kingscorecord.com - Breaking News, New Brunswick, Canada

96 THE TRUTH

96 THE TRUTH

Man is forever trying to rationalize religion. Put it in a box that he can understand and make it into a simple set of rules that he can keep so that he doesn’t have to be continually thinking about it and checking himself, to see if he is doing it right. This way, he doesn’t have to worry about being right or wrong, he just has to follow those set of rules and God will accept him into paradise while he can get on with his, much more important, lifestyle.

God started with a man and they were friends. He added woman and man then had something else to occupy his mind with instead of God. Mankind went to hell.

God started over with Noah and mankind again went to hell after so many generations.

God found Abram and, still trying to find a long-term solution, got some people living for Him instead of religion. It was shaky but working to some extent.

God brought in Mosses and gave the people some laws and they were put in a book; great, they now had something that they could hold and see. They didn’t have to go to God every time and check themselves; they could go to the book and read it for themselves and make up their own minds. God would send them prophets to correct them and hear from God, words that they needed to hear. They soon killed those prophets because their correcting was not the way the people wanted to go; they had the book and could do it themselves. They wanted a king so God gave them Saul, who took them to battles that they lost.

God found David and the people had a living example of how to live right for Him along with the book. A few generations later, the people were gone again; their selfishness and independence taking them to hell again.

By the time God sent His Son, Jesus, to us, the people were so religious and had so many rules to follow that the ordinary person did not have any hope of pleasing the God of the Jews.

Jesus’ words were so different then those of the religious leaders and gave hope to the common man. They were so simple and so easy that the religious, who had come up with over 2000 rules that one had to obey to please their God, killed Jesus to shut Him up and stop this new, easy way to avoid hell and get into heaven.

The truth is too hard for the ‘everyone is going to make it, do whatever you want to’ ultra-liberal religions because there is something that one must do and a lifestyle that one must live; but it is too easy for the ‘3, 5 or 10 step to heaven’ ultra-religious because pleasing God and being accepted by Him is not a repetitious routine that is the same for everybody.

There are people all over the world and in most religions who are doing it right. These few are far outweighed by the rest who only think that they are doing it right.

The simple truth is God will accept all those who want to live their lives His way.

Those that are doing it right are those that keep this ‘want to’ towards God while all around them have taken up ritual, habit, obedience to others, self-sacrifice or some other security to replace the spontaneous requests of our first love; God and His pleasure.

Jesus showed us how it was done by loving His father even when He asked Him to die on a cross at our hand and still love us enough to give us the gift of His death for our salvation.

Love starts in the heart as a ‘because I want to’ and ends in the heart as a ‘because I love, I want to’.

8 ‘3 MPH’

8 ‘3 MPH’

When I was younger, about 10 or 15 years ago, there was a thought train that the radar equipment was not accurate so one could speed a little and not get caught.

This was true; radar had an accuracy ratio of plus or minus 1.5 MPH totalling a 3 MPH difference. That’s 5 Km in today’s lingo.

So, you travel 5 Km over the speed limit and don’t get caught. Pretty soon, everyone is traveling 5 Km’s over the speed limit. [It’s that monkey see, monkey do rule] Who are they going to stop, everyone?

Now everyone is going 5Km over the speed limit so, some try 10Km over the speed limit. It’s only 5 Km faster than everyone else and the law enforcement officers get used to this small change. More and more people move up to 10 Km over the speed limit until everyone is now travelling 10 Km over the speed limit. Again, who are they going to stop? Everyone is doing it.

Then we try 5 Km more because everyone is going 10 Km over the speed limit, 5 more is hardly noticeable and is easily reduced when one sees the law around. We have got away with it for so long that a large percentage of drivers now habitually travel 15 Km over the speed limit and are not stopped.

Now we have the bold criminals trying another 5 Km. This means that we now have a group of drivers going 20 Km over the speed limit and only slow down when they see a patrol car; as soon as it passes, they go back up to 20 Km over the speed limit.

This has been going on for so long and has become accepted by so many drivers that 85% of the drivers on our roads are speeding. [I’m being conservative with the 85% figure. I could say 95% and still be accurate.]

These are all people going faster than the posted maximum allowable speed that they are legally allowed to drive and doing it in rain, snow, high wind, heavy traffic and all kinds of adverse conditions where they are supposed to slow down.

Add to that all the new, inexperienced drivers that get their licence every year and the older slower and more nervous drivers and we now have a speed difference of about 30Km on our roads.

Today, in North America, the most dangerous thing that you can do is jump in your car and go for a drive. There are thousands killed every week on our highways and 98.7% of those crashes are caused by going too fast for conditions.

Now consider that the car manufactures are making cars safer and stronger all the time and the road builders are making the roadways wider and safer. The cars are doing more of the thinking for the drivers when it comes to conditions and safety.

Transports are governed so they cannot go fast and are kept in restricted lanes for the motorists’ safety.

We have electric signs warning us of hazards, concrete barriers that keep us from unsafe places and on and on.

It all started with a 1.5 Km variance in an electronic, hand-held device but we proved that people can forget faster than technology can advance.

95 END

95 END

Almost everything in and about this world will end. [The only thing that won’t end is God, His kingdom and His word.]

An end does not mean that it will cease to exist but simply means that it will stop being what it is and will change into something else.

A toy that brakes will become garbage or be recycled into something else, a worn out house will rot or be burned and will become food for worms or pollution or a tree that is cut down will be built into something else; a piece of furniture or a box, maybe.

Even a living soul will change after its human body dies; it will be moved from the dead body to a place of peace or torment, depending on how and why the soul thought and acted.

That’s the point; everything that ends will be changed into something else and have a new beginning.

We pay on a debt and, when the debt is paid, move the money that we are earning, to another bill or purchase.

We buy a car and, when we are done with it, sell it to someone else that will use it or resell it to use it some more or recycle it whole or piece by piece.

We take a vacation that starts at a certain time and ends at a certain time.

There are times when the beginning and the end happen over a period of time; hours, days, years or decades. We decide to sell our house but the process take days to complete; the house is not ours but it is not theirs until that process is finalized.

Our lives started as a spark of life when our father’s sperm joined with our mother’s egg. Our time in the womb ended when we were born. Our limited mobility ended when we learned to walk. Our youthful thinking of ourselves should end when we become responsible for others; marriage, our children being born, our promotion to an authority position or our elderly parents’ inability to perform independently should be this ending.

Our lives should be spent preparing for endings and beginnings but, in today’s world, everyone is trying to keep everything in their lives the same. They want their children to stay children, their income to stay above their outgoing, their home to stay new, their car to stay clean and working well, their health to stay youthful, etc.

We cling to the things of the past, trying to keep them the same so they do not change, because that is how we remember them and know how to deal with them. That is our security; everything staying the same, don’t rock the boat, don’t change, don’t end.

We are continually struggling against the very thing that we cannot stop and hoping, against hope, that we can stop it; instead of expecting and preparing for it.

We are shocked when someone that was sick for a long time dies, horrified when someone who did not care for others kills or is killed by their own actions, stunned by catastrophes that we, ourselves, helped to bring about or overjoyed by an event that we hoped for and were working for, even though we did not expect it.

Every beginning has an end but we spend so much time preparing for the process that we are consumed to the point of blindness for the fact that it will end; leaving what it will become after that end for someone else to decide.

God gave us power over the endings, too, which gives us the power over the new beginnings; now is the time to start preparing for the end, before it happens and give some thought to the new beginning.

7 MISTAKES

7 MISTAKES

I want to talk about mistakes today for one good reason; I almost made a big one today.

I was making a left turn and was thinking about my delivery schedule and not about my immediate driving situation. I was looking straight ahead and could see the car coming but it did not register on my brain. All I could think about, besides my schedule, was the green light.

The driver’s erratic driving pattern which was his evasion of me woke me up and I slammed on the brakes.

Thank God we missed. He probably was not happy with me and I don’t blame him.

If we had of crashed, it would have been 100% my fault.

If that driver is reading this, I want him to know that I am sorry and that he did the correct thing by trying to avoid me. Because he was alert enough to drive defensively, we both did not end up in a crash.

The point is, no matter how good or bad a driver you or I are, we will make mistakes every now and again. By speeding, driving where we should not be or not paying attention, we compound the circumstances and increase the chances of crashing in those mistakes. [Calling it an accident eases our mind with that lie but doesn’t change the fact that we are to blame.]

Defensive driving is driving to avoid the other drivers’ mistakes, too. You cannot do that if you are staring at the passing miniskirt, angry at your boss, impatient with the traffic flow or in a hurry because you left home to late.

There are a million and one things to take your mind off what you are doing and it takes discipline to keep yourself focused.

Because of a moment of mind wandering on my part, today that man could be in the hospital or worse, in the morgue.

We all will make mistakes; no matter how good we are or become. Let’s watch out for each other and help each other live through those mistakes that we make so we can think about it and correct ourselves and learn to make fewer mistakes as we go.

Also, the next time someone makes a mistake in front of you and you are put out just remember to go easy on him/her; the next time it might be you making that mistake in front of them and they will have to go out of their way to keep you safe.

94 SALT

94 SALT

Salt is well known for its ability to enhance the flavour of anything that it is put on, when it is put on our food. It increases the tastes that we love and sharpens the impact that taste has on our mouths.

When Jesus told His disciples to be ‘salt’, He was telling them to enhance the good qualities that He was teaching them, in the people around them. Encourage and support people that lived moral lives, support the truth, encourage respect for each other and those who are given authority and power of/in a situation or position, help those that are trying to do good and honourable things, encourage peace in our groups and safety in our homes and neighbourhoods and be a living example of how one is supposed to live before God and mankind.

Those who do these things will be working in God’s kingdom and for His benefit, trusting Him for their acceptance and position in His realm.

Salt also has a second effect on our food that is not thought of very much with our modern technology. Salt will preserve food and keep it from spoiling. Today, we have freezing, drying and chemicals that keep our food from rotting.

Rotting is a process where the food starts to decay and break down to a liquid to be reabsorbed into the soil to further feed the living plants. Once this process starts, our good, healthy food quickly turns into a poison that cannot be eaten and must be thrown out.

The two qualities of salt do the same thing; there is a place where our food is just acceptable, in the middle, neither enhanced nor spoiled but still nutritious. Going either way from that center will add good or bad, depending on what we add or do.

Food left to it-self will start the spoiling process very quickly and will soon reach a point where even a lot of salt will not matter.

Salt does not do its work passively but is an active agent against decay and actively enhances the substance that it is put on. Jesus also expects us to be active Christians; speaking up for right living, good morals, obedience, proper respect and healthy choices; at the same time, speaking and acting against unhealthy thoughts and actions, unsafe practices, disobedience, disrespectfulness and corrupt morals.

He wanted us to start right away, before decay could start but, because there was not a lot of action for Christian righteousness and a lot of moral decay, our world is in a very serious state of decay.

One grain of salt cannot preserve the entire piece of food that it is on; it can only preserve the area that it touches. You cannot change the world that you see but can make a difference in those people that you encounter each moment of each day.

Have you laughed at your coworkers off colour joke or told him that it wasn’t funny? Did you speak condemnation of a government decision that you don’t know all the facts about or speak up and admit that you don’t have enough information to comment on the topic? Did you speed today or control yourself to obey the laws? [Worse still, did you flash your lights to warn the speeders that there is a radar patrol car ahead of them so they would not get caught for there illegal actions? Jesus said that, if you help the wicked, you are as guilty as they are.]

Are you really salt or just religious? God knows, do you?

6 ONE LENGTH

6 ONE LENGTH

The old rule for following another car was one car length for every 10 MPH. That was back when cars were 16’ long; so at 30 MPH. that would be 54’, at 50 MPH. that was 80’ and at 65 MPH. that was 104’.

This was under ideal conditions; clear day, dry pavement, straight roads and your car working well.

For every hazard that came along, you were to drop 10 MPH; night time from 65 MPH. to 55 MPH; rain was another 10 MPH; and so on.

In a 65 MPH. zone, when you were forced to go under 40 MPH. you were supposed to put your four way flashers on and allow for cars to pass you by travelling as far to the right as was safe. The right hand lane, in a multi-lane highway is considered the slow lane.

When everyone is traveling around the maximum speed limit allowable, all the lanes can be used but expect anyone travelling slower to be in the right lane.

This also helps the police to catch the speeders because we legal drivers are generally in the right lane, leaving the police one less lane to watch.

When following another car in heavy traffic, it is wise to leave a little more space between you and them. If they get in trouble or have a crash, it will give you more time to react and avoid the crash site. If you are too close and they crash, you will probably become a part of it.

This also leaves a place for those who have to change lanes to get where they are going, so they can change lanes safer; avoiding you and the car in front of you.

If you have to travel a little closer, watch the traffic ahead through, the car in front of you,‘s windshield; when you see brake lights, start stopping before the car in front of you. This will give you a better stopping distance and a safer one.

Now, you’re probably looking at those MPHs and thinking ‘what is that?’

That is ‘miles per hour’; we old people know that from our childhood. One mile per hour is equal to one point six two kilometre per hour or 1MPH = 1.62Km. [I think that is how they print that.]

That 16’ is 16 feet; one foot is 12 inches or 30.48 centimetres. Three feet or one yard is almost one metre. [about 3 inches short of a metre.]

So, at 30 MPH [50 Km] 54’ would be between 16 and 17 metres.

50 MPH [81Km] 80’ would be 24 metres.

I know, I know; this is a lot more than we are seeing the drivers use today but, we have to remember, most of the drivers today are just happy to steer their cars; they don’t really want to learn how to drive them. [That is a lot of work and takes effort.]

The faster we go, the more distance we have to leave between us and the other guy. For airplanes, to come within a mile of each other is too close.

93 PERSECUTIONS

93 PERSECUTIONS

Have you been persecuted today, yesterday, last week? You should have been.

When you live for Christ, you will be different from the world and the world will hate you. [And the things you do.]

They will condemn your honesty as being picky. They want you to ‘lighten up’ because it is only a small thing.

They will tell you that it is none of your business when you see them do something or say something wrong; even if it is to you. We are all the same and God loves us all, so, lighten up. Jesus didn’t ‘lighten up’ but did you notice that His words were to the religious?

The non-religious people are dead but don’t care. They are living for themselves right now and let tomorrow bring whatever it will.

The religious are trying to make everyone believe that they are right so they can feel right and believe that they are OK just the way they are. They will keep picking at your life and actions until they get you to agree with them.

This picking goes on and on until you agree with them or they run out of things to say or do to you about your religion, then they will get personal.

With Jesus and His followers, it became so personal that they killed them, even though they were innocent and right.

Are you so right that people are doing things to you that are picky and hurtful? If you’re living the way God wants you to, then this should be happening.

When you obey the traffic laws, people will try to push you, swear at you and gesture at you. When you obey the civil laws, that God told you to obey, they will ridicule and laugh at you. When you obey the safety rules and try to get them to obey them, too, they will ignore you, get angry at you and do spiteful things to make your life worse.

As you stay in contact with a person or group, they will either change you, you will change them or they will put distance between them and you. [If not physically, then mentally]

We can give in and relax our life morals to make our life easier but we would be betraying our calling to our master, Jesus Christ. Openly shaming Him before the public by going back on what He said was the truth.

God’s word, the truth, will be the standard used for acceptance or rejection into God’s ‘new heaven’ at the judgement of the world. The bible says that judgement will start with the people of His kingdom or us Christians. [Jesus’ servants]

The more we love Jesus, the more the people of this present system will hate us because, by our actions of love to God and love for them, we will be showing them that they are wrong and we are right. This condemns them to hell and they don’t want that. They want to be right without accepting God’s way or changing themselves; in other words, they want to be right and keep being wrong.

Their persecution’s of the Christians is to get us to back off and ease up on our ‘right’ way of doing things. Our actions will cause them to be caught in their own lies, shown to be selfish when compared to us and hinder their way of doing things.

We are their worst enemies as long as they don’t want to accept Jesus Christ as their master and friend and their hate will expand to their actions towards us. Expect it.

5 WHAT TO DO

5 WHAT TO DO

You’re driving along at the posted speed limit, relaxing and enjoying a warm sunny day. You look in the mirror and you see a car approaching you very quickly from behind. There is no passing zones for quite some time but, when he gets to you, he comes to within a car length or two of your back bumper and stays there; driving just left of you so he can see by you and show himself in your mirror, so you can see how dissatisfied you are making him.

You have a choice; you can speed up but he will probably stay close to your bumper, you can ignore him or you can let him know that he is too close.

If you speed up, you are breaking the law and have become as much as a safety risk as he is. You will also be the first one caught if the police hit the two of you with radar and you will probably be the one getting the speeding ticket.

If you ignore him, he will stay there and could become your crash partner, if you had to panic stop. The lives of your children, in the back seat, would then be in his hands and, if he is tailgating you, you know he is not a capable driver.

[I say ‘he’ but I have seen many ‘she’ tailgaters.]

What I do and would suggest is for you to tap your brakes a time or two to let him/her know that they are too close and they are making you nervous. This works for most considerate drivers and they drop back a few more car lengths, increasing the distance between them and you. When the next clear passing zone comes along, slow a bit and help them get by you. Everyone is considerate and safe doing this.

If they don’t back off to a safe distance, by tapping your brakes and flashing your brake lights at the tailgater, you at least have focused their attention on you and they are paying close attention to what you are doing. This has just increased your margin of safety and, as long as you can keep them focused on you until the next passing zone, might be enough to help avoid a rear-end crash.

If they are still making you nervous or they decide to keep tailgating you and not pass, slow down. This is the method of handling tailgaters taught to school bus driver trainees.

Hopefully, they will decide to pass you at the next passing zone. If not, at least, if they hit you, the impact will be less and safer than at a fast speed.

Also, by slowing down, you will have their undivided attention because that is the last thing that they want. With this attention on you and what you are doing, you will be safer than if they were paying no attention to you.

10 Km under the speed limit is completely legal but tailgating is never legal or safe.

A tailgater is making you drive for them and, as soon as they get on your bumper, they stop looking ahead for driving conditions and trust you to make them aware of any danger ahead. They look around, talk to and look at their passengers or start an in-car project that they have been putting off because they had to drive. They have just increased their danger to you.

If it is a commercial vehicle, a phone call to the C.V.E. boys with a description would, with enough on the same vehicle, start them pulling that vehicle over more and they will inform the driver that they are getting some complaints about them.

Remember, your safety starts with you and what you can learn and do.

92 LIKE THEM

92 LIKE THEM

The world [or, really, the people of the world] wants Christians to be like them. They want us to live for ourselves and not for God and others.

They want us to look like them and wear every fad or skimpy outfit that is in fashion. They want us to spend God’s money on the expensive and outrageous so we can show the people of the world that our credit is just as good as theirs and that we can work long hard hours paying it back, just like them. [Wait a minute; God’s money? I thought He only got a tenth and the rest was mine. Noooo. He wants you to give a tenth to the church so they can teach God’s word but He wants you to spend the rest meeting your neighbours and your needs. Like, you need food, clothing, a home, a bed, heat, water, etc. and your neighbour needs these things, too; weather he can afford them or not.]

The people of the world think that because their neighbours have 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom homes on 2 acres of land, that that is what they need to keep up and be accepted by their neighbours and, if they can get 3 acres of land, their neighbours will look up to them and accept them as their friends because they think their important because of what they have.

It’s like more and more wealth to feel secure and accepted by your peers; bigger and bigger houses, bigger and more powerful cars and trucks, more expensive furniture, better and prettier looks, etc.

The world and its people are putting their trust in their things to be secure. Take away their money and what would they do – panic. How would they buy food, pay their bills? [We are going to find out because the economy cannot keep going the way it is going much longer before it crashes.]

The people of the world do not want to be honest, kind, caring, giving, sincere, etc. Those things will take away your wealth, your time [for yourself, your pleasures, your wealth getting], your energy [again, you won’t have energy for yourself] and, all those things take hard work and no benefit for yourself; its hard work so others can gain.

They want us to be like them and they are succeeding. They come to us and we accept them just as they are, shake their hand, call them friend and listen to their swearing and rude stories without scolding them or stopping them.

Why should they change? If we accept them as they are with no changes to their personality, then surely God has accepted them, too. No.

He wants us to be the standard that He spoke about in His word. When someone lies, don’t accept the lie and, unless they change, don’t accept the liar. Show them they are wrong by not being their friend and accepting their behaviour.

Avoid dishonest people and don’t trust them. Let them know why you are not hanging around with them. Don’t shame Jesus by befriending His enemies. If someone does not want to change their speech out of respect for you or your friend, Jesus, don’t accept them as your friend and become like them. Reject them and show them that you are different.

The people of the world were afraid to be associated with the Christians of old for fear of dieing; yet today they are found in our churches, in our homes and beside us at public gatherings, looking and acting just like us. [or is that we’re looking and acting just like them?]

4 WHO THEY ARE

4 WHO THEY ARE

Before we can get into what we can do to hinder or stop speeders and tailgaters, we should know who they are and how to recognize them.

Speeders are people who care more about their schedule, their importance and themselves than they do about their safety, your safety and everyone else’s safety. 98.5% of all crashes in North America were caused by speed; going too fast for conditions. The old saying “speed kills” is true.

These people don’t care who they hurt or kill. They have convinced themselves that ‘it won’t happen to them’ and then they add ‘because’; because they are special, because they are smarter than everyone else, because they are better drivers than everyone else, because it hasn’t happened to them yet then it probably won’t, because God is looking out for them or any number of reasons so long as they can feel confident that when they speed, nothing bad will happen. They’re only fooling themselves.

Then, when it does happen to them, they call it an accident [as if their speeding had nothing to do with it] and go on speeding because that accident could not be helped.

You can recognize these people because you can see them gaining on you in your rear view mirror. [It’s always a good policy to keep checking your rear view mirror regularly for potential problems. Most problems will come from behind you unless you are the speeder, then you are the problem.]

If you can, give them lots of room and let them go by you. Remember, It’s their $186.00 when their caught, not yours. If you try to outrun them, then it WILL BE your $186.00.

Tailgaters are speeders that have reached you. They will be people that are in a hurry and don’t want to travel the same speed you are going or people that have watched others tailgate and think that that is the proper way to drive. [This category contains young, inexperienced drivers, arrogant and self-centered men and women who are thinking of everything else except driving.] This group is especially dangerous because their mind is not on what is around them and they are not experienced enough or alert enough to handle an emergency situation in front of them. The potential of them ramming you is very high.

People that are in a hurry but don’t care will at least be alert enough to steer out around you, if anything happens.

Again, by watching the cars behind you periodically, you can tell the alert drivers from those whose minds are not on their driving. They will wander side to side, come too close at lights and stop signs, do thoughtless and dangerous little things without being aware that they are doing them, be more interested in themselves in their mirrors then what is going on around them or be fishing for something on the seat, on the floor or back seat, while they are driving through busy traffic.

Your safety is at stake and your life is in danger. To drive defensively, is to drive to survive. Look and learn who is around you and don’t let them get you. Avoid those inexperienced and dangerous drivers by putting as much room as you can between your car and theirs but stay in your own lane and where you are supposed to be.

Until the next time, stay alert and drive to be safe.