When have you ever wanted to say,
"Thank You!" to a commercial?
Thanks for so many Memories
Santa Travolta!!!
Merry Christmas Joy!
Speaking of Saint Nick, we were, yesterday...
Nicholas of Myra,
aka, Nicholas of Bari,
4th Century AD, Christian Bishop of Greek descent
From the modern-day Antalya Province, Turkey.
With many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known
as Nicholas the Wonder worker.
Saint Nicholas.
One of the real and poignant aspects of Saint Nicholas' life
was the troubled times he lived in,
and his desire to make more of Jesus
giving us more Heaven on earth with God's Good Will.
St Nicholas had 'je ne sais quoi'. Certainly.
John 3:8
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit
Ancient Rome knew Diocletian had reworked the Power of Rome. And Constantine the Great had been his protégé, winning the Emperor throne through Civil War Victory. Not a man to trifle with Constantine the Great.
Diocletian's first order of business was to establish what became known as the Tetrarchy, the division of the empire between two Augusti (emperors) and two Caesars (sub-emperors). Ultimately, he envisioned easier management of the Roman Empire to grow and remain at the top of worldwide trade.
Diocletian chose Maximiam as his fellow Augustus and assigned him the western half of the empire. Maximiam reigned in Milan, while Diocletian ruled the eastern half from his capital in Nicomedia. In 293 Constantius I Chlorus, Constantine's father, became Caesar under Maximian, while Galerius served under Diocletian.
Constantine The soon-to-Be Great remained with Diocletian, and life in the palace had a strong influence on his thinking and development. Furthermore, young man Constantine received education and traveled frequently with Augustus. The future emperor, as described by contemporary sources, wore his hair to the shoulder and wore jeweled robes and a high-crested helmet, later replaced with a pearl-decked diadem. However, this helmet was the prototype of the future Byzantine crown. An outstanding general, Constantine also excelled as an organizer, leader, and administrator, possessing a wealth of energy. Imperatively, Constantine loved to chat with his troops, inspiring loyalty in return. Throughout his life, he worked hard to learn as much as possible. Constantine the Great was ambitious, religious to the point of being superstitious, and very emotional, always striving for personal success at all costs. Although, because he suffered from fits of anger brought about by a highly suspicious and jealous mind, occasionally resorting to murder.
And Constantine sent a letter to Nicholas, the Bishop of Turkey, in prison, where Emperor Diocletian had sent the Christian Nicholas for the kill you dead crime of having faith in Jesus Christ.
And the Letter arrived in the prison.
This letter, an invitation, could be a very superlative form of entrapment leading to death. Welcome to leaving prison and the delights of Mediterranean Ocean travel and highway robbery.
This, in effect, is the invitation of Constantine the Great:
St Nick's earliest icon
from St. Catherine's Monastery
at Mount Sinai
where Moses received the 10 Commandments
2 Corinthians 11:23-28
23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.
25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned.
Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift
at sea;
26 on frequent journeys,
in danger from rivers,
danger from robbers,
danger from my own people,
danger from Gentiles,
danger in the city,
danger in the wilderness,
danger at sea,
danger from false brothers;
27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.
28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me
of my anxiety for all the churches.
1800 Bishops, not 1(800) Bishops, Eighteen hundred Bishops were invited and
318 decided to risk the whooooole set up.
God is God Himself. The Almighty. The Mighty. Ancient of Days. I Am.
And if God sets up the universe and holds all of this up, by His Word....
Hebrews 1:1-3
In these last days He has spoken to us by His Son,
Whom He appointed Heir of all things,
and through whom He
made the universe.
The Son is the radiance of God’s glory
and the exact representation of His nature,
upholding
all things
by His powerful Word.
So, God upholds the Universe, by His Powerful Word. And if God deigns to remarkably set up December 25, by faith and not works, who are we to quibble Christmas is the actual Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ?!!
And if then,
Saint Nicholas becomes Father, Patron Saint of Christmas,
Père Noel,
then who are we to do other than find out why
the Fullness of The Lord's Good Creation
has Given His St. Nick a Place.
St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker. Remember, with me, this is in the general time frame of The Acts of The Disciples. Not a light set of phrases!
In fact, if you wanted to be close
to the man, the saint,
called St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker - what would you do?
Joshua 3
3 Then Joshua rose early in the morning and they set out from Shittim. And they came to the Jordan, he and all the people of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over. 2 At the end of three days the officers went through the camp 3 and commanded the people, “As soon as you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the Levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place and follow it. 4 Yet there shall be a distance between you and it, about 2,000 cubits in length. Do not come near it, in order that you may know the way you shall go, for you have not passed this way before.” 5 Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” 6 And Joshua said to the priests, “Take up the ark of the covenant and pass on before the people.” So they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people.
7 The Lord said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. 8 And as for you, command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, ‘When you come to the brink of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.’” 9 And Joshua said to the people of Israel, “Come here and listen to the words of the Lord your God.” 10 And Joshua said, “Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites. 11 Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is passing over before you into the Jordan. 12 Now therefore take twelve men from the tribes of Israel, from each tribe a man. 13 And when the soles of the feet of the priests bearing the Ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off from flowing, and the waters coming down from above shall stand in one heap.”
14 So when the people set out from their tents to pass over the Jordan with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people, 15 and as soon as those bearing the Ark had come as far as the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the Ark were dipped in the brink of the water (now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest), 16 the waters coming down from above stood and rose up in a heap very far away, at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, and those flowing down toward the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were completely cut off. And the people passed over opposite Jericho.
17 Now the priests bearing the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord stood firmly on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all Israel was passing over on dry ground until all the nation finished passing over the Jordan.
Jericho Today
Sycamore tree site, (new tree)
attributed as Zachaeus climbed to see and meet Jesus Christ
In Archaeology, Jericho Walls collapsed
without earthquake
or flood
Joshua 6
2 And the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and mighty men of valor. 3 You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days. 4 Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. 5 And when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up, everyone straight before him.” 6 So Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them,
“Take up the Ark of the Covenant and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams' horns before the Ark of the Lord.”
7 And he said to the people,
“Go forward.
March around the city
and let the armed men pass
on before the Ark of the Lord.”
Asking again...
St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker.
Remember, with me,
This is in the general time frame of The Acts of The Disciples. Not a light set of phrases!
And therefore, if you wanted to be close
to the man, the saint,
called St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker - what would you do?
t. Nicholas was buried in his church at Myra, and by the 6th century his shrine there had become well known.
In 1087 Italian sailors or merchants stole his alleged remains from Myra and took them to Bari, Italy. This availability greatly increased the saint’s popularity in Europe, and Bari became one of the most crowded of all pilgrimage centers.
Nicholas’s relics remain enshrined in the 11th-century basilica of San Nicola at Bari, though fragments have been acquired by churches around the world.
In 2017 researchers dated one such relic fragment, a piece of hip bone, from a church in the United States
and
confirmed it to be from the 4th century.
NICE!
Original Icon
The Icon
and the reconstuction
are
GREAT TOGETHER
Then Jerome spent almost three years (379–382) continuing his pursuit of scriptural studies. An enthusiastic disciple of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome also came to know St. Gregory of Nyssa and the theologian Amphilochius of Iconium at the Council of Constantinople (381). Under such influences, he improved his knowledge of Greek and developed an admiration for Origen’s exegesis. He translated 14 of Origen’s homilies (sermons) on Old Testament books into Latin. Here too he translated the church historian Eusebius’s Chronicon (Chronicles) and continued it to the year 378.
But the most decisive influence on Jerome’s later life was his return to Rome (382–385) as secretary to Pope Damasus I. There he pursued his scholarly work on the Bible and propagated the ascetic life.
In Christianity, in the 1600s, the name "the Apocrypha" is applied to a particular set of books which, when they appear in a Bible, are sometimes placed between the Old and New Testaments in a section called "Apocrypha." The canonicity of such books took longer to determine. Various of these books are accepted by the Catholic Church, Orthodox Churches and the Church of the East, as deuterocanonical.
Saint Nicholas
When we read the Scriptures daily
Acts 17:11
Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica;
they received
the word with all eagerness,
examining the Scriptures daily
to see if these things were so.
Abba, Father!
Happy Thanksgiving!
WE PRAY
BLESSINGS
ON THE DILIGENT
AND BLESSED FAMILY
OF SEDONIA AND DIESEL
AND BLESSED FAMILY
OF SEDONIA AND DIESEL
The safety
of Your people.
And their DOGS.
The safety
of those
helping the earth
to heal.
The Lord Bless you
and keep you;
The Lord make His Face to shine upon you
and
be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His Countenance upon you
and
give you peace.
“So shall they put
My Name
upon the people of Israel,
and I will bless them.”
✝
NORTH CAROLINA
The people of North Carolina
today
received running, clean water.
Fra
Christmas is coming.
Parents are looking for toys.
Winter is here
and they talk about how
How to be warm.
Or to be warm in an RV.
Or a tent.
Hotel vouchers, how to find them.
Some areas were not covered
in the Blitz of Help Recovery.
They ALL SAY
THE GRAHAM MINISTRY
SAMARITAN'S PURSE
IS
DOING INCREDIBLE
SHAKE NORTH CAROLINA
SHAPE NORTH CAROLINA
SHAKE NORTH CAROLINA
SHAPE NORTH CAROLINA
Love and Mercy and Work.
GIVE TO
SAMARITAN'S PURSE
and
PUT IT ON YOUR CHRISTMAS LIST
ALL,
Please.
GOD BLESS THEM
Let evil and practicing evil
depart
far
from us
and our children.
With Your Help
We will act justly
and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with You, our God.
Dwell in me,
Dwell in us,
Dwell in those we Love,
Help us to seek You first.
And we will finish well,
in Jesus Christ.
Help us seek and find
and bring,
to become,
more Heaven
to this earth.
And in Jesus - this Hope,
Faith and Love - we will rise up believing Jesus.
Amen.
♔ Lord Jesus Saves †
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