'Go Down Moses... Tell ol' Pharoah, Let My People Go!'

The sweet wife and I have started the Book of Exodus in our daily Bible reading as we start over from Genesis to Revelation once again, a chapter a day. An old spiritual hymn, "Go Down Moses" has been playing in my head since we started Exodus. The story of the Hebrew nation coming out to slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land is a theme that is not only repeated through the rest of the Bible, but is also repeated daily in the lives of believers and unbelievers alike today. I was 29 when Jesus came to me and set me free from slavery and I shall be eternally grateful.

I googled it and found the lyrics so I could sing the whole anthem and I also found this video with Jess Lee Brooks performing the classic spiritual. From the 1941 Preston Sturges movie "Sullivan's Travels", starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake.

The spiritual is sung during a powerful scene of white and black convicts in chains tramping into a black church on Sunday to worship as "special guests," Joel McCrea among them. If this don't get your spiritual waterwheel turning, you better check up because your Holy Ghost well is dry.

Freedom to pray goes on trial today in Florida courtroom

Fellow gun nutz and readers of God, Guns & Grits, it's time to pray. This morning at 9 a.m. two school officials in Florida go on trial for the heinous offense of saying grace over a meal at a school with no students present, despite what the lede says in The Washington Times story today.

Two Florida school officials facing possible jail terms for praying in the presence of students arrive in court Thursday enjoying the support of more than 60 members of Congress.

Some of those members, who signed a letter of support and sent it to the two school officials Monday, took to the House floor Tuesday night to denounce what they called a "criminalization of prayer" that "tramples on the First Amendment rights" of Christians.

"The Founding Fathers would be appalled" at the trial of Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and his school athletic director, Robert Freeman, said Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida. His Pensacola-based district includes Santa Rosa County, where the lawsuit is based.

The 9 a.m. trial "is one of the first times we've literally had the potential for the criminalization of prayer in the United States of America," said Rep. J. Randy Forbes of Virginia, chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus.

If the two men are found guilty, "there will come a day," Mr. Forbes predicted, "when the speaker of this house will be hauled into federal court and threatened with jail because she dares to stand at that podium where you stand tonight and ask the chaplain to start our day with the prayer."

Mr. Forbes, Mr. Miller and Rep. Mike McIntyre, North Carolina Democrat, were signatories to the Monday letter to the two educators, assuring them that "we are standing with you in prayer and support as you face your trial." More than 60 members of the House have co-signed.

I have been praying that this case will be the cause that hoists the Anti-Christian Lawyers Union by its own petard. The ACLU has been the bully on the block against everything Christian for far too long. It's about time they get slapped down and this case is so ridiculous on the face of it, I can't seen how any sane judge would not throw it out. But sane and judge may not necessarily go together. Pray that sanity will break out today in that courtroom in Florida.

And I am proud to say we've got 60 members of Congress who have gotten into this fight on behalf of the two Christian gentlemen who have done nothing illegal except in ACLU idiocy.

God bless Mike McIntyre of my home state and the other 59 members of Congress who have stepped up to the plate to defend God and country and the liberty most of us still hold dear.

Obama issues 'foreceful statement' on murders in Iran

Tongue-tied President Obama finally found a few words for the murderous regime clinging to power in Iran while people die in the streets, seeking freedom.

Then, when his "forceful statement" is recorded, he goes out for ice cream.

I'm sure Martin Luther King Jr., who he quoted, went out for ice cream right after his historic march for freedom across the Birmingham bridge. Or maybe he went to jail, I forget.

Whatever. This is just one more sign that the rookie in the White House really has no clue about what it means to be the President of the United States and the leader of the free world. If the faces at Mt. Rushmore were made of something other than stone, they would all be shedding tears today. Pray for the people of Iran.

Depressing thoughts about the future of our free Republic

Haven't blogged much on politics lately as all the news is bad and getting worse. Depressing for a founding member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, as Obama/Pelosi/Reid consolidate power.

Besides, I've been busy as a one-handed paper hanger working at my new job at a gun store, where Obama's stimulus plan for gun shops shows no signs of slacking off since the election. That's so far as I know the only sector of the economy that's booming and the Good Lord opened a job for me there just in time before I got laid off as a technical writer/photography for a local industry. Proves once again how the Lord takes care of fools and drunks. I've been both and still a bit of the former.

Anyway, I had another depressing thought last night sitting in Bible study at church. We've been studying the "minor prophets," the small in quantity but not quality authors of the concluding books of the Old Testament, such unrecognizable names as Hosea, Amos, Habakkuk, Joel, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Haggai, Zephaniah, Zechariah and Malachi. I've read them all before several times in my trips through the Bible, but this is the first time I've participated in a study of these men who wrote during the closing years of the Northern and Southern Jewish kingdoms.

Their messages could be aptly summed up in four words: "The end is near." Their words were indeed prophetic as they warned of the defeat of the Northern Kingdom of Isarel first, when the Assyrians conquered and carried away the "Lost 10 Tribes" of the Jewish nation into exile.

They're called the lost 10 tribes because they never returned to Northern Israel. Gone forever.

And these minor prophets also warned of the coming collapse of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, which happened when Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians conquered Judah and carried those two Jewish tribes into captivity. They were released by the Persian ruler who conquered Babylon and allowed to return to Israel, but the Southern Kingdom was never restored.

There were no further true kings in Israel following the period written about by the minor prophets. During the 400 "silent years" between Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, and Matthew, the first book of the New Testament, there was no true king in Israel, nor were there any prophets in Israel.

By the time of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, first the Greeks and then the Romans had conquered Israel and King Herod was nothing but a non-Jewish puppet/pretender placed on the throne of Israel by the Romans.

And here's the depressing thought that hit me last night during Bible study of Habakkuk. Are we in the times of the minor prophets here in America? Are the lights about to go out on our freedom as a nation as socialism is being proclaimed on the front cover of a leading magazine?

Prophets of our time have warned for the past few decades "The end is near!" but few have believed them. Seems to me the power grab under way by Obama/Pelosi/Reid could bring about the total collapse of our free-market economy and plunge America into third-world status.

That may be why you cannot find any mention of a nation that sounds even remotely like America in any of the prophetic writings about the last days before Jesus returns to earth.

The Book of Revelation and other end-time prophecies clearly describe the revived Roman empire in Europe, but have no hint of a free nation that is currently the world's sole superpower.

I fear our superpower status is soon to fall into the dustbin of history. Truly the end is near.