Ecclesiastes 12:10

    In the 1920s, everyone wanted to play Salem Trade School.   They were a lay-up on your schedule having not one a game for several years. Back in that day, the schools did not organize play but the teams were clubs unto themselves responsible for their activities. Each team would find other schools to play and split the ticket sales, which went to pay for equipment and travel. Since the Salem Trade school would always play at your field, thus giving you the higher share, and were not very good, they were a popular pick.   There was a reason they never played a home game, however. There was no Salem Trade School. The players were not students. It was a ruse cooked up by a man named Harold Burges to make money. He got some adults to pose as students and told them to keep it respectable but to let the other team win. The way the scheme was discovered is they accidentally scored late and the other team couldn’t thus giving them their first win. Reporters eager to wr...

     The old adage was ‘seeing is believing’ but photoshop and deepfakes, seeing isn’t all that accurate anymore. It’s easy to get fooled by fake news and internet hoaxes yet that isn’t the biggest deception we face. Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.   But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today," so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Hebrews 3:12-13      Here the Hebrew writer warns us about the deceitfulness of sin. Sin fools us into not seeing what is right in front of us. It always explains itself away, hides behind false motives, and covers over its shortcomings. Al the while it corroding our hearts taking us away from God.   So how can we see thru the lies?   With one another. With encouragement. With a daily dose of accountability from other brethren. That is why God didn’t make ...

  On May 11, 1846, President James K. Polk stood before Congress and declared that Mexico posed an immediate threat to the United States. Foreign troops, he said, had crossed the border and “shed American blood upon the American soil.” So Congress declared war on Mexico.    The next year a new congressman from Illinois began to question his claims. He challenged the president to show him the spot on U.S. soil where American blood had been shed. This ‘spot resolution’ was labeled by Polk as treasonous. The congressman said that we would gladly take back his statement if the President could “answer with facts and not with arguments”.  He never did.  The issue stalled out however with the war nearing a close and folks more concerned about the territory gained than the reason the conflict started. For the young congressman, the issue stunted his career. One of his constituents branded him "the Benedict Arnold of our district," and he was denied renominati...

  If you ask most people about Napoleon Bonaparte and they will tells you two things. He was a French general and he was short.   Any movie, show, or cartoon that has Napoleon in it is real big on pointing out he was rather diminutive.  We even have the so called “Napoleon Complex” named after him, describing men who have an inferiority complex because of their height.  It seems his height was a defining characteristic of the “little corporal”.    Expect he wasn’t all that short.   The myth that he was short stems primarily from the fact that he is listed as 5 feet 2 inches tall at the time of his death.  However, this is 5 feet 2 inches in French units.  In modern international units, he was just shy of 5 feet 7 inches.  At the time in France, the average height for an adult male was about 5 feet 5 inches in modern international units.  So in fact, he was quite tall for his day.   His nickname Little Corpor...

   It happened again.  Some news story came out about a ( Pick One, Celebrity Death, New Law, Hollywood Scandal, Wonder Drug, New Research, Shocking Story ) that spreads like wild fire until someone bothers to check the facts and see that it wasn't true.  It is now getting to the point that any story I see on Facebook, Twitter, news sites, or the like, I instantly think the opposite is true.  It seems the media is so eager to be first with a story they never bother to check if the story is true.  If it is sensational enough or shocking enough why bother if it is true enough?  Now before we get to quick to blame them let’s remember who is forwarding and reposting all those stories!  I admit I am little  upset and worried at how quickly so many people are to buying into the half-truths and gossip in our world today. Without batting an eye, we will give our acceptance to things that are not so.      Now we all will ge...

    In his book “ How Do You Kill 11 Million People?”  , author Andy Andrews asked that question about the Holocaust that occurred in Nazi Germany. It was not asked about why that it happened but rather how it occurred. He asks the question this way: “ Why, for month after month and year after year, did millions of intelligent human beings –guarded by relatively few Nazi soldiers– willingly load their families into cattle cars to be transported by rail to one of the many death camps scattered across Europe? How can a condemned group of people headed for a gas chamber be compelled to act in a docile manner? ”   The answer was surprisingly simple. In short, they lied to them. And, sadly, they believed it.  The Jews were told it was for their protection.  First, as barbed-wire fences were erected, encircling entire neighborhoods, leaders assured them that the physical restrictions being placed upon their community were only temporary necessities of war...

               Maybe I am just now seeing something that has always been there, but it seems to me that more and more people are lying about things that don’t really matter.  I see it with appointment times; the person will tell you they will arrive at your home before 10 and well after noon no one is there.  I see it with questions; I ask the clerk, “Do your carry this product?” They will answer “Yes” I will drive over to the store to find out that they don’t really carry it but they can order it.  I see it in planning events, you will ask someone are they going to an event, and they will tell you “Yes, we are excited about it” but when the time comes you find out they made other plans.  Is my car ready to be picked up?  Yes (But it’s not).  Will this be in by tomorrow? Yes (But it won’t be).  Can I get a straight answer? Yes (But you never will).  Over and over, I ask for simple ans...

  If you have a computer and an email address you have probably received a message that says if you just forward a message to another person that AOL or Bill Gates or some other entity will give money to you or some other needy person . These messages have been a hoax that has been around almost as long as the internet. Billions of emails have been forwarded but never has anyone gotten any money.   So if you send it to me I will politely reply back to you and tell you about the hoax with some form of research showing the truth . I have found that this news is often not received well by the sender. Some will send me another message with a different twist on the same premise shortly thereafter. Others will not send it to me but later I will see that they sent it to someone else who then sent it to me. One person responded back to me saying, “You’re probably right but I hate to be the one to stop sending then I would feel guilty.” Even when faced with a mountain of truth peop...

The Associated Press attempted to do a poll to see how Americans viewed lying. Researchers however had a difficult time getting results because those polled could not give a straight answer. For example, 40 percent said they "never" lied, but in the next question, about 10 percent of that 40 percent said they might even have lied just within the previous week. More than half said lying was "never" justified, but two-thirds then said lying is OK sometimes. [Tampa Tribune-AP, 7-11-06] It seems that Americans may not be liars; we just can’t tell the truth very well.             Lying is a habit that many have embraced with regarding the source of where all lies come from. Whether it is the big fat lies or the little white lies, they all have one father. Jesus said in John 8:44  " You are of your father the devil,… does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own natu...