Jeff Ragan > Recent Status Updates

"Johnson dominated. He got up so close, especially to members of his staff, it was uncomfortable. Bodies actually touched. Breath intermingled. Who could stand up to him, his six feet four inches bent forward like a weapon, his laughter so intimate that the staffer would never forget it and from that moment on would always feel he owed the President something" (125).

"Lord, I have heard the report about The and I fear. O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy." - Habakkuk 3:2

"The most impressive variable is Chi (x) in the swan's neck. At maximum, Chi reaches 3rd-magnitude and rivals nearby Eta (h) in brightness. But it falls below 14th-magnitude at minimum, beyond small telescope range, over a period of 407 days. It thus displays one of the greatest brightness changes among variables we know" (102).

"A jealous and avenging God is the Lord; The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserves wrath for His enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. In whirlwind and storm is His way, and clouds are the dust of His feet." - Nahum 1:2-3

"All God's people are praying people. You may as soon find a living man without breath as a living Christian without prayer" (90).

"At home...his manner is simple & unassuming, as though he did not trust himself to speak. But in the ancestral temple & at Court he speaks readily, though always choosing his words with care. At court when conversing with the Under Ministers his attitude is friendly & affable; when conversing with the Upper Ministers, it is restrained & formal. When the ruler is present it is wary, but not cramped" (138).

"And it will come about in the last days that...the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains...and the peoples will stream to it. And many nations will come and say, 'Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord that He may teach us about His ways and that we may walk in His paths. For from Zion will go forth the law, even the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.'" - Micah 4:1-2

"The New Covenant aims to meet the specific needs that made it necessary: (1) it is more personal than the marital contract which Israel so flagrantly violated...(2) it is written on the hearts of the people, the seedbed of their iniquity, not on stone tablets; (3) it results in the true knowledge of God...(4) it carries full forgiveness of the sins that have earned judgment" (351).

"When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth, & sat on the ashes. And he issued a proclamation...'Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing...& let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way...Who knows, God may turn & relent, & withdraw His burning anger so that we hall not perish?" - Jonah 3 6-9

"Wherever one looks along the perimeter of Islam, Muslims have problems living peaceably with their neighbors. The question naturally rises as to whether this pattern of late-twentieth-century conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim groups is equally true of relations between groups from other civilizations. In fact, it is not...The evidence is overwhelming" (256).

"Then the house of Jacob will be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame; But the house of Esau will be as stubble. And they will set them on fire and consume them, so that there will be no survivor of the house of Esau,' for the Lord has spoken." - Obadiah 18

"Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but...'He is our bloody tyrant.' In their view, the invasion [of Kuwait] was a family affair to be settled within the family and those who intervened in the name of some grand theory of international justice were doing so to protect their own selfish interests and to maintain Arab subordination to the West" (248).

"Therefore, thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I shall do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel. For behold, He who forms mountains and creates the wind and declares to man what are His thoughts, He who makes the dawn into darkness and treads on the high places of the earth, The Lord God of hosts is His name." - Amos 4:12-13

"The great thing is to have made a start even if our start had been something less than dashing. The cares of the land fall away, all the worries of fitting-out are over, and for the next four months there will be no bills to pay, no newspapers to read. Though we were not yet a thousand miles from the nearest land where, according to Conrad, the true peace of God begins, we were on the way" (636).

"And it will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. And even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. And I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, blood, fire, and columns of smoke..." - Joel 2:28-30

"In a political move designed to prepare public opinion & minimize disaffection [for the Emancipation Proclamation], in August Lincoln outlined his position to the country. 'My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, & is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it..." (109).

"Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to Him, 'Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously, that we may present the fruit of our lips. Assyria will not save us, We will not ride on horses; nor will we say again, "Our god," to the work of our hands; for in Thee the orphan finds mercy.'" - Hosea 14:1-3

"Observe a resemblance between this deliverance of Abram out of Egypt and the deliverance of his seed thence: 430 years after Abram went into Egypt on occasion of a famine they went thither on occasion of a famine also; he was fetched out with great plagues on Pharaoh, so were they; as Abram was dismissed by Pharaoh, and enriched with the spoil of he Egyptians, so were they" (89).

"And he said, 'Go your way, Daniel, for these words are concealed and sealed up until the end time. Many will be purged, purified and refined; but the wicked will act wickedly, and none of he wicked will understand but those who have insight will understand. And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days." - Daniel 12:9-11

"Three brilliant stars appear high in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere, making up the celebrated Summer Triangle. Brightest is Vega in Lyra, which forms the triangle with Deneb in Cygnus and Altair in Aquila" (96).

"I make a decree that in all the dominion of my kingdom men are to fear and tremble before the God of Daniel; for He is the living God and enduring forever, and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed, and His dominion will be forever. He delivers and rescues and performs signs and wonders in heaven and on earth, who has also delivered Daniel from the power of the lions." - Daniel 6:26-27

"Jeremiah readily admitted that his ministry was distasteful at times. He felt trapped, unable to escape God's call, with the word burning inside him like a fire. Yet when he preached, God made him look foolish by delaying fulfillment of the prophecy (20:8-10). But Jeremiah trusted God so much that his directness was an asset" (332).

"But at the end of that period I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, & my reason returned to me, & I blessed the Most High & praised & honored Him who lives forever; For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, & His kingdom endures from generation to generation. And all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven..." - Daniel 4:34-35

"The more I...gaze up towards it, the higher it soars. The deeper I bore down into it, the harder it becomes. I see it in front; but suddenly it is behind. Step by step the Master skilfully lures one on. He has broadened me with culture, restrained me with ritual. Even if I wanted to stop, I cold not...when I feel that I have exhausted every resource, something seems to rise up, standing out sharp & clear" (133).

"The DOJ had a case and strong evidence, as well as legal precedent in a 1942 Colorado case that went to the Supreme Court. But Department of Justice dropped its anti-trust investigation...When the Senate completed its probe, investigators criticized the Department of Justice, saying political contributions influenced the DOJ's decision to drop the case" (156, 8-9).

"On March 4, 1861, James Buchanan went home to his Pennsylvania plantation. 'I...often warned my countrymen of the dangers which surrounded us,' he wrote. 'I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that I at least meant well for my country.' History would label him as cowardly, weak, senile, and vacillating. In truth, he was a lonely, limited man who mistook politics for statesmanship" (99).

"Then he led me to the gate...facing toward the east; and behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from...the east. And His voice was like the sound of many waters; and the earth shone with His glory. And it was like the appearance of the vision which I saw...when He came to destroy the city. And...like the vision which I saw by the river Chebar; and I fell on my face." - Ezekiel 43:1-3

"Europe and Russia are demographically mature societies with low birth rates and aging populations; such societies do not have the youthful vigor to be expansionist and offensively oriented" (242).

"'Then they will know that I am the Lord their God because I made them go into exile among the nations, and then gathered them again to their own land; and I will leave none of them there any longer. And I will not hide My face from them any longer, for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,' declares the Lord God." - Ezekiel 39:28-29

"Time the great healer, aided by a specialist who had diagnosed a lesion of the labyrinth, affected a cure, but not before I had reached such a low ebb as to put Mischief up for sale. Fortunately nobody wanted her except as a gift. Having recovered I felt ashamed of this piece of treachery and thankful that Mischief, clever as she was at sea, could not read advertisements" (620).