Fishing Bible Quotes

It was just so in the American Revolution, in 1776, the first delicacy the men threw overboard in Boston harbor was the tea, woman's favorite beverage. The tobacco and whiskey, though heavily taxed, they clung to with the tenacity of the devil-fish.

Fundamentalist Christianity: fascinating. These people actually believe that the world is twelve thousand years old. Swear to God. Based on what? I asked them. "Well, we looked at all the people in the Bible and we added 'em up all the way back to Adam and Eve, their ages? Twelve thousand years." "Well, how fucking scientific, OK. I didn't know that you'd gone to so much trouble there. That's good. You believe the world's twelve thousand years old?" "That's right." "OK, I got one word to ask you, a one word question, ready?" "Uh huh." "Dinosaurs." You know, the world's twelve thousand years old and dinosaurs existed, and existed in that time, you'd think it would been mentioned in the fucking Bible at some point: And O, Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth. But the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus... with a splinter in its paw. And the disciples did run a-screamin'. "What a big fucking lizard, Lord!" "I'm sure gonna mention this in my book," Luke said. "Well, I'm sure gonna mention it in my book," Matthew said. But Jesus was unafraid. And he took the splinter from the brontosaurus paw, and the brontosaurus became his friend. And Jesus sent him to Scotland where he lived in a loch, O so many years, attracting fat American families with their fat fuckin' dollars to look for the Loch Ness Monster. And O the Scots did praise the Lord: "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!" Twelve thousand years old. But I actually asked this guy, "OK, dinosaur fossils-- how does that fit into your scheme of life? What's the deal?" He goes: "God put those here to test our faith." "I think God put you here to test my faith, dude. I think I've figured this out." Does that-- That's what this guy said. Does that bother anyone here? The idea that God might be fucking with our heads? Anyone have trouble sleeping restfully with that thought in their head? God's running around burying fossils: "Ho ho! We'll see who believes in me now, ha ha! I'm a prankster God. I am killing me, ho ho ho!" You know? You die, you go to St. Peter: "Did you believe in dinosaurs?" "Well, yeah. There were fossils everywhere. (trapdoor opens) Aaaaarhhh!" "You fuckin' idiot! Flying lizards? You're a moron. God was fuckin' with you!" "It seemed so plausible, aaaaaahh!" "Enjoy the lake of fire, fucker!" They believe this. But you ever notice how people who believe in Creationism usually look pretty unevolved. Eyes really close together, big furry hands and feet? "I believe God created me in one day." Yeah, looks like he rushed it. Such a weird belief. Lots of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he's gonna want to see a fucking cross, man? "Ow." Might be why he hasn't shown up yet. "Man, they're still wearing crosses. Fuck it, I'm not goin' back, Dad. No, they totally missed the point. When they start wearing fishes, I might show up again, but... let me bury fossils with you, Dad. Fuck 'em, let's fuck with 'em! Hand me that brontosaurus head, Dad.

Acts 16:9 is the meddler's motto, simultaneously selfless and self-serving, generous but stuck-up. Into every generation of Americans is born a new crop of buttinskys sniffing out the latest Macedonia that may or may not want their help.

The disciples were, most likely, rather well off. Peter and Andrew were business partners of James and John (Luke 5:7, 10). James and John, under the supervision of their father, Zebedee, ran a fishing business wealthy enough to employ multiple hired men (Mark 1:19–20).

How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values.

Don't you sometimes find it hard to remember God all through your work?" asked Clementina. "I don't try to consciously remember Him every moment. For He is in everything, whether I am thinking of it or not. When I go fishing, I go to catch God's fish. When I take Kelpie out, I am teaching one of God's wild creatures. When I read the Bible or Shakespeare, I am listening to the word of God, uttered in each after its own kind. When the wind blows on my face, it is God's wind.

For Americans, Acts 16:9 is the high-fructose corn syrup of Bible verses--an all-purpose ingredient we'll stir into everything from the ink on the Marshall Plan to canisters of Agent Orange. Our greatest goodness and our worst impulses come out of this missionary zeal, contributing to our overbearing (yet not entirely unwarranted) sense of our country as an inherently helpful force in the world. And, as with the apostle Paul, the notion that strangers want our help is sometimes a delusion.

That big glorious mountain. For one transitory moment, I think I may have actually seen it”. For one flash, the Mommy had seen the mountain without thinking of logging and ski resorts and avalanches, managed wildlife, plate tectonic geology, microclimates, rain shadow, or yin-yang locations. She’d seen the mountain without the framework of language. Without the cage of associations. She’d seen it without looking through the lens of everything she knew was true about mountains. What she’d seen in that flash wasn’t even a “mountain”. It wasn’t a natural resource. It had no name. “That’s the big goal”, she said. “To find a cure for knowledge”. For education. For living in our heads. Ever since the story of Adam and Eve in the bible, humanity had been a little too smart for its own good, the Mommy said. Ever since eating that apple. Her goal was to find, if not a cure, then at least a treatment that would give people back their innocence. “The cerebral cortex, the cerebellum”, she said, “that’s where your problem is”. If she could just get down to using only her brain stem, she’d be cured. This would be somewhere beyond happiness and sadness. You don’t see fish agonized by wild mood swings. Sponges never have a bad day.

There is a time to fish and a time to mend nets.

These Bibles included the Unrighteous Bible, so called from a printer’s error which caused it to proclaim, in I Corinthians, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God?”; and the Wicked Bible, printed by Barker and Lucas in 1632, in which the word not was omitted from the seventh commandment, making it “Thou shalt commit Adultery.” There were the Discharge Bible, the Treacle Bible, the Standing Fishes Bible, the Charing Cross Bible and the rest.

I told you. He says it’s the miracle of the loafs and the fishes.” She stared at him blankly, and he felt stupid. When his father said it, people would laugh. “Um. Like in the Bible. The miracle of the loaves and the fishes. Dad used to say that he loafs and fishes, and it’s a miracle that he still makes money. It was a sort of joke.

These are lines from my asteroid-impact novel, Regolith: Just because there are no laws against stupidity doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be punished. I haven’t faced rejection this brutal since I was single. He smelled trouble like a fart in the shower. If this was a kiss of gratitude, then she must have been very grateful. Not since Bush and Cheney have so few spent so much so fast for so long for so little. As a nympho for mind-fucks, Lisa took to politics like a pig to mud. She began paying men compliments as if she expected a receipt. Like the Aerosmith song, his get-up-and-go just got-up-and-went. “You couldn’t beat the crap out of a dirty diaper!” He embraced his only daughter as if she was deploying to Iraq. She was hotter than a Class 4 solar flare! If sex was a weapon, then Monique possessed WMD I haven’t felt this alive since I lost my virginity. He once read that 95% of women fake organism, and the rest are gay. Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but ugly is universal. Why do wives fart, but not girlfriends? Adultery is sex that is wrong, but not necessarily bad. The dinosaurs stayed drugged out, drooling like Jonas Brothers fans. Silence filled the room like tear gas. The told him a fraction of the truth and hoped it would take just a fraction of the time. Happiness is the best cosmetic, He was a whale of a catch, and there were a lot of fish in the sea eager to nibble on his bait. Cheap hookers are less buck for the bang, Men cannot fall in love with women they don’t find attractive, and women cannot fall in love with men they do not respect. During sex, men want feedback while women expect mind-reading. Cooper looked like a cow about to be tipped over. His father warned him to never do anything he couldn’t justify on Oprah. The poor are not free -- they’re just not enslaved. Only those with money are free. Sperm wasn’t something he would choose on a menu, but it still tasted better than asparagus. The crater looked alive, like Godzilla was about to leap out and mess up Tokyo. Bush follows the Bible until it gets to Jesus. When Bush talks to God, it’s prayer; when God talks to Bush, it’s policy. Cheney called the new Miss America a traitor – apparently she wished for world peace. Cheney was so unpopular that Bush almost replaced him when running for re-election, changing his campaign slogan to, ‘Ain’t Got Dick.’ Bush fought a war on poverty – and the poor lost. Bush thinks we should strengthen the dollar by making it two-ply. Hurricane Katrina got rid of so many Democratic voters that Republicans have started calling her Kathleen Harris. America and Iraq fought a war and Iran won. Bush hasn’t choked this much since his last pretzel. Some wars are unpopular; the rest are victorious. So many conservatives hate the GOP that they are thinking of changing their name to the Dixie Chicks. If Saddam had any WMD, he would have used them when we invaded. If Bush had any brains, he would have used them when we invaded. It’s hard for Bush to win hearts and minds since he has neither. In Iraq, you are a coward if you leave and a fool if you stay. Bush believes it’s not a sin to kill Muslims since they are going to Hell anyway. And, with Bush’s help, soon. In Iraq, those who make their constitution subservient to their religion are called Muslims. In America they’re called Republicans. With great power comes great responsibility – unless you’re Republican.

The first thing Gutenberg sought to publish, after the Bible, was a laxative timetable he called a “Purgation-Calendar.” Then there is the astonishing number of anal German folk sayings. “As the fish lives in water, so does the shit stick to the asshole!,” to select but one of the seemingly endless examples.

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

And if the best you can do is quote the Bible in defence of your prejudice, then have the humility to be consistent. The same book that exhorts against the abomination of one man lying with another also contains exhortations against the eating of pork and shell-fish and against menstruating women daring to come near holy places. It’s no good functionalistically claiming that kosher diet had its local, meteorological purposes now defunct, or that the prejudice against ovulation can be dispensed with as superstition, the Bible that you bash us with tells you that much of what you do is unclean: don’t pick and choose with a Revealed Text — or if you do, pick and choose the good bits, the bits that say things like ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’, or ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’.

You don’t have a chance if you think you can clean yourself up before you come to the Lord. You come to the Lord first, then He will clean up your life. A fisherman cleans the fish after the fish are caught.

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is. Eraserhead was growing in a certain way, and I didn’t know what it meant. I was looking for a key to unlock what these sequences were saying. Of course, I understood some of it; but I didn’t know the thing that just pulled it all together. And it was a struggle. So I got out my Bible and I started reading. And one day, I read a sentence. And I closed the Bible, because that was it; that was it. And then I saw the thing as a whole. And it fulfilled this vision for me, 100 percent. I don’t think I’ll ever say what that sentence was.

the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”     27 So God created man in his own image,         in the image of God he created him;         male and female he

I read in a book that they cut off the workers’ hands if they hadn’t collected enough rubber by the end of the day. The Belgian foremen would bring baskets full of brown hands back to the boss, piled up like a mess of fish. Could this be true of civilized white Christians?

Fifield’s connection to his congregation extended to their views on religion and politics too. In the apt words of one observer, Fifield was “one of the most theologically liberal and at the same time politically conservative ministers” of his era. He had no patience for fundamentalists who insisted upon a literal reading of Scripture. “The men who chronicled and canonized the Bible were subject to human error and limitation,” he believed, and therefore the text needed to be sifted and interpreted. Reading the holy book should be “like eating fish—we take the bones out to enjoy the meat. All parts are not of equal value.” Accordingly, Fifield dismissed the many passages in the New Testament about wealth and poverty and instead worked tirelessly to reconcile Christianity and capitalism. In his view, both systems rested on a basic belief that individuals would succeed or fail on their own merit.

There is probably something good in every religion, the important thing is how you practice it. And this is when I found out that the most beautiful thing is to be able to live with a religion. Not just by displaying it and going to church and all, but by really being able to live some of these thoughts in your everyday life. This is a good thought. My problem right now is—and I just went to a Catholic service in connection with my daughter's something-or-another—and I got so damn annoyed by the fact that every text was about humility in relation to God. That's annoying, and I keep on being annoyed by it. Granted, the texts were written by people and not by God, but it's still so annoying. I don't see the meaning of you being humble just because you've been created by God and He has created all this. You can be humble toward life and toward other human beings and toward creativity and everything—and you are—but being humble toward the man who has created the whole circus? Of course, but you shouldn't have to prostrate yourself, and you do that in many religions—you crawl in the dust before these gods. Why? I can see why some king down here on earth might enjoy seeing people crawling before him, but if this guy is that great, then he shouldn't care whether I bow down before him or whether I play around with my dick at night—he shouldn't care a bit about anything like that. As long as I don't do anything that will harm his creation, as long as I don't kill, say, too many fish—well, he's OK with fish, they eat them in the Bible. But this thing about throwing yourself on the floor and exclaiming, "You're so great! You're so great!"—that's completely illogical. If you believe in him, then he's the greatest anyhow. You look at a tiny leaf and you'll get humble—everyone will—even some stupid redneck in an ugly car. You really have to be stupid not to be able to appreciate a thing like that—a little leaf is like looking into eternity. It's totally amazing! And you don't have to stand around in church every day proclaiming that you're a little sinner and worth nothing and he is everything. That's annoying. Sorry, I must have made my point by now.

Strange, Eliot thinks, that the androids take to religion. After all they aren’t plagued by the unknowns that draw heartbeats to temples, bibles, and holy men. There is no mystery as to who created the bots, no absence of meaning for their existence as there is with men. If a bot wants to know why he was put here, all he has to do is ask. The engineers who created them, men like Eliot’s father, could tell them, yes, I know exactly why you’re here. You’re here to shovel, to mine, to gather, to build, to plant, to harvest, to fish, to sew, to stitch, to mend, to weld, to solder, to cook, to slaughter, to render, to load, to carry, to steer, to fight, to clean – to serve.

But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you; And the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you. Or speak to the Earth, and let it teach you; And the fish of the sea declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this, In whose hand is the life of every living thing, And the breath of all mankind?

Apocalypse Hal was on the corner by the Laundromat. Hal was a neighborhood street preacher who worked at the fish and crab place next door. He wore a sandwich board sign of Bible verses and shouted angry things at passersby like “The end times are near” and “Seafood sampler $5.99.” Now his sign just read “TOLD YOU SO,” and he looked more anxious than angry.

variety, don't overdo, always have a proper breakfast, have a good daily amount of antioxidants, don't omit or exaggerate with refined sugar and, most of all, don't forget to insert into your diet a good amount of foods containing phosphorous and B-complex vitamins, great substances to let your brain work at its best. Some examples of foods containing these nutritional substances? Cereals, fish, nuts.

Ask,  zand it will be given to you;  aseek, and you will find;  bknock, and it will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9Or which one of you, if his son asks him for  cbread, will give him  ca stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11If you then,  dwho are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will  zyour Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

7 y“Ask,  zand it will be given to you;  aseek, and you will find;  bknock, and it will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9Or which one of you, if his son asks him for  cbread, will give him  ca stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11If you then,  dwho are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will  zyour Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Lord, when shall we be done growing? As long as we have anything more to do, we have done nothing. So,now, let us add Moby Dick to our blessing, and step from that. Leviathan is not the biggest fish; I have heard of Krakens... Lord, when shall we be done changing? Ah! it's a long stage, and no inn in sight, and night coming, and the body cold. But with you for a passenger, I am content and can be happy. I shall leave the world, I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality.

Casiopea did feel the train, though. It lumbered onward, away from the humid heat of the coast. She had never been on such a contraption. She felt as if she rested on the belly of a metal beast, like Jonah who was swallowed by the whale. This image in her family's Bible had often disconcerted her, the man sitting inside a fish, his face surprised. Now she sympathized with him. She could not see where they were headed, nor the place where they'd come from, and thus felt as though time and the world around her transmogrified, became unknowable; it was as if she were traveling in a dream.

The only part of evolution in which any considerable interest is felt is evolution applied to man. A hypothesis in regard to the rocks and plant life does not affect the philosophy upon which one's life is built. Evolution applied to fish, birds and beasts would not materially affect man's view of his own responsibilities except as the acceptance of an unsupported hypothesis as to these would be used to support a similar hypothesis as to man. The evolution that is harmful—distinctly so—is the evolution that destroys man's family tree as taught by the Bible and makes him a descendant of the lower forms of life. This ... is a very vital matter.

God created man out of dust from the ground. At a basic level, the Creator picked up some dirt and threw Adam together. The Hebrew word for God forming man is yatsar,[11] which means “to form, as a potter.” A pot usually has but one function. Yet when God made a woman, He “made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man” (Genesis 2:22). He created her with His own hands. He took His time crafting and molding her into multifaceted brilliance. The Hebrew word used for making woman is banah, meaning to “build, as a house, a temple, a city, an altar.”[12] The complexity implied by the term banah is worth noting. God has given women a diverse makeup that enables them to carry out multiple functions well. Adam may be considered Human Prototype 1.0, while Eve was Human Prototype 2.0. Of high importance, though, is that Eve was fashioned laterally with Adam’s rib. It was not a top-down formation of dominance or a bottom-up formation of subservience. Rather, Eve was an equally esteemed member of the human race. After all, God spoke of the decision for their creation as one decision before we were ever even introduced to the process of their creation. The very first time we read about both Eve and Adam is when we read of the mandate of rulership given to both of them equally. We are introduced to both genders together, simultaneously. This comes in the first chapter of the Bible: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26–27) Both men and women have been created equally in the image of God. While within that equality lie distinct and different roles (we will look at that in chapter 10), there is no difference in equality of being, value, or dignity between the genders. Both bear the responsibility of honoring the image in which they have been made. A woman made in the image of God should never settle for being treated as anything less than an image-bearer of the one true King. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent in the world to be trodden on.”[13] Just as men, women were created to rule.

And when they start talking, and they always do, you find that each of them has a story they want to tell. Everyone, no matter how old or young, has some lesson they want to teach. And I sit there and listen and learn all about life from people who have no idea how to live it. Nobody knows how to just shut the fuck up and look out the window anymore. The bathrooms are tiny and filthy and you have no choice but to piss all over yourself when the bus swerves, but the streetlights look like blurred stars exploding in the window when it rains at night, and you can sleep knowing that if there’s an accident and everyone on the bus dies it wasn’t your fault. Someone fat and snoring will sometimes sit beside you and sweat on your shoulder even though it’s twelve degrees outside, and someone else with a big head shaped like an onion and dirty hair that smells like fish sticks will sit in front of you and recline their seat into your lap. And you’ll be trapped and sleepless and sad for the entire ride. But then other times you get two whole seats to yourself, and when that becomes your idea of luxury you know you’ve found something that no one else is even looking for, and if you gave it to them for Christmas they’d return it the next morning as soon as the stores opened. And then you get to think of yourself like the little drummer boy, playing for Jesus even though he’s too young to understand, even though nobody in Bethlehem really likes percussion and they think you’re a cheap ass for not bringing gold or frankincense. And it’s a shame when you realize that you won’t get to be in the Bible, and it doesn’t seem right. But then nobody gets to be in the Bible anymore, no matter who they are or what they do, and the sooner you realize that the easier it all becomes. But it’s still a shame.

The biggest problem we faced was people stealing our nets and fish. Sometimes the thieves would ruin the nets by cutting the fish out. The first time it happened, I asked my dad if we should call the police, but he said, “Son, where we live, I am 911.” He policed the river and would awaken many times during the night to check out boats he heard motoring by. I was with him during a few confrontations after we caught people in the act of stealing our nets. They were the most intense moments of my childhood. How my dad handled these situations was in a way a reflection of his growth as a Christian. He started out with a shotgun and a threat to use it if he ever caught them stealing again. But then one day when we caught two guys red-handed, Dad raised his shotgun and gave one of the best sermons from the Bible I’ve ever heard. Toward the end of our commercial-fishing career, he would have the gun but not raise it, give the sermon, and then give them the fish. He would tell them, “If you wanted some fish, all you had to do was ask.” I actually saw grown men shed tears over this approach, and a couple of them came to the Lord.

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 24 ¶ And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 26 ¶ And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

LUKE 5 On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by  uthe lake of Gennesaret, 2 vand he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were  wwashing their nets. 3Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And  xhe sat down and taught the people from the boat. 4And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,  y“Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5And Simon answered, “Master,  zwe toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” 6And when they had done this,  athey enclosed a large number of fish, and  atheir nets were breaking. 7They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them.  bAnd they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. 8But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying,  c“Depart from me, for  dI am a sinful man, O Lord.” 9For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” [1] 11And when they had brought their boats to land,  ethey left everything and followed him.

JOHN 6 After this  jJesus went away to the other side of  kthe Sea of Galilee, which is  lthe Sea of Tiberias. 2And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. 3Jesus went up on  mthe mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. 4Now  nthe Passover, the  ofeast of the Jews, was at hand. 5 pLifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to  qPhilip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. 7 rPhilip answered him, “Two hundred denarii [1] worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.” 8One of his disciples,  sAndrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9“There is a boy here who has five  tbarley loaves and two fish, but  twhat are they for so many?” 10Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.”  uNow there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. 11Jesus then took the loaves, and  vwhen he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” 13So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. 14When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said,  w“This is indeed  xthe Prophet  ywho is to come into the world!

Is It True? English is a really a form of Plattdeutsch or Lowland German, the way it was spoken during the 5th century. It all happened when Germanic invaders crossed the English Channel and the North Sea from northwest Germany, Denmark and Scandinavia to what is now Scotland or Anglo Saxon better identified as Anglo-Celtic. English was also influenced by the conquering Normans who came from what is now France and whose language was Old Norman, which became Anglo-Norman. Christianity solidified the English language, when the King James Version of the Bible was repetitively transcribed by diligent Catholic monks. Old English was very complex, where nouns had three genders with der, die and das denoting the male, female and neuter genders. Oh yes, it also had strong and weak verbs, little understood and most often ignored by the masses. In Germany these grammatical rules survive to this day, whereas in Britain the rules became simplified and der, die and das became da, later refined to the article the! It is interesting where our words came from, many of which can be traced to their early roots. “History” started out as his story and when a “Brontosaurus Steak” was offered to a cave man, he uttered me eat! Which has now become meat and of course, when our cave man ventured to the beach and asked his friend if he saw any food, the friend replied “me see food,” referring to the multitude of fish or seafood! Most English swear words, which Goodreads will definitely not allow me to write, are also of early Anglo-Saxon origin. Either way they obeyed their king to multiply and had a fling, with the result being that we now have 7.6 Billion people on Earth.

this I say,—we must never forget that all the education a man's head can receive, will not save his soul from hell, unless he knows the truths of the Bible. A man may have prodigious learning, and yet never be saved. He may be master of half the languages spoken round the globe. He may be acquainted with the highest and deepest things in heaven and earth. He may have read books till he is like a walking cyclopædia. He may be familiar with the stars of heaven,—the birds of the air,—the beasts of the earth, and the fishes of the sea. He may be able, like Solomon, to "speak of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows on the wall, of beasts also, and fowls, and creeping things, and fishes." (1 King iv. 33.) He may be able to discourse of all the secrets of fire, air, earth, and water. And yet, if he dies ignorant of Bible truths, he dies a miserable man! Chemistry never silenced a guilty conscience. Mathematics never healed a broken heart. All the sciences in the world never smoothed down a dying pillow. No earthly philosophy ever supplied hope in death. No natural theology ever gave peace in the prospect of meeting a holy God. All these things are of the earth, earthy, and can never raise a man above the earth's level. They may enable a man to strut and fret his little season here below with a more dignified gait than his fellow-mortals, but they can never give him wings, and enable him to soar towards heaven. He that has the largest share of them, will find at length that without Bible knowledge he has got no lasting possession. Death will make an end of all his attainments, and after death they will do him no good at all. A man may be a very ignorant man, and yet be saved. He may be unable to read a word, or write a letter. He may know nothing of geography beyond the bounds of his own parish, and be utterly unable to say which is nearest to England, Paris or New York. He may know nothing of arithmetic, and not see any difference between a million and a thousand. He may know nothing of history, not even of his own land, and be quite ignorant whether his country owes most to Semiramis, Boadicea, or Queen Elizabeth. He may know nothing of the affairs of his own times, and be incapable of telling you whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Commander-in-Chief, or the Archbishop of Canterbury is managing the national finances. He may know nothing of science, and its discoveries,—and whether Julius Cæsar won his victories with gunpowder, or the apostles had a printing press, or the sun goes round the earth, may be matters about which he has not an idea. And yet if that very man has heard Bible truth with his ears, and believed it with his heart, he knows enough to save his soul. He will be found at last with Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, while his scientific fellow-creature, who has died unconverted, is lost for ever. There is much talk in these days about science and "useful knowledge." But after all a knowledge of the Bible is the one knowledge that is needful and eternally useful. A man may get to heaven without money, learning, health, or friends,—but without Bible knowledge he will never get there at all. A man may have the mightiest of minds, and a memory stored with all that mighty mind can grasp,—and yet, if he does not know the things of the Bible, he will make shipwreck of his soul for ever. Woe! woe! woe to the man who dies in ignorance of the Bible! This is the Book about which I am addressing the readers of these pages to-day. It is no light matter what you do with such a book. It concerns the life of your soul. I summon you,—I charge you to give an honest answer to my question. What are you doing with the Bible? Do you read it? HOW READEST THOU?

From Walt: The Grapes of Wrath, Les Misérables, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby-Dick, The Ox-Bow Incident, A Tale of Two Cities, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote (where your nickname came from), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and anything by Anton Chekhov. From Henry: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Cheyenne Autumn, War and Peace, The Things They Carried, Catch-22, The Sun Also Rises, The Blessing Way, Beyond Good and Evil, The Teachings of Don Juan, Heart of Darkness, The Human Comedy, The Art of War. From Vic: Justine, Concrete Charlie: The Story of Philadelphia Football Legend Chuck Bednarik, Medea (you’ll love it; it’s got a great ending), The Kama Sutra, Henry and June, The Onion Field, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Zorba the Greek, Madame Bovary, Richie Ashburn’s Phillies Trivia (fuck you, it’s a great book). From Ruby: The Holy Bible (New Testament), The Pilgrim’s Progress, Inferno, Paradise Lost, My Ántonia, The Scarlet Letter, Walden, Poems of Emily Dickinson, My Friend Flicka, Our Town. From Dorothy: The Gastronomical Me, The French Chef Cookbook (you don’t eat, you don’t read), Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals From Death Row, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Something Fresh, The Sound and the Fury, The Maltese Falcon, Pride and Prejudice, Brides-head Revisited. From Lucian: Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, Band of Brothers, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Virginian, The Basque History of the World (so you can learn about your heritage you illiterate bastard), Hondo, Sackett, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Bobby Fischer: My 60 Memorable Games, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Quartered Safe Out Here. From Ferg: Riders of the Purple Sage, Kiss Me Deadly, Lonesome Dove, White Fang, A River Runs Through It (I saw the movie, but I heard the book was good, too), Kip Carey’s Official Wyoming Fishing Guide (sorry, kid, I couldn’t come up with ten but this ought to do).

You, then, are very much at play in the Kingdom, like a child in a sandbox. And each event that arises for you need not be judged. I have shared with you many times that it is the egoic mind that compares and contrasts. Therefore, never compare or contrast your experience with another person’s. Yours is unique. And though the world would say, perhaps, that your experience is not as valuable because you are only worth twenty thousand dollars and somebody else is worth four hundred million, therefore, they have manifested more powerfully, that is simply not true. For manifestation is simply the expression that reveals where the mind has been focusing. The real power is the very mystery that anything can be manifested at all. And you are free to constantly choose anew. Cultivate, then, a very childlike attitude toward all of your experience. Learn to ponder it, to wonder about it, to look upon it like a father does to a child, like your Father does to you: Behold, I have created all things and it is good! In your Bible in the creation story that is told there, it is said that God said something like that. For God looked upon all that She had created and said, “Behold, it is very good!” You are the father of your creations. You are the father of your thoughts, your attitudes, and your choices. Look upon all of these things and say, “Behold, it is very good.” For goodness begets goodness. Judgment begets judgment. For nothing can produce except that which is like itself. An acorn cannot produce a fish. A man and a woman cannot produce an acorn. The thoughts you hold about yourself will reproduce themselves. When you look upon all things as good, goodness will be begotten from that decision. Each time, then, that you have chosen to hold a negative thought about yourself, or about anyone, you have only insured the kind of inconsistency in your mind that interrupts the power of your ability to create, more and more, as a living embodied master. This can only be because you have held deep within the mind some belief that says, “No matter what I do, it won’t work out.” There is some conflicted belief. A belief in goodness and a belief in evil create a conflict that must entrap the soul.

Then God said, “Let us make man [8] in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28†And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Mistakes to Avoid This is not a story about sharing (i.e., the boy who shared his lunch). The boy is mentioned only in John, and even there his willingness is not mentioned. The boy may have been willing, but that should no more be the focus than should sitting in groups of a particular size or helping to clean up after the meal. These are trivial issues. The reference in all four Gospels to the five loaves and two fish emphasizes how little there was to begin with. Other details not to emphasize include the disciples’ incredulity at the number fed; or God taking little things and turning them into something great; or Jesus praying before the meal was eaten, or the disciples gathering up the leftover food, which is included to indicate the magnitude of the multiplication, not that they let nothing go to waste. In teaching younger ages, the emphasis should be simply that Jesus is God and that he cares about the people and is taking care of them. Older groups may be able to understand more about the messianic banquet and the connections to Moses, Elijah, and Elisha.

After plant and animal life had been created, "God" said "Let Us make man in Our image, according to our likeness." The reference to "God" in the plural form ("Us") implies that "God" is the plural collective of the totality Itself. "God" in the plural form comprises all of creation including the stars, fish, birds, and cattle. Man was made from the plural collective of all that is.

Vegetables. Fruits. Nuts. Seeds. Meats. Eggs. Fish. That

Yahweh will deliver your flesh, for you to eat. “‘And not for just a day or two days, not even for five or ten days, even twenty days—but for a whole month, until it comes out from your nostrils, until you loathe the smell of it. “‘For you have denied Yahweh, who is in the midst of you, wailing in his ears, “Why did we ever come out from Egypt?”’” But Moses responded: “I stand in the midst of six hundred thousand wanderers—and you want me to say you will have meat for them—enough for eating a whole month of days? “If all the cattle and sheep were slaughtered, could that begin to be enough? Could all the fish in the sea be caught for them?” Now Yahweh answered Moses: “Is the arm of Yahweh too short? Soon you will see what becomes of my words.

Spirit crave it familiar in anybody who have God calling, how to know that you got this crave?By uncertified feeling like you feel like something missing, that you can't reaching it, going to church doesn't end it,hunger of doing God's things, unexplained spiritual hunger don't fix and more by hiding with doing bad things even suicide not the answer cause it not fix that hunger,the secret is death declaring your suicide application so don't even think about it, you can ask Jonah in the bible from Damascus,fish guts didn't digestive him after swallowing him three days,so solution pray to God ask him to show him what he want you to do that will be the cure for it that will be the end of that nightmare or being hunted by nature about it.

The businessman said, “I believe that if you spend six months outdoors chopping wood, digging in the soil, reading the Bible, and fishing in the deep lakes you will become a new man.

The net of the gospel may perhaps be spread far more widely than it has ever been before, but in the last day, the angels will find an abundance of bad fish in it as well as good. There may be millions more people working for the gospel, and I pray that might be, but however faithfully they may sow, a large proportion of tares will be found growing together with the wheat at the time of harvest.

We walked single file around the lake, inhaling the unmistakable smell of life poised and ready - fish stirring under the ice, green bulbs awakening below the ground. Soon the water would be free, the leaves would unfold like handkerchiefs, the flowers swell with pollen, the butterflies return. The risks of spring were still trapped under the ice but one good thaw and they would be released.

As soon as possible, following your workout you need to consume: • 30 – 50 grams of a lean complete protein like whey, soy, egg, chicken or fish. • 30 – 50 grams of carbohydrates with a high glycemic index. Why lean protein? Because fat slows the absorption of protein and carbs. During a brief window of opportunity after your workout, protein synthesis occurs at the highest rate. This is due to the micro-trauma (broken-down muscle tissue) that occurred during your workout. Complete recovery will be optimized if you provide your muscles with a large supply of amino acids—the key components of protein—within 45 minutes after your training session. A whey protein shake is the best post-workout protein choice because it is so rapidly absorbed, and it has the highest efficiency ratio, or availability to the body, of all proteins. Why carbs with a high glycemic index? Immediately following your workout is the only time to eat carbs that rapidly absorb into the blood stream as the glucose causes an insulin spike. Insulin helps shuttle protein into the muscles, repairing and building new muscle. It is also an important hormone that regulates the storage, replacement, and use of glucose. During a workout, the body uses stored glucose that is in the blood and muscles as fuel for the activity. If the lost glucose isn’t refilled within about 45 minutes after training, your body rapidly goes from an anabolic state (muscle growth and repair) to a catabolic state (cannibalizing of the body’s muscle for protein and energy). Since insulin signals the body to replenish and store glycogen, and the release of insulin is best triggered by eating foods with a high glycemic index, it makes sense that eating carbohydrates with a high glycemic index, along with some lean protein, is the best post-workout choice. An effective and convenient post workout meal is a whey or soy protein supplement, which contains maltodextrin, or simple sugars, as its carb source.

17‘We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,’ they answered. 18‘Bring them here to me,

17‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’ 18At once they left their nets and followed him.

Above the doorway hangs a bumper stricker of a fish with WWJCD? inscribed across its body, sent by an American church along with a crate of bibles in response to our plea for life-saving aid.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims share a creation story from the Bible, found in the early chapters of the book of Genesis. Like many such stories, it begins with sky and earth intertwined in darkness. God first brings forth light, then separates what is above from what is below, thus making oceans, land, and sky. Although some people insist that Genesis 1 is a literal scientific account, it is best understood as what Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann calls a “liturgical poem,” a form for use in worship that invites a community “to confess and celebrate the world as God has intended it.”4 In the opening pages of the Bible, a cosmic vision of creation unfolds with the making of plants and forests, the stars and suns and moons beyond, all the fishes and birds and animals, and finally human beings. At each juncture, God proclaims blessing on what has been made, declaring it good, and with the creation of humankind the whole of the universe is pronounced “very good.” At the end of the poem, God sends human beings out to till and keep the soil and to work on behalf of the earth, delighting in all its gifts.5

20 At length the son of Hanani coming to the fish-pool of Jesus to destroy it, the water vanished away, and the Lord Jesus said to him, 21 In like manner as this water had vanished, so shall thy life vanish; and presently the boy died. 22 Another time, when the Lord Jesus was coming home in the evening with Joseph, he met a boy, who ran so hard against him, that he threw him down; 23 To whom the Lord Jesus said, As thou hast thrown me down, so shalt thou fall, nor ever rise. 24 And that moment the boy fell down and died.

shortened and become small, so that I am unable to redeem? Or is there no power in me to deliver? Behold, at my rebuke, I will make the sea into a desert. I will turn rivers into dry land. The fish will rot for lack of water and will die of thirst.

Later that day, after we talked more and things were starting to settle down, Dad said, “I’m going to put you on house arrest. You cannot leave this house for three months. You’re going to study the Bible with me, and you’re going to duck hunt every single day.” “All right, Dad. I think I can do that.” During the months I spent at Mom and Dad’s, I hunted, fished, and studied the Bible every day with Dad. I began to realize that all this time, I had been living off of my dad’s faith. I’d never had my own relationship with God. For the first time, I started to find my own faith. As I looked at God’s Word with fresh eyes, I realized that repenting and turning to God meant I was saved and forgiven. Jesus’ blood covered my sins and redeemed me from the path of destruction I was on. I couldn’t ever have been good enough on my own. Back when I was in the middle of that crazy time of drugging and drinking, I remember feeling guilty once in a while and knowing I needed God. But then the thoughts would come. I’m not good enough. Or I’m just not quite ready. I think that’s the number one excuse because you’ll never be perfect, and you’ll never be ready. Getting right with God and getting rid of the bad stuff in your life takes him. You have to take it one step at a time. It’s not easy, I’m not perfect, and I still struggle.

In what ways can people experience God today? (4:8–10) In some respects, experiencing God is like experiencing air. We rarely think about air, yet our lives are fully dependent on its unseen presence. It’s the same with God: although we may ignore God (Isa 1:2–4; 17:10), deny his existence (Ps 14:1) or even be ignorant of who he is (Ac 17:22–23, 30), we remain as connected to God as a fish is connected to the water in which it thrives. However, people certainly do experience God on many different occasions and in many different ways: seeing the power of creation (Ps 29:1–11); experiencing the warmth of a caring community (Gal 6:2); being the recipient of specific acts of kindness (Eph 4:32); hearing the testimonies of others (Mt 5:13–16); observing God’s work in the lives of others (1Th 1:2–10); having dreams or visions (Da 7:1–8:27); reading the words of Scripture (Ps 119:1–176); observing miracles or mighty wonders (Jn 12:20–33); or having direct interaction with the divine presence of God (Ex 33:1–23). Some of these are fairly common experiences, while others happen only occasionally or under special circumstances.

Billions are descending from freedom and dignity into fatalistic despair. A divorce may be necessary but at the end of the day it is resignation. Abortion is sold as “choice” but in most cases, it is fatalism—a belief that the child or the mother cannot have a good life without taking the baby’s life. Individuals resigning themselves to the death of their marriage or baby are like the fish that lost faith, and therefore hope. Even the mainstream Western church is being corrupted.4

O LORD, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!        Your glory is higher than the heavens. 2 You have taught children and infants        to tell of your strength,[*]   silencing your enemies        and all who oppose you. 3 When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—        the moon and the stars you set in place— 4 what are mere mortals that you should think about them,        human beings that you should care for them?[*] 5 Yet you made them only a little lower than God[*]        and crowned them[*] with glory and honor. 6 You gave them charge of everything you made,        putting all things under their authority— 7 the flocks and the herds        and all the wild animals, 8 the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea,        and everything that swims the ocean currents. 9 O LORD, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!

really matter what you put in there, it is foul-smelling stuff. Pepper, sulfur, vinegar, turned milk, or fish heads if you want. One of my favorite passages in the Bible is actually in the Apocrypha, in the Book of Tobit, and it is the story of Tobias and the Angel. There’s one part of the story of Tobias and the Angel where they’re exorcising evil spirits from a house, and they make an exorcism incense, and one of the ingredients is fish heads. The instructions are, you make this incense, you take it into the house, light it, leave the house and don’t go back for three days, because nothing wants to be in there for three days. It’s a foul stench of exorcism, and so this ritual uses a foul stench-filled incense. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s unpleasant and acrid. That’s why vinegar is one of the important ingredients because it makes it acrid. So you’ve got his nasty, acrid smoke that stings your eyes, and you basically go on a rant. You wear a rough robe, of horsehair or sack

humans have been misunderstanding YHWH’s actions and words since the very beginning. The examples are almost too numerous to recount: He promised us a Savior. We expected a conquering hero on a white horse; instead He sent us a humble carpenter on a donkey. To meet a giant, He sent a shepherd boy with a stone and a sling. To protect His people from the wrath of Persia, He prepared a young Jewish maiden. To give the city of Nineveh a second chance, He sent a giant fish. We could go on and tell of a young Hebrew man sold into slavery who became the second most powerful ruler in Egypt, or of a harlot who would be the grandmother of a future king. The bottom line is that YHWH often does things that do not make sense based upon our human experience and expectations.

One of the problems facing the church today is gossip. Gossip is worldliness, it's from the Enemy, and it's destructive. Listen to what the bible says about gossip in James 3:7-12 (NLT), 'People can tame all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, but no one can tame the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison. Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God. And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right! Does a spring of water bubble out with both fresh water and bitter water? Does a fig tree produce olives, or a grapevine produce figs? No, and you can't draw fresh water from a salty spring.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? 11If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!

There were no oceans on Oasis, no large bodies of water, and presumably no fish. He wondered whether this would cause comprehension problems when it came to certain crucial fish-related Bible stories. There were so many of those: Jonah and the whale, the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, the Galilean disciples being fishermen, the whole ‘fishers of men’ analogy . . . the bit in Matthew 13 about the kingdom of heaven being like a net cast into the sea, gathering fish of every kind . . . Even in the opening chapter of Genesis, the first animals God made were sea creatures. How much of the Bible would he have to give up as untranslatable?

Pastor Madison looked steadily at the jurors, cleared his throat and started to read.          “Marriage is what brings us together today. Where did the idea of marriage come from? What is marriage? Does marriage have any purpose in this modern age? Is it really a blessed arrangement? Why shouldn’t anyone, or any group of someones, be allowed to marry? Is marriage in danger of extinction? These are all questions, along with others, that we will examine today and in the next three week’s sermons.             “First, where did the idea of marriage come from? Who thought it up? I’m going to read to you a few sentences from a sermon given by a Swedish Pastor named Ake Green. Pay attention to what he said, because he was arrested and convicted by the Swedish judicial system for what he said. As you listen to the beginning of Pastor Green’s sermon, ask yourself if you think his words are hate words. The Swedish government charged and convicted Pastor Green with a hate crime for these words. Here are Pastor Green’s opening few paragraphs:             “From the beginning God created humans as man and woman. We begin in Genesis 1:27-28: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."             “Here, God's Word clearly states that you were created to be Father and Mother - as man and woman - designed for parenthood. The Lord states that very clearly here….The marriage institution is also clearly defined in Genesis 2:24, where it says: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."             “Only man and wife are referred to here. It is not stated any other way; you can never imply or interpret it to mean that you can have whatever sexual partner you wish to have. ….”             “What was it that led to these cities (Sodom, mentioned 30 times in the Bible, and Gomorrah) perishing, losing their dignity, disappearing from the face of the Earth? It was because they lived in homosexuality. It will be the same on that day when the Son of Man is revealed; consequently, this is a sign of the times we are facing. As people lived in the time of Lot, so shall they live before Jesus returns. This is something we cannot deny in any way. Jesus says that the lifestyle of Sodom shall be active in the whole Earth before the coming of Jesus. The one who represents this lifestyle today goes against God's order of creation.

The Bible tells us, “the young woman was lovely and beautiful….” Not just lovely, not just beautiful, but lovely AND beautiful — that’s Esther. In the King James translation, she is described as “fair and beautiful”. The word “fair” comes from the word “to’ar”. This word, when literally translated, means lovely on the outside. Esther’s outward appearance was very pleasing.2 The word “beautiful” comes from the word “tobe”. This word, literally translated, goes far beyond external beauty. It means “good in the widest sense, used as a noun…. also as an adverb: beautiful, cheerful, at ease, fair, in favor, glad, good….. gracious, joyful, kindly…. loving, merry, most pleasant, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, well.”3 These words give us a much more accurate view of Esther: she is more than beautiful! Please take note that Esther’s circumstance did not dictate her attitude. Esther’s life does not sound easy by any means. First, she is living in a city that has not been entirely friendly to Jewish people, even though the captivity is over. On top of that, she has lost her parents and any other family other than Mordecai. In spite of these hardships, she is described as lovely and beautiful — inside and out! Esther has not allowed herself to become bitter over circumstances that were out of her control. This is a wonderful example for us to follow: as we are faithful to God, He is faithful to us. Rather than allowing situations to make us disagreeable, we need to keep our focus on the Lord. Allow Him to move through everything that comes to you, both good and bad. In the end, you are a child of the true King! Though great times and hard times, God is working out a perfect plan for you! These inner strengths and qualities in Esther are about to become necessary for her very survival. If the hardships of life in Persia could not make Esther bitter, another test of her character is about to come: Ahasuerus’ servants are out collecting young women as potential candidates to be queen. At first, such an opportunity may seem exciting, but consider that these young women are being given no choice in the matter. Possibly afraid, definitely alone, each were taken from their homes and families by force. So it was, when the king’s command and decree were heard, and when many young women were gathered at Shushan the citadel, under the custody of Hegai, that Esther also was taken to the king’s palace, into the care of Hegai the custodian of the women. Esther 2:8 NJKV After the virgins in the kingdom are gathered, they are taken to Hegai “the custodian of the women”. Hegai is going to “weed out” any women whom he thinks will not be suitable for the king. He will look them over and if they are pretty enough to keep around, he orders their beauty preparations. What will Hegai think when he meets Esther? Now the young woman pleased him, and she obtained his favor; so he readily gave beauty preparations to her, besides her allowance. Then seven choice maidservants were provided for her from the king’s palace, and he moved her and her maidservants to the best place in the house of the women. Esther 2:9 Esther impressed Hegai from the first, and he immediately agreed to begin her beauty preparations as well as her diet (“her allowance”). Esther is going on to “round two” in this “pageant”! Initially this may sound glamorous, but this is truly a “fish out of water” situation for Esther. Remember the description of the palace in chapter 1? Esther has never seen anything like the excess in Ahasuerus’ palace and, considering her background, is probably very uncomfortable. She has been raised to have a simple faith in God, and this palace may feel to her like one huge tribute to a man: Ahasuerus (and knowing him, it probably is!). Add this to her already isolated and lonely feeling that must have

Then Jesus took the loaves of bread, thanked God for them, and gave them to the people … He did the same with the fish, giving as much as the people wanted. John 6:11

God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them        reflecting our nature    So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,        the birds in the air, the cattle,    And, yes, Earth itself,        and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.

I cannot agree with the gentleman in the magenta coat that Potter’s Pond is only a wretched little hamlet. But it is certainly a very remote and secluded village; so that it seems quite outlandish, like a village of a hundred years ago. The spinsters are really spinsters — damn it, you could almost imagine you saw them spin. The ladies are not just ladies. They are gentlewomen; and their chemist is not a chemist, but an apothecary; pronounced potecary. They do just admit the existence of an ordinary doctor like myself to assist the apothecary. But I am considered rather a juvenile innovation, because I am only fifty-seven years old and have only been in the county for twenty-eight years. The solicitor looks as if he had known it for twenty-eight thousand years. Then there is the old Admiral, who is just like a Dickens illustration; with a house full of cutlasses and cuttle-fish and equipped with a telescope.’ ‘I suppose,’ said Father Brown, ‘there are always a certain number of Admirals washed up on the shore. But I never understood why they get stranded so far inland.’ ‘Certainly no dead-alive place in the depths of the country is complete without one of these little creatures,’ said the doctor. ‘And then, of course, there is the proper sort of clergyman; Tory and High Church in a dusty fashion dating from Archbishop Laud; more of an old woman than any of the old women. He’s a white-haired studious old bird, more easily shocked than the spinsters. Indeed, the gentlewomen, though Puritan in their principles, are sometimes pretty plain in their speech; as the real Puritans were. Once or twice I have known old Miss Carstairs-Carew use expressions as lively as anything in the Bible. The dear old clergyman is assiduous in reading the Bible; but I almost fancy he shuts his eyes when he comes to those words.

26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

The gang of us sat around, and moved our thighs on the horsehair or on the split-bottom and stared down at the unpainted boards of the floor or at the design on the linoleum mat in the middle of the floor as though we were attending a funeral and owed the dead man some money. The linoleum mat was newish, and the colors were still bright—reds and tans and blues slick and varnished-looking—a kind of glib, impertinent, geometrical island floating there in the midst of the cornerless shadows and the acid mummy smell and the slow swell of Time which had fed into this room, day by day since long back, as into a landlocked sea where the fish were dead and the taste was brackish on your tongue. You had the feeling that if the Boss and Mr. Duffy and Sadie Burke and the photographer and the reporters and you and the rest got cuddled up together on that linoleum mat it would lift off the floor by magic and scoop you all up together and make a lazy preliminary circuit of the room and whisk right out the door or out the roof like the floating island of Gulliver or the carpet in the Arabian Nights and carry you off where you and it belonged and leave Old Man Stark sitting there as though nothing had happened, very clean and razor-nicked, with his gray hair plastered down damp, sitting there by the table where the big Bible and the lamp and the plush-bound album were under the blank, devouring gaze of the whiskered face in the big crayon portrait above the mantel shelf.

Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.

Pharaoh’s heart is rigid,” Yahweh said to Moses,“he resists sending the people; but you will go to him. Wait, and meet him by the way: it is the morning he goes down to the riverbank. ‘Yahweh, God of the Hebrews, sent me’—you will say this to him—‘“Send me my people, to serve me in the desert. Until now you have not really heard—Yahweh speaks so—but in this it will be revealed to you: I am Yahweh. The fish in the Nile will die, the river will be a stench: it will be impossible for Egypt to drink from the Nile.

Vegetables. Fruits. Nuts. Seeds. Meats. Eggs. Fish. That’s it. For millions of years our ancestors survived purely from these 7 things. Typically, the women gathered the nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables while men hunted for meat. Together these food sources provided the necessary components of a complete diet that sustained healthy living. Climate, geography, and luck mainly determined how balanced these sources were. But remember, regardless of how much of each food they ate, these were the only foods available to our ancestors, so naturally our bodies have adapted to their consumption. It wasn’t until about ten thousand years ago, a blip in our time on Earth, with the cultivation of plants and domestication of animals, that large quantities of breads, potatoes, rice, pasta, and dairy became available. These relatively new sources of calories were the main reason our complex societies were able to develop, and our overabundance is to a large degree due to them. However, for millions of years our bodies evolved on diets without any of these. The relatively miniscule time span since the domestication of plants and animals has not prepared us to live healthy lives with diets consisting of too many breads, pastas, rice, and potatoes. Yes, life expectancy has greatly increased in this time span, but this can be attributed not to new foods, but rather to man’s no longer having to live life on-the-go while dealing with hunger, thirst, illness, injuries, extreme cold, and fighting dangerous animals with primitive tools. So think of these new calories as little more than fillers. If you find yourself overwhelmed by nutritional definitions and rules, just ask yourself this: For millions of years before the domestication of plants and animals, what did we eat?

Believers hold that every word in the Bible has not only been inspired but also literally dictated by God. Thus we are to believe every verse and every story as spoken directly by God, and this creates some serious problems, including: Intellectual difficulty with overgeneralizations, conflicts with science, and contradictions. Moral difficulties where God is portrayed at times as partial, vengeful, and deceptive, while in other parts of the Bible universal love is taught; the history of the Hebrews in the Bible shows progress in moral concern rather than a static code; injustice in the Bible including the slaughter of innocent people and minor transgressors. Moral difficulty with concept of endless torture in hell. Problem with occasions of Jesus expressing vindictiveness, discourtesy, narrow-mindedness, and ethnic and religious intolerance. Intellectual difficulties with the human decision-making process for deciding the books of the Bible and questions of the value of other writings not included. Non-uniqueness of Judeo-Christian teachings and practices. Other religions have similar rituals and beliefs, including sacrifice and vicarious atonement through the death of a god, union of a god and a virgin, trinities, the mother Mary (Myrrha, Maya, Maia, and Maritala), a place for good people who die and a hell of fire, an apocalypse, the first man falling from the god’s favor by doing something forbidden or having been tempted by some evil animal, catastrophic floods in which the whole race is exterminated (with details analogous to the story of the flood), a man being swallowed by a fish and then spat out alive, miracles as proof of power and divine messengers. Moral difficulties with intolerance and oppression in today’s society, which are based on the Bible. Intellectual difficulties with New Testament authors’ interpretation of events as fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. There are a number of references to “scriptures” that simply don’t exist.

God blessed them and said to them,a “Be fruitful and increase in number;b fill the earthc and subdue it. Rule overd the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.e

But if he seems to be fishing for pertinent information with overly personal questions, if he keeps trying to find ways that he can commiserate with you so that you will confide in him, or if he is using fancy language and flattery to make you feel ingratiated and charmed by him, then that is a bad sign that he is trying to get an emotional hook into you to manipulate you.

In Scripture the sea represents chaos, its churning, unpredictable waters teeming with monsters and demons, threatening death. So when Jesus rebukes the stormy sea, when he commands its fish and walks on its waves, he’s not just showing off; he’s making a statement about the God who reigns over even our most visceral, primal fears, the God who, in the words of the psalmist, “makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” (Isaiah 43:16 ESV). “Take courage!” Jesus tells the dumbfounded disciples as he walks across the sea. “It is I. Don’t be afraid” (Matthew 14:27).

Things go wrong when you fish, and those chances increase when you’re in a boat. Often this has to do with what’s known as human error. This is the preferred term because it doesn’t name the human who made the error, especially when that human is me. Once, Dave and I were in his canoe on the last quarter mile of a long day on the water. We were around a bend from the takeout. Beyond one final rapids we would pull over and load up his van. The only thing standing in our way was a large rock. The current picked up and moved us faster, but it would be easy to avoid the rock. It would almost be harder to hit it than to miss it. I was in the bow, Dave was in the stern. Without question he was the captain, I’m not sure a fifteen-foot canoe has a captain, but Dave would be the captain of anything from a kayak to a steamer. “Go to the left of the rock,” he bellowed. This could not have been clearer and took on some urgency as the rock got nearer. Yet we rowed at cross-purposes and continued to head straight toward it. In search of clarity I shouted: “Our left or the rock’s left?” The metaphysical nature of this question has remained with me over the years. If it appeared in a Basho haiku, it might be considered cryptically wise or at least a noble mistranslation. Canoe in summer Floats slowly down the river Past the large rock’s left Not this time. The last thing I remember hearing, which echoed in my ears underwater as we turned over, was Dave saying emphatically, “The rock doesn’t have a left!” My tendency to overanalyze simple situations was captured in this question, though I’m embarrassed to admit in private moments it still makes sense to me that a rock can have a left. Hitting a rock with a canoe may have many reasons but one result. The canoe tipped at once, decisively, and Dave’s only concern was the fate of his tackle box, which occupied a place in his spiritual landscape like the Gutenberg Bible. Thankfully, the river wasn’t deep there, just a few feet. Once the tackle box was salvaged—which he always kept tightly shut in case of this exact sort of catastrophe—Dave was in a fairly agreeable mood. He didn’t care about getting wet or even mention it. He had the grin of a teenager who’s just talked his way out of a speeding ticket. This was not the first canoe he’d tipped out of. He was seventy-five years old.

This is the path of Torah: Bread and salt shall you eat, and drink water by measure; you shall sleep upon the ground, and live a life of privation, and in Torah shall be your work. And if you do thus, “You shall be happy, and it will be well with you” (Ps. 128:2)—Happy [refers to] this world, and well to the world to come. Greatest is the Torah, for it gives life to those who perform it[s commandments] in this world and in the world to come, as it is said, “It is a tree of life to those who hold on to it, and all who maintain it are blessed” [Prov. 3:18]. —m. Abot 6:4, 7 Once the wicked regime [Rome] decreed that Jews be forbidden to study the Torah. Pappus b. Judah subsequently found R. Aqiba nonetheless convening groups in public for the study of Torah. “Aqiba,” he said, “are you not afraid of the regime?” He said: “Let me answer you with a comparison: It is like a fox that was walking along the river-bank when he saw some fish moving in groups from place to place. He said to them: ‘What are you fleeing from?’ They said: ‘From the nets that the human beings cast over us.’ He said to them: ‘Wouldn’t you like to climb up onto the dry land so that you and I might live together as your ancestors and mine once did?’ They said: ‘Are you indeed the one who is alleged to be the cleverest of animals? You are not clever but foolish! For if there is danger in the place where we do live [that is, our natural environment], is it not all the more so in the place where we must die?’ So is it with us now: for we sit and study Torah, about which it is said, ‘For it is your life and your length of days’ (Deut. 30:20); were we to abandon it, we would be in far greater danger.” — b. Berakhot 61b

The New Testament was written as the Age of Pisces was beginning. It was an update of the Mosaic Old Testament. The age was moving from Aries to Pisces. Thus, the Gospels of the New Testament have many fish references. “Jesus” is the Greek version of the Hebrew Joshua. The biblical Joshua was the “sun of nun” (Joshua 1:1). In Hebrew, “Nun” means fish.

God made them male and female- two words not crafted by a person, or group, or society, or culture, or America for that matter, but used by God to describe what He'd make and exactly what He'd designed them to be. Out of the same God came two different bodies. And after creating them, lastly, after all that had been made before, God looked at them and everything else and called it and them good. The plants? Good. The stars? Good The fish's fins? Good. What about Adam and Even? What about their eyes, and how their mind made them see the same thing through a different lens? Or their hands, and how Adam's were wide enough to hold a hoof or two and Eve's small enough to fit a bird in it. Or Eve's voice and how it sounded like the morning and his, sounding like he'd just spit out a mountain. Or his brow bone, strong as a fist. Her face, soft as an amen. All of this, God said was a 'very' good thing. Why? Because a good God made it.

You know that many runners enter a race, and only one of them wins the prize. So run to win!’ That’s what it says in 1 Corinthians 9:24.” “But I don’t think the Bible means a fishing contest,” said Alexis.

And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.

day and the night and to divide light from darkness. God saw that it was good. 19Evening came and morning came: the fourth day. 20God said, "Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth within the vault of heaven." And so it was. 21God created great sea-serpents and every kind of living creature with which the waters teem, and every kind of winged creature. God saw that it was good. 22God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas; and let the birds multiply upon the earth." 23Evening came and morning came: the fifth day. 24God said, "Let the earth produce every kind of living creature: cattle, reptiles, and every kind of wild beast." And so it was. 25God made every kind of wild beast, every kind of cattle, and every kind of land reptile. God saw that it was good. 26God said, "Let us" make man! in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth." 27God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. 28God blessed them, saying to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth." 29God said, "See, I give you all the seed-bearing plants that are upon the whole earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this shall be your food. 30To all wild beasts, all birds of heaven and all living reptiles on the earth I

Yo mama is so stupid… she thought Dunkin’ Donuts was a basketball team! Yo mama is so stupid… she tripped over a wireless phone! Yo mama is so stupid… she failed a survey! Yo mama is so stupid… she got locked in a grocery store and starved to death! Yo mama is so stupid… when they said that it is chilly outside, she went outside with a bowl and a spoon. Yo mama is so stupid… she tried to drown a fish! Yo mama is so stupid… she tried to throw a bird off a cliff! Yo mama is so stupid… she took a knife to a drive-by! Yo mama is so stupid… she thought Boyz II Men was a daycare center! Yo mama is so stupid… she bought a ticket to Xbox Live! Yo mama is so stupid… she thought she couldn’t buy a Gameboy because she is a girl! Yo mama is so stupid… she thought a scholarship was a ship full of students! Yo mama is so stupid… she threw a clock out the window to see time fly! Yo mama is so stupid… she went to the ocean to surf the Internet! Yo mama is so stupid… you can hear the ocean in her head! Yo mama is so stupid… she thought Hamburger Helper came with a friend! Yo mama is so stupid… she got locked in Furniture World and slept on the floor. Yo mama is so stupid… she sits on the floor and watches the couch. Yo mama is so stupid… she stayed up all night trying to catch up on her sleep! Yo mama is so stupid… she got her hand stuck in a website! Yo mama is so stupid… she thought Christmas wrap was Snoop Dogg’s new song! Yo mama is so stupid… she can't pass a blood test. Yo mama is so stupid… she thought the Harlem Shake was a drink! Yo mama is so stupid… she ordered a cheeseburger without the cheese. Yo mama is so stupid… she tried to climb Mountain Dew! Yo mama is so stupid… that she burned down the house with a CD burner. Yo mama is so stupid… she went to PetSmart to take an IQ test! Yo mama is so stupid… she went to the library to find Facebook! Yo mama is so stupid… she stole free bread. Yo mama is so stupid… she sold her car for gas money. Yo mama is so stupid… she stopped at a stop sign and waited for it to turn green. Yo mama is so stupid… when she asked me what kind of jeans I am wearing I said, “Guess”, and she said, “Levis”. Yo mama is so stupid… she called me to ask me for my phone number! Yo mama is so stupid… she worked at an M&M factory and threw out all the W's. Yo mama is so stupid… she tried to commit suicide by jumping out the basement window. Yo mama is so stupid… she got lost in a telephone booth. Yo mama is so stupid… she stuck a phone in her butt to make a booty call! Yo mama is so stupid… I said that drinks were on the house and she went to get a ladder! Yo mama is so stupid… she went to a dentist to fix her Bluetooth! Yo mama is so stupid… she put lipstick on her forehead to make up her mind. Yo mama is so stupid… it took her two hours to watch 60 seconds.

Biddy Chambers did. Had she given up, no one would have criticized her. Had she walked away, no one would have thought less of her. Her God-given assignment was to partner with her husband in teaching the Bible. They met in 1908, and by 1910 they were married, living in London, and busy about their dream of starting a Bible college. They purchased a large home and made rooms available for students and missionaries on furlough. Biddy’s training was in stenography. She took careful notes of her husband’s lectures and turned them into correspondence courses. At the outbreak of World War I, he felt a call to minister to soldiers stationed in Egypt. He and Biddy and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter moved to the Middle East, where he took a position as a chaplain. Their ministry continued. He taught, she transcribed. He lectured; she captured his messages. It was a perfect partnership. Then came the setback. Her husband’s complications from appendicitis rendered Biddy a widow. Her husband died at the age of forty-three. She buried him in Egypt and returned to London to face this question: How could she partner with her husband if her husband was gone? All dreams of a teaching ministry would need to be abandoned, right? No. Biddy chose to give God her loaves and fishes. She set about the work of turning her husband’s notes into pamphlets and mailing them to friends and acquaintances. Eventually they were compiled into a book. My Utmost for His Highest was published in 1927.5

An abundance of other English versions of the Bible had followed Tyndale’s original, many affectionately identified by their misprints – the Place-maker’s Bible (‘Blessed are the place-makers’), the Wicked Bible, in which the seventh commandment lost its ‘not’ and became ‘Thou shalt commit adultery’, the Murderers’ Bible (a misprint for ‘murmurers’), the Breeches Bible (Adam and Eve made themselves trousers), the Bug Bible (‘thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night’), the Standing Fishes Bible (instead of ‘fishers’ standing on the river bank), the Vinegar Bible (instead of the ‘Parable of the Vineyard’).

raised his arms like a magician or religious leader or politician; it was hard to tell which in this day and age

Am I such a devil that I have to have Allah watching me from the front and Christ watching me from the back?

Something which, once made, can never be destroyed, once destroyed, can never be repaired.

I killed him because I am Turkish and he was Greek. But when I looked at his face, as he looked up at me blindly, I couldn't see what separated us.

The Ninevites apparently did not witness the sign of Jonah in the fish’s belly; they repented instead through his preaching. One Jewish tradition claims that Jonah tried to avoid preaching to Ninevites lest their repentance shame Israel for failing to do likewise (Mekilta Pisha 1.80–82; cf. Jnh 3:10–4:2); if any of Jesus’ hearers were familiar with this tradition, it would make Jesus’ comparison here all the more graphic.

Yo mama is so stupid… she tried to drown a fish!

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. SN 1:27 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

The penultimate is to recognize that if we commit ourselves to God, we can trust that he is committed to us. Jesus once asked his disciples, “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?” (Luke 11:11). He then reasoned that God is infinitely more generous than earthly fathers and will “give the Holy Spirit” to anyone who asks (Luke 11:13). This does not mean the Bible guarantees that life will go well for Christians—far from it. However, when disappointments and difficulties drive Christian believers more into the arms of God—to make him more and more their meaning, satisfaction, identity, and hope—they will find as time goes on that they are becoming far more grounded, resilient, happy, and wise.

I studied the Bible very carefully in those days, but there was little that was favourable to dogs in the Old Testament. Tobias took his dog with him on his journey with the angel, but it played no part in the story at all, not even when a fish tried to eat Tobias. A dog was an unclean beast, of course, in those times. He only came into his own with Christianity. It was the Christians who began to carve dogs in stone in the cathedrals, and even while they were still doubtful about women’s souls they were beginning to think that maybe a dog had one, though they couldn’t get the Pope to pronounce one way or the other, not even the Archbishop of Canterbury