Jeff Ragan > Recent Status Updates

"'Que voudrais-tu que je fasse pour toi? Demande-le moi avant que je sois enleve loin de toi.' Elisee repondit: 'J'aimerais recevoir une double part de ton esprit.' Elie repondit: 'Tu as exprime une demande difficile a satisfaire, mais si tu me vois pendant que je serai enleve d'aupres de toi, cela te sera accorde; si tu ne me vois pas, il n'en sera rien.'" - 2 Rois 2:9-10

"Only Ceres, Pallas, Vesta and a few other asteroids are roughly spherical in shape. The others are irregular-shaped lumps, looking rather like huge potatoes. From the way they reflect light, asteroids appear to be of three main kinds. Some are made up mainly of rock, some mainly of metal and others a mixture of the two" (154).

"How do the people you are currently attracting look to you?...their quality depends less on a hiring process, a human resources department, or even what you consider go be the quality of your area's applicant pool. It depends more on you. Who you are is who you attract. That is the Law of Magnetism. If you want to attract better people, become the kind of person you desire" (118-9).

"During the five days of our imprisonment we kept normal watches except when at night...we kept double watches...Even with several northern voyages behind me I had no experience of this sort of thing. Perhaps I had more sense then...we had seldom become entangled with ice & never for long...The crew...who had hardly bargained for being beset, remained quite undismayed & in excellent spirits" (705).

"As the Old Testament portion of this canon, the Hebrew Bible has been traditionally divided into three parts, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. Evidence for this arrangement is quite old" (599).

"'This is a dangerous game, Kelly. Assuming that's even your name.' 'Freedom's a dangerous business. If you people want to go on like this, you can.' 'We don't.' 'Then find some people you can trust and let's get together. Stay off the phones.' 'I may be a country preacher, but I'm not that dumb,' replied Bellman, irritated" (108).

"When you come to the place where you can tarry with the Lord one hour, something supernatural happens. Yo begin to understand the character and purposes of God, and to experience the anointing of the power of God as never before" (43).

"Come, Achilles, tame that awful temper! You must not let your heart be hard. Even the gods can be moved and they are greater than you in excellence and honor and might. They can be turned by the supplications of mankind, with burnt offerings and tender prayers, and the savour of sacrifice, when there has been transgression and error" (111).

"[Paul's] own life and apostleship are deeply bound up with his converts' well-being, and especially with their perseverance so that they themselves will experience God's eschatological joy. Such perseverance calls for their standing firm in the on Spirit. Only so will his own joy be filled to the full; and in any case the entire letter presupposes the secure nature of his and their mutual affection and joy" (183-4).

"The Constitutional Convention was Madison's moment of special destiny, just as the Declaration of Independence had been Thomas Jefferson's. It was Madison who proposed the all-important Virginia Plan, outlining a tripartite government with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches, with the legislature divided into a House and Senate" (401-2).

"L'Eternel dit: Sors et tiens-toi...devant l'Eternel. Et voici que l'Eternel passa. Devant lui soufflait un vent si violent qu'il fendait les montagnes...Mais l'Eternel n'etait pas dans l'ouragan. Apres...il y eut un tremblement de terre. Mais l'Eternel n'etais pas dans ce tremblemet...Enfin, apres le feu, ce fut un bruissement doux et leger. Des qu'Elie l'entendit, il se couvrit le visage..." - 1 Rois 19:11-13

"The four terrestrial (Earth-like) planets have only three moons between them, compared with more than 130 for the four gas, giant planets" (150).

"Leaders look at things differently than others do. They evaluate everything according to their leadership bias...While other people see a production problem, leaders loo for the leadership breakdown that may have caused it...Good leaders have a bias or filter that causes them to look for leadership dynamics first to explain results in an organization or on a team" (95).

"Try as we might the wind could not be persuaded to fill both headsails, there was not enough of it. I could sympathize with the good people of Steeple Bumpstead, Bucks., who are said to have refused to allow the building of a second windmill on the grounds that there was barely enough wind for the one they already had" (699).

"Christ transformed Old Testament interpretation by drawing together in himself various strands of teaching & braiding them into a single cord. He was the great prophet like Moses who taught the new law from the mountain; the peerless priest who made the whole temple system obsolete; the wise king, the 'greater than Solomon'; David's son & Lord, rightful heir to Israel's throne; the triumphant Son of man..." (586).

"'We are simply not going to allow any group to undercut the progress & evolution we are putting in place after breaking away from the racist states. If you refuse to cooperate...there will be a price.' 'So my congregation is free to practice its faith...except when you disagree with it?' 'In a democracy, the people choose what's allowed & what isn't. And they have chosen not to allow hate, Pastor Bellman'" (99).

"Christians are called to a lifestyle of prayer, but many have come to see prayer as nothing more than calling upon their Heavenly Butler for daily service, or crying out to their Heavenly Lifeguard when they are drowning in their daily circumstances. Certainly God has more for us than that" (26).

"Don't you see that God has no victory for you? Yon man wins to-day by the will of Zeus Cronides; another time we shall win, if it be his pleasure. Man's might is nothing against God on high, for he is stronger far than you or I" (94-95).

"They are to live 'on behalf of Christ' in the same way Christ himself lived - and died - on behalf of this fallen, broken world. The Christ in whom they have believed for their salvation effected that salvation because as God he poured himself out by taking the form of a servant and as man he humbled himself to the point of death - death for theirs and the world's sake - even death on a cross" (172).

"'It's very difficult to psychoanalyze oneself,' Richard Nixon once said. 'Most people would give me rather low grades as far as "charisma" and "gregariousness" and all that sort of thing that the politician is supposed to have...But the essence of every great leader I have known - and I'm not saying I'm great - he was a lonely man'" (386).

"Alors Elie s'avanca devant tout le peuple et s'ecria: 'Combien de temps encore sauterez-vous des deux cotes? Si l'Eternel est la vrai Dieu, suivez-le. Si c'est Baal, alors ralliez-vous a lui!' Mail le peuple ne lui repondit pas un mot." - 1 Rois 18:21

"Mars has an atmosphere like Earth, though it is very much thinner, with only about one-hundredth the pressure of Earth's atmosphere, and the main gas present is carbon dioxide" (144).

"People respect others' accomplishments. And it's hard to argue with a good track record. When leaders are successful in their own endeavors, people respect them. When they succeed in leading the team to victory, then followers believe they can do it again. As a result, followers follow them because they want to be part of success in the future" (88).

"'Boast'...does not mean to 'brag about' or to 'be conceited'; rather, it has to do first with putting one's full 'trust or confidence in' something...and thus, second, in 'glorying' in that something...Hence a false 'boast' (in the flesh; 3:3-6) lies at the heart of Paul's understanding of sin, whereas its opposite, 'boasting/glorifying in the Lord,' is the ultimate evidence of genuine conversion" (155).

"The damn People's Volunteers are back again. We aren't cooperative enough, I guess, so they come through to teach us who's boss. And they never pass this store by. The come in here, take whatever they want, and I can't do shit.' He finished loading the sack, leaving just a few bucks in the till. Luke took the bag and left without a word. 'They aren't getting my money this time'" (92).

"Apocalypse has been defined as 'a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another supernatural world'" (567).

C. Peter Wagner in the forward: "God is calling out a vast army of His people to pray, and they are saying, 'Show me how!' I have found no better training manual than this book. It explains what prayer is, what it does, what different kinds of prayer look like, how to hear from God as you pray, the essentials of spiritual warfare and more" (14).

"I take the villager to be a boorish, ignorant man who does not know that a true gentleman ought not to be known as a specialist in any one line" (232).

"There is a wealth of evidence of various kinds which allows modern scientists to conclude that during the climatic optimum of A.D. 1000 to 1200 the mean summer temperatures in southern Greenland were 2* C. to 4* C. higher than now and that sea temperatures in the northernmost Atlantic were of the same order of increase. The area of permanent ice lay north of 80* N..." (696).

"...all lunar rocks...[are] volcanic" (134).