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Lexi Belle404,614 Views, 1,327 Likes, 7,003 Favorites Tags: Average Body, Blonde Hair, Hybrid Pussy, Medium Tits, Natural Tits, Shaved Pussy, Small Ass, White / Caucasian
Videos of Lexi Belle
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Sexy girl with a tight body gets rubbed
Porn Star Spa - 58,034 Views, 1 Likes, 2,154 Favorites
PornStarSpa has a nice update for you guys this week. Lexi Belle has Cody Sky stop by to rub her down and get the kinks out. After getting the sweet parts he starts getting into the second part of the massage which Lexi has no objections to. Before you know it Cody is getting his dick massaged inside her mouth. Then massages her pussy. Enjoy watching
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Big Asses And Hardcore Anal
Ass Parade - 88,688 Views, 2 Likes, 2,968 Favorites
This weeks Assparade will leave you weak in the knees and quick to jerk one out. Starring in todays feature is Lexi Belle & Rose. Lexi Belle is the new babe around here and she is straight up bad ass. This girl has a small waist with a nice juicy ass and has no problem deep throating. Also in today's update is Rose, this sexy thing needs no introduction because I no you all no who she is but I will remind you that this babe has no limits and takes it anal. So check out this video and prepare to be amazed!
Watch this video now!
Lexi Belle In Miami!
Bang Bus - 142,319 Views, 1 Likes, 2,537 Favorites
Lexi Belle is on the bangBus bithces. She's here riding around getting it. Looking for dudes to hop on the BangBus to fuck her. Who could resist this sweet piece of ass. Lexi Belle is all natural and loves to be fucked. She finds three lucky dudes in the streets of Miami. All get their nut off. Enjoy!
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College Balloons
Dorm Invasion - 69,845 Views, 188 Likes, 1,456 Favorites
The girls are rocking out this week. We got Bethany Benz, Jada Stevens and Lexi Belle and they are ready to invade your dorm. This week we have a whole new set of games to get these horny co-eds going. A little bit of pass the dildo and Ass smashing balloon popping. This is what its all about. Then when all the festivities hit high gear the girls kick it up a notch and throwing some dick sucking and some banging ass fucking. These college kids arent ready for this..are you?
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Lexi Belle has Happy feet
Magical Feet - 18,224 Views, 1 Likes, 344 Favorites
Who wants to see Lexi Belle give a foot rub? You've got to be a fool if you don't. She's slim and sexy with natural tits, an all natural ass, and a beautiful butterfly pussy that will leave your mouth watering. Not to mention. Lexi Belle has succulent toes. Which will have you rock solid once they touch your cock. Mojito has to be the luckiest fucker to have Lexi Belle all over his cock. Don't miss out. She'll have you wanting a foot rub as well. Enjoy!
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Lexi Belle does the tugging 'round here
Tugjobs - 29,955 Views, 109 Likes, 746 Favorites
Oh man lexi is one sweet looking candy, but she inside that candy shell is a dangerously sexy spice. Oh And she'll place nice, but only if you feed her that cock! Lexi Belle likes to take control and like a boa constrictor squeezes its prey, She has a death like grip on your cock and with her kung-fu tugging action she's capable of incapacitating any man until he busts a nut in the body part of her choice..in this case her cute barbie doll tits. Enjoy!
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Sexi Lexi Belle Loves Cum !
Big Mouthfuls - 58,521 Views, 1 Likes, 2,150 Favorites
Hey fans. We got Lexi Belle to screw on camera for your entertainment. This girl is so amazingly fly it's ridiculous! Lexi loves to fuck and it really shows in her great performance in this Bigmouthfuls update! Johnny Castle is one lucky SOB for getting the chance to dick down such a hot piece of ass! Enjoy Fuckers! Cause I know your gonna love it!
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Lexi Belle Likes ASS-tor Play
Can He Score? - 40,232 Views, 112 Likes, 1,196 Favorites
This week on Can He Score we have the very beautiful, very youthful Lexi Belle. This darling maybe cute and have quite a cartoonish voice, but she's got a viscous body.She has great legs! Those legs are as thick as tree trunks, supple tits and a big fat ass that's hardly containable. Lexi Belle is the complete package, but underneath that tight body and the cute persona lies a massive black spot of smut. She is a FREAK! For one thing she likes to Bang dudes with a strap on...ouch! So Because we now know this we had to hook her up with someone who can handle her. So Lexi meet Alex Astor; he just broke up with his girl who just recently decided she wanted to become a Fetish pornstar....
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Lexi and the Hogger
Can He Score? - 31,878 Views, 1 Likes, 899 Favorites
This week we have a very sweet girl with an innocent face. Her name is Lexi Belle and she is anything but innocent. She likes to do all sorts of freaky shit. This week she came down to us because she wanted to meet someone new. So we hooked her up with this guy Joey Hogger, who's some sort of salesman, like we care. He wanted to have his last hurrah before retiring. The dude looks kinda old and decrepit. We almost felt bad about putting them together. But, what the hell, you never know what can happen. So check it out this week and see if Lexi Belle finds a new man and if Joey can do the ultimate...CAN HE SCORE?!
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Hair Did and Pussy Licked!
Power Munch - 20,927 Views, 1 Likes, 386 Favorites
What up everyone? Today we have an amazing update for Power Munch. Nikki Brooks heads to the salon to get her hair did and ends up getting her pussy fucked by her stylist and assistant (Kelso D'Love and Lexi Belle). These three girls are fucking fine! They all lick, suck and fuck each other with toys and tongues! It is a good day for Powermunch fans! For all you lesbian lovers... I suggest you watch these three sexy ladies get it on!
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Fuck Team Punch Out!
Fuck Team Five - 58,649 Views, 2 Likes, 1,502 Favorites
Oh shit its that time again, Time to fuck shit up with the Fuck Team 5! And this week we have 3 banging knock outs with us to show you how to have a good time the only way we can. Who are these knock outs you may ask? Luscious Lopez, Lexi Belle and Natalie Norton these three devilish hotties are out and about looking to find the perfect trainer to condition them into becoming a crew of badasses. This isn't little mac and Doc training this is the fuck team punch out crew. and who knows what trouble these girls will be looking for and who they will find to fuck suck and possibly jerk off.
Watch this video now!
I 'll Make Your Cock Gush
Tugjobs - 46,542 Views, 2 Likes, 1,250 Favorites
This week we have Lexi Belle doing her tug thang. Joey got a good close up this cutie's sexy eyes. She is hot and on fire. Lexi has a cute ass too, that she rubbed on Joey's cock while she was tugging it. Lexi wanted to tug all the way through but she was getting Joey so excited he had to slow her down a couple times. She wanted to see him explode. Lexi's tug technique is the double-handed yank with a lot of lube. Showing off her ass and tits and tugging on that cock made Joey explode.
Watch this video now!
The Perfect Girl With The Perfect Feet
Magical Feet - 22,345 Views, 49 Likes, 403 Favorites
What's up guys, this time on magical feet I got a sexy, amazing and sensual girl named Lexi. She is just too cute, her body is perfect and her ass is something you just want to grab and hold on to forever. She is just an amazing girl that knows how to satisfy a man; she loves to use her feet to stroke cock, and she uses her ass to seduce while making Shaggy cum. So check out these magical feet, you will love to see this girl in action.
Watch this video now!
Construct This!
Fuck Team Five - 36,047 Views, 1 Likes, 1,126 Favorites
We've got a little bit of a role reversal game going in this weeks update. This week's team consisting of Kristina Rose, Lexi Belle, and Whitney Stevens have gone out on patrol for construction workers. We all know how much these guys like hollarin at women, and no it isn't just a cliché or stereotype. In the history of construction work this is what happens when the girls come on to THEM. We'll see if these group of guys are all talk, or if they actually have something to back up there big mouths.
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Lexi Belle sexiest moves
Tugjobs - 18,048 Views, 49 Likes, 421 Favorites
Lexi Belle came by looking for a hard dick to stroke. Who could turn away a girl this hot? She had a great ass and a pretty face. Lexi loves giving tugjobs, and it shows. From taking off her clothes with the sexiest moves, licking her nice tits, and putting that ass on my penis, my dick felt like it was going to rip my pants off. She was robing my cock so softly. Her performance was really amazing. I had excite ...oh delicious! she really likes the cock to be wet..I have to say this time I knew it was going to be a good stroke.. It was hot! Check it out.


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A brief explanation is needed since a variety of terms are used to refer to students who do not use English as their native language. According to the Conference on College Composition & Communication (CCCC) Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers, which is part of the National Council of Teachers of English in the US, the term "ESL" (English as a Second Language) is used in the context of higher education to refer to students who do not speak English as their native language, even if they speak English as their third or fourth languages. The term "ELL" (English Language Learners) generally refers to students in K-12 contexts.
A more contemporary term "multilingual" is also widely used to highlight the positive sides of such students rather than the limits of "ESL" or "ELL". However, when we say "multilingual students", it also includes native speakers who speak multiple languages. Thus, in order to avoid the confusion, the term "ESL" will be used on this website to refer to non-native English speaking students, which include both international and immigrant students. For further information about the terminology and other information, please check out the CCCC Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers.
Young-Kyung Min, PhD
Education Program

subset: commoncrawl


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Search Maps
MapRegion embraced in the operations of the armies against Richmond and Petersburg Shows fortifications, troop movement routes of Confederate and Union forces, and names of some residents. Relief shown by hachures. Printed on 2 sheets of paper pasted together. Transferred from the Joseph Warren Keifer Papers in the Manuscript Division, L.C. "Authorities. North of James & Appomattox from photograph map captured from the enemy and surveys of Maj. P.S. Michie, Corps of Engineers. South of Do....
- Contributor: United States. Army. Corps of Engineers - Michie, Peter Smith - Michler, N. (Nathaniel)
- Date: 1865


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ATLANTA - As SEC football powerhouses Georgia and Alabama look to play each other for a national championship berth, Georgia Dome officials are urging fans not to be duped by scalpers selling fake tickets.
CBS-Atlanta (http://bit.ly/SoSeLI ) reported Monday that tickets for Saturday's SEC Championship game at the Georgia Dome were selling for hundreds of dollars online.
Authorities say criminals are looking to capitalize on the demand by selling counterfeit tickets.
A spokesman for the Georgia Dome told the television station authentic tickets should have a glossy coating, a barcode and three different SEC holograms stamped onto them.
Authorities urge fans to use caution if a ticket deal seems too good to be true.
The arena will open a validation window Saturday morning for spectators wishing to check the authenticity of their tickets.


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Your 'Go-To' Source for
Aviation Art & Information
Artist, author, and historian Mike Machat is a well-known American aviation personality who has dedicated his career to the preservation and documentation of aviation history.
If it's about airplanes, Mike can illustrate it, write about it, or talk about it. His extraordinary archival resources and aviation experience allow him to deliver dynamic aviation imagery and content that is accurate, exciting, and compelling.
Welcome aboard!


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You know those people who wave their iPhones about everywhere they go, in a desperate need to record every moment of their lives?
You're one of them, aren't you?
At least there's a very good chance you might be, if Apple's new iPhone ad is to be believed.
For, in an attempt to re-pluck your emotive twang-elements, the company claims that every day more people take pictures with an iPhone than with any other camera.
I am not sure how the company knows that, say, my engineer friend George doesn't take 65,000 pictures on his Nokia Lumia 920 every living hour. But it claims it does.
Which is, in itself, worrying.
Lately, Apple has begun to realize what it feels like to be Lindsay Lohan.
For reasons best known to those for whom satisfaction is a peculiar form of hell, Cupertino has been assaulted by every possible brickbat.
It's had rocks thrown at its effigy with constant force -- everything from the idea that its CEO is a coffee-drinking, unimaginative Titanic captain to the notion that Apple's designers will never produce another interesting product before Lohan wins an Oscar.
This new ad is an attempt to restate confident emotional territory and rise above any and all brickbats.
Here we see the world through Apple's eyes.
Skateboarders who have to take pictures, joggers who have to take pictures and shoppers who have to take pictures.
It's as if we've become a society of camera-freaks, ready to snap the minute we awake. Which, in a way, is true.
We are so wound-up about missing something that we have to photograph it to remind ourselves (and, especially, others) that we've actually seen it.
I am creating a clinical term for this phenomenon: Photo-neurosis.
We shoot fun, friends and, of course, food. We point our cameras to the sky and to the ground. And we can only see a concert through the prism of an iPhone camera.
Who's going to believe us if we just say we were there?
This ad will undoubtedly make many people feel good all over. It reassures photo-neurotics that they are not alone.
It's more difficult to reassure the feelingless, feckless, fickle, fumbling, fraudulent neurotics on Wall Street, however.
Sadly, no ad can ever do that.


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Vector NTI Advance® is an integrated sequence analysis and data management software package that allows analysis, manipulation, construction, storage, and management of complex biological molecules. You can:
• perform routine sequence analysis tasks, such as restriction mapping and identifying protein coding regions;
• generate recombinant cloning strategies and protocols; and
• design and analyze PCR primers.
You can register here for a Vector NTI Advance® account . University of Rochester Medical Center faculty, staff, and students are eligible to register. Usage is limited to on-campus computers connected to the URMC network.
After you register, you'll be able to view additional details about the download and installation process.
PLEASE NOTE: To install the software you must have administrative rights for your computer. If you don't have administrative rights or you are not sure, contact your department's computer support staff for assistance.
In addition, you may find the following pages from the Vector NTI Advance® website helpful:
Installation Guide
Quick Start Guide
User's Manual
Vector NTI Customer Support
University Information Technology on River Campus licenses statistical, mathematical, and scientific software for the use of UR faculty, staff, and students, including JMP, Mathematica, Matlab, S-Plus, SAS, SPSS, Stata, Amira, and ChemDraw. Use of most software requires payment of a license fee. Go to University IT Software Site Licenses for more information.
The U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) supports and distributes a variety of publicly available databases and software for the medical and scientific communities. These include GenBank, UniGene, OMIM, BLAST, Entrez Gene, Entrez Genome, and Nucleotide. The NCBI Welcome page provides links to the software and databases as well as information on their use.
For all other questions, feel free to contact Miner's Bioinformatics Consulting and Education Service (275-6940).
Library Search
Quick Links


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Browse FAQs
Uniflair BACnet (Building Automation and Control Networks)
Published date: 13 August 2013
Browse FAQs
Issue: Uniflair BACnet (Building Automation and Control Networks)
Product line: Uniflair
Environment: All Models and Serial Numbers
Cause: Install
All the units must be fitted with a RS485 card, trough that they are connected to the RS485 serial cable. On one side there will be the 120 ohm resistor, on the other, the gateway which will translate the variables from Uniflair language, to LON language.
To realize a local net to be connected to a BMS with protocol BACnet, it's necessary:
• gateway LBM every 8 units; (not necessary with pCOnet - pCOWeb)
• 1 RS485 serial card for every controller;
• 120Ω resistor;
• PC for the gateway configuration
BACnet is a supervisory system created from AHRAE:
"American society of Heating, refrigerating and Air conditioning Engineers"
These are the ways how the information under BACnet can be sent to Uniflair controllers:
BACnet IP/Ethernet
pCOnet: connessione RS485
Carel :
BACnet :


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Friday, August 13, 2010
waste-free bento lunch: PlanetBox, take 2
Clockwise from top left:
*small container of sunflower kernels, carrots
* raspberries and grapes
* the brown zone: cereal bar, granola bar, pretzel sticks
* star-shaped cheddar cheese and a peppered turkey roll-up
* tiny middle section holds one frosted animal cookie
More milk went along in a Thermos Funtainer (Spiderman, in case you are wondering, though we also have two Batmans and a Hello Kitty...).
Ethan reported that it was still "cold as ice" at lunchtime. I keep the empty Funtainer in the fridge (with no lid) overnight and fill with milk in the morning where I then pop it in the freezer until it's time to load the backpacks (so about 20 minutes). Works like a charm every time to keep beverages very well chilled!
12 comments:
Seriously I want to eat this box myself. I just ordered a Bento laptop lunch box for my 2nd grader because I cannot stand the thought of her eating school lunch. There are fantastic ideas here on your site.
- August 13, 2010 at 3:14 PM
- Rebecca Watson said... [Reply to comment]
i love that lunch box! i want it for myself!! totally cool!! im your newest follower!! :)
www.justcherishtoday.com - come follow me back - please and lets stay in touch!!
- August 13, 2010 at 3:37 PM
- slushygirl said... [Reply to comment]
Lovely box! I've been searching out boxes as I don't have any yet. Well, I do have the vintage Tupperware bento box. I guess it counts.
- August 13, 2010 at 4:59 PM
- two_blue_one_pink said... [Reply to comment]
Does the funtainer fit in the laptop lunch box?
- August 13, 2010 at 7:59 PM
- Melissa said... [Reply to comment]
two_blue_one_pink - I'm confused by your question. Do you mean does the Funtainer bottle fit in the drink pocket of the PlanetBox lunchbox? It does!
I don't have any of the Laptop Lunches outer carry bags, just the plastic box system. So if that is what you are asking about - my answer is, "I don't know". :)
- August 13, 2010 at 8:57 PM
Where do I buy the PlanetBox...so cool!!
- August 13, 2010 at 11:39 PM
- Adriana said... [Reply to comment]
Yes, yes, I would love to get a planet box as well, do you have a full picture of the cotainer????
And btw, i just started reading your blog and I am truly in love, inspired, and motivated...thanks for all the great ideas...
- August 14, 2010 at 8:13 AM
- Melissa said... [Reply to comment]
Hey girls! The PlanetBox is only available on their own website, PlanetBox.com.
- August 14, 2010 at 9:53 AM
- My Wonderworld said... [Reply to comment]
What a great blog!
- August 14, 2010 at 10:09 AM
- frosty said... [Reply to comment]
Melissa, I can't believe you are back to school. We don't start until after Labor Day :)
- August 16, 2010 at 1:37 PM
- Gretchen said... [Reply to comment]
I love your site and have been inspired to dress up my little man's lunch a bit. I haven't moved up to the fancy bento boxes yet, but it's in the future. I must say -- I am pretty surprised by the quantity of food in the kids' lunches! My 4 year old typically gets a sandwich, yogurt, fruit of some sort and a treat (cookie, yogurt raisins, etc.). 2 granola bars, pretzels, all that fruit, carrots....does your kiddo eat it all???
- September 8, 2010 at 11:25 AM
I used the planet box this year for the first time and I love it! You really can be creative in making healthy lunches! Love your ideas!
- July 20, 2012 at 10:37 PM


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I just returned from a long job interview that took me no less than 3 hrs. They gave me a job application form to fill in and the question "What's your religion?" was in it. I almost got a nervous break down, I felt tempted to write Jehovah Witness but thought it would be more interesting to put "None". The reason why I didn't wrote Atheist is because Atheism is not a religion, so basically I don't have a religion. If they were asking me whether I believe in god(s) then I would have answered I'm an Atheist but I think that is none of their bussiness.
Anyway now my friends and family members say that I should've wrote I'm a Catholic... But that is a small progress that I didn't put Atheist (4 years ago I was asked about Euthanasia and I said I agree with it and the recruiter sent me home lol). I know that there won't be any sort of punishment for me if I lied about that issue and that I would actually get a benefit from it, but I don't feel like going around saying I'm something I am not just to please some random person who doesn't even know me.
Or maybe is because is not a matter of live or death.
So.. would you lie about your atheism to get a job?
Views: 679
So they made you sign a paper that Jesus was your savior? Was their purpose to use it in court in case you turned out to be a non-christian? I ask because it seems to me that it was a way to legally protect themselves.
No, the purpose was to make sure that all of their teachers were born again Christians. It was a Christian daycare, so they wanted to make sure that the teachers had the same belief system that they wanted the kids to be taught. I don't think there were any malicious reasons behind it. Although they were a bit frustrating at times, and not the most intelligent people ever, they had good hearts. I actually had a really good relationship with the director of the center.
I live in the Netherlands, and when I had a job interview about a year ago the question came up as part of them wanting to know my personality a bit better.
The thing was, I had been reading a few stories on this site about people having had problems being Atheist at their jobs, so I'd be lying if I said that question didn't raise my heartbeat a bit :)
Anyway, I told them then that I didn't really believe, and that religion wasn't making much sense to me.
btw, it turned out that I wouldn't have had to worry anyway. about 90% of the department where I work is in various forms of Atheism.
I guess it question could go the other way, maybe they only want atheists to relate to, might make the office air sweeter!
Freek I thought that in the Netherlands they didn't ask that question because a good part of the population is Atheist. I'm glad saying the truth worked out, you imagine saying that you are a christian and not getting the job?
Sure I'll lie. The joke's on them.
About 15 years ago I had an interview with a company that wrote industry-specific software. The owners, two brothers, conducted the interview and made a point in the middle of it to tell me that their business was a 'family business'. I said that since I knew they were brothers and the owners that that seemed a little obvious. They then clarified, "What we mean is that this is a family oriented business, we like to uphold family values and we feel Christianity offers the best foundation for this." I stood up, reached across the table, shook their hands and said, "Good luck with that," and walked out.
I would lie about a LOT of things in a job interview to get the job, but pretending to have a religion is not one of them.
That takes a lot courage Heather, is like telling someone "No you are not breaking up with me, I'M breaking up with you".
It doesn't really take courage, just some honesty with myself as well as them. There was simply no way that I could have spent more than a week in a place where people spoke regularly about their relationship with Jesus without telling them they were bullshit filled theotards. What would be the point of even taking a job like that?
While it's true that "two wrongs don't make a right," savvy job interviewers will use various sorts of devious stratagems to trick people applying for work to reveal things about themselves that many world say are none of the company's business.
For example, if you go into the interviewer's office and they have numerous pictures of children, the idea may be to get you to say something like, "You have lovely children. I have four kids under 12." This is gold for the interviewer because you might as well be saying "I'll be needing a lot of time off to take my kids to the doctor, to attend afternoon soccer matches, to attend to my kids when they are sick," etc.
They may walk you out to your car, not to be nice but to see what kind of car you drive. If it's a wreck or if it appears to be a car you couldn't possibly afford in your circumstances, this could count against you.
Now, I'm not saying I would lie in a job interview, just that you need to view it as somewhat adversarial and think about the effect of what you reveal in it.
LOL that one of taking you to your car to kow what you drive is a good one, is even useful for when you are dating someone, excellent.


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Our Moisture-wick Nylon Collection uses the highest quality fabrics and the most cutting-edge compression technology. The multi-dimensional weave and 400-needle count allow for comfort, flexibility, and breathability. All styles are available in a Wide Calf option.
Made with high-quality fabrics and 400-needle count for flexibility and comfort. Our socks offer mild-moderate compression (15-20 mmHg) - appropriate for all day, everyday wear. The moisture-wicking fabric helps draw...
Made with high-quality fabrics and 400-needle count for flexibility and comfort. Our socks offer moderate-firm compression (20-30 mmHg). 20-30 mmHg is considered medical-grade compression and generally recommended or prescribed by your doctor. This...
We have a different sizing chart depending on the type of compression garment. Please consider your foot and calf circumference when choosing your size.
If you're in between sizes, ask yourself a few questions:
What is my body type? Will I be more comfortable in a size up or down? Take your body type into consideration when choosing a size especially if you're in between sizes.
Machine wash after each wear, delicate and cold.
Air dry is preferred to maintain the elasticity and quality of fabrics.
Compression garments are made in a variety of support levels, each of which is designed to address different needs. These levels are most commonly expressed in millimeters of mercury (abbreviated as mmHg). Generally, graduated compression is displayed in ranges. The higher the numerical value, the stronger the support level indicated. For example, a 20-30 mmHg garment will offer more support and feel tighter than a 15-20 mmHg garment.
All of VIM & VIGR's products are offered in 15-20 mmHg compression level and select styles are available in 20-30 mmHg.
Slip your arm into the sock until your fingers reach the toes. Your palm should be resting in the sock's heel.
Starting at the cuff, fold the sock over until it meets the heel. Make sure to fold the sock onto itself.
With the sock still inverted, pull the foot of the sock firmly onto your foot. Make sure your toes are securely in the toe pocket. Starting with the cuff, gradually roll the sock up.
Adjust so that your heel is properly positioned in the heel pocket and the cuff sits below the knee. Make sure the cuff is not pulled up too high.


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Central Ohioans can pay their respects to fallen Vietnam War soldiers during a program at 4 p.m. Friday, March 29 in the Ohio History Center, 800 E. 17th Ave.
Central Ohioans can pay their respects to fallen Vietnam War soldiers during a program at 4 p.m. Friday, March 29 in the Ohio History Center, 800 E. 17th Ave.
"The Wall That Heals, Wall Retirement and Remembrance" ceremony will cap off a four-day commemoration honoring those who served in the Vietnam War. The event is free and open to the public.
"The idea of this ceremony is to honor those who have fallen, those who didn't make it home and the innocent lives lost during the war," said Mike McKinney, communications director for the Ohio Department of Veterans Services.
This year marks the first state level recognition of Vietnam Veterans' Day, which is Saturday, March 30.
Because of the Easter holiday, services were held earlier, McKinney said.
The Wall That Heals, which is affiliated with the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., is one of eight that travels around the country.
"We're very fortunate to get this particular wall here for our commemoration," McKinney said.
The week was filled with memorial activities both at the history center, which is part of the Ohio Historical Society, and the Statehouse.
The Wall That Heals, Wall Retirement and Remembrance ceremony will be preceded by a panel discussion at 10 a.m. today, Thursday, March 28.
The discussion about the aftermath of Vietnam will be conducted by veterans. It will be held in the history center.
The lineup includes:
* Thomas Burke, Navy veteran and president of the Buckeye State Council of Vietnam Veterans of America, who will talk about the intolerance he experienced when coming home from the war.
* Hoac Ngo, a pilot in the South Vietnamese air force, will discuss the nine years he spent in a communist prison after the war.
* Jeffrey Race, an Army veteran and current Harvard University professor, will speak about the war's impact on foreign policy and national security.
* Virginia Rayburn, an Army nurse who was not in Vietnam and who currently is a nurse executive at the Chalmers P. Wylie Veterans Administration Ambulatory Care Center in Columbus, will discuss the long-term health effects the war had on Vietnam veterans.
McKinney said the events are a time for celebration and reflection.
"This commemoration is important because Vietnam veterans never got the welcome home they earned for their service and deserved as veterans of a war," McKinney said.
"When Vietnam veterans came home their experience ranged from indifference to hostility, in some cases."


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The Tim Holtz Mini Distress Ink Pads are a collection of individual 1 x 1 inch water based dye inks. Like their larger counterpart, the Minis feature a raised felt pad with ink that is reactive with water and coordinates with the Distress palette of products. Each pad is stackable and fade resistant. Ink Pads can be re-inked with matching Distress Ink Re-inker.
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Ranger was founded in 1929 and originally manufactured an exclusive line of commercial ink products for the U.S. banking industry. With a continuous focus on innovation, successful lines such as the Distress family of products and Perfect Pearls pigment powders have become popular worldwide. Ranger is well known for bringing quality inks, embossing powders and innovative craft products to the arts and crafts market worldwide. Ranger is very proud that all Ranger inks, embossing powders, paints, mediums, dimensional glitters, glues, and stamp cleaners are manufactured in the USA. These products are made in Ranger's facility located in Tinton Falls, New Jersey.


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Christians have not always been at their best when encountering serious believers from other religions, but Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard J. Mouw is a notable evangelical exception. In his sustained work across the Catholic-Protestant divide and in Fuller's pioneering dialogues on Jewish- and Muslim-Christian relations, Mouw has modeled charity and clarity in the face of skepticism and even some vocal criticism. Thus, he is a valuable contributor to our 2008 Christian Vision Project conversation on the question, Is our gospel too small?
Charles Hodge was a severe critic of the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher. A champion of Calvinist orthodoxy at Princeton Seminary in the 19th century, Hodge had witnessed the influence of the German theologian during his own graduate studies in Germany, and was deeply disturbed by what he saw as Schleiermacher's rejection of the Bible as an infallible divine revelation. Schleiermacher's embrace of the rationalist critique of biblical authority, Hodge insisted, undermined the most fundamental tenets of the historic Christian faith.
But on the same pages of Systematic Theology where Hodge set forth his critique of Schleiermacherwho had by this time been dead for several decadeshe included a brief personal footnote about Schleiermacher. During his studies in Germany, Hodge reported, he had frequently attended services at Schleiermacher's church and had been impressed that the hymns sung there "were always evangelical and spiritual in an eminent degree, filled with praise and gratitude to our Redeemer." He went on to note that he had been told by one of Schleiermacher's colleagues that often, in the evenings, the theologian would call his family together, saying: ...1


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Anza (AZ) Waveforms 24 Hours Display For Vertical Channels
San Jacinto Fault Zone (YN)
Anza Contributed
Anza Prelim
PFO Broadband Array Post Holes (PY)
The image below is a snapshot of the last 1 hour of data the ANZA network has received from network stations. The page is auto-refreshed every 150 seconds to reflect the latest data recorded. Waveform data is yellow with a dark blue background. A light blue background represents zero data. The most recent data is on the right-hand side, with the edge of the right-hand side of the image being the current time. Time is shown every 6th line in the format YYYYJJJ:hh:mm:ss, where YYYY is the year, JJJ is the Julian Date, hh is the hour (24 hour), mm is the minute, and ss is the second.
The station code (on the left-hand side) is in the format NN_STA_CHA where NN is the network (in this case AZ for ANZA), STA is the station code, and CHA is the channel code used to identify a particular data stream from the station (e.g. HHZ is a broadband, High sample rate, High gain, Vertical component data stream).


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Technology has been making a big time difference in the overall way of living life and on the daily processes. The Online Cyber jobs in one such example where the knowledge is being delivered at a channelled manner with convenience and at the economic and affordable range. The online Cyber tutoring jobs are a channel to fulfil the gist to share knowledge one is passionate about while making an extra income for the same. The Cyber online teaching jobs can be done from anywhere as far as the focus is on tutoring. The hours of delivering can be chosen as per the convenience and can be organized accordingly.
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Trash Behaving Like Trash
If you walked into KFed's house and didn't see ciggie butts on the floor and spit on the walls, you'd probably be pretty damn shocked. So it's not surprising that KFed is being accused of completely trashing a house he was renting. The owners of the house want KFat to fart up $100,000 (of Brit Brit's money) to pay for all the damages he allegedly made the house in Tarzana, CA. They also say that KFed rolled out of there without paying rent for 6-months. Here's a list of the damages:
Gutters full of cigarette butts and empty beer bottles
A broken beer dispenser on the barbecue island
Permanent spit marks on exterior paint
Broken light covers
Bent light posts
Broken tiles
Dead trees and plants due to failure to water
Drawings all over the walls
A room that was turned into a studio (without the owners' permission)
Broken dishwasher … with broken baskets
Dismantled smoke detectors
Front driveway oil-leak damage
Master bathroom windows tinted (without owners' permission)
TMZ also has a ton of pictures of the damages. My guess is that KFed didn't mean to mess that place up. Most of the damage was probably caused just by him walking around. Dude can make the earth move. And when he farts? Forget about it. Light posts will bend and smoke detectors will burst.
The most disturbing part about all of this is that KFed had a recording studio in his house. That is some terrorist shit right there. Haven't we been through enough?!


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Local Resources
West Valley Community Services is a local organization that provides Health (Food & Nutrition), Home (Shelter & Housing assistance), and Heart (Family Support & Emergency Assistance). They serve the West Valley area of Cupertino, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Saratoga, West San Jose and the unincorporated mountain regions.
Emergency Assistance Network - in order to find out where you can go to find out about local community services visit the Emergency Assistance Network. Agencies list the areas they serve by zipcode.
United Way Silicon Valley is committed to improving community conditions by helping local people become financially stable and independent. Their focus is to improve the education, income, and health of every Silicon Valley resident. You can also call them at (408) 266-8950
United Way of the Bay Area Students living outside of the Silicon Valley can visit the United Way of the Bay Area by visiting the website or calling (415) 808-4300.
United Way is a world wide organization. In order to find the local United Way in your area you can dial 2-1-1 on any phone or you can also check their website


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Computer Science ColloquiumIm Rahmen des Informatik-Kolloquiums, das von den Instituten des Fachbereichs Informatik, der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Informatik (ÖGI), der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Datenverarbeitung (ADV) sowie der Österreichischen Computergesellschaft (OCG) abgehalten wird, spricht
Andreas Bender
University of Cambridge, UKüber das Thema:
Using Bioactivity Databases and Computer Algorithms for Target Deconvolution and Compound DesignZeit: Fri 25.4.2014, 16:00, 60 Minuten
Ort: S3 055
ZusammenfassungMore and more chemical and biological information is becoming available, both in public databases as well as in company repositories. However, how to make use of this information in chemical biology and drug discovery settings is much less clear. In this work, we will discuss how chemical and biological information from different domains - such as compound bioactivity data, pathway annotations from the bioinformatics domain, and gene expression data - can be used for a variety of purposes, such as the mode-of-action analysis from phenotypic readouts, anticipating compound toxicities in early discovery, and for designing and selecting compound with the desired bioactivities. We will show that cheminformatics algorithms trained on large chemogenomics databases can be employed to support target deconvolution in high-content screening as well as organism-based screens using e.g. Xenopus laevis as well as phenotypic data obtained from rat models. When anticipating compound adverse compound properties early on, we will show than gene expression data can be used for this purpose; however, how to generate and analyze data is very much case-dependent. Relating to compound design and selection, we can employ both bioactivity-driven approaches as well as gene expression based resources, and examples of both will be presented. Hence, overall, while the chemical and biological data available currently is very diverse, we are able to show that it can already be used successfully for understanding the mode of action of compounds, anticipating their toxicities early on in discovery, and designing and selecting novel chemical matter to modulate biology.
VortragenderDr Andreas Bender is a Lecturer for Molecular Informatics with the Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Cambridge, leading a group of about 20 postdocs, PhD and graduate students andacademic visitors. In his work, Andreas is involved with the integration and analysis of chemical and biological data, aimed at understanding phenotypic compound action (such as cellular readouts, and also organism-level effects) on a mechanistic level, ranging from compound efficacy to toxicity. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge as a Cambridge Gates Scholar in 2005 and worked in the Lead Discovery Informatics group at Novartis in Cambridge/MA as well as at Leiden University in the Netherlands before his current post.
Einladender: Univ. Prof. Dr. Sepp Hochreiter
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If you have your Bibles, turn to Acts, chapter 9. Now, here we come to one of the great days in the history of the church, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. The importance of this conversion is indicated by the fact that it's mentioned three times in some detail in the Book of Acts: chapter 9, chapter 22 and chapter 26. Anything repeated that frequently has a great significance. It also is alluded to many times by Paul himself in his writings in his epistles.
Now, the conversion of this particular man became the pivot not only on which his life turned, but on which the history of the church turned. And you and I, in tremendous measure, are indebted to this man for whatever we may know about God and about salvation, because he wrote those books which detail for us this great information.
It was fitting that his conversion be very unique, because he's such a unique person. By birth, he was a Jew; by citizenship, a Roman; by education, a Greek; by conversion and grace, a Christian. And he became the best of all those things in combination. He was missionary, theologian, evangelist, pastor, organizer, leader, thinker, statesman, fighter for truth and, at the same time, lover of souls. He was everything that a Christian could and should be, short of being what Jesus Christ is. There never was a man like him, as far as I'm concerned. There may have been, apart from my information, such a man, but it's hard to imagine him being any better.
This is the story of the conversion of this man. And it's a great evidence of the fact that God can take the crummiest of the crummy, the worst of the worst and make them the best. God is in the business of doing that. Nobody ever gets too low to be unredemptive. Sometimes I think we wonder whether the grace of God can ever be extended in certain cases, and that's just exactly where the grace of God does its greatest and most glorious work.
There are many things that come into my mind in thinking about this, and we're going to have to kind of get a running start before we really hit the outline this morning, but it's interesting, as I look at this man, Saul, to think that, prior to this occasion of his conversion, the one great dramatic event that must have plagued him was the execution of Stephen. The first time we meet Saul significantly is as he stands at the place where Stephen is being stoned. And he apparently was leading in this thing, because they laid their cloaks at his feet when they picked up the stones to stone Stephen.
And it has been said that sometimes a rather inconsequential or apparently trivial event can plant within the mind of a man a kind of an idea time bomb that doesn't detonate for a long time. And it just may have been that Stephen was kind of a time bomb in the brain of Saul, and it didn't really detonate until he hit the Damascus Road, flat on his face, when Jesus revealed Himself to him.
Abraham Lincoln said that he remembered with very much clarity the horror which he felt when, having taken a flatboat trip down the Mississippi, he arrived in New Orleans and saw his first slave auction. The year was 1831, and that was 32 years before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but he himself said the incident ignited his thinking.
And so it is very likely that this thing which occurred in confrontation with Stephen, which also probably included some kind of an argument or disputation between Saul and Stephen, incidentally, which Saul lost, because it says in 6 that nobody could withstand Stephen, that this all had planted within his mind this whole problem of Christianity. And he saw it at that point as heresy. And he began from Stephen on to persecute Christians. But I believe the bleeding Stephen's words and demeanor eventually had part in the end of the promising career of a young fire-breathing Pharisee. And I also believe it had a great part in the beginning of the ministry of one of history's most capable and colorful men, the apostle Paul.
Now, let me give you a little background about this man, Saul, so that we understand something of what happened in his life. His home was in a town called Tarsus. Tarsus is located at the corner where Asia Minor meets Syria, north of Israel. It was a very distinguished city, distinguished for its cosmopolitan interests. It was a place where many people gathered. Its wharves on the Cydnus River were crowded with commerce. It was also a city that was famous for its university. And, along with Athens and Alexandria, Tarsus ranked with the three great universities. Those three were kind of the Harvard, Yale and Princeton of their day.
Saul's father was a Roman citizen. And, of course, you remember that Saul inherited from him that right of Roman citizenry, which stood him in good stead in later years. His father was also a Jew and a Pharisee, and so Saul could match zealous credentials with any Jew.
In keeping with Jewish tradition, which I think is a great tradition, every boy had to know a trade, and in the city of Tarsus one of the very large industries was the industry of tent-making. And so the young Saul apparently learned this trade. He was able to weave cloth from the black hair of goats. They would weave the cloth into strips, then tie the strips together to make tents. And it really isn't any different today in the East. You can see the very same kind of tents if you go there right now.
At the age of approximately 13, no doubt, Saul was packed off to Jerusalem. The Jewish heritage was motivation enough for him to have good Jewish training. So he was off to Jerusalem, and he sat under a great teacher by the name of Gamaliel. Gamaliel was called "the beauty of the law" because of his marvelous ability to teach. Gamaliel was also so revered that when he died, the people said that the reverence for the law died with Gamaliel. And so Saul studied under this brilliant man.
The course of his study would involve memorization of great portions of the entire Old Testament. So he became quite scholarly in terms of his knowledge of the Old Testament. He also would sit in question and answer sessions with his tutor, and so he was a familiar man in terms of Jewish history and theology.
It's interesting, too, that since it is never mentioned that he met Jesus, it is likely that he, having studied in Jerusalem, then went back to Tarsus, and perhaps was the master teacher in the synagogue at Tarsus. Later on, however, he returns to Jerusalem, and on his return Jesus has already disappeared from the scene, and he confronts this man Stephen. And Stephen was dynamic. He was bold. He was dramatic. He was powerful. Saul couldn't handle him in life. The only thing he could do was get rid of him, so they killed him. But, as I said, I think the death of Stephen planted a time bomb in the brain of Saul that exploded finally on the Damascus Road in conjunction with God's invasion of his life.
Saul became, from Stephen on, the leader of the persecution movement. He began to rip and tear the church. Years later, he himself acknowledged this, as recorded in Acts 26:9-11. "I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only shut up many of the saints in prison, by authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them," which is an indication that he was in the Sanhedrin, the fact that he could vote.
"And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme. And in raging fury against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities." Jerusalem wasn't enough. He chased them all over the place. Luke tells us, as we read earlier in chapter 8, verse 3, that "he made havoc of the church." He laid waste to the church, and the Greek word describing a wild boar raging through a garden or an army devastating a city is used there.
Now, apparently, as we approach chapter 9...meanwhile, in chapter 8, of course, Philip and the Hellenist Christians who have been scattered by the ravaging Paul, have gone everywhere preaching Christ, so it's been great. His persecution led to preaching, and preaching led to salvation and everything came out great. So they've all been preaching, having a great time, through chapter 8. Meanwhile, back at Jerusalem, Paul is still breathing fury.
And we go back to Jerusalem, we pick up the narrative with this man, who is at this point called Saul, and I'll find myself using either one all the way through because I can't very well restrict myself to Saul, too familiar is he to me as Paul. But, nevertheless, he, back in Jerusalem, is still furiously pursuing the killing of Christians and their incarceration and jail. However, he apparently has accomplished something of what he set out to do in the city of Jerusalem, because he's now bent on leaving town and finding little pockets of Christians anywhere he can find them and rooting them out.
See, he is really zealous about this. This is not just a lark with him. It's not just a game. In his mind, he's convinced that Christianity is heresy, that it is the defamation of the character of God and the traditions of Judaism, and he seeks them out with a certain amount of honesty. And he hears, apparently, that there is a group of Christians up there in a place called Damascus, and so he feels that he's got to get up there and take care of that group, and that's where we pick it up in verse 1 of chapter 9. "And Saul, still," or yet, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest."
You notice the term "breathing out." In the literal Greek, it's "breathing in." It's not so much the idea that he's sort of expelling air as it is the idea that he's inhaling it. He lives in an aura of threat and slaughter. He breathes the very air of slaughter. This man is totally encompassed, his whole lifestyle, his very life breath, is threat and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord. And what it means is that that's all that occupied him. He was consumed in this thing. This is not just a Saturday afternoon hobby. This was the consuming passion of his very existence, to exterminate every Christian he could find.
His sin was like, you remember Haman the Agagite in the Book of Esther, who wanted to exterminate every Jew, and he chased after Mordecai. His ending wasn't quite so good as Saul's. He wound up hanging in his own gallows. Saul fortunately comes to a knowledge of Jesus Christ. But he wanted to exterminate the Christians.
Notice the term "disciples." Don't think that means only the 12. It doesn't. The word "disciple" is simply mathetes. It means a learner. Anyone who comes to Jesus Christ is a disciple. Anyone who follows Christ to sit at His feet, to learn from Him, any saved individual, I believe, is a disciple. And so Saul was after every disciple, but not just in Jerusalem. He was going to get them wherever they went.
Now, we don't know how he got the information about Damascus, but we know that he got it. There were probably 150,000 minimum people in Damascus. At least 20,000 were Jews. We know that because it wasn't too long after this that Damascus was sacked and about 20,000 Jews were massacred. So there had to be at least that many there. So there's a Jewish community in this place called Damascus.
Another note that you need to understand. Christianity, in its original context, stayed within the framework of the synagogue. You remember that in Jerusalem, when the Jews were getting saved, they didn't necessarily leave the synagogue. You'll also remember that when Paul went to the Christians in various towns on his missionary journeys, where did he always go? To the synagogue. Because, in many cases, the Christians had not yet separated themselves from the synagogue. Christianity began in the synagogue and went from there, you see. So in every area, really, where it began, it began with a group of Jews who then saw the new covenant and moved away from that, but they didn't necessarily move out of the synagogue.
That was a problem, incidentally, and that's the problem on which the Book of Hebrews is based, the fact that you had Jews who had come to Christ but who maintained their involvement in all of the rigmarole of the Jewish synagogue. And so that was what the Book of Hebrews was really written to do, was to detach the Christians from the traditions that were so much a part of their former life.
And so these Christians apparently were within the framework of the synagogue, and he wanted to get rights and privileges from the high priest to go up there and sort of just go through the synagogue there and root out all the Christians. And there must have been many synagogues, incidentally, for that many Jews.
All right, so verse 9 tells us that this is a fury that's in him, or verse 1, I should say, of chapter 9, tells us. Verse 2 then takes it a step further. "He desired from the high priest letters," which means permits, to go and get the Christians. And he had to have them, because he couldn't operate on his own. The whole place was under Roman rule. And the Romans recognized the right of the high priest within the Jewish state. And so if he had letters from the high priest to do this as a religious function, in the framework of Judaism, he then could do it. He couldn't do it apart from that under the Roman jurisdiction.
So he wanted some of the letters or the approval or the authority of the high priest to go to Damascus, to the synagogues, "that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women," and Luke continually makes a point about the fact that Saul was after woman as much as men, "he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem." And so he designs to go to Damascus.
Now, just a quick geographical note about Damascus, because it is somewhat immaterial in the narrative here. Damascus was a very beautiful city. It was situated about 2,200 feet above sea level, 60 miles inland from the coast, about 160 miles northeast of Jerusalem, I'd guess. It was such a beautiful area that one of the Oriental writers said that "Damascus was like a handful of pearls in a goblet of emerald," which'll give you a little idea. Lush, green and a beautiful white city. In fact, the historians called it the paradise of the earth.
Now, Damascus was an ancient city. It was the capital city of Syria, and it was very old. In fact, if you go back into Genesis, you'll find that Abraham had a servant who came from Damascus, which means that Damascus predated Abraham. So it's an old, old city, and yet it still remained, and now with a great Jewish population.
It's very likely that the man who really was the spiritual leader of this church was Ananias, and Paul runs into him, from our perspective, next Sunday. Now, it also is very likely that some refugees from Jerusalem had made it to Damascus, and Paul was after them, too, Christian refugees.
One other note in verse 2. It says that he was looking for any of "this way." Now, that's an interesting thing. That's a good Bible study sometime. Just go through the Book of Acts and even through the New Testament and find all the uses of the term "way" as a description of Christianity. That became...that became the popular name for Christianity, "the way." "The way." Even Saul was pursuing people of "this way."
Jesus, you remember, had said, "I am," what? "The way, the truth and the life." And over and over and over again He had isolated Christianity as the only way to God, you see. So Christianity became known as "the way." It's interesting, because there probably couldn't be a more apropos term than that. In Acts 18, the Bible says that it's the way to God. In Hebrews, chapter 9 and chapter 10, it's the way to the holiest. In Revelation 3:17, it's called the way of peace. In II Peter 2, it's called the way of truth and the way of righteousness.
Christianity is the way. There's only one way to God, and it's through Jesus Christ. And Christianity became known as "the way," and indeed it is. "Now, there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." Isaiah said this. "This is the way. Walk ye in it." Jesus said, "It is a narrow way and," what? "Few there be that find it." And Saul was after those few.
Now, he wanted to bring them back to Jerusalem. They were going through some kind of legal procedure, apparently, so that they could be established as ecclesiastical offenders before the Sanhedrin. So he wanted to go to Damascus, get them and bring them back, which means he probably had really a large entourage of people going along with him to bring these prisoners back. So this whole gang is going north.
And what's a fantastic note is this. Just think about this. To go north to Damascus, 160 miles, he's got to go right through Samaria. Now, if you were here last week, you know what's going on in Samaria. And if he was irritated already, you can imagine how irritated he was by the time he got through Samaria, because who had just finished going through Samaria? Philip, who was immediately followed by Peter and John. The gospel was preached all over Samaria. People were turning to Jesus Christ by the thousands. A revival was going on in Samaria. That must have really irritated him.
But he didn't seem to stop at any point. He made his way through, infuriated, no doubt, at what he saw, but intent on getting to Damascus, and figuring he'd mop this area up later. It normally took a caravan six days to get there, so it was a pretty good trip. Well, on that sixth day, as they got near town, something fantastic happened, and that, in verse 3, begins the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.
And I've divided it into five steps, and they're just simple. I use these key words only to help you to have some nails to hang your thoughts on. The first one is the contact, then the conviction, then the conversion, then the consecration, then the communion. And these five steps will unfold to us what happens here.
First of all, the contact. Here he is, living in an atmosphere of slaughter and threat, marching with all this gang, thinking, "I'm going to go into that city and I'm going to root out every Christian in there." And as he moves toward this thing, God stops him in his tracks. And that leads us to a tremendous point. We want to study the contact for a minute.
Does God do this very often? Well, I can't actually say that God lets people see some kind of heavenly vision, slams them to the ground and brings this to pass very often. But God, mark it, always initiates the contact in salvation. It may not always be like this. It isn't always like this. But God always initiates the contact, because the natural man cannot understand God. He can't know God. He can't sense God. He can't see God. God must invade the privacy of his sin.
You saw earlier in chapter 8, as we studied the Ethiopian, how that the guy was just riding along in his chariot, God made sure he was reading the right chapter, God picked up a prophet up in Samaria, dumped him in the middle of the desert, made sure he matched up, met the chariot, jumped up, taught the man, the man came to Christ. God had it all laid out. And if that's true in the case of the Ethiopian, you haven't seen anything yet, until you see what he did in the case of Saul.
Believe me, folks, God is sovereign in salvation. Believe it. "The natural man understands not the things of God." He doesn't even pursue God. He pursues happiness, health, wealth and peace, and finds none of them that are lasting. So there's a direct act of God's sovereign will.
Now, you know, it's true. Some people God gently calls. And some people hear the still, small voice. But there are other people who are making so much noise that God's got to make a lot of racket to get through, see. You know, I think about my own life, and the years and years that I was in a Christian home, and went to church so many years, and all this stuff. And I was in...I knew everything. I had seven zipper Bibles from the graduation from every department, and, you know, and I always had sticker stains on my head from turkeys and gold stars. I'd been in Sunday School since the year one. And I knew all of the things there were to know, and God continually spoke to my heart, and I continued to rebel in my own heart about really committing my life to Him.
And so, finally, going 75 miles an hour, a car flipped, He threw me out, I hit the pavement, slid 100 yards on my...and after it was all over, God could communicate. I said, "You know, I can only go so far, Lord. If you're going to do it like this, I can't fight it." But it was one of those kind of things in my life where God had to get dramatic.
And you know about the foxhole conversion type thing. You know that very often God has done something tremendously dramatic to lay His hands on somebody's life. Other times it's not so dramatic. Don't disparage that your salvation wasn't dramatic. Just praise God that it happened. And I think very often that the greatest miracle may be to take the person who's very good and allow him to recognize that he's a sinner and needs Jesus Christ.
But, nevertheless, Saul got zapped in the "zaptest" sense of the word. There's no question about it. Verse 3, let's start it. "And as he journeyed." You can imagine. He's just...you know, he's absolutely oblivious to anything God's doing. He doesn't even believe that this whole Christianity thing is anything at all. He's charging up there to Damascus, going along, and watch this. "And as he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly there shone round about him a light from heaven." God says, "Stop. That's all the further you're going." And He stopped him dead in his tracks.
And, of course, if you read further, in chapter 22 and chapter 26, you'll find that those two chapters also record this same event, and they fill in a lot of details. What happened was, the light shone and the whole crowd hit the ground. They just completely fell over. They were face to face with Jesus Christ. They did the same thing, you remember, the soldiers in the Garden? Jesus walked out, and the whole army went just like that. And they all hit the ground. Apparently, as you put the narratives together, some of the soldiers started picking themselves back up again, and they were dumb with amazement. They couldn't figure out what was going on.
And it says in verse 7, "The men who journeyed with him stood," so apparently they got back up again, "speechless." They didn't say anything. They heard a voice, but they couldn't see anybody. The light was absolutely blinding. They heard a voice. Now, later on, in chapter 22, verse 9, it says, "They didn't hear the words the voice said." Some people have assumed a contradiction. What it means is, they heard a noise, they just didn't know what it was saying. And in chapter 22 it says, the statement there is that they could not determine what it was that he was saying. Remember in John 12:29, when the people...when God spoke, but all the people heard was thunder? It's the same thing.
And so these people all hit the ground when this light struck. Everybody got up, apparently, except one guy, Saul. He was flat. And through it, he saw Jesus Christ in glory. Now, we've taught many times that Jesus Christ is the glory of God in a body. We saw Him reveal His glory on the Mount of Transfiguration to James, John, and Peter, and here He reveals His glory to Saul, this sinner, this killer of Christians. He stops him dead in his tracks and He reveals Himself.
You say, "Well, it doesn't say in that verse he saw Jesus." I know it doesn't. But he still saw Jesus. You say, "Well, where's the evidence for that?" Well, it's in several other places in the New Testament. I Corinthians 15, in verse 8, the apostle Paul, having listed all the people who saw Jesus after His resurrection, said this. "And last, I myself saw Him, as one born out of due time." And then you find out if you go chapter 9 of I Corinthians, in verse 1, he says, "Am I an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus Christ?" Sure he saw Him. He saw Him right there.
To take that a step further, go down to verse 17 in the same chapter. "And Ananias went his way and entered into the house, and, putting his hands on him, said, 'Brother Saul.'" That's kind of nice, isn't it? Brother Saul? This one who's been furiously killing Christians? "The Lord, even Jesus," watch this, "that appeared unto thee in the way." Do you see? Ananias acknowledges that Jesus was there and appeared and he saw Him.
Verse 27. "Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles." Barnabas is going to bring...of course, the apostles would be saying, "Oh, sure, Barnabas, Saul's a Christian? Sure, right, we understand that, Barnabas." So Barnabas brings him in. He says, "Look, I'm declaring unto you how he hath seen the Lord in the way." This guy saw Jesus.
Over in chapter 22, verse 14, the indication comes again. It says this. "And he said, 'The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldst know His will and see that Just One and shouldst hear His voice." So we know that Saul actually saw Jesus Christ in glory. It's fantastic. He saw the glorified Christ. You see, he believed that Jesus was dead. He believed the whole thing was a big joke. He believed Jesus was dead. All of a sudden, he saw Him.
There's another fantastic thing here, and that is this. The last guy before Saul to see the resurrected Christ was who? Stephen. He said, "Look at that, I see the Son of God standing at the right hand of the Father," or Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father. And everybody heard it. Of course, that infuriated them all the more. But if it isn't grace to realize that the man standing there, in measure responsible for the stoning of Stephen, was, in the grace of God, the next one to see His glory. That's how grace operates.
And, you know, remember Stephen's prayer? "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." God answered, and God was gracious unto Saul. The heavens are opened one more time, and this killer, Saul, gazes into the glory and the person of Him whom he persecuted. What grace, that Saul saw Jesus. Fantastic.
And so here you have, friends, the fact that salvation begins with a divine, sovereign contact. That, you see, is the doctrine of election. That's the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in motion toward the sinner.
All right, after the contact, secondly, let's look at the conviction. Whenever there's going to be salvation, there's got to be conviction of sin, right? Because that's what separates men from God, sin. So sin has to be exposed, and is it ever.
At this point, the conviction is so potent that this poor guy, Saul, starts shaking like a leaf, as we'll find out. "He fell on his face to the earth," verse 4, "and heard a voice saying unto him, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?'" Now, he was in the right position for conversion. Flat. And he heard the voice of the Lord Jesus.
"Saul, Saul" is interesting. That's emphatic, because it's used twice. But in Luke's writing, the repetition of a name refers to a rebuke or a warning, whether Luke says, "Martha, Martha," "Simon, Simon," or "Jerusalem, Jerusalem," and here, "Saul, Saul." In Luke's mind, that's rebuke and warning. And it was.
"Why persecutest thou Me?" Well, you know, I can't read into the psychology of the man, Saul, but I'll tell you one thing. That would absolutely tear him to shreds. I mean imagine the guilt the guy was living with anyway. There is built into every man a sense of right and wrong by God. That's right, isn't it? Romans 1. Now, Saul had been living with a horrible conflict, believing he was doing right in persecuting Christians, and, yet, because it was wrong, he knew there was tremendous guilt in his life. And later on down there, at the end of verse 5, it says, "It's hard for you to kick against the goads." "It hasn't been easy doing this, has it? I mean, you've been fighting God, Saul, and it doesn't come easy."
And so he's been living with unbelievable kind of guilt, and his conscience must have been as heavy as lead. It must have been unbelievable to try to exist in the kind of thing he was existing in, breathing the air of threat and slaughter. And when he heard Jesus talk to him and say, "Why are you persecuting Me?" you can imagine the anguish that ripped through his soul as he was confronted with the horrors, and all the things he feared might be true were made true. His guilt was full guilt.
Jesus says, "Why are you doing it? What did I do to you?" Remember back in John 15:25, when Jesus says, "They hated Me without a," what? "Without a cause." Who could ever hate Jesus Christ?
I like another thing here. He says, "Why persecutest thou Me?" You say, "Well, he's not persecuting Jesus, he's persecuting the Christians." You persecute the Christian, guess what? You persecute Jesus. You see, we're inseparably tied together. "He that is joined to the Lord is," what? "One spirit." You can't persecute me without persecuting Him. Every time you touch me, you touch Him. No blow hit on earth goes unfelt in heaven.
That's why He's a sympathetic high priest. He is "touched with the feelings of," what? "Our infirmities. He bears our griefs. He carries our sorrow." "Why persecutest thou Me?" And you know what? That's the first crack of light in the doctrine of the body and its head, which Paul later elucidates in the Book of Ephesians. This is Saul's first exposure to the inseparability of the life of a Christian and Jesus Christ his Lord. We are one, aren't we? It's a glorious thing. What a thrilling thing to know that Jesus is bound together with all the members of His body so that whatever hits us hits Him. Saul was actually, then, dealing blows to Jesus Himself.
Now, notice this. Saul is hit with the real issue. Because the real issue in every man's life is what he does with whom? Jesus Christ. God doesn't say to him, "Saul, you've been a naughty fellow. Why, Saul, you have hate in your heart." He did. "Saul, you're going around murdering." He didn't say that. That's all superficial stuff. He says, "Saul, you know what your problem is? You're persecuting Jesus. That's your problem."
If you're a sinner here and you die and go to hell, it won't be because you lied. I've lied, and I'm not going to hell. It won't be because you stole something. I stole something. Even got put in the Glendale City Jail. But I'm not going to hell. If you go to hell, it won't be because you went out and got drunk, because you took drugs. I've never done that. I've done a lot of other things. If you go to hell, it'll be because you didn't acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. That's the only reason.
Because all us Christians, who, maybe, to the world, appear so holy, we do a lot of that other stuff. Because the flesh in us makes it tough. But because we have set it right in terms of Christ, that settles the eternal issue. Do you see? And so when the Lord talks to him, he says, "Saul, your problem's simple." Here comes the conviction. Wham. "Why are you persecuting Me?" Any man who lives in this world apart from Jesus Christ is as guilty as Saul of rejection of Jesus Christ.
You say, "Well, I wouldn't...I mean, a Christian can do what he wants. I mean, I don't care. No skin off my nose. Let him, if he wants to go through all that religious mogus. That's his thing." My friend, to reject Jesus Christ at any level damns a man. The degree of it's consequential. Although we believe in degrees of punishment in hell, they're all bad. And so we say that the real issue of conviction is what a man does with Christ. So when you're sharing Christ, that's where you want to get. That's what you want to hit at. That's the cardinal issue.
And, you know, bless his heart, Saul learned his lesson so well. You know, to read his life later on when he goes down the line of all these wonderful things that Christians do, you almost forget what he was before. Listen to what he says. I Corinthians 16:22. "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema," accursed. Boy, don't you know that it was a joy for him to be able to say that? "And, boy, I love Him. I didn't used to, but I do now."
So the issue is what a man does with Jesus. If you don't love Jesus, you're anathema. It's just that simple. That's the issue of conviction, unbelief and rebellion toward Jesus Christ.
So, you see, the Spirit of God, through the preparation of all of his life, has brought him to a crisis. Christ Himself confronts him and says, "Here's your problem." You remember the work of the Holy Spirit in John 16:9? He's going to convict of sin "because they believe not on Me," you see. That's the issue.
So we find the contact, and, immediately after that, the conviction. And that's the way it ought to be. Whenever you bring someone to Christ, you must talk about their rebellion against Christ. It's not right that anybody exists who doesn't give Him glory.
Third, the conversion. Verse 5. And I think he's converted somewhere in the white spaces in verse 5. Because it doesn't really say, but verse 6 is so obviously a different guy that it's got to be in there. "And he said," and he's not too sure what's going on, "'Who art Thou, Lord?' And the Lord said, 'I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." Oh, oh, can you imagine the trauma? And He says, "It's hard for thee to kick against the goads." You see, He recognized Paul's terrible conscience, guilt, and He says, "It hurts to know that, doesn't it?"
You know what a goad is? A goad, ends with a "d." They took a long stick, and in the end of it they put great long nails that were used to pierce and perforate, and they would use those to drive the ox. And so when the ox would hesitate, they'd perforate, and the ox would then, you know, continue. Now, a dumb ox might resist and kick against the goad, which wouldn't hurt the goad but would certainly hurt the ox. And you know there would be pain in the resistance.
Saul at this point had been rebelling against God, had he not? You know who was getting hurt? Not God. Ever since he started, the gospel got spread all over Samaria and Judea. The only person getting hurt was Saul, and his conscience was ripping him apart. And Jesus said, "It's tough to be doing what you've been doing, isn't it?" He was fighting.
Well, let's back up in verse 5. "Who are you, Lord?" Notice, he's got the right idea in terms of where he belongs in relation to whoever this is, flat on his face. He knows this is the Lord. "Who art Thou, Lord?" And the Lord said, "I am Jesus." Now, I think he knew that God was talking, but I'm not sure yet that he understood it was Jesus. When Jesus said, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest," I think the light dawned in the life of this man.
He believed that this person was dead, but here He is alive. And I believe that at this point...and, incidentally, Saul knew well the Christian message. I mean, he'd debated it with Stephen. He knew it. He'd chased enough Christians to hear what they had to say. You can believe he knew the gospel front to back. And I believe that when he heard Jesus, he said, "Okay, okay. I accept. I can't fight at this level." And I believe it's there that you see the conversion of this man. And he acknowledged Him as Messiah and Savior.
And the horrible truth flashed on his mind, Jesus, who went about doing good and healing all those oppressed of the devil; Jesus, who was crucified, who was rejected by the nation; the same Jesus that dying Stephen beheld and into whose hand he committed his spirit; that Jesus, whom he, Saul, so hated and whose followers he so mercilessly and cruelly persecuted, is alive, and He is the Messiah that He claimed to be.
And I believe at that point, bowed as he was in body, bowed he became in spirit and acknowledged Jesus Christ. All the bloodshed drowned Paul in sorrow, the sorrow of his sin. He was shattered. He was penitent. He was lying beneath the mercy of God. His heart was broken by repentance. But I believe in that moment it was healed by faith.
Now, this is a glorious conversion. Oh, people want to explain it away. You can read, you know, a half a dozen opinions any way you want to go about what happened to him. Renan, the Frenchman, says...I was reading his view of this...says, "Well, it was an uneasy conscience with unstrung nerves, fatigue of the journey, eyes inflamed by the hot sun, and a sudden stroke of fever that produced the hallucination." Others say a thunderstorm just happened to hit at the very moment, and he was so overwrought by the guilt of his own conscience that he assumed it was God speaking to him and imagined the whole thing.
And perhaps the most popular view that has been espoused, and it's been espoused by many, including Jewish scholars, is that he had epilepsy. A Dr. Klausner holds this view, and he wrote this whole long deal about how obvious it is that Paul was an epileptic. I understand, though, however, from some medical sources, that one thing about an epileptic that is to be noted is that an epileptic cannot remember anything that occurs during a fit, or a seizure. It's amazing how Paul so well detailed what happened.
Dr. Klausner says this, sort of conceding to Saul, he says, "Some epileptics have been great and powerful personalities. Mohammed, Augustine, St. Bernard, _________, Beam, Swedenborg, as well as Napoleon the first, Julius Caesar and Peter the Great, Pascal, Rousseau and Dostoevsky were all epileptics." So he's saying, "You know, it's not too bad to be an epileptic. There's some wonderful ones that have accomplished a lot." But that is really a strange view. I like what Ironside said. "If epilepsy did what it did, oh, blessed epilepsy."
We know what happened. God invaded his life. Don't we? It takes more incredulity to believe the junk that people pump out to explain away the Bible than it does to just put your faith in God. I don't see how they do these logistical and logical gymnastics to come up with wrong answers.
And so he bowed. And I love the fact that He said, "I am Jesus," because that identified Him. And isn't that the name at which every knee will bow? And who said that? Paul said it, later on.
So the battle's over. And I believe he got converted, as I said, in the white spaces in verse 5. Jesus said to him, "It's been rough on you, kicking against Me, against that goad." And don't think of a goad as a little prickly thing. Shamgar, in Judges 3, slew 600 men with one. It was painful doing what Paul did, painful. And he was the only one getting hurt. You kick against God and you get hurt. You know, you throw yourself against God and you'll get broken. He won't.
And now all of a sudden I think peace began to enter his soul. He rested from the battle. And, you know, when he rested, so did everybody else. Go to verse 31. It said, "Then had the churches rest." I mean, as long as he was hassling, everybody was up in the air. If he'd have just gotten converted and died, it would've been a great day for the church.
So we see first the contact, and then we see the conviction. Now, Christ convicts him of the real issue. And I say that's the issue in your life, my friend, if you don't know Jesus Christ. I don't care how good you are. That's the issue. It's faith in Him and acknowledging Him as Savior and Lord. And then came the conversion.
And you've got to think, you know, you've got to compare Saul with the Pharisees, because the Pharisees heard...they saw Jesus, saw His miracles, went through all of the things. And their response was not faith. Saul responded in faith. They responded in apostasy. Saul responded with an open heart.
He expresses the view of his conversion in I Timothy 1:12. "And I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who hath enabled me, in that He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry." In other words, he had faith. He believed. And God saw he was faithful, counted that faithfulness for righteousness and placed him in the ministry.
He says, "Who before was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious," which means a wanton aggressor, "but I obtained mercy," he says. Why? "Because I did it," what? "Ignorantly in unbelief." "Don't hold me to apostasy. I did it because I didn't know the truth fully." Those Jews spend eternity in hell because they knew it and rejected it.
"And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." He says, "God just let His grace drown me." "This is a faithful saying," he says, "and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of who I am," what? "Chief. Nevertheless," he did it, he says, "that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth a pattern to them that would believe." In other words, how that God is longsuffering and forgiving.
And so his entire soul had been wrapped up in the annihilation of the church. Had his plan succeeded, the church would have been smothered in its own birth, drowned in its own blood. God's eternal decree would have been annulled and Satan would have triumphed. So great was his sin that if he had done it in ignorance...or if he had not done it in ignorance, it would have damned him forever. But because he did it not really knowing the truth, God's mercy was available. So we see his conversion.
Quickly, look at this. His consecration. Oh, this is so good. You know, very often people come to Jesus Christ but they never really commit everything to Christ until later, if ever. This man was saved and consecrated his life to full-time service at the same moment, and that's the only way God ever expected it to be.
Notice verse 6. "And he, trembling and astonished," and that's putting it mildly, "said, 'Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?'" "Just tell me. I'll do anything." Now, notice a footnote here. That little phrase I just read you does not really appear in this verse in the manuscripts. You say, "What's it doing here?" Well, it is in chapter 22, verse 10, and some scribe just thought since it fit here, he'd slide it on back. So it is Biblical, but it just belongs in 22:10, but it's...22:10 is a recount of this narrative, so some scribe, wanting to help along, pushed it back into verse 6. And the oldest manuscripts don't have this at all. But it's true, and it came from 22:10, so we'll just take it and add it to the narrative as the scribe did.
He said, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Now, that is consecration. He was saying, "Lord, here's my life. What do You want out of me? I'll give You everything I have." I mean, let's face it. He had...he had a career that couldn't continue. Right? I mean, that whole career was shot. So he had to start from nothing, anyway. He gave everything to the Lord.
And I love the fact that he said, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" Isn't that good? He acknowledged the lordship of Christ. I hear people say this, and it bothers me all the time, and I hear people say, "Well, I know that He's my Savior, but I haven't received Him as Lord." That is not accurate. You don't receive Him as Lord or not receive Him as Lord. He is Lord. When you receive Him, He comes as who He is, not in the sections that you want. Don't say, "Well, I received Him as Savior ten years ago but today I made Him Lord." No, you didn't make Him Lord. He is Lord. If you didn't do anything, He's still Lord. That's immaterial.
You can go through the New Testament. You'll find verse after verse. John 13:13, right there in the Upper Room. They're talking, and Jesus says, "You call Me Lord, and you do well, for so I am." The only question is not, "Who am I?" It's "How obedient are you?" The question in the Christian life is not, "Is He Lord of your life?" The question is, "Are you obeying Him?" That is the question.
Saul said from the beginning, "I know You're Lord, and I'm going to obey You." You know what the Christian life is? It's a battle between the will of the Lord and the will of the Christian. You know what Christian maturity is? When both wills always agree. That's worth a quarter. That's a good definition. You see, that's the process of maturity. Here's your will. Here's His will. And you grow and you grow and you grow and you grow, and pretty soon you're a mature Christian and the wills are the same. And then you find out that finding the will of God isn't such a big problem, when you've conformed to the image of Christ.
Now, you can find it in Acts 10:36, Romans 10:12, I Corinthians 12:5. You find that great statement of Philippians 2:11, which says, "He is Lord." You can find all those verses telling you that He's Lord. Saul recognized it and said, "I'm going to be whatever You want me to be." I love that. Some people get saved, but they don't want to give everything to Him. "Well, I'll accept salvation, but no, no, no, don't touch my little hmm over here, and"...see.
Paul knew there was only one thing that was needful in his life. That was obedience. "What wilt Thou have me to do?" That's the only question a Christian needs to ever ask the Lord every day of his life. "What do You want me to do?" This is the standard for every Christian, to cease to do what I want, what I desire, what my ambition dictates, and do what He wants me to do. And, as I say, maturity is when you both want to do the same thing. That's the issue.
You say, "Well, you know, anybody can say, `Lord, what will Thou have me do?' I've heard people say it a lot, but do they always do it?" No, they don't. You know, I mean, we've all been to camp and said, "From now on, I'm going to dedicate, consecrate, irrigate, I don't know, whatever. I'm going to go ahead and do what the Lord..." And you come down and nothing, right? The first time He gives you the test of obedience, right down the tubes. We all make these verbal consecrations, but Saul made a verbal consecration, but it was real.
And the Lord tested him that fast. Look at what He said in verse 6. He says, "Arise, and go into the city." Now, he didn't say, "Well, gee, could you...I don't know about that. I've got other things to take care of now that this whole thing's falling apart." He just bang, gone. Seven, "the men who stood around speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul arose from the earth. When his eyes were opened, he saw no man." He was blind. "But they led him by the hand and brought him," where? "Into Damascus."
He did exactly what He told him to do. His consecration wasn't just verbal. It was actual. Study the rest of his life. Was his consecration verbal only? Oh, no. His whole life is a testimony. He kept saying, "The love of Christ constrains me. I go there because Jesus drags me there. The Lord sent me here. The Lord's pushing me over here. The Lord drew me here." You see. His whole life was this. He sought nothing other than what God wanted him to do.
Oh, we promise so much, do so little. He promised a simple thing, "I'll do what You want me to do," and he did it. Don't make all kinds of gigantic promises to God. Just make Him one, "Lord, I'll do what You want," and then do it. It's that simple.
Well, his entry into town wasn't quite what he had anticipated. Instead of going in like the great conquering hero, he went in like a blind lamb, being led by the hand. God had crushed him into submission. And sometimes God has to do that. But, boy, it's like crushing a rose. It releases the fragrance, you know. When it was all over, what came out of it was fantastic. And if that's what it takes, "God, crush me," right? If crushing me means I can be something like Paul.
So we see his consecration. Now, lastly, his communion. You know, his conversion had happened so fast and without any prior warning that he needed to catch up with what was going on. I mean, there's no way that he could've even figured out what hit him. I mean, I know he believed, but have you ever gone into an experience where you've just got to say, "Now, wait a minute. Wait. I've got to think this one through. This is a little too fast"?
I mean, you can't...your wildest imagination couldn't fathom the extremes to which that man had gone on one midday afternoon under the hot sun. He had been transformed in an unbelievable fashion, and he needed time for his brain to catch up with what had happened in his soul. And isn't it wonderful? You look at verse 9, and what does it say? "And he was three days without sight, neither did eat or drink." God just stuck him some place all alone and let him have three days to catch up with what had happened.
Salvation happens in an instant, beloved, but it takes a long time to plumb the depths of what it really is. Have you ever thought in your own life when you were saved? You look back and say, "Well, I was saved so-and-so, but things really never began to dawn on me until a certain time afterwards." That's what's going on.
Here's another footnote. Hang onto this. It's rich. What was the last thing he ever saw? Jesus. Have you ever looked in the sun, and then everywhere else you look all you see is the sun? Or you had somebody take your picture and all...everywhere you look, flash. They say if you look at the sun long enough, you'll be blind. An astronomer tried it, and he was. You know what I think? I don't think Saul's blindness was the blindness of darkness. I think it was the blindness of light. I think for three days all he ever saw was the Son, S-O-N, that he couldn't get rid of the vision of Jesus. That's all he ever saw.
So he spent three days getting acquainted. And I think that's when all the old things died. And they died hard. And he didn't yet understand forgiveness, either, and he would still have guilt. And I think it's when faith and love and joy and peace began to born, in those days. Communion.
Oh, what a conversion it is. I'm glad. Aren't you? Praise God for this man. One of the greatest scenes in history has just passed our eyes. Learn from it what the Spirit would teach you. Let's pray.
Father, thank You this morning for again opening our hearts and minds to see the glory of God and the face of Jesus Christ. Thank You for this man whose life was transformed, and because of it my life and the lives of millions of others has been transformed. God, may we catch something of the significance of the influence of one life for Your glory.
God, teach us the lessons of sovereignty, of grace, forgiveness, of the miracle of transformation that salvation is. All the lessons that are here, of consecration, of the importance of communing with thee. That, Father, we might learn what it is You would have us learn to apply in our lives.
And, Lord, for those who may never have come to a Damascus Road, who've never met Jesus Christ face to face and yielded to Him, may this be the day they do it. May the vision of the blessed Son flash upon their eyes. May He be irresistible to them. We pray in His blessed name. Amen.
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The following editorial appeared in The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle on Sunday:
It may not have seemed like it when you stood in line at the store before Christmas, but experts say this was a deeply disappointing retail season.
Sales growth was expected to be 3 or 4 percent, and ended up being less than 1 percent: 0.7 percent, to be precise. That's an anemic number reminiscent of the 2008 recession.
They cite several reasons for the slumping season, including wounded Northeast markets from Superstorm Sandy, a cloud of grief from the Newtown shooting - and gridlock in Washington that many fear could lead to higher taxes and perhaps even another recession.
This president has been quoted in the past as saying you shouldn't raise taxes in a perilously weak economy, and yet higher taxes on upper-income Americans appears to be the width and breadth of his domestic agenda. And he looks prepared to crash the economy over the fiscal cliff in order to get them.
That may not come as a surprise to those who heard him say in a 2008 primary-election debate that he'd raise capital gains rates as a matter of fairness - even if the move brought in less revenue, as has historically happened.
No one has yet explained how higher taxes will help the economy. Indeed, it's likely that siphoning more money out of the private economy and into the federal bureaucracy will only make things worse.
Yet, President Obama and other Washington Democrats have managed to bamboozle the media and much of the country into believing that the federal government and the economy are the same thing, and that things can get better if Washington can just get its hands on certain people's bank accounts.
Economists of any political stripe can show you that no amount of taxes will satiate the federal government, which currently borrows about 40 cents of every dollar it spends. In short, we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
But Democrats appear
fatally allergic to thrift; they have no appetite for spending cuts whatsoever. And there can be little doubt that this president's obsession with taxing those earning $250,000 or more cast a pall over the Christmas buying season, and is haunting tuned-in Americans even now.
It's a bit silly to be so obsessed with "fairness" when the ship is threatening to go down - and when it's clear that we can't tax our way out of a spending addiction. Moreover, this notion that the "rich" don't pay their fair share isn't supported with any facts whatsoever.
For one thing, what is rich? Mr. Obama talks about taxing millionaires and billionaires, but his plan would tax couples at $250,000 and up, individuals at $200,000 and up. That's hardly millionaires or billionaires, and it includes small business owners whose companies show a healthy cash flow but which are, in fact, barely getting by.
When recently given the chance by House Speaker John Boehner to actually tax "millionaires and billionaires," Democrats declined. That's odd, if that's their goal.
In addition, nearly half the country pays no federal income taxes at all, and in 2009 the top 1 percent of earners paid 37 percent of taxes; the top 10 percent paid 70 percent of taxes.
Mr. Obama has yet to explain how that is so grossly unfair.
Or how grabbing more money for Washington will help the economy.
Rather than blindly push the president's class-warfare agenda, when will the "mainstream" media ask him how it will improve the economy? When will they exhibit a modicum of the journalistic skepticism they're supposed to show our leaders?