Feb 28: Liberia Conference in Greenville, SC

Brookwood Church and Water of Life are co-hosting a Liberia mission conference at Brookwood in Greenville, SC, on February 28, 2009, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM.

This is an important opportunity for those interested in Christian mission work in Liberia, especially in the partnership that Water of Life and Brookwood have with the Christian Revival Church Association in Liberia. There will be more information posted as it becomes available.

For more information please contact

Roland Bergeron
Roland@bergeronbuilders.com
864.241.6222

Jose Alfaro
jose.alfaro@brookwoodchurch.org
864-688-8231

This conference is a big deal. Try to get there. Our family plans to drive down that weekend from the Raleigh area for this conference.

Numbers 11:16-35 - Quail and the Spirit

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Pray and Read: Numbers 11:16-35

Key Truth: Moses wrote Numbers 11:16-23, 31-35 to teach the Israelites the importance of the Word of God and the Spirit and the trap of operating in the flesh.

Key Application: Today I want to warn you about what God’s Word says about rejecting the Lord and embracing the flesh.

Sermon Points:

1. Beware of rejecting the Word of God (Numbers 11:18-23)

2. Beware of ignoring the Spirit (Numbers 11:16-17, 24-30)

3. Beware of choosing the flesh (Numbers 11:31-35)

Exposition: Note well,

1. BEWARE OF REJECTING THE WORD OF GOD (Numbers 11:18-23).

a. The people had grown to hate the manna (see Num 11:6) through familiarity. Manna is a figure of the Word of God.

b. APPLICATION: Beware of rejecting the Scripture as the Word. The Scripture’s purpose is found in 2 Timothy 3:16, and its purposes are teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. In our flesh we don’t usually like at least half of those words. We don’t like being rebuked. That means being called out on something. In our flesh, we don’t usually like being corrected, because sometimes the correction stings a little.

c. Even Moses had grown in unbelief. After all he had been through, Moses distrusted that the Lord could do what He said he would do. Moses has been so close to his situation, so embroiled in all the problems, so tired, that he cannot back up to see God’s presence and miraculous work. Moses had gotten in the flesh, too.

d. APPLICATION: Oftentimes our fatigue brings us to a place of unbelief. That’s a big problem. When we get so deep into things that we cannot see the forest for the trees, we lose perspective and direction. Have you been working hard to do the right thing, do it with excellence, but all around you is mumbling and grumbling? Are you tired? Don’t let unbelief and a critical spirit creep in on you. Ask the Lord to pull you back to see the big picture from His perspective, gain the hope that you need from Him before moving forward, or you might make a big mistake in the flesh based on unbelief and a critical attitude.

e. Jesus called himself manna as the Word of God, too. He explained this in John 6:30-33, 48-51. The gospel of John opens by pointing to Jesus (John 1:1-4, 14).

f. APPLICATION: Beware of rejecting the Lord Jesus as the Word. He is the only answer we have for salvation.

2. BEWARE OF IGNORING THE SPIRIT (Numbers 11:16-17, 24-30).

a. The Jewish Sanhedrin of the New Testament claimed the precedent here in Numbers 11 for seventy members. Jesus likewise sent out seventy to assist Him in his work (Luke 10:1). There were seventy elders at Mount Sinai who went up on the mountain (Exodus 24:1), selected for that purpose at that time. These leaders were God’s response to Moses’ problem. These 70 chosen from among the leadership tapped in Exodus 18 will now help Moses with governing Israel.

b. These 70 begin to prophesy as a sign that they are the ones God has chosen for this work in helping Moses. Prophesying means they were speaking the word of God. Similarity to Acts 2 at Pentecost.

c. Eldad and Medad: Eldad’s name means “God loved,” and Medad’s name means “Love,” but is the named used for “Uncle,” your father’s brother. Hence probably the Jewish tradition that these were Moses’ relatives (actually half-brothers).[1]

d. We don’t know know why Eldad and Medad did not show up when their names were written as the seventy to be there for this special occasion. Perhaps they had a legitimate family emergency, but the text doesn’t give us that indication. It simply says (v. 26) they remained in the camp. The inference is that they didn’t see the importance of going all the way down to the tabernacle for any meeting that was called. They had better things to do with their time than go stand and wait to see what the Holy Spirit would do. If they were indeed relatives, their action would foreshadow Numbers 12:1-16 in which Miriam and Aaron oppose Moses. They perhaps didn’t particularly like who was in leadership down there.

e. Keil & Delitzsch: This miraculous manifestation of the Spirit was intended simply to give to the whole nation the visible proof that God had endowed them with His Spirit, as helpers of Moses, and had given them the authority required for the exercise of their calling. [2]

3. BEWARE OF CHOOSING THE FLESH (Numbers 11:31-35)

a. There is a play on words going on here in the Hebrew. The word for Spirit and wind are the same word, ruach. So now a wind from the Lord brings in the quail that they wanted. Psalm 78:26.

b. Meat would come out of their nostrils, ie., would make them nauseous, and vomiting.

c. Kibbroth-Hattavah means “graves of craving.” Graves dug by lust, or graves of greed.

d. Operating in the flesh means doing things the way I want to, doing things without submission to the Holy Spirit, forcing your own way without regard to the Lord or His Word. Do you see the result? Death. Romans 8:5-8 explain the carnal or fleshly way of living. Living in the flesh invites death. Life in the spirit brings life and peace.

e. Some people live that way as Christians all the time. You show no evidence whatsoever that you are a believer. You think your way is always the right way, and you force it on others. You don’t care what the consequences or who might be hurt, you want your way right here, right now, and you give the Lord and His church a bad name.

f. APPLICATION: We all get in the flesh sometimes, and that is usually the times we say something we wish we hadn’t or do something we wish we hadn’t. But if you are living in the flesh as a Christian, it is time to repent and get your life submitted afresh to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Invitation: If you exhibit carnality and fleshly attitudes normally, then it is good to ask yourself whether you even know the Lord. The door is open today. No one is turned away. Salvation is available for the worst of sinners. Won’t you receive Him now as your Lord?

---

[1] John Gill’s Commentary on the Bible, Numbers 11:24-30 quoting the Targum of Jonathan.

[2] Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament, Num 11:24-30.

Assault on children underway

Assault on the unborn underway, battle begins
The erosion of pro-life policies in America is officially underway. One could argue it began even as our new president took the oath of office. As the clock struck noon on Inauguration Day, the White House’s official Web site morphed from one defending unborn lives to one supporting their death. Click to continue...

Prayers, indeed. Capitulation, never.
In a very real way, Barack Obama’s elevation to the White House is an affirmation of the biblical truth that all persons are created by God in His own image and, as image-bearers, are sacred, deserving of inalienable rights. The most important of these inalienable rights is the right to life itself. Tragically, it’s the violation of this right that makes Obama’s inauguration also a matter of grave concern. Click to continue...

Targeting children– born and unborn

by Richard Land

Just a week into Barack Obama’s presidency and we have several tragic reminders that we live in an increasingly anti-child culture, where too many adults ignore society’s responsibility to protect children–both born and unborn–if it interferes with their adult “preferences” and “choices.” more » Click to continue...

Source: ERLC

Get Spiritryl today

Talk to your doctor about Spiritryl charismatic enhancement tablets today to help you get back on track. Works better with the new drug Calvinix to treat those predestinarian symptoms. When you feel everything was predetermined for you, try Calvinix.

Peculiar Peoples Church

Tradition

Joyous Future

Stop global warming

A new door

This is the door that our team has been building for the east lower door of Adams Hall. Today William Warren (on the left) from Mississippi, a student in the college here, showed me how to rout the panels on a shaper, and I routed half of these panels with him making sure I didn't flub it up any. We had put it together to make sure the panels were the right size, then took it apart and began putting paint primer on the individual panels.

Woodruff, SC, is Mourning

Legendary high school coach Willie Varner has died.

The superintendent at Spartanburg District 4 mentioned in the linked article, Dr. Rallie Liston, was my ninth grade English teacher at Clinton (SC) High School.

One of Coach Varner's proteges was W. Keith Richardson, the legendary Clinton High School coach. Coach Richardson came one night to see our family when I preached revival in Hodges, SC, last October.

Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson

Today is the birthday of Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson, born January 21, 1824, at Jackson's Mill, Clarksburg, Virginia, now West Virginia.

“A man he is of contrasts so complete that he appears one day a Presbyterian deacon who delights in theological discussion and, the next, a reincarnated Joshua. He lives by the New Testament and fights by the Old. Almost 6 feet in height and weighing about 175 pounds, he has blue eyes, a brown beard and a commonplace, somewhat trusty appearance” (Lee’s Letters). Source

D.H. Hill on Jackson's faith:
"Jackson had been baptized in the Episcopal Church, but not confirmed. His leanings, however, were toward that church. One day I read him the definition of sin given in the Assembly's "Shorter Catechism." Its brevity and comprehensiveness impressed him very much. Knowing his great admiration for sententiousness, I read him the answers to several other questions. He became so much interested that he borrowed the little book, which he said he had never seen nor heard of before. He kept it a week or more, and on returning it said that he had read it very carefully, that it was a wonderful production, a model of fine English, as well as of sound theology. I then gave him the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church. This, too, he had never seen. He kept it a much longer time than the catechism, and compared the foot-notes with his Bible. He professed himself pleased with everything except predestination and infant baptism. His scruples about the latter did not last very long. In the last years of his life he was regarded as a fatalist; but his repugnance to predestination was long and determined."

Jackson Anecdotes:
After six tremendous Union assaults on his position on August 29, 1862, Stonewall Jackson’s troops still held Stony Ridge. That night a friend told Jackson, “We have won this battle by the hardest kind of fighting.” Jackson replied, “No, no, we have won it by the blessing of Almighty God !’

Remarks by Jefferson Davis at the dedication of Jackson Monument

VMI Archives Jackson page

Wikipedia article on Stonewall Jackson

Two of my beauties

Ava-Grace and Amanda at the North Carolina State Capitol on December 13, 2008.

Witches magically sweep DC clean for Obama inaugural

Raw Video from the Associated Press:
Witches in Washington magically sweep city clean for Obama's inauguration.



Washington witchdoctor Caroline Kenner, a Pagan shamanic healer and organizer for the Sacred Space Foundation, says, "Many of us are worried by the ruinous course our country has taken for the last eight years, and we are also concerned for the safety of the Obama and Biden families. This ceremony gives us a chance to request help from our loving ancestors and our multitude of deities, and to bless and protect the incoming administration. We will begin the work by magically sweeping away the detritus of the worst administration in American history with our consecrated Witches' Brooms."

A large quartz crystal resembling the Washington Monument will be charged with the blessings of unity and protection during the ritual. At the culmination of the ceremony, the crystal will be sacrificed into the Tidal Basin, whence it will broadcast the energies of the ritual to the Potomac River and the world at large.

Robert Edward Lee

Robert Edward Lee

January 19, 1807 - October 12, 1870

Address by North Carolina Governor Charles B. Aycock
Delivered in Raleigh, N.C. on Lee's Birthday, January 19, 1912

Ladies and Gentlemen:

We have met tonight to do honor to the memory of General Robert Edward Lee, a man whose position in the world is so well established, and whose fame is so strongly based that nothing which we can do or say will add to his glory. But, on the other hand, I can myself but count it a high honor to be deemed worthy to be permitted to talk about him to an intelligent and sympathetic audience.

Some years ago there was unveiled in Richmond a noble equestrian statue of General Lee. The statue has been much criticised, but there is one thing about it which always strikes every observer and compels the admiration of all for appropriateness - the inscription on it is one word, "Lee." There have been numerous Lees, many of them famous - Light Horse Harry of Revolutionary fame, General Governor Fitzhugh Lee, to mention but two who were well worthy of monumental honors - and yet no visitor to Richmond from any part of the civilized world ever asks the question, "To whom was this statue erected?" Everybody knows. There is but one Lee. He is the noblest, the purest, the highest possession of any people.

It has been the fortune of many to win fame, to have their deeds recorded in history, and their achievements taught through the world to the young as a part of their education. The desire to attain fame is a large incentive in the human heart for great action and high thought, but most men who have lived and who have been honored in story and in song and in history, and whose deeds have been perpetuated in marble, have been those who won final victory. It is the unique glory of Robert Edward Lee that, having failed to conquer, he has yet achieved a distinction beyond his fellows.

What is there about the man that thus selects and differentiates him from the group of those whom men honor as great? Why is it that every Southerner loves and reveres his memory? Why is it that the victorious North has placed him in the Hall of Fame? Why is it that English historians and army officers have vied with Southern orators in panegyric? Why is it that he for more than forty years has steadily grown in the esteem of mankind until he stands today the least criticised among all the heroes of the world, modern or ancient? Why is it that all mankind acknowledge the wondrous power and charm of the man and no one can be found to find fault with him? I think the reason may be found not alone in his singular "beauty of personality and emphasis of presence," in his magnificent intellect, in his perfect life, in his ideal Christian character, in his mastery of the science of war, but in that older fact which first finds exemplification in the life of Moses when, returning from his interview with the Lord on Mount Sinai, he found that in his absence the children of Israel had made for themselves a golden calf and were worshipping it, and he lost his temper and broke the stones and punished his people, and then went up unto the Lord to make intercession in their behalf, and said, "O Lord, these people have sinned a great sin and have made them gods of gold, yet now if Thou wilt, forgive their sin; and if not, I pray Thee blot me out of Thy book."

This was no demagogy. It was not said in the presence of the people. It was said by the creature to his Creator. It was said by one in whose face there shone the light which emanated from the Lord. It was said by one who had seen the lightnings and heard the thunders of Sinai. It was said unto the Al mighty God. "If Thou wilt punish my people, punish me also." From the days of Moses to the days of Gen. Robert Edward Lee, no other man had ever done so fine a thing; for Lee, who did not believe in secession, who was an officer in the United States Army and loved the Union, who had won renown on the fields of Mexico under the stars and stripes, to whom had been offered the highest position in the command of the armies of the United States, to whose clear vision there must have appeared the certainty of the final outcome, calmly said to the Union, "If you will punish my people, punish me also. From the days of Moses to the days of Gen. Robert Edward Lee, no other man had ever done so fine a thing; for Lee, who did not believe in secession, who was an officer in the United States Army and loved the Union, who had won renown on the fields of Mexico under the stars and stripes, to whom had been offered the highest position in the command of the armies of the United States, to whose clear vision there must have appeared the certainty of the final outcome, calmly said to the Union, "If you will punish my people, punish me also. I will not fight against Virginians."

The love of home, of family, of neighborhood, of county, of State, was predominant with him. The elemental foundation of all free government if found in this vital fact. There can never be a free people save those who love and serve those closest to them first, and those farthest away afterward. The Gospel must be preached to all the world, but its preaching must begin at Jerusalem. It never could have begun anywhere else, and if it had, it never would have gone anywhere. General Lee was a home-lover. He was a Virginian first and an American afterward. His intellect might be convinced, and was convinced, that under the Constitution of the United States the Union was to be perpetual, and to use his own language, "It is idle to talk of secession," but when secession became a fact and Virginia had gone out of the Union, there was no logic, there was no power, there was no temptation, there was no honor, there was no hope, there was no glory, that could for one moment make him hesitate about drawing his sword on the side of Virginia.

For myself, I have always believed in the right of secession. I never doubted that each State retained to itself the power to withdraw from an unbearable Union, and my admiration for the man who did not so believe but went with his State when the States seceded is intensified by my own conviction of the lawfulness of secession. And this view makes the war between the States a thing which should give pride to Southerners for all time. It was not a fight for slavery. When men tell me that the South fought for slavery, I answer them, Gen. Robert Edward Lee, freed his slaves before the war and left important military duties to go to his home in order to carry out the will of his wife's father in setting free her slaves. Let the children of the South learn rather that the fight was a fight for local self-government, without which in all its fullness and power there can be no such thing as a Union of coequal States. It is the old doctrine of States? Rights - a doctrine which belongs to no section and is monopolized by no party. Indeed, the first Republican platform ever adopted was based on an idea of State rights so extreme that those of us who professed most strongly to believe in them refused to go to the extent demanded in that platform. The Republicans justified their refusal to return runaway slaves on the right of a State to legislate for itself on the subject of slavery.

There is another great fact in the life of General Lee which makes him pre-eminent in all his career. No one ever heard of his putting the blame of failure of any enterprise on the shoulders of any one else. When his wonderful genius had planned a battle and assigned each commander his duty, if the battle went wrong through the failure of any commander, General Lee never gave to the world any explanation of why the battle was lost. He never sought for a single instance to aggrandize his own glory by detracting from the service of any other.

Indeed, I may go so far as to say that he never seemed to be conscious of any desire for the commendation of man. His whole career is founded on the single word, "duty," which he himself declared to be the sublimest word in the English language. Having done his duty, what others said, what others thought, what misinterpretations might be made to his own hurt, seemed never to concern him, but he was always anxious that every other person connected with his enterprise should have full praise for any unusual merit exhibited by him. This trait of character approaches the fulfillment of the law, the whole law, which is briefly comprehended in this, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Service to his neighbors was always his life work, and when the war was ended, we fund him calmly and deliberately refusing the acceptance of a country home in England with an ample annuity; declining the presidency of a great insurance company with a large salary; and gratefully accepting the meager salaried presidency of a broken college. What a spectacle, my countrymen, to see this commander of the greatest army that the world had ever seen, patiently, cheerfully, gladly, supervising the education of a few hundred boys! He had taught the South the mastery of war. It was his highest desire thereafter to instill into the youth of the land a love of peace and knowledge of the ways of industry. We cannot honor the memory of a man like this. We can only ourselves catch a few rays of light from the sunshine of his face.

When the North tells me that General Grant was great, I admit it, and gladly join in praise for his graciousness to General Lee; but then I add that if he was great, he had his faults, personal and intimate, not to be mentioned in public because of the greatness of his service to the country. But General Lee was great without fault. There is nothing in his life to hide. All that we want is for the world to know him as he was. We should like for every child in the universe to be cognizant of everything he did and said, entirely confident that having learned every movement and every saying, the child would arise from his study a stronger, a better, a purer person, and with a high ideal of life. Again, the North and the world may justly make a hero out of Abraham Lincoln - I do not hesitate to recognize and proclaim the essential greatness of the man - but there are stories which he told which I could not repeat to this audience tonight without offense. But if I could tell you all that General Lee ever said, you would rise in your seats and thank me for the gentleness, the purity, the cleanness of the speech which I had made.

And yet I have read within a week a book professing to be an appreciation of General Lee which says that he failed. I cannot believe that any man has failed, or the principles for which he contended have ever failed when he has left to the world a life so rich and full, clean and serene, as to make every man who studies it desirous of doing something and being better himself.

Life and Speeches of Charles B. Aycock,Governor of North Carolina, from the library of Reverend Bruce Robinson.

Source: VA Div. SCV

The run around from Luke

I think I got the run around today after church from our eldest son Luke.

We were sitting in the van waiting for Mommy.
I asked Luke, "Did you enjoy Sunday School this morning?"
"Yessir."
Did you have a snack and play a lot?"
"Yessir."
"Did you have a Bible lesson?"
"Uh huh."
"What was it about, Luke?" I asked.
"Uh," he hesitated, "David."
"What about David?"
"When he got thrown in the lions den and beat up Goliaf."

"Okay . . . . ," I puzzled, then decided to try again. "Luke, what did your Sunday School teacher REALLY talk about from the Bible today?"
"Jesus," Luke matter-of-facted me.
"What about Jesus?"
"Jesus fed the five thousand and helped David."

This conversation was getting dizzy, but I couldn't resist hearing what might come next as I tried to hold the laughter.
"What did Jesus help David with, Luke?" I eyed him through the rear-view mirror.
After a sideways glance, he said, "Beat up Goliaf."

See what I mean about run around?

I smiled to myself, got out of the van, opened the side door and found Luke's take home paper from Sunday School. His lesson was about Daniel 2 when Daniel and his three friends elected to eat kosher food instead of the defiled food from the king's table.

I began to read the story out loud to him from the take home paper. Luke took up the story and finished telling it himself with some good details, and I dutifully "good jobbed!" him. Then he sat there a minute in silence.

"Daddy, our teacher wanted us to pick out the green vegetables."
"What?" That conversation was over, or so I thought.
"The teacher wanted us to pick the green vegetables out."
"Okay, . . ." I said, wondering if they talked about eating nutritious foods or something, so I asked him, "Luke, did you talk about your favorite foods today?"
"Yessir."
"What are your favorite foods, Luke?"
"Bread."
"Okay. What else?"
"Coke."
"Well, okay. What else?"
"Bread."

I don't think he got the application of Daniel 2.

"How about a vegetable?"
"No sir. I don't like them."
"Okay, what else?" I was still hoping for a vegetable, any vegetable, perhaps even a green one.
"Chicken nuggets and french fries and ketchup and Coke."

I gave up.

Rachel on the balcony

I like this picture Amanda took of Rachel because it symbolizes so much of what our family's last six months have been like. Rachel is moving a handmade Liberian chair through a doorway, out of our seminary apartment onto the balcony porch.

Our family stepped out in obedience last summer and left the church I had pastored for 2 1/2 years and moved back to the seminary.

The high wall speaks of Safety for our family, and Wake Forest has again been a safe place for our family.

The plants and warm summer morning light speak of the healing and provision the Lord has had for us here since leaving Amis Chapel.

And it seems when we are intentional about being in the Light of His Presence that we still somehow carry a calling regarding Liberia. And glory crowns Rachel's hair as she goes forward.

GW Carver: Prayer for peanuts

George Washington Carver (1864/5 – 1943) A Prayer for Peanuts

For years Southern farmers had been planting cotton season after season, depleting the soil and producing less every year. The boll weevil was cutting a destructive path through the South. Carver warned farmers that the cotton business would disappear, leaving famine and unusable soil. Carver ushered in a new era in agriculture in the South with crop rotation. He encouraged cultivation of sweet potatoes, peanuts and soybeans to restore the soil and provide much needed nutrients.

Carver wrote, “Conservation is one of our big problems in this section. You can't tear up everything just to get the dollar out of it without suffering as a result. It is a travesty to burn our woods and thereby burn up the fertilizer nature has provided for us. We must enrich our soil every year instead of merely depleting it. It is fundamental that nature will drive away those who commit sins against it. To me Nature in its varied forms is the little windows through which God permits me to commune with Him, and to see much of His glory, by simply lifting the curtain and looking in. I love to think of Nature as wireless telegraph stations through which God speaks to us every day, every hour, and every moment of our lives.”

When farmers did listen to Carver, they found themselves with a huge crop of peanuts and no market for them. Farmers were angry at Carver.

Carver writes, “Why, I just took a handful of peanuts and looked at them. ‘Great Creator,’ I said, ‘why did you make the peanut? Why?’ With such knowledge as I had of chemistry and physics I set to work to take the peanut apart. I separated the water, the fats, the oils, the gums, the resins, sugars, starches, pectoses, pentoses, pentosans, legumen, lysin, the ameno and amedo acids. There! I had the parts of the peanut all spread out before me. Then I merely went on to try different combinations of those parts, under different conditions of temperature, pressure, and so forth. The result was what you see--these 202 different products, all made from peanuts!” Source: National Wildlife Federation, http://www.nwf.org/internationalwildlife/1998/esayso98.html

A Listing Of Products Developed from the Peanut by Dr. Carver:
George Washington Carver Foundation, Tuskegee Institute (University)

Foods: salted peanuts, breakfast foods #1-5, bisque powder, peanut meal #1-2, chocolate coated peanuts, peanut cake #1-2, dry coffee, instant coffee, peanut hearts, mock oysters, worcestershire sauce, peanut food #1, peanut sprouts, peanut tofu sauce, cream from milk, buttermilk, milks (numbering 32), curds, vinegar, crystallized peanuts, peanut relish #1-2, peanut chocolate fudge, peanut and popcorn bars, peanut bar #1, peanut tutti-frutti bars, lard compound, sweet pickle, cheese cream, cheese pimento, cheese tutti-frutti, white pepper (from the vines), cocoa, peanut kisses, peanut wafers, peanut butter (numbering 3), butter from peanut milk, pancake flour (numbering 11), peanut surprise, malted peanuts, peanut meal, meat substitute, chili sauce, peanut brittle, cream candy, peanut flakes (numbering 2), chop suey sauce, mayonnaise, peanut meat loaf, shredded peanuts, cooking oil, salad oil, mock meat, mock veal cutlet, mock chicken, mock duck, mock goose, peanut sausage, flavoring paste, oleomargarine, dehydrated milk flakes, caramel, butterscotch, evaporated milk, golden nuts, substitute asparagus, cheese nut sage, cheese sandwich, plain pickle, peanut dainties, bar candy.

Stock Foods: peanut stock foods #1-3, peanut hull stock food, peanut hull bran, hen food, peanut hull meal, molasses feed, peanut hay meal, peanut meal (numbering 3).

Beverages: peanut orange punch #1-2, normal peanut beverage, plum punch, cherry punch, peanut lemon punch, peanut punch #2, beverage for ice cream, blackberry punch, evaporated peanut beverage, pineapple punch.

Medicines: rubbing oil, tannic acid, emulsion for bronchitis, castor oil substitute, iron tonic, goiter treatment, quinine, laxatives.

Cosmetics: hand lotion, face cream, face bleach and tan remover, shampoo, shaving cream, face ointment, face powder, fat producing cream, toilet soap, pomade for skin, face lotion, vanishing cream, oil for hair and scalp, pomade for scalp, glycerine, all purpose cream, dandruff cure, and antiseptic soap.

Household Products: laundry soap and sweeping compound.

Dyes, Paints, and Stains: leather dyes (numbering 18), wood stains (numbering 17), special peanut dye, dyes for cloth (numbering 30), and paint.

General: fuel bricks, colored paper (from skins), newsprint paper (from vines), insecticide, gasoline, wood filler, plastics, lubricating oil, diesel fuel, writing ink, furnace coke (from hulls), white paper (from vines), paper (from hulls), coarse paper (from skins), glue, gas, metal polish, axle grease, illuminating oil, printers' ink, rubber, washing powder, hand cleanser, wall boards (from hull, numbering 11), sizing for walls, nitroglycerine, soap stock, linoleum, insulating boards (numbering 18), charcoal (from shells), soil conditioner, and shoe and leather backing.

Lymphoma vaccines from tobacco?

For many years, some in the North and South Carolina prayer movement have asked the Lord for the redemptive purpose of tobacco, for the Lord to show why He created it, and what purpose it could be used to benefit creation and not to destroy it. When George Washington Carver asked the Lord for the secret to the peanut, his discoveries created new industries and much wealth.

Perhaps an answer to prayer regarding tobacco is emerging. If so, it would also create new industries and revitalize whole rural economies.

Using Plants to Grow Lymphoma Vaccines
It may be possible to use tobacco plants to grow personalized vaccines for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients, scientists report.

Read Full Article

Amanda's favorite pictures

My wife Amanda is out-doing me with family pictures. You might have to be her friend on facebook to see them, but below are the links.

Christmas 2008

Her favorite pictures

"Somebody is about to get . . . "

"Somebody in this house is about to get nailed to the cross!"

--- said by our thrilled Luke today as he opened the box containing his new Black and Decker workbench he received from friends for his fourth birthday.

Falling pickles, 'possums, and acorns

They may have one of those gaudy, bright ball drops in Times Square, but New York City doesn't have a thing on North Carolina.

In Mount Olive, NC, they have a pickle drop. A three foot long lighted pickle is lowered down the flag pole at the Mount Olive Pickle Company on the corner of Cucumber and Vine in Mount Olive. It made Trip Advisor's top ten quirkiest News Years Eve events. They drop the pickle promptly at 7pm -- Greenwich Mean Time.

"That way, we are official, we shout Happy New Year! -- and we don't have to stay up until midnight," company spokesman Lynn Williams said. "We advise those attending to get here early, because the whole thing's over at 7:05."

The Pickle Drop is based on a boast made by World War II bombardiers that they were so accurate, they could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel. And in the 1950s they were invited by Pickle Packers International to test this skill by dropping pickles off a skyscraper into barrels on the sidewalk below. This idea germinated in the minds of Mt Olive Pickle employees, and in 1999, the first Pickle Drop was held in front of 8 people. This year they expect 2,000. See video of the 2009 pickle drop here.

In Brasstown, NC, on the NC/GA line, they have a possum drop. Clay Logan lowers a live possum in a cage from the roof of his country store, Clay's Corner at Brasstown Road and Old 64West. Logan said, “One man’s roadkill is another man’s icon,” and that began the possum drop. The possum, named O.P. for Old Possum, is lowered in a plexiglass box with the ceremony presided over by 2008's Possum Queen, the winner of last year's womanless beauty pageant. And just before the possum is lowered, everybody (an estimated 2,000 in attendance), gets a hug from somebody else. This year was the 14th possum drop. No alcohol is allowed. “We advertise it as the only New Year's party that you remember what you done the next day,” Logan said.

In Huntersville, NC, they have First Footin'. That's a three mile hike through some woods. If you haven't made the connection with New Year celebration, neither have I. And they say you should definitely call them for "exact directions" to find their farm. It might be a good story for the grandchildren one day about how you got lost in the woods in Huntersville one New Years Day. But probably not.

In Oriental, NC, they get a little spooky. The Oriental Dragon Run on Dec. 31, gives visitors a chance to touch the dragon for good luck during two runs along the waterfront. I think they've got that one mixed up with Chinese New Year.

In Raleigh, they drop a 1,250 pound acorn, being that Raleigh is, after all, the City of Oaks. Wouldn't Sir Walter Raleigh be proud? Let's hope A.C.O.R.N. doesn't hear about this, or they'll be out on Moore Square signing up oak tree species to vote.

Raleigh murders up 29%

Crime is getting pretty bad in Raleigh.

Homicides in Raleigh increased 29% in 2008 over 2007, and armed robberies in the city were up 21%, according to the Raleigh Police Department.

Through Sunday, 31 people had been killed in the city this year, compared with 24 last year and 18 in 2006.
Source: WRAL