Book Burning 2010 – Start Planning Now
I just wanted everyone to know that now is the time to get started and plan for the 2010 Annual Book Burning. If you were like me you were not able to participate last year. That was painful to be sure. But good news, Pastor Marc Grizzard has provided some helpful ideas on how to have your own Book Burning event:
1. Plan at your church or home to have a book burning this year.
2. If you are not willing to have a book burning then have a book tearing as we did last year due to state laws.
3. If you are not willing to do either a book burning or a book tearing, then begin to collect perversions, books by heretics, music, movies, magazines, idols (Buddha, Allah, Rosary Beads, crosses with Jesus on it, etc.), posters, etc. and send them to our church address (6865 Cruso Rd; Canton, NC 28716).
4. Pray! This is the most important step you can do is to pray for God’s Word to be glorified and grow.
If you need ideas on how to pull this off there are a few simple things to keep in mind:
First of all, we are not encouraging any church or individual to break their state laws and act stupid and be put in jail. If your state fire marshal says that it is against the law to have an open air burning or burning paper is against the law then abide by that law. Don’t do it. Just have a book tearing as we did last year. It actually gets the people more involved to have a book tearing. Secondly, I would video tape the service and the entire event to show that you didn’t break any laws and to encourage others to do the same.
Thirdly, don’t buy this stuff new. It just helps sales if you do. Last year we didn’t buy anything new. In fact, most of it was given to us free. If we did buy anything it was never over a dollar each, but most a quarter or fifty cents. We get these items at yard sales, consignment shops, second hand stores, flea markets, books stores, libraries, etc. Lots of places have a free area and that is what we keep an eye on all the time. One has to be committed to checking these areas each week. We always leave the KJB and good materials for people to choose from. Some people wrote last year making fun of us for buying all of this stuff new, and telling us how dumb we were. These “scholars” and Bible correctors are to smart to have common sense.
To summarize: 1) follow the law, 2) video tape it, and 3) find the materials for free or really cheep (because if you buy it new you are just supporting evil people like Billy Graham, Rick Warren and Bill Hybels).
Unfortunately this year’s Book Burning date will be a secret. This is a shame, since I think it would be a more powerful and effective message to the world to have all the book burnings on the same date. Imagine a thousand columns of smoky praise rising up to heaven. What would the world think of that! Does anyone have any suggestions on a date? As for the perfect time of day, I will paraphrase Apocalypse Now: I love the smell of burning paper in the morning.
Jeremy
Add comment January 30, 2010
Project 365
I have decided that for 2010 I will attempt Project 365. Basically it means taking one photograph every day of the year. I will be posting the photos I take to this blog at least once a week. I am not going to follow any particular theme. I will be using the following software and equipment:
Nikon D40
Olympus FE-370
Photoshop Lightroom 2.6
Jeremy
Add comment December 31, 2009
Attorney’s Fees
Here’s a novel approach to being bored to death – try sitting though a court hearing on attorney’s fees.
You may not be aware that after a civil trial (trial only about money, not where someone could go to jail) attorney’s will fight over their fees and costs and if the losing attorney should pay. Often this battles continues for a long time after a case is closed. It’s not a guarantee that the losing attorney will need to pay, there are laws making this provision (in an attempt to prevent frivolous law suits) however, the law is not as straightforward as you’d think. Personally, I think the law may just say – you shall pay if you can’t hire an expert to outwit the winning attorney.
Here’s how this plays out, first the winning attorney (for our purposes, she shall be known as Attorney W) has to put on a case about how truly reasonable her fees and costs are, that in fact – they are not high but right in line with what would need to be done to successfully represent and as she will surely point out win. She will provide quite a bit of evidence supporting her stance. The idea of evidence may seem like it could brighten up the proceedings, but its usually long lists detailing her fees and costs. At this point the losing attorney (from here on known as Attorney L) will have the opportunity to question Attorney W about her ‘reasonable’ fess and costs.
But this can not become a game of ’she thinks, he thinks’ about who should pay. So second step in this painful process – Attorney W will put her hired gun expert on the stand. This expert will testify about just how right and reasonable Attorney W’s fees and costs are. Attorney L then questions this so called “expert” trying to show that he wouldn’t know a “reasonable” fee if it stood up, crossed the room, and hit him on the nose with a brick. It should be noted that this expert is earning a fee to look over and testify about fees.
Third, attorney L gets his turn. He calls to the stand his own expert. This expert is clearly better than the other expert because he can show just how unreasonable attorney W’s reasonable fees and costs really are. At which point, attorney W then questions this “expert” about why he thinks her fees are unreasonable, then says this is all unfair and sits down.
Fourth and finally – we get to the argument. Not exactly an argument like you had with your brother when you were 10, more like when your mom broke up the argument you were having and you both have to explain yourselves. Both attorneys are very good at this and have been practicing for this very moment. Attorney W argues about how painfully obvious it is that she is a great attorney who deserves to be reimbursed for all of her very reasonable fees and costs. She uses cunning legal argument and presents irrefutable case law on the matter. (Case law is similar decisions made by other Judges who have previously dealt with ambiguously or poorly written laws that then need to be ‘interpreted.’) Attorney L then presents his clever legal argument and presents his own iron-clad case law. Take that attorney W.
The hearing is now over and the Judge (with a big cup of coffee) will mull over these amazing arguments, the expert’s fascinating testimony and the in-depth charts and lists on fees and let them know if Attorney W is going to receive a big reasonable sized check from Attorney L or if Attorney L will be able to count this as a small win and get the last laugh in this case.
Add comment December 27, 2009
America’s Prophet
“For four hundred years, one figure stands out as the surprising symbol of America. One person has inspired more Americans than any other. One man is America’s true founding father. His name is Moses.” (4)
In Bruce Feiler’s America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story, he traces “how seventeenth-century Protestant separatists, eighteenth-century deist revolutionaries, nineteenth-century enslaved Africans, and twentieth-century Jews could all possibly have the same hero.” (201) Feiler shows how each of these groups used Moses and the Exodus story to find hope and encouragement along with justification for their actions. While the book is an exhaustive overview of Moses’ influence on America – here’s a few illustrations of where Moses and the Exodus story have played a roll in America’s history and cultural formation.
Moses during the Revolution:
Donald Lutz and Charles Hyneman set out to read everything published in America between 1760 and 1805. They wanted to settle disputes over the sources of the Revolution and evaluate the influence of “Enlightenment writers such as Montesquieu, Locke, Hume and Hobbes, as well as ancient writers such as Plutarch and Cicero.” Their conclusion was: “If we ask what book was more frequently cited by Americans during the founding era, the answer somewhat surprisingly is: the Book of Deuteronomy.” A book of Moses. “Thirty-four percent of all references were to the bible, compared with 22 percent for the Enlightenment and 9 percent for the classics.” (93)
Moses and African-American Slavery:
When Africans were brought over to America as slaves they brought with them their religions. Some were Christian, some Islamic, and others different African religions. Once in America they were often forced to convert to and learn about Christianity. The slaves learned about Moses and the Exodus and quickly began to identify with the Israelites. They took the Exodus story and made it there own. They saw in the story the hope and encouragement they needed to know that God wanted them to be free. This can readily be seen in their spirituals, such as “Go Down, Moses,”:
When Israel was in Egypt Land,
Let my people go;
Oppressed so hard they could not stand,
Let my people go.
“Thus saith the Lord,” bold Moses said,
“Let my people go;
If not, I’ll smite your first-born dead,
Let my people go!”
Chorus:
God down, Moses
Way down in Egypt Land
Tell ol’ Pharoah,
Let my people go.
I could go on and on citing more examples and discussing numerous figures throughout America’s history that have been compared to or drawn inspiration from Moses but I think the above gives you a good idea what the book is all about.
Jeremy
Add comment December 5, 2009
American Gospel
I recently read this book American Gospel by Jon Meacham. In this book the author gives a wide overview of religion in America by looking at how the Founding Fathers, past Presidents and prominent public figures have spoken about and used religion from the founding of America to the present.
The author argues that what we have in America is not a Christian religion but it is one that draws heavily on the Judeo-Christian tradition. He writes that the Founding Fathers could have used explicitly Christian language in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution but they did not. Instead the Declaration uses generic terms such as “Nature’s God” and “their Creator”. “Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin, Jay, and their comrades could have chosen to draw on the examples of Jamestown, Plymouth, or Massachusetts Bay, but they did not.” (244-245) In the treaty of Tripoli which was “ratified by the Senate in 1797, the Founders declared that ‘the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…’” (19) However the author states that “the wall Jefferson referred to is designed to divide church from state, not religion from politics.” (19) This leaves us with a “public religion”.
The nation’s public religion, then, holds that there is a God, the one Jefferson called the “Creator” and “Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence. The God of public religion made all human beings in his image and endowed them, as Jefferson wrote, with sacred rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What the God of public religion has given, no king, no president, no government can abridge—hence the sanctity of human rights in America. The God of public religion is interested in the affairs of the world. The God of public religion may be seen as capable of rewarding or punishing individuals or the nation either here and now or later, beyond time. And the God of public religion is sometimes spoken of as a God bound to the American nation, in Jefferson’s words, “as Israel of old.” (22)
It turns out that public religion is something close to but not quite Christianity. The book addresses how various Presidents and others have grappled with this public religion and balanced it with their personal faith. Some of the people discussed other than the Founding Fathers are Lincoln, Roosevelt, Carter, Reagan, Jerry Falwell, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Billy Graham. The author ends by trying to strike a middle ground between what he calls extremists: those on the far right who think we are a “Christian Nation” and those on the far left who think we are purely secular.
Add comment November 21, 2009
Book Burning a Success
I am sure that many of you were wondering how the Halloween Book Burning went: “We wanted to say that the Book Burning was a great success. It was a success because God’s Word was glorified and uplifted.” The website promises that there will be video footage soon. You can read a news article about it here. Apparently it was not exactly a book burning. Certain laws got in the way. But paper tears and is cut easily and the goal was to destroy garbage one way or another. “If there were any disappointments, it was that there were no other Independent Fundamental Baptist churches or individuals standing with us locally on the KJV. They hook up with the Southern Baptist and the Freewill Baptist to fight the liquor crowd, and the abortionist, but will not stand with the KJV, the Word of God.” Next year things will be better.
Add comment November 3, 2009
