Two Extraordinary Men

Yesterday two extraordinary men passed from this life. One you've probably heard of. He was world renowned and will be remembered for all time for one singular event, although his achievements were many. The other was also known world wide, although in smaller circles, but his accomplishments were every bit as important, and in an eternal perspective, they were much greater.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong took "one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind," and became the first person to walk on the moon. That step was more than just another page in the long story of exploration. It was the culmination of every journey, every step into the unknown, every quest for knowledge and advancement in the history of the world up to that time, and remains man's greatest achievement.

Armstrong was born to fly. At age 16 he had a pilot's license before he could drive. At the young age of 20 he flew 78 combat missions over Korea. Then he was one of the first to skirt the edge of space in the X-15 rocket. Quiet and unassuming, he was a the ideal of cool and collected. When test piloting the lunar lander, the craft went out of control and he ejected less than a hundred feet from the ground. A short time later he was briefing to go on another flight as if nothing had happened. He was commander of the Gemini 8 mission that performed the first space docking of two aircraft. When a stuck thruster on his capsule sent the craft spinning out of control, he calmly handled the emergency, regained control of the aircraft and brought it safely to a Pacific Ocean landing east of Okinawa.

His finest moment, however, had to be the landing of the lunar module on the moon. The proposed landing site was strewn with boulders, and Armstrong skillfully maneuvered the lander to a clear spot and touched down with only 15 seconds of fuel remaining. "Houston," he called, "The Eagle has landed." The world, weary from war and unrest, for one moment rejoiced together and watched with great anticipation as Armstrong and his co-pilot, Buzz Aldrin, walked on the lunar surface.

Armstrong, not interested in notoriety, quietly bowed out of the lime light and made another name for himself as an educator. He rarely gave interviews or participated in public celebrations of his moon landing, but he should be remembered as the quintessential gentleman hero, a man every boy should look up to and even aspire to be like.

The second was every bit as much an example for boys, young and old, to admire and look up to. He gave his heart to the Gospel ministry as a teenager and spent his life sharing and sending the Gospel world wide. He was one, of what I like to call, the Great Spiritual Triumvirate, that came out of the First Baptist Church of Englewood, Colorado. Three teenage boys, Clifford Clark, Carl Boonstra, and Al Wells, best friends all, sat under the preaching of a "fire and brimstone" preacher named Harvey Springer, and went out from there to win the world.

Al Wells became an evangelist and preached until the Lord called him home a few years ago. Carl Boonstra served as Springer's associate, then started his own church, and in 1972 became the Missions Director for the Baptist Bible Fellowship, International. At age 87 he is still active, preaching nearly every Sunday.

Clifford Clark built the huge Tulsa Baptist Temple and introduced to the BBFI a method of missions giving known as Faith Promise. Scores of young people from his church, including one of his own sons, went to the mission field, and millions of dollars were raised through Faith Promise to take the Gospel to the farthest reaches of the earth. Tulsa Baptist Temple was the sending church for one of Africa's greatest missionaries, Elmer Deal, and for Rachel Saint, whose brother, Nate, was martyred along with four others by Indians in Ecuador in 1956. Rachel spent the last thirty-six years of her life winning those same people to the Lord.

Clark was also a very humble man, never seeking fame or notoriety, yet he became a giant among the 4,500 churches of the BBFI, as well as hundreds of other churches across the United States and world wide. His influence has inspired tens of thousands and brought many more to faith in Christ. Yesterday his journey came to an end. He fought a good fight, he ran his course well, he kept the faith, and now he has entered the joy of the Lord.

Two great American heroes; both will be missed.

Life

When the US Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that a woman has a right to abortion, it added a disclaimer saying that if it could ever be positively proven that the fetus in the womb is alive, that would overturn the decision.

Medical science and the development of ultra sound imaging in the 1980's have pretty well proven that the fetus is a living being capable of hearing and feeling pain. Any woman who has ever carried a child to term knows when that child is moving around and kicking that it is very much alive, but those in favor of abortion never tire of asking the question about when life begins.

The basic answer is simply this. When a sperm and an egg unite to form a zygote, within moments the cell begins dividing and growing. Only living things divide and grow. Whether it is viable or able to survive outside the womb is not the issue. It is alive from conception.

When my wife was struggling with a very difficult pregnancy with our last son, she was having ultra sounds done every other day during a hospital stay and then every month. At nine weeks we saw the baby, nothing more than a blob with little stubs beginning to form, but with a beating heart that we could see and hear. As the months went by we were able to watch him grow through the various stages of development. We were limited, being in Kenya, to older technology and could see little more than the skeletal structure and fuzzy images, but a more beautiful thing I have never seen.

My wife's cousin is carrying her third child and just had an ultra sound. The image of her little girl is so clear you can make out all of her facial features. Photos show the baby holding her foot, scratching her nose, and yawning.

This little child in the womb is alive and deserves the right to live, yet little babies just like this one are aborted at a rate of 4,000 per day in the United States. One has to wonder how anyone could become so cold, calloused, and uncaring as to murder a living being just because it is in the womb and an inconvenience to the mother or the father or both. I've known people who shed tears over cruelty to animals, but couldn't care less about a baby being ripped apart, or having its skull smashed by a partial birth abortion just moments before it would be ruled murder. Abortion should qualify as the most heinous, hate crime that there is.

Leftists long ago took over the Democrat Party and turned it into a platform for atheism, perversion, and self-indulgence. By packing the courts with radical leftwing ideologues they've turned the meaning of "separation of church and state" on its head in order to remove any Christian or moral influence from our government and public life. They've defied the bi-partisan Defense of Marriage Act in favor of gay marriage. They've made abortion a litmus test for justices and candidates, and they denounce everyone who opposes them as being full of hate.

And now, just when it looks like the Democrats couldn't get any more wicked, they have sunk to a new low. Wednesday they announced they are going to make the Democrat Convention a celebration of abortion. A celebration of the act of ending innocent life! A celebration of the destruction on demand of little faces like the one in this picture. They accuse Republicans of "waging a war on women," which is a slanderous lie, while they are waging a war on helpless babies. There is nothing they could do that is any more despicable, detestable, defiled, or depraved.

We hear from conservative talk radio and elsewhere that the coming election will be the most vital in American history because the Obama machine with its trillion dollar deficits and the obamacare reinvention of medical coverage, if allowed to continue, will drive the country into bankruptcy. But this election is about more than economics. It's about the moral fabric of our culture. It's about the character of the American soul. It's about the sanctity of life. It's about the judgment of God hanging over America like Damocles' sword.

If we don't turn Obama and his godless minions out in November that sword will fall. The blood of fifty-five million aborted babies cries out for justice, and like Jefferson, I "tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever." I also tremble for anyone calling himself a "Christian" who would have so little Christian principle as to vote for Obama. You cannot be right with God and vote for the wanton, reckless, destruction of babies.

This election is a referendum on life and death. Vote PRO-LIFE.

Who Should be Taken Seriously?

A group of former Navy Seals has produced a video highly critical of the president for the shameless way he has taken credit for the killing of bin Laden. Much as like the "Swift Boaters" of 2004, the Press has criticized the Seals' efforts. Obama's response was that he doesn't take them seriously.

The truth of the matter is, Obama doesn't take anybody seriously. Neither does he take the Constitution or the rule of law seriously. He is bound and determined, as all liberals are, to force his agenda on everybody whether they want it or not. He seems to have forgotten, along with all the other American history he has forgotten, that the battle cry of the Revolution was "No taxation without representation."

He has decided that he will force Obamacare down our throats even though two-thirds of the country want it repealed. A percentage that high means even Democrats are against it. The House has already voted to overturn it, and a federal judge ordered it's implementation halted, but Obama has defied the court, the House, and the will of the people to begin installing the system. When the Catholic Church objected to having to pay for Obama's insurance plan that mandates covering abortions, he basically thumbed his nose at them and said they had to comply. Oh, I forgot, Kathleen Sibelius said that, Obama's nose is clean.

Actually it's not. Obama promised before the Affordable Health Care Act (a terrible misnomer) was passed that it wouldn't cover abortions. He lied. He also said it wouldn't raise taxes, but thanks to the conservative betrayal of Chief Justice Roberts, the only way the unconstitutional mandate in Obamacare is constitutional, is if it is a tax. There are in fact 18 taxes that will be hitting us in the next year if Obamacare is fully implemented. But no sooner had Roberts released his decision upholding the act, than Obama contradicted him and said it was not a tax. In that case, it's unconstitutional, but Obama doesn't take that seriously.

Obama doesn't take marriage seriously. Even though several states as well as Congress have passed laws defining marriage as one man and one woman, the president has by dictatorial decree abolished the Defense of Marriage Act. He even called it "unconstitutional," as if he alone knows more than the US Supreme Court and all of Congress. This is an arrogance that is tyrannical.

He doesn't take welfare reform seriously. He again, single-handedly by decree, overturned the bi-partisan Welfare Reform Act signed into law by Bill Clinton, basically undoing everything that had been set up to help welfare recipients find work. Then he lied in an interview and said he hadn't done it. All of this with Bill Clinton scheduled to give a keynote speech at the Democratic Convention. It would be interesting to know what Clinton really thinks about that.

Obama doesn't take the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry seriously either. With a scandal brewing that is bigger than Watergate ever thought of becoming, Obama claims executive privilege to protect Eric Holder and probably himself as well, and files lawsuits against States that take any action to protect themselves from the invasion of illegal aliens.

The Press was all over Nixon for Watergate, and all over Reagan for Guns for Hostages, even though nothing was found to implicate Reagan. Where are they now? An agent is dead, other people have been killed along the border as well, the scandal involved probably goes all the wait to POTUS, but the MSM doesn't take any of it seriously. The sold-their-souls-to-Democrat-leftism MSM doesn't care unless it is a gaffe by a Republican.

Remember Dan Quayle misspelling "potato?" (He was actually set up. He was handed a card with the word spelled "potatoe," so that when he corrected the child's spelling he actually read the error provided him.) There was no end of the criticism for the "child" Quayle who couldn't spell potato. Guess what word Obama misspelled this week? In a stump speech given in Ohio, he verbally spelled the state, "Oiho." Hear anything about that on the news?

Now Todd Akin, running for the Missouri Senate seat held by radical leftist Claire McCaskill, has blundered making some non-sensical statement about rape. You would think he had raped somebody himself the way the media has jumped all over it. Leaders of his own party along with Sean Hannity have all asked him to drop out of the race, and the media is having a field day with it. Where's the criticism from the left over Biden's hateful, racist remarks?

There is something else the MSM seems to have forgotten. Back in 2008, McCain campaigned saying that he was the guy that would get bin-Laden. At a stop somewhere Obama came back with the comment that it wasn't that important that they actually get bin-Laden as long as they could keep al Qaeda in check. But when the Seal Team finally got bin-Laden it was another story. Then megalomaniac Obama was quick to let everyone know he had authorized it, he had directed it, he had practically pulled the trigger.

I would say that we shouldn't take Obama seriously, except that we had better. His Saul Alinsky Marxist tactics are closer to Hitler's Nazi agenda than anything we've seen in this country. He is step by step dismantling the Constitution, taking over the economy, and mandating our lifestyle. He is assuming powers not granted nor ever intended by the Founders of our country. If he is re-elected there will be nothing to stop him from grabbing more and taking more of our freedoms away. Obama needs to be taken so seriously that the country rallies to Romney/Ryan and votes him out by a landslide so overwhelming that the Democrats won't be able to try and steal the election with hanging chads and endless recounts.

Once he's gone we won't have to worry about taking him seriously anymore, but the challenge is before us. This is going to be the most critical election in our history, and we must work harder than ever before to vote in the Republican candidate.