Words of the Preacher

Words of the Preacher
Wisdom

If we look into Ecclesiastes thru out the whole thing as well as Proverbs, we run into a lot on Wisdom, those here who don't want to be of the company of fools heed the words of the preacher, I just want to say this *will* bother some people. But remember in corinthians 6:9-11 states such were some of you. Thank God for the "were" some of you. He will teach and help each of us to learn from these things.


The first time the word wisdom is found in the book of Ecclesiastes is verse 13, talking about himself. as we know him to be the wisest of man(besides the Lord Jesus). It says in verse 13: "and I gave my heart to seek and to search wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven this sore travail hath God given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith".
Heh.. no one said it's easy right? well heres solomon the wisest of man saying its hard. whats that tell us today? That means don't go about it thinking you're going to just learn it. or that you will do better then those before. and if we don't seek God for the wisdom to understand then we won't ever get it. Proverbs 16:3 says

Proverbs 16:3

Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established.


Now look back to the verse, it said "to seek and to search after wisdom", you know what that means? that means if we don't search or thinking we need wisdom, if we don't go for it. whats that make us? fools. Now before you start throwing stones. realize I'm not speaking out of highness but what God is teaching to me and thru me. I'm part of this group. So I can say this is preaching to me. Now also remember in this lesson. I'm not raising up Solomon higher then God. He is still a man like us. we all have our falls. as solomon did.We find out later in the books of the kings that Solomon was overcome with many wives and there gods, so don't let you're guard down. Back to the main point tho. As someone seeking out wisdom, dont be content with just the wisdom you have now. You can't sit back and let pride say "I know all I need to know". Because we see those who think they know everything are some of the first people to fall into pride and as I said before, being part of the company of fools. Also know this is more then just wanting to know more then the next guy. But you can set a goal to be like one of the wise men of old. those are good goals to set. but as I said before don't be content with the knowledge you have, and think you're one of the people that is a goal for others. because those who think they know it all are the fools. Yes God will use your knowledge to inspire others but that doesn't mean that you need to go around pointing out you're self as some great person. Proverbs 16 and 27 tells us about that.

Proverbs 16:5

Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished

Proverbs 27:1-2

Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips.

A good thing for people to look at in proverbs says that the wise man looks at every point or seeks to understand each side of things, every angle. Make sure you look into the full thing of a problem, make sure each part of a buildings plans are set, make sure each part of your families needs are met and lives are right with one another.

Now lets look at Ecclesiastes again. In verse 2,14,18. We read in verse 2 Vanity of Vanities all is Vanity. In verse 14 is Behold all is Vanity and a Vexation of the Spirit. Then in verse 18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. You say "get me out of here this is to hard". I say read the middle part of verse 14. The works that are done under the sun. Now what do you suppose that means? that means anything not of God. So if you're life isn't under his rule, your life is vanity. it's living for self, which we know won't last or matter in the end. Remember the verse. All have come short of the glory of God. None can do right without God. If you're not living for him you're wasting your life away in your own wants to your own destruction. We still know God uses the lost to teach His sheep. or use them in some way to wake us up. but they are still fit for destruction.

Now lets look at verse 4 of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 1:4

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.

So Fathers, Mothers, Grandparents. is your generation wise. Is it living for Christ. can you walk thru out town and not have to cover your eyes at sin. can you look at people without a pain in your heart for them, cause you know there saved. if not why can't you do something about it? your own self is the only thing stopping you. there is no other excuse. and if you are old or can't get out to witness to others. then you better make sure your children are fit for it. teach them, instruct them. don't let them go into the world like everyone else did and get lost in the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. because then your own children become an abomination to God. and as the parents your the ones responsible for them. some day your going to give an account for your children. Men it's your very position to lead the family. if your family doesn't have its bible times. it's family times. prayer. singing. your family isn't going to grow right. it won't have the right element of God's love left in your children. also do they see the joy and peace in your life from God. or is it something they see as something you dread teaching. God teaches his Church. and his own words are there to teach them. You as fathers are supposed to use that same word to teach your families. because God has the best way and it works in his Church it will work in your families. God will use it in there lives to save. Who are we to limit the outcome of works blessed by God to mans level of knowledge thinking possible. God is all powerful. all mighty, all knowing. don't you think he knows what he's doing if he can control the whole world at the same time? Hallelujah he is in control not man. He who made the world and everything in it is in control of each detail. study his works and use them to teach others in the same way. then stand back and image the vastness of his wisdom and power. the God who kept this world together and his precious word each step thru history to teach us of times to come and how we are to act. and even this statement is only a pinch of his power. I could spend all day explaining this and still not even come close to really touching the vastness of His glory.

The next verse that I felt I should speak about is verse 9. The phase "there is no new thing under the sun" comes up. what that means is things of the past will happen again. to different degrees of course with different means. but same general happening and style of it happening with the same solution to fix them. hey think that means by learning the past you gain insight on the future. and you know how to protect your self from happenings. and we can learn from all history things that happened and know that God is in control so what can we learn from it, to keep us safe today. Also another thing is parents your kids are going to follow some of the same things you did as a kid. or follow the same bad paths others have. or copy the same evil work. so make sure you teach your kids right, after God's way in the Bible. And remember it has to be out of love your instructing them. because if it's not out of love then what do they do? They build up anger and hate inside them about it against you. and then they tell worldly friends and people there age with same problems and it supports the same evil thinking of rebelling against parents rule. now that will normally happen anyway but if you pray with them make sure they know you love them. they won't side with there friends instruction. and more and more they will listen to you more. Help them to see what happens when certain rules aren't kept. and the Dangers of them. like different high physical sports. or running thru the kitchen and such. those things that aren't really listed as sins but are to be kept because we know if you do them you can get hurt. now you know as well as I do that kids side with kids so this isn't something new and unheard of by you. and yes I know not all kids are the same. Kids who read this, Understand your parents do love you and each bit of instruction they give isn't to make you mad. or push down your thoughts and wants. but to show you what isn't right and the right way of thinking. its love that they teach you holiness. Work for righteousness those who are saved, those who aren't let today be the day you wake up to your lost state and turn to God's wisdom and love. come to him he can save today. know that going by just what you want isn't going to save you. and it's only going to set you on a course to hell. Hell is calling you each day, and God is calling you. see that hell isn't going to wait for your answer it's just going to pull you in. know that also God isn't waiting for your permission. Pray to him, Beg him for forgiveness of your sin. he is mighty to save. All your sin will be washed away by the blood of the Lamb. Hallelujah!

Newest poem

This Land

There is a Shadow over this land
Because of Canada's wicked demand
God's people wait and pray
For His coming great day
When Christ will come again
And Save us from the Lion's Den

Canada, Follow His Hand
Canada, Obey His command
Canada, Get out of the clay
He can save you Today

This land is going deeper
It's dying along with it's leader
O for grace to save this land
That it could see His merciful hand
I will rejoice in His will
And Bare this land still

Canada, You're not your own
Canada, God's on the thrown
Canada, Wake up from ease
Remember He's got the keys

Some of Canada's beginning

This is some history work, I've found to be of interest.


Just because Canada exists doesn't mean it ever was founded. In fact, the whole notion of founding a country is alien to Canadian experience. Founding is something undertaken by a Machiavellian "new Prince," but Canadian sovereignty has devolved historically from the very old British crown. The Americans and the French, with their fancy republican ways, speak easily enough about their founding fathers - Washington, Madison, Robespierre, Marat and all the rest. Canadians don't.

True, we use the same patriarchal language and speak of the fathers of Confederation, but nobody talks about the fathers of Canada, which indicates clearly enough that Confederation was an episode in Canada's evolution, not a brand new beginning. A few intellectuals might indulge in loose talk about the Canadian founding, but they ought to know better.

Usually the act of founding is accompanied by a heavy traffic in high-minded ideas intended to make the new citizens feel good about the violent things they are doing. Truths are held to be self-evident. The founders promise liberty, equality and sisterhood, or peace, bread and other people's land. None of that has ever happened in Canada, though political parties, such as the New Democrats or Reform, have staged founding events to haul themselves into existence.

Unfounded though Canada is, our early political life was not hostile to ideas. They were not expressions of grand new principles but, as contemporary politicians would have said, embodied "well known" ideas. They were well known because they were part of a tradition the origins of which were discreetly shrouded in the mists of time. Chief among them were the principles of parliamentary government and of liberalism. They remain important today. Indeed, many of our difficulties, as well as our successes, are a direct reflection of the extent to which we have maintained liberal and parliamentary government, or drifted away from it.

At the closing of the first session of the first parliament of Upper Canada in 1792, Governor John Graves Simcoe reminded his advisors, "that this province is singularly blest, not with a mutilated constitution, but with a constitution which has stood the test of experience, and which is the very image and transcript of that of Great Britain."

The sentiments were recalled in the British North American Act of 1867, when Canada received "a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom," and, in a more muted way, in the 1982 constitution as well.

In fact, parliamentary government in North America began long before the American Revolution. In its primitive form, elected assemblies could not control the executive. After the publication of Lord Durham's famous Report, the course toward responsible government and today's parliamentary institutions was set, at least in eastern Canada: the Crown is advised by a council that is supported in an assembly that in turn raises and spends money. Parliamentary government is finely balanced between executive decisiveness and the need for prudent and public justification of policy before the sceptical eyes of a "loyal opposition", which is also a government-in-waiting.

Responsible government, parliamentary government properly speaking, came to the old colonies of British North America around the middle of the nineteenth century. On the prairies, however, it was delayed "for the purposes of the Dominion" until 1930, when the provinces gained control over resource revenues. The timing could not have been worse. A decade of severe deflation, followed by the massive centralization of wartime, meant that political leaders in the West were deprived of practical education in the ways of parliament that their colleagues in the east had experienced for a least a generation before 1870.

In consequence, while liberalism in the West has been robust, it is also often extra-parliamentary. From the nineteenth-century agrarians to today's Reform Party, populist liberalism has mounted a serious challenge to the conventions of parliament. When sovereignty is thought to be vested in "the people" and not in the crown, the implications for cabinet, the executive and for the assembly are huge. Populist measures - the initiative, referendum and recall, for example - are in fact incompatible with parliamentary government. You can have one or the other, not both.

As a result, the populist liberalism of Canada's west has been a recipe for distress. Sometimes it has been dismissed as a reflection of the unwillingness of Parliament in Ottawa to respond to the interests of Westerners. From the National Policy of Sir John A. Macdonald to the National Energy Programme of Pierre Trudeau, evidence to support this view is not hard to find. But more than interests are involved. Injured pride, not neglected interests, lies behind the ambivalence of many Westerners towards parliamentary government and "Ottawa."

Pride matters. Indeed, human beings are especially proud when they rise above their interests, which is why the pride of Westerners is especially insulted when the beneficiaries - easterners for the most part - are so palpably ungrateful.

In so many ways Quebec is a mirror image of the west. There "Ottawa" carries the same ambivalent symbolic charge, but for quite different reasons. In Quebec, the levers of parliamentary power have been energetically grasped, but diverted to distinctly non-liberal purposes.

It is useful to recall that in Quebec liberalism came ashore with the soldiers of General Wolfe in 1759. In those days, its most important element was freedom of religion, which opened the way for non-Roman Catholic and often English-speaking traders to settle in the newly acquired colony and to prosper. Once again the effect of this infusion of liberal enterprise led to the recommendations of Lord Durham. But many French-Canadians were less interested in individual liberty than in sheltering their community from the malign outside forces that the entrepreneurial English liberals seemed to represent. This is why Durham's name is still mud in Quebec.

The same religious solidarity of the eighteenth-century resistance to liberalism could be detected in the writings of Abbé Lionel Groulx fifty years ago. With the massive and rapid secularization brought about by the Quiet Revolution, the words changed, but the music remained the same. The elegant Hegelian rhetoric of a sovereigntist such as the late Fernand Dumont, for whom every distinct society achieves fulfillment and proper form as a state, or the claims in favour of "deep diversity" made on behalf of Quebec by a federalist such as Charles Taylor, resonate with the same anti-liberal communitarian survivalism pioneered by François-Xavier Garneau a century and a half ago. Garneau's long poem, Louise, as his multi-volume Historie du Canada, were as much a littérature de combat as anything from the pens of contemporary Quebec nationalists, whether sovereigntist or not. Plus ça change. . . .

In fact, many things have changed since the days of Simcoe, Durham and Macdonald, but the principles they espoused can still be detected without too much effort. And yet, pure parliamentary liberalism has never worked in Canada. All Canadians, and especially those in the unmovable centre of the country, Ontario, should be grateful for the impurities supplied by the communitarian realities of Quebec and the extra-parliamentary populism of the west. They provide the colour and flavour to Canadian politics, the leaven that makes federalism work, even though it violates not a few of the explicit intentions of the fathers of Confederation.

Canada has been informed from its beginnings, back in the aftermath of the American Revolution, by two principles: liberalism, and responsible or parliamentary government. After Confederation, the Canadian version of responsible government was modified by the addition of a heavy dose of federalism. These are, I believe, the principles that will guide Canadians into the next century.

Liberalism means many things. In my first article, I referred to Lord Durham's splendid Report. Bob Rae referred to it in his first article as well, but did not praise it. According to him, it was "disastrous, but fortunately short-lived." Au contraire! It was a splendid piece of work and so filled with of foresight that even today it informs Canadian political life at its best. To see why, we must understand Durham's liberalism on its own terms, removed from what present-day liberalism has become.

Lord Durham was a confident, strong, and spirited liberal. He believed liberalism was worth defending and was eager to criticize its enemies. Conventional readings of the Durham Report praise the author for recommending responsible government, but criticize his proposal to assimilate French-speaking colonists. In these days of official bilingualism and semi-official multiculturalism, this looks intolerant, and -- because contemporary liberals can tolerate anything but intolerance -- to some it looks illiberal as well.

But consider the circumstances in which Durham found himself. Following the Rebellion of 1837, he was faced with a "fatal feud" between the French- and the English-speaking colonists of Lower Canada. He also had to consider the dissatisfaction with British rule in the other colonies. Only by adapting to a common North American way of living, he believed, could French-speakers enjoy genuine liberty and equality. Thus did he advocate equality of opportunity and British constitutional practices for all colonists. Thus too, his liberalism: According to Durham, no religious cult, no clan, no caste, no nation, no collective, no faction, and no king, should usurp the right to legislate on behalf of others.

Existing practices, Durham was convinced, would ensure that "the great part" of French-speakers would remain "labourers in the employ of English capitalists," and so poor, dependent and resentful. He was not in error. The French-speaking colonists did not, he said, wish to "remain stationary", but had been held back by a misguided policy that both permitted immigration of aggressive English-speaking entrepreneurs to Quebec and maintained the old seigneuries. Because the seigneuries could not easily be sold, the French-speakers' economic competitiveness was reduced. Regardless of whether British policy was inspired by a goodhearted desire to maintain the noble but vanishing life of the ancien regime, or by prejudice against the Catholic and French inhabitants of the colony, the result was identical: the English-speaking minority prospered while the majority of French-speakers did not. It was a recipe for strife. It was also the reason the colonists on both sides argued in terms of "race." That is, the English-speakers sought to protect their group privileges, and the French-speakers challenged them on the same grounds.

Durham was also perhaps the first to notice the mauvaise foi of nationalist rhetoric. It was designed not to resist assimilation to a liberal, British political order, but to protest the exclusion of French-speakers from the prosperous, liberal society of the English-speaking merchants. Durham therefore opposed legal protection for a "distinct society" in Lower Canada - he called it a society of ancient virtue - because, like the "separate but equal" institutions of the American South, it violated his faith in equality of opportunity.

Much like the sovereigntists today, the Patriote rebels of 1837 were not as dedicated to preserving the ancient virtues and cultural traditions of their ethnic garrison as is sometimes assumed. Although they invoked nationalist sentiments to justify their position, their appeal to the pre-modern and pre-liberal habitants was intended to gain electoral support — a thoroughly modern, liberal objective — in order to effect liberal reforms against the discriminatory laws supported by the English-speaking faction. The Patriotes were moved by ambition, not nostalgia.

Likewise today's sovereigntists, no less than today's federalists, share liberal political habits. This is why the sovereigntists become so irritated when their opponents criticize their pure laine rhetoric as ethnocentric, and worse. And yet, like the Patriotes of 1837, they do make archaic and anti-liberal appeals against, for example, "money and the ethnic vote," to use the unforgettable phrase of Jacques Parizeau.

In recommending equal opportunity for all the colonists, Durham's message was simple: wherever ethnic, linguistic, or religious differences are politically institutionalized, there one finds injustice. This liberal principle has endured in Canada because it guarantees the dignity of all citizens, whatever language they speak. That is what makes Lord Durham such a great liberal, and why his Report remains an enduring statement of Canadian liberalism.

In the context of Durham's arguments rightly understood, it is correct to observe, as Mr. Rae did last week, "Canada is a federation, not just a nation, and that says it all." It doesn't quite say it all, but it says a great deal: We are a "political nation," to use Cartier's formula in the Confederation Debates, and we are a federation. It is not, however, "cookie-cutter" federalism, as Mr. Rae has suggested, to treat the provinces as formally equal. Acknowledging the reality of equal provinces has become a political necessity, largely for the same reasons Durham made plain as day in his Report. A liberal society permits variety, indeed, requires variety for its survival. Federalism, a mode of governance that enhances liberal "experiments in living", is the institutional expression of variety concentrated.

Today few would dispute that Quebec is more distinct from PEI than Saskatchewan is from Manitoba, but the two prairie provinces are not cookie cut-outs either. Here is where the former premier of Canada's most populous province is too timid in his understanding of what federalism can do for diversity in Canada.

There are good reasons for Quebec to take pride in its own language laws, and even its own sign laws, whatever English-speakers in British Columbia might think. By the same token, there is no reason Saskatchewan should not take pride in its own gun laws, regardless of what the good burghers of Montreal might think. Likewise, Alberta can take pride in its own health laws, despite the disapproval of the bien pensants of Toronto. B.C. would certainly take pride in formulating its own salmon laws.

That, after all, is the point of federalism. It encourages the kind of variety that is both the foundation of liberal society and its fullest expression. Quebec's sign laws, no less than the existence of Nunavut, are experiments. In both places, citizens are able to use local or regional government for their own purposes, to organize their common life without being intimidated by a remote and massive central government, and to take pride in their achievements. Federalism encourages these liberal experiments by promoting government that is not just responsible, but also responsive.

As Canadians head into the new millennium, they can be sure that new political necessities will require new political experiments. And they can be confident that the tested principles of liberalism, responsible government and federalism are equal to the challenge. No I didn't write this, and back then liberal wasn't what it is today. Anyway I hope this is of some interest to other people. not only me, and I hope u enjoyed you're history lesson for the day. : ) Come back next time for questions lol.