Explode

Sequoyah (born about 1760 - died 1843) was a Cherokee silversmith who, although he did not speak a single word of English, noticed that the white men communicated using “talking leaves.” He thought that this was a wonderful idea and decided in about 1809 to create a way to make “talking leaves” for the Cherokee language.

In his first attempt, Sequoyah created a logographic writing system. He quickly decided that there were far too many Cherokee words for this to be practical. Japanese uses a logographic system, with symbols representing ideas, individual words, and individual syllables. Chinese uses a logosyllabic system with each symbol representing a separate sound. 

What Sequoyah eventually decided to do, rather than copying the English language alphabetic system, was to use symbols for each sound used in the Cherokee language. He created an eighty-five character syllabic system which represented all the individual Cherokee sounds.

The Cherokee Nation had no tradition of a written language and there was some individual resistance but Sequoyah’s syllabary began to spread rapidly among an excited populace. By 1825, the syllabary was declared to be the official written language of the Cherokee Nation. In the span of only sixteen years the Cherokees went from being totally illiterate to almost universally literate. I believe that Sequoyah’s syllabary awakened something which was already there among his people. It just needed a spark to make it explode.

(For more on Sequoyah and the Cherokee language see the end of this post.)

The same principle applies to the unevangelized. Many are aware that someting is missing in their lives, that there has to be more than just living a few years trying to be happy and staying out of trouble ... and then dying. They are like the Cherokee tribe, ready to explode. They just need to hear, they need a spark.

I have seen several people die. The color suddenly leaves their skin and they are gone.

If you have ever seen the spark of the Holy Spirit take over a life you realize that it is also just as instantaneous. The change in the person is immediately obvious. I have seen gasps of breath pulled in in surprise and eyes widened at suddenly seeing the Truth.

" ... since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made ... Romans 1:18-20   (NASB®)

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Here is a statement from the Cherokee Nation website:

“Between the years of 1809 and 1821, he accomplished a feat, which no other person in history has done single-handedly. Through the development of the Cherokee Syllabary, he brought our people literacy and the gift of communicating through long distances and the ages. This one person brought to his people this great gift without hired educators, no books and no cost."

Shown below is a Cherokee translation of Acts 28:31, the guiding scriptural reference for this blog. From the Cherokee Bible Project. (Copyright ©2001. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/.)

ᎠᎵᏥᏙᎲᏍᎬᎩ ᎧᏃᎮᏍᎬᎩ ᎤᏁᎳᏅᎯ ᎤᎬᏫᏳᎯ ᎨᏒᎢ, ᎠᎴ ᏓᏕᏲᎲᏍᎬᎩ ᎧᏃᎮᏍᎬᎩ ᎤᎬᏫᏳᎯ ᏥᏌ ᎦᎶᏁᏛ, ᎤᏍᏗᎤᏅ ᎾᏍᎦᎢᎲᎾ, ᎠᎴ ᎩᎶ ᏄᏅᏍᏓᏕᎲᎾ. 

Here is an example of spoken Cherokee.

The 2016 Candidates for the Office of President of the United States of America

Religion has always played a major part in world events. In the current political environment in the United States it has become almost taboo to even mention it. We have a strong national heritage of freedom of choice in religion and a separation of church and state. There is no Established Church in the United States.

Some have come to interpret our heritage of separation of church and state to mean that religion must be totally stripped from any public mention. There even exists a group named the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

There is no legal requirement or definition of any sort concerning the religious affiliation of a candidate for the office of President of the United States of America. There is also no reason why we cannot know the religious affiliations of the candidates.

There are five political parties in the United States which are considered to be “major” parties. There are at least thirty-one minor political parties. The major groups are the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, and the Constitution Party.

Here is a listing of many of the current candidates for the office of President of the United States of America, with their known religious affiliations.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Hillary Clinton: United Methodist Church

Bernie Sanders: Jewish

Lincoln Chaffee: Episcopalian

Martin O’Malley: Roman Catholic

Jim Webb: Protestant

Lawrence Lessig: None stated

Jeff Boss: None stated

Harry Braun: None stated

Robby Wells: None stated

Dr. Willie Wilson: None stated

REPUBLICAN PARTY

Donald Trump: Presbyterian

Ben Carson: Seventh-day Adventist

Marco Rubio: Originally Mormon, now Roman Catholic

Jeb Bush:  Originally Episcopal, now Roman Catholic

Carly Fiorina: Originally Episcopal, now Non-denominational Christian

Ted Cruz: Southern Baptist

Lindsey Graham: Southern Baptist

John Kasich: Anglican

Chris Christie: Roman Catholic

Jim Gilmore: Methodist

Mike Huckabee: Southern Baptist

Bobby Jindal:  Roman Catholic

George Pataki: Roman Catholic

Rand Paul: Presbyterian

Mark Everson:  None stated

Jack Fellure: None stated

Andy Martin: None stated

Rick Santorum: Roman Catholic

LIBERTARIAN PARTY

No religious affiliation information was found for these candidates.
Marc Feldman
Steve Kerbel
Cecil Ince
Darryl Perry
Joy Waymire
Derrick Michael Reid
Rhett Smith

GREEN PARTY

Jill Stein: Not stated

CONSTITUTION PARTY
No religious affiliation information was found for these candidates.
Chad Kopple
J. R. Myers
Scott Copeland

Treat Your Bible Like Your Cell Phone

Found this excellent 2011 post today. It was written by Salvation Army Major Tim Lynn in Victoria, Australia.
http://tdlynn.blogspot.com/2011/01/if-our-bible-were-just-as-important-as.html

Magic

Watch this and this. You did not see what you thought you saw. Both are illusions. The first video is essentially an advertisement for a magic company's Floating Card Trick which they sell, with instructions, to stage magicians. The second is a video of illusionist Criss Angel.  I have no idea how he does this but it is an illusion and is not real supernatural magic.

The Egyptian priests in Exodus 7:8 - 8:7 were able to duplicate the miracles performed by Moses using what the Bible calls their "secret arts." Whether or not they actually performed supernatural acts or were merely skilled illusionists, we do not know. The effect, though, was to cause haughty unbelief in Pharaoh's heart. Because he did not believe, God hardened Pharaoh's unbelief.

Jesus does not appear to have been particularly impressed with His own supernatural powers. He expected belief because of who He was, not because he did "magic." He remarked that if the people did not believe Moses, why would they believe Him? And He seems to have had what on the surface appears to have been a rather harsh attitude toward unbelief. Harsh unless He was who He clearly said He was.

“And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.” Mark 6:5 NASB®

"Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” Matthew 7:6 NASB®

"Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet.” Matthew 10:14 NASB®

"And as for those who do not receive you, as you go out from that city, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” Luke 9:5 NASB®

There is no biblical record that Jesus ever returned to Nazareth after that day.

These two sites discuss whether or not the unbelief in Nazareth actually limited Jesus' ability to perform miracles.

https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/872-was-christs-power-limited-by-mans-faith

http://home.earthlink.net/~ronrhodes/qjesusmiracles.html

Theophoric Names

Often, we fail to recognize that many personal and family names also have religious origins. Many are easy to see when we actually look. Others require a little effort.

Surnames originating in Western culture are of several types: occupational (example: Baker), relating to a place (example: Lincoln), relating to a particular family trait (example : Jolly), named for historical people (example: Kennedy), sarcastic or silly names (examples: Naaktgeboren (“born naked”), family relationships (example: Harrison), animal names (example: Bird), emotions: (example: Love), vulgar names (example: Mist, translate this name from German to English), and other types of name origins. This post will present a few names of theophoric origin.   

Surnames and personal names in the Far East appear to be based primarily on nature or philosophical concepts.

Chinese surnames http://www.yutopian.net/names/, Japanese surnames http://surnames.behindthename.com/names/usage/japanese, and Korean surnames https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_name appear to be primarily based on philosophy or nature.

θεόφορος (theophoros) is a Greek word meaning “God bearing.” The word “theophoric” in English is used of pronames, surnames, and place names which have religious origins. This blog has a recurrent segment profiling religious place names. 

The religious meanings of most of the ancient biblical personal names are known, including those of the foes of the Israelites and early Christians. An example is Tiglath-pileser III, King of Assyria (745 - 727BC).  He is mentioned in 2 Kings 15:19 and 2 Kings 15:29. His Assyrian name is Tukulti-apil-esharra, which translates as "my trust is in the son of Esharra." Esharra is Ashur, the main god of the Assyrian pantheon.

Following is a listing of several theophoric surnames occurring in English language usage. The religious origins of some of the surnames is readily obvious, some are more indirect:  Benjamin, Aaron, Abraham, Isaacson, Bishop, Abbot, Church, Grace, Eglise, Bartolo, Sofer (Hebrew  = "scribe"), Dayyan (Hebrew = "Jewish civil judge"), Abdullah (Arabic = "slave of Allah"), di Moise, di Angelo, Kohen/Cohen (Hebrew = "priest"), Simon, Stephens, Dennis (Latin = "of Dionysus") Godwin/Godwynn, Goodwin, Goodwyn (Old English = "God's friend"), Gotfried/Gottfried, Holiness, Nunmaker, Faith, Kirk (Scottish = "church"), Angel, Theodore (Greek = "gift of God"), Oden  (Swedish form of Odin, the main Norse god), Johnson ("son of John". John is derived from the Hebrew personal name Yohannan, which means "Yahweh is gracious"), Christian, Soul, Monk, St. James, Zacharias, and many others.