Friday, May 16, 2014

Fri May 16th Todays News

One of the more disappointing conservatives, Sarkozy, was elected President of France on this day in '07. France had had right wing leadership for awhile leading up to it, but it was indulgent. I remember reading of Sarkozy's casual anti semitism and I had hoped he was merely courting Obama over some issue. But bigotry is older than Obama. Bigotry is also a character flaw. It is a problem for Jewish peoples that anti semites are on both the left and right of European political demarcations. And it is everybody's problem that that is the case. Hollande is not an improvement, but he is socialist and can't be expected to not be a bigot too. There is always a reason for bigotry, and it is never isolated, It is a result of poor values and often a crime of convenience.

 Mao's Great Leap Forward had failed, with China's economy shrinking, millions dead, workers pushed from cities to country to work in agriculture. The failed model was advanced by Pol Pot later. So, on this day, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution with his May 16th address denouncing capitalism and claiming that some were undermining Communism. The result was the formation of Red Guard youth groups who informed on their own parents if they appeared to advocate Capitalism. And many tens of millions died in the purges. 

 The day is not entirely backward. Kuwait voted 35 out of 58 for Women's Suffrage in '05. Soviets landed a probe on Venus in '69 (their moral police are still examining this sentence). In 1888, Tesla experimented with AC which is superior to DC over a relatively large distance. But also, the day saw in 1532 Sir Thomas More resign as Lord Chancellor of England. And in 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots, flee to England. It is that kind of day.
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For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball
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Hatches
Happy birthday and many happy returns Anna Chan and Colin Wong. Born on the same day, across the years. On this day in 1943, one particularly daring mission was launched called Operation Chastise, aka Dam Busters. Also, in 1960, the first working laser was made, fully 6 years before Star Trek Phasers were shown. A lot to live up to. But you were born to do it.
Matches
Despatches
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Green fantasy would drive us all to red ruin

Piers Akerman – Friday, May 16, 2014 (9:23am)

THE reaction to the federal Budget from both Labor and the Greens would indicate they want to ensure Australia becomes a nation of innumerate bludgers.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Green fantasy would drive us all to red ruin'
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A COMMUNE AIN’T A COMMUNITY

Tim Blair – Friday, May 16, 2014 (2:26pm)

The NSW government yesterday suspended Metgasco’s licence to explore for gas in the state’s north coast. Reason for the suspension: the government claims Metgasco has failed to undertake genuine and effective community consultation.
Let’s meet some of those community members, who seem in many cases not to be members of the local community at all:



(Via JT)
UPDATE. Margo Kingston, spiritual leader of the Bentley people, declares: “The blockaders have won.”
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SELF-STYLED NIGERIAN PATRIOTS

Tim Blair – Friday, May 16, 2014 (2:06pm)

When bombs detonated at the Boston Marathon, Waleed Aly ($187,500) wrote of the “very real suspicion that the perpetrators here are self-styled American patriots.” In case readers didn’t get the message, the Sydney Morning Herald accompanied Aly’s column with a Tea Party terror image. Of course, the bombers turned out to be a pair ofyoung Muslims, one of whom was “angry that the world pictures Islam as a violent religion.”
Now Aly is ducking and weaving over the religious affiliation of girl-stealing Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram. Here’s Aly’s answer when asked to describe Boko Haram: 
“They are a really, really hard group to define because they are so splintered and so diverse,” he said.
“What we do know though is that the broader movement is a terrorist movement and they’ve been wanting to overthrow the Nigerian government and establish a government of their own.
“But beyond that, this particular group, who have done this particular thing, it’s hard to identify who they are and they might just be vigilantes.” 
And they just might be Kunu Party members or even self-styled Nigerian patriots. Who knows? When Waleed Aly says “it’s hard to identify who they are”, he’s not talking about Boko Haram. He’s talking about his own difficulties in ever recognising Islamic evil. As it happens, the only vigilantes involved are volunteers from the village where children were stolen: 
The village has deployed its own civilian force of fighters to defend the area. Bulus Mungo Park, a 38-year-old civil servant who says two of his nieces are among the kidnapped, is one of them. A volunteer in the national vigilante association, Mungo Park says the local force is about 300 strong. “We must fight this Boko Haram and we will win,” he says. 
Quite so. These vigilantes are fantastic. So are the brave locals currently dealing out justice to Boko terrorists: 
Residents of three villages in northeastern Nigeria took security into their own hands this week, repelling attacks by Boko Haram insurgents and killing more than 200 of them, residents and officials said. 
Good. And here’s Boris Johnson: 
It is hard to think of any group of human beings more obviously loathsome than those who go by the general nom de guerre of “Boko Haram”. I yearn for them all to be rounded up by helicopter gunship … 
Readers are invited to submit alternative words for “rounded up”.
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INVASION OF THE TUBE PEOPLE

Tim Blair – Friday, May 16, 2014 (1:53pm)

Armed with cash from Clover Moore’s Sydney council, a bunch of artistic types have built this device outside my home:

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It’s apparently a musical instrument, but the only sounds I’ve heard so far seem to mimic whales suffering extreme intestinal distress. Similar infestations are occurring throughout Surry Hills.
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HER STORY

Tim Blair – Friday, May 16, 2014 (1:34pm)

Julia Gillard’s book My Story won’t be released until October, leaving fans of the former Prime Minister facing a painful five-month wait for all of her fascinating political insights.

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To help those fans survive, Daily Telegraph literature expert Tim Blair has located what he swears are 100 per cent genuine* extracts from Gillard’s blazing biography. Read on as the ex-PM defends her record and smites her enemies. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'HER STORY'
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AND THEN JAIL THEM

Tim Blair – Friday, May 16, 2014 (1:19pm)

Here’s one good reason to licence cyclists: so we can take their licences away.
(Via Dave, who emails: “Elizabeth Farrelly could get a week’s worth of columns on the injustice of this police state.")
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Sorry Palmer

Andrew Bolt May 16 2014 (11:21am)

The Australian last week reported:

CLIVE Palmer’s private company Mineralogy has been accused of wrongfully siphoning more than $12 million from his Chinese business partners, with some of the funds allegedly used to cover political expenses for the costly federal election campaign by his Palmer United Party.
The Federal Court in Perth was told yesterday that there were “serious questions” about the unauthorised use of large sums of money that Chinese-backed CITIC Pacific had put aside in a bank account for the operation of a port at its Sino Iron mining project in Western ­Australia.
Clive Palmer denied it when grilled on his favorite station by his favorite journalist:
TONY JONES: Now Clive Palmer, one final question; it’s a personal one actually because you would have seen in The Australian arguments made by your partners in Western Australia CITIC Pacific that you’ve somehow taken a large sum of money from a fund set aside to manage the port facilities in WA and possibly used that to fund your election campaigning. I don’t think I’ve heard your response to those allegations yet. What is it?
CLIVE PALMER: Well it’s certainly scandalous and I can’t say - but there’s always been a resolution of that matter and it’s been pointed out to people and they’ve made the appropriate apology to us.
TONY JONES: Is CITIC pressing to investigate what happened to that money?
CLIVE PALMER: Not that I’m aware of… No, I think it’s just another make-up by the Rupert Murdoch press, really. It doesn’t seem to have any substance. These things happen about me regularly ‘cause people don’t like me, they don’t like the fact that I’m concerned about our pensioners and I will stand up for them.
TONY JONES: Well your CITIC partners seem to be quite angry. You’re saying they’ve backed off? Basically they’re talking about a sum of money, over $10 million, I think it was, and then saying that, you know, you’ve spent pretty much that sort of amount of money on your election and linking the two things. Whether they’re making a direct allegation, I don’t know.
CLIVE PALMER: Well my companies turn over over $1 billion a year, Tony. That’s not the only money that we’ve got available to us, and of course, that’s just not true, what’s been alleged.
TONY JONES: Are you saying that CITIC has apologised about this?
CLIVE PALMER: There’s been an apology given and I can’t divulge who it is under the terms of it.
TONY JONES: Clive Palmer, we’ll have to leave you. Thank you very much for coming in to join us tonight. Always interesting to talk to you.
CLIVE PALMER: It’s good to talk to you, Tony. You’re a great journalist.
In fact, it was Palmer’s side which did the apologising:
CLIVE Palmer’s key lawyer, ­Michael Dunham, has issued an apology in a Federal Court row that revolves around more than $12 million in missing funds belonging to a Chinese state-owned company.
Mr Dunham’s sworn affidavit also features an apology from Mr Palmer’s media and public relations manager, Andrew Crook, because of a media release that he improperly issued three months ago in an attack on the company, Citic Pacific....

Yesterday Citic Pacific rejected Mr Palmer’s claims on Lateline including that its allegations and concerns about the missing money were “another make-up by the Rupert Murdoch press”, which publishes The Australian…

Citic Pacific issued a statement yesterday in which it repeated its calls for a significant investigation into the missing funds… “It was incorrect for Mr Palmer to say that there has been a resolution of the administrative fund matter. Citic has made no apology to Mr Palmer in relation to that matter. As was made clear to the Federal Court last week, Citic considers that a ‘searching inquiry’ should be made into the missing funds. That inquiry is continuing in confidential arbitration proceedings.”  
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I want lunch with Richo

Andrew Bolt May 16 2014 (10:35am)

Graham Richardson must dine at only the very best:
In the corner offices of corporate Australia they can’t believe their luck. They have been left unscathed. Does anyone believe that a person on $500,000 a year will even notice their extra 2c-in-the-dollar tax increase? It would barely add up to the cost of a good lunch once or twice a month.
Really?
For Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who earns $500,000, the tax hike will force him to pay an additional $6400 a year.
That’s enough to pay for a monthly lunch worth $533. The only time I had a bill that big was when I paid for a table of nine. 
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The Bolt Report on Sunday

Andrew Bolt May 16 2014 (10:29am)

On Channel 10 at 10am and 4pm.
How spiteful has been some media coverage of the Budget?
My guest: Treasurer Joe Hockey.
The panel: former NSW Treasurer Michael Costa and Judith Sloan, former productivity commissioner and now columnist with The Australian.
On NewsWatch: Sharri Markson on some of the week’s worst media tricks.
Plus spin of the week. I can’t split the winners.
The videos of the shows appear here.
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On being denounced for blaspheming against Islam and Waleed Aly

Andrew Bolt May 16 2014 (10:27am)

Culture wars, Islamism, Media

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Scott Stephens, religion editor for ABC Online, is a former Uniting Church minister.  You’d expect him to preach a milksop peace, reconciliation and love of even our enemies.
But Stephens has just published an astonishing paroxysm of abuse – a true shock-jock sermon.
He has found a heretic so evil – guess who - that he denounces this Beelzebub as not just “mad”, “lunatic” and “maniacal” but “idolatrous”.
Idolatrous?  Now there’s a word we don’t hear much these days in a culture unmoored from its religious foundations. 

So which faith have I wickedly blasphemed against with what Stephens calls my “pseudo-intellectual thuggery”, “vulgar generalisations” and “desiccated reason”?
Well, it’s not Christianity, of course. No violence against that faith ever prompts a Uniting Church minister, past or present, into this kind of vilification.
No, my sin is, as you’d guess, against Islam, which Scott rapturously praises as embracing “conscientious humility, the devout hesitation before the inscrutability of the Divine”. My sin is particularly against that faith’s great new preacher, an ABC presenter who Stephens says speaks “against the idolatry in one’s own heart”.
This preacher, Waleed Aly, was born in a land so distant from his father’s home in the Middle East, and Stephens says his “very presence, prominence even, in the Australian media is enough to give the most despondent among us hope” .
And in case you didn’t get the Messiah allusions in Stephens’ text, the ABC has published an accompanying portrait showing Aly, former spokesman of the Islamic Council of Victoria, with blood pouring from wounds on his head, as if I’d pressed down with particular force a crown of thorns. (See above.)
I don’t think I could ever win an argument about Aly with a man determined to see him as a modern Christ. Against such faith, reason wilts.
Even so, it’s astonishing to see how Stephens tortures the truth, like some medieval Inquisitor.
My criticism of Aly - adopted by the ABC, Fairfax newspapers and Network 10’s The Project as a model moderate Muslim - was perfectly reasonable and easy to understand, I naively thought.
Asked on The Project to explain who’d stolen nearly 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria, Aly, who doubles as a lecturer at Monash University’s Global Terrorism Research Centre, had claimed:  “It’s hard to identify who they are and they might just be vigilantes”.
In fact, in his entire interview, not once did Aly say the girl-stealers were Boko Haram terrorists, identifying as Muslims. Not once did the word “Islamic” even cross his lips, even though Boko Haram’s leader had already been filmed telling the world had Allah commanded him to take these schoolgirls and sell them.
Be very clear about what I argued, because Stephens grossly misrepresents it.
I pointed out that these men claimed to be motivated by Islamic teachings.
“Nor is there any mystery about Boko Haram’s agenda.
“Boko Haram means ‘Western education is sinful’ — haram being the loaned Arabic word meaning sinful or forbidden by Allah. The group’s official title is Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad.
“In his latest video Shekau stated his group’s agenda so clearly a true terrorism expert could not have missed it.
“This was ‘a war against Christians’, Shekau shouted, and “real Muslims, who are following Salafism” should support him.
“‘Kill, kill, kill, kill.’”
And I concluded: “They are yet another variety of the Muslim extremists who have struck from Moscow to Mumbai, Bali to London, Syria to New York.”
Someone asked to explain the motivations and program of Boko Haram could not sensibly avoid mentioning they were Islamists. How else could we understand, for instance, why Boko Haram has declared war on Christians and slaughtered thousands, or why it demands shariah law be imposed in Western Africa? 
You don’t have to agree with Boko Haram’s interpretation of Islam, and hundreds of millions of Muslims don’t . But pretending it isn’t an interpretation – with Boko Haram itself quoting passages from the Koran to justify enslaving female captives and killing infidels – is intellectually dishonest.
To be fair, Stephens is not quite that dishonest. He actually agrees Boko Haram has roots in Islam, even if he is far quicker than me to distance it from Islamic tradition.
“Boko Haram is, at best, a kind of bastard Salafism,” Stephens writes.
“Perhaps more accurately, it represents the still-born offspring of Salafist ahistorical restorationism and unprincipled political opportunism, on the one hand, and Wahhabist anti-intellectual supremacism, on the other. This corrupted and all-corrupting Salafabist hybrid ...  has been aggressively disseminated and massively funded throughout the Muslim world - including Nigeria - by Saudi Arabia, who promote it, not as one expression or sect of Islam, but as Islam tout court.”
It’s odd that Stephens, the former Uniting Church minister, believes he knows better than Saudi Arabia’s leaders and imams the truth of Islam, which he says actually advocates “devout hesitation before the inscrutability of the Divine” and urges a “penitent, generous life in shared pursuit of mercy, charity and beauty”.
The fact that a rich Muslim power has spread a radically different view through much of the Muslim world – and that dozens of terrorist groups do likewise - should make Stephens wonder, as I do, whether the Koran too easily lends itself to interpretations that licence terrorism, intolerance, oppression and the subjugation of women.
But this isn’t an argument I covered in this column on Aly, other than to note in a single sentence that Boko Haram again raised a question the Left did not want to debate and which it looked to Aly to deflect: “Is Islam a threat?”
My column instead criticised Aly for not acknowledging what even Stephens does – the Islamic roots of Boko Haram’s program. 
So it’s strange to find Stephens then demonising me as “mad”, “lunatic”, “maniacal” and “idolatrous” for making this rather obvious point. What could possibly be my sin?
I suspect it’s just the “vibe of the thing” – my pointing out (correctly) that yet another terrorist group claimed Islam as its inspiration, and that the Left’s favourite Muslim apologist had pretended not to even notice.
So if Stephens essentially agrees with me, how can he then rationalise his fury, insults and collectivist support for a fellow ABC staffer?
Simple. He invents my transgressions.
“What Bolt wants from Waleed Aly, it would seem, is the same maniacal lucidity that Abubakar Shekau exhibits,” Stephens claims.
“Without the slightest hesitation, the leader of Boko Haram can claim to speak in the name of God...”
No, Scott. That’s not what I want or argued. I made plain that I merely wanted Aly to acknowledge exactly what you’ve just said, that “the leader of Boko Haram can claim to speak in the name of God”.
Stephens again:  “It is not at all clear to me that Waleed Aly was being purposefully evasive in his description of Boko Haram. If anything, his attempt to characterise so impossibly diffuse and promiscuous an ‘organisation’ suffered from too much detail.”
False again. Aly’s description contained absolutely no detail, including the most obvious of all – that the group claimed Islamic inspiration. Aly even suggested the girl-stealing could have been done by “vigilantes”, although the leader of Boko Haram had already taken credit on video. And Aly has a history of such evasions, in my opinion, examples of which I gave.
Stephens again: “What Bolt wants, in other words, is for Aly to admit the “obvious”: that Islam is defined by the conduct of those who purport to be Muslims.”
False again: No, I just wanted Aly to admit the girl-stealing was by Boko Haram, and that it claimed to act from Islamic principles.  That’s it. That’s all I wrote.
True, elsewhere I have argued that an ideology should be judged not just by what it says but the behaviour it actually inspires, yet I cannot see Stephens really quarrelling with that truism. Isn’t that how many people legitimately question, say, Marxism, arguing it means well but, alas, leads too easily to evil? (That’s not quite my argument, I should add.)
In the same way I should ask Stephens what faith he follows that licences such abuse, such misrepresentation and such intellectual evasion? Against which faith have I been so “idolatrous” that I must be pronounced not just wrong but “mad”?
I suspect Stephens, in fact, is the true voice of the “maniacal clarity” he denounces. Witness him now scourging blasphemers and diagnosing madness in any who dare mock his new Christ.

UPDATE
No sooner written than I read more evidence that perhaps the Koran really is too easily interpreted as licensing violence and the subjugation of women:
A SUDANESE judge sentenced a pregnant Christian woman to hang for apostasy after she refused to convert to Islam, despite appeals by Western embassies for compassion and respect for religious freedom.
UPDATE
Mark Scott, under whose leadership the ABC has betrayed its statutory duty to be balanced, is very excited that one of his staff has smeared a conservative as “mad”, “lunatic”, “maniacal” and “idolatrous”. Not for the first time, he directs his followers to a trashy hit job, praising it as “scholarly”:
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Once again, the ABC is abusing its enormous power as a state broadcaster to vilify critics of the organisation and its staff.
Chris Kenny, for instance, was branded a “dogf...er” and shown on national TV in a doctored photograph buggering a dog. (Scott apologised seven months later, as Kenny’s defamation case posted some early victories.)
I was branded a racist and falsely accused of publishing vile abuse of an academic which, again falsely, was claimed to have driven her from public life. (The ABC grudgingly apologised, although Scott directed readers to further smears published in another publication.)
This week the ABC published a warning that Immigration Minister Scott Morrison had a private army and could grow in power as did Heinrich Himmler. For that it has not yet apologised.
The ABC is out of control. And Scott is the man most responsible. 
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Shorten promises more of the red ink Labor spilled

Andrew Bolt May 16 2014 (9:36am)

An abusive Bill Shorten last night promised to stop almost everything - other than the essentially insignificant deficit levy - to fix the budgetary disaster Labor left:
BILL SHORTEN: Labor will not support a system of higher fees, bigger student debt, reduced access and greater inequality.
TOM IGGULDEN: Labor’ll also try and amputate the doctor’s fee from the Budget, ...
BILL SHORTEN: We shall fight this wicked - this wicked and punitive measure to its ultimate end.
TOM IGGULDEN: ... keep dole payments for young people intact ...
BILL SHORTEN: The Prime Minister’s vicious, victim-blaming policy.
TOM IGGULDEN: ... and oppose most if not all changes to the pension.
BILL SHORTEN: Labor will not surrender the security of your retirement. We will fight for a fair pension and we will prevail.
TOM IGGULDEN: The $2 billion fuel levy increase will also be opposed. So will some, but not all the changes to family tax benefits.
BILL SHORTEN: We’re working though the exact scenarios, the tables, but one thing’s for sure: families who get family payments in Australia are going to get a better deal out of Labor under this harsh bunch of roosters.
Labor didn’t just mortgage our future. Under Shorten it promises not to repay.
UPDATE
Shorten’s bill:
BILL Shorten has dared Tony Abbott to force an election over the federal budget by vowing to vote down measures worth almost $18 billion…

The Australian was told Labor would definitely vote against the withdrawal of FTB Part B from families with children older than six. This measure saves $1.9bn over four years.
The new GP fee raises $3.5bn; the $5 charge on subsidised medicines raises $1.3bn; and the changes to the Medicare Benefits Schedule raise $3.5bn over four years. The increase in fuel excise raises $2.2bn over four years.
The tougher measures for job seekers younger than 30 saves $1.2bn over four years and the changes to seniors-card concessions saves $2bn.
Labor’s position on the detail of every tertiary education change was not clear last night but the government’s reforms save at least $3.1bn and as much as $5bn over four years. In total, Labor’s policy positions could deepen the deficits by about $18bn without any alternative savings or revenue measures to offset the impact.
Labor lit the fire and now cuts the fire hose. 
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G’day,
An extremely sad and tragic subject to try to satire so it is with only little satisfaction that I state that my only real pleasure in producing this cartoon, was the fact that I could draw Kevin Rudd & Peter Garrett again,………. they really are a cartoonists’ gift. Mark Arbib was fun too!
Seems this dreadful can will be kick well down the Public Service road until it stops with some poor bugger who was just doing their job as instructed. Personally I believe the buck stops with Rudd and although the MSM want you to think he is taking the blame, it is clear to me that he thinks he is going to get off this one and let Mark Arbib take the lion share of fault. No wonder these players all left the field early.
Godspeed
Zeg
Freelance Editorial Cartoonist/Caricaturist for The Spectator Australia Magazine & Quadrant Online.
0414293765
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=== Posts from last year ===
4 her, so she can see how I see her


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Just stack tomatoes, some mozzarella cheese, basil and asparagus and drizzle with some balsamic vinaigrette.
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The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It's full of charts and facts and figures and instructions for dancing
But I
I love it when you read to me
And you
You can read me anything
The book of love has music in it
In fact that's where music comes from
Some of it is just transcendental
Some of it is just really dumb
But I
I love it when you sing to me
And you
You can sing me anything

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Did you know none of the employees involved in the IRS scandal were disciplined. In fact, one was promoted.

Demand Congress investigates the IRS: https://secure.teapartypatriots.org/m/tpp/irs_petition?src=FAC1165
If you have been harassed or intimidated by the IRS we need to hear from you. Tell us your story athttp://www.teapartypatriots.org/shareyourstory/
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“My question isn't about who's going to resign. My question is who's going to jail over this scandal.” -House Speaker John Boehner on the IRS targeting conservative groups
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"The Gang" are reunited once more in the series 7 finale, 'The Name of the Doctor'. Geronimo!

Check out the Next Time trailer here on YouTube:http://bit.ly/13e3eP1
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Nakba? What about the Jewish Nakba? 

850,000 Jews from Arab lands brutally murdered or expelled, after confiscating all their lands and wealth. What about their rights?

This graphic does not even address the 400,000 odd Jews that were expelled from the Arab world in the four decades PRIOR to Israel's independence.

That's 1.25 million Jews and their 8 million odd descendants that have been deprived of their human rights by the Arab countries!

Shameful!
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Sincerity makes the very least person to be of more value than the most talented hypocrite.
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Academy Award statuette
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“As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.” - Ecclesiastes 11:5
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"All that believe are justified."
Acts 13:39
The believer in Christ receives a present justification. Faith does not produce this fruit by-and-by, but now. So far as justification is the result of faith, it is given to the soul in the moment when it closes with Christ, and accepts him as its all in all. Are they who stand before the throne of God justified now?--so are we, as truly and as clearly justified as they who walk in white and sing melodious praises to celestial harps. The thief upon the cross was justified the moment that he turned the eye of faith to Jesus; and Paul, the aged, after years of service, was not more justified than was the thief with no service at all. We are today accepted in the Beloved, today absolved from sin, today acquitted at the bar of God. Oh! soul-transporting thought! There are some clusters of Eshcol's vine which we shall not be able to gather till we enter heaven; but this is a bough which runneth over the wall. This is not as the corn of the land, which we can never eat till we cross the Jordan; but this is part of the manna in the wilderness, a portion of our daily nutriment with which God supplies us in our journeying to and fro. We are now--even now pardoned; even now are our sins put away; even now we stand in the sight of God accepted, as though we had never been guilty. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." There is not a sin in the Book of God, even now, against one of his people. Who dareth to lay anything to their charge? There is neither speck, nor spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing remaining upon any one believer in the matter of justification in the sight of the Judge of all the earth. Let present privilege awaken us to present duty, and now, while life lasts, let us spend and be spent for our sweet Lord Jesus.

Evening

"Made perfect."
Hebrews 12:23
Recollect that there are two kinds of perfection which the Christian needs--the perfection of justification in the person of Jesus, and the perfection of sanctification wrought in him by the Holy Spirit. At present, corruption yet remains even in the breasts of the regenerate--experience soon teaches us this. Within us are still lusts and evil imaginations. But I rejoice to know that the day is coming when God shall finish the work which he has begun; and he shall present my soul, not only perfect in Christ, but perfect through the Spirit, without spot or blemish, or any such thing. Can it be true that this poor sinful heart of mine is to become holy even as God is holy? Can it be that this spirit, which often cries, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this sin and death?" shall get rid of sin and death--that I shall have no evil things to vex my ears, and no unholy thoughts to disturb my peace? Oh, happy hour! may it be hastened! When I cross the Jordan, the work of sanctification will be finished; but not till that moment shall I even claim perfection in myself. Then my spirit shall have its last baptism in the Holy Spirit's fire. Methinks I long to die to receive that last and final purification which shall usher me into heaven. Not an angel more pure than I shall be, for I shall be able to say, in a double sense, "I am clean," through Jesus' blood, and through the Spirit's work. Oh, how should we extol the power of the Holy Ghost in thus making us fit to stand before our Father in heaven! Yet let not the hope of perfection hereafter make us content with imperfection now. If it does this, our hope cannot be genuine; for a good hope is a purifying thing, even now. The work of grace must be abiding in us now or it cannot be perfected then. Let us pray to "be filled with the Spirit," that we may bring forth increasingly the fruits of righteousness.
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Today's reading: 2 Kings 22-23, John 4:31-54 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: 2 Kings 22-23

The Book of the Law Found
1 Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem thirty-one years. His mother's name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah; she was from Bozkath. 2 He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left....

Today's New Testament reading: John 4:31-54

31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."
32 But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
33 Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"
34 "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Don't you have a saying, 'It's still four months until harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest....'"


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