Prophet Saw Quotes

I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not. I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there. I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not. With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only 'anqa's habitation. Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even. Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range. I fared then to the scene of the Prophet's experience of a great divine manifestation only a "two bow-lengths' distance from him" but God was not there even in that exalted court. Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.

Seek knowledge from the Cradle to the Grave

Allah will not give mercy to anyone, except those who give mercy to other creatures.

When Allah created his creatures He wrote above His throne: ‘Verily, my Compassion overcomes my wrath.

Acquire knowledge, it enables its professor to distinguish right from wrong; it lights the way to heaven. It is our friend in the desert, our company in solitude and companion when friendless. It guides us to happiness, it sustains us in misery, it is an ornament amongst friends and an armour against enemies.

What actions are most excellent? To gladden the heart of human beings, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and to remove the sufferings of the injured.

The Prophet (SAW) said: 'Knowledge is only gained through learning and clemency is only gained through perseverance.

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition. Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.

In the summer heat the reapers say, “We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.

He was shy, timid, gentle, and kind, but he wrote gruesome and painful books. He saw the world as full of invisible demons, who tear apart and destroy defenseless people. He was too clear-sighted and too wise to be able to live; he was too weak to fight, he had that weakness of noble, beautiful people who are not able to do battle against the fear of misunderstandings, unkindness, or intellectual lies. Such persons know beforehand that they are powerless and go down in defeat in such a way that they shame the victor. He knew people as only people of great sensitivity are able to know them, as somebody who is alone and sees people almost prophetically, from one flash of a face. He knew the world in a deep and extraordinary manner. He was himself a deep and extraordinary world.

If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.

In that face, deformed by hatred of philosophy, I saw for the first time the portrait of the Antichrist, who does not come from the tribe of Judas, as his heralds have it, or from a far country. The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possessed from the seer. Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. Jorge did a diabolical thing because he loved his truth so lewdly that he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood.

Ivy held no claim over me," he said softly. "You, on the other hand, you claimed me from the moment I first saw you.

Mathois said, ‘The nearer a man comes to God, the more he sees himself to be a sinner. Isaiah the prophet saw the Lord and knew himself to be wretched and unclean (Is. 6:5).

The Merciful is kind to those who are merciful. If you show compassion to your fellow creatures in this world, then those in heaven shall be compassionate toward you. -The Prophet Muhammad (SAW), as narrated by Abd'Allah bin Amr from "The Bounty of Allah

Life is an island in an ocean of solitude and seclusion. Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees its dreams, and flowers its loneliness, and it is in the middle of an ocean of solitude and seclusion. Your life, my friend, is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains,secluded its happiness and far away in its compassion and hidden in its secrets and mysteries. I saw you, my friend, sitting upon a mound of gold, happy in your wealth and great in your riches and believing that a handful of gold is the secret chain that links the thoughts of the people with your own thoughts and links their feeling with your own. I saw you as a great conqueror leading a conquering army toward the fortress, then destroying and capturing it. On second glance I found beyond the wall of your treasures a heart trembling in its solitude and seclusion like the trembling of a thirsty man within a cage of gold and jewels, but without water. I saw you, my friend, sitting on a throne of glory surrounded by people extolling your charity, enumerating your gifts, gazing upon you as if they were in the presence of a prophet lifting their souls up into the planets and stars. I saw you looking at them, contentment and strength upon your face, as if you were to them as the soul is to the body. On the second look I saw your secluded self standing beside your throne, suffering in its seclusion and quaking in its loneliness. I saw that self stretching its hands as if begging from unseen ghosts. I saw it looking above the shoulders of the people to a far horizon, empty of everything except its solitude and seclusion. I saw you, my friend, passionately in love with a beautiful woman, filling her palms with your kisses as she looked at you with sympathy and affection in her eyes and sweetness of motherhood on her lips; I said, secretly, that love has erased his solitude and removed his seclusion and he is now within the eternal soul which draws toward itself, with love, those who were separated by solitude and seclusion. On the second look I saw behind your soul another lonely soul, like a fog, trying in vain to become a drop of tears in the palm of that woman. Your life, my friend, is a residence far away from any other residence and neighbors. Your inner soul is a home far away from other homes named after you. If this residence is dark, you cannot light it with your neighbor's lamp; if it is empty you cannot fill it with the riches of your neighbor; were it in the middle of a desert, you could not move it to a garden planted by someone else. Your inner soul, my friend, is surrounded with solitude and seclusion. Were it not for this solitude and this seclusion you would not be you and I would not be I. If it were not for that solitude and seclusion, I would, if I heard your voice, think myself to be speaking; yet, if I saw your face, i would imagine that I were looking into a mirror.

When I met Wittgenstein, I saw that Schlick's warnings were fully justified. But his behavior was not caused by any arrogance. In general, he was of a sympathetic temperament and very kind; but he was hypersensitive and easily irritated. Whatever he said was always interesting and stimulating and the way in which he expressed it was often fascinating. His point of view and his attitude toward people and problems, even theoretical problems, were much more similar to those of a creative artist than to those of a scientist; one might almost say, similar to those of a religious prophet or a seer. When he started to formulate his view on some specific problem, we often felt the internal struggle that occurred in him at that very moment, a struggle by which he tried to penetrate from darkness to light under an intense and painful strain, which was even visible on his most expressive face. When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous effort, his answers came forth, his statement stood before us like a newly created piece of art or a divine revelation. Not that he asserted his views dogmatically ... But the impression he made on us was as if insight came to him as through divine inspiration, so that we could not help feeling that any sober rational comment of analysis of it would be a profanation.

whereas the Arabs were in favour of the man but against the message, the Jews were in favour of the message but against the man. For how could God send a Prophet who was not one of the chosen people? None the less, when the pilgrims brought news of the Prophet to Yathrib, the Jews were interested despite themselves and eagerly questioned them for more details; and when the Arabs of the oasis sensed this eagerness, and when they saw how the monotheistic nature of the message increased the interest of the rabbis tenfold, they could not fail to be impressed, as were the bearers of the tidings themselves.

- The Azan story - The five daily ritual prayers were regularly performed in congregation, and when the time for each prayer came the people would assemble at the site where the Mosque was being built. Everyone judged of the time by the position of the sun in the sky, or by the first signs of its light on the eastern horizon or by the dimming of its glow in the west after sunset; but opinions could differ, and the Prophet felt the need for a means of summoning the people to prayer when the right time had come. At first he thought of appointing a man to blow a horn like that of the Jews, but later he decided on a wooden clapper, ndqiis, such as the Oriental Christians used at that time, and two pieces of wood were fashioned together for that purpose. But they were never destined to be used; for one night a man of Khazraj, 'Abd Allah ibn Zayd, who had been at the Second 'Aqabah, had a dream whieh the next day he recounted to the Prophet: "There passed by me a man wearing two green garments and he carried in his hand a ndqiis, so I said unto him: "0 slave of God, wilt thou sell me that naqusi" "What wilt thou do with it?" he said. "We will summon the people to prayer with it," I answered. "Shall I not show thee a better way?" he said. "What way is that?" I asked, and he answered: "That thou shouldst say: God is most Great, Alldhu Akbar." The man in green repeated this magnification four times, then each of the following twice: I testify that there is no god but God; I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God; come unto the prayer; come unto salvation; God is most Great; and then once again there is no god but God. The Prophet said that this was a true vision, and he told him to go to Bilal, who had an excellent voice, and teach him the words exactly as he had heard them in his sleep. The highest house in the neighbourhood of the Mosque belonged to a woman of the clan of Najjar, and Bilal would come there before every dawn and would sit on the roof waiting for the daybreak. When he saw the first faint light in the east he would stretch out his arms and say in supplication: "0 God I praise Thee, and I ask Thy Help for Quraysh, that they may accept Thy religion." Then he would stand and utter the call to prayer.

The Most Excellent Jihad is the Conquest of One’s Self.

The Declaration of Independence . . . is much more than a political document. It constitutes a spiritual manifesto—revelation, if you will—declaring not for this nation only, but for all nations, the source of man's rights. Nephi, a Book of Mormon prophet, foresaw over 2,300 years ago that this event would transpire. The colonies he saw would break with Great Britain and that 'the power of the Lord was with [the colonists],' that they 'were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations' (1 Nephi 13:16, 19). "The Declaration of Independence was to set forth the moral justification of a rebellion against a long-recognized political tradition—the divine right of kings. At issue was the fundamental question of whether men's rights were God-given or whether these rights were to be dispensed by governments to their subjects. This document proclaimed that all men have certain inalienable rights. In other words, these rights came from God.

In after-years he would tell of an incident that took place at one of their encampments: "We were with the Prophet when a Companion brought in a fledgling that he had caught, and one of the parent birds came and threw itself into the hands of him who had taken its young. I saw men's faces full of wonderment, and the Prophet said: 'Do ye wonder at this bird? Ye have taken its young, and it hath thrown itself down in merciful tenderness unto its young. Yet I swear by God, Your Lord is more merciful unto you than is this bird unto its fledgling. And he told the man to put back the young bird where he had found it. He also said: "God hath a hundred mercies,and one of them hath He sent down amongst jinn and men and cattle and beasts of prey. Thereby they are kind and merciful unto one another, and thereby the wild creature inclineth in tenderness unto her offspring. And ninety-nine mercies hath God reserved unto Himself, that therewith He may show mercy unto His slaves on the day of the Resurrection.

O Allah, I take refuge in You from anxiety and sorrow, weakness and laziness, miserliness and cowardice, the burden of debts and from being over powered by men." (Prophet Muhammad SAW, narrated by al-Bukhari)

The Prophet saw him waver, too. He clamped his hand heavily against my father’s shoulder. “DO IT!” he bellowed. “DO IT NOW!” My father raised the hatchet above his head. It wobbled there, breath passing his chapped lips in ragged waves. He jammed his eyes shut as he brought the hatchet down and punched it into my wrists.

With astonishing consistency, the people of Kültepe and Duttepe all saw the same figures in their dreams at regular intervals: Boys: the female primary-school teacher Girls: Atatürk Men: the Holy Prophet Muhammad Women: a tall, anonymous Western film star Old men: an angel drinking milk Old women: a young postman bringing good news

The jealous and the foolish ones thought that they won after Prophet Muhammad [S.A.W.] had gone from Mecca to Medina! In history, they are only known as the evil conspirators but Hazrat Muhammad [S.A.W.] is the last prophet and the greatest human being!

The wise man has struggled to find You in his wisdom, and he has failed. The just man has striven to grasp You in his own justice, and he has gone astray. But the sinner, suddenly struck by the lightning of mercy that ought to have been justice, falls down in adoration of Your holiness: for he had seen what kings desired to see and never saw, what prophets foretold and never gazed upon, what the men of ancient times grew weary of expecting when they died. He has seen that Your love is so infinitely good that it cannot be the object of a human bargain.

The first is having a hard heart. A man saw the Prophet kiss a baby and asked him, “Do you kiss your children?” The Prophet said, “Indeed, I do.” The man then said, “I have ten children, I never kissed any of them,” which was considered and aspect of the pride of being a tough Arab. To that the Prophet replied, “There is nothing in my religion for a man whose heart is void of mercy.” The Prophet also said, “Have mercy on those on the earth, and He who is in heaven will have mercy on you.

Men, Kellhus had once told her, were like coins: they had two sides. Where one side of them saw, the other side of them was seen, and though all men were both at once, men could only truly know the side of themselves that saw and the side of others that was seen—they could only truly know the inner half of themselves and the outer half of others. At first Esmenet thought this foolish. Was not the inner half the whole, what was only imperfectly apprehended by others? But Kellhus bid her to think of everything she’d witnessed in others. How many unwitting mistakes? How many flaws of character? Conceits couched in passing remarks. Fears posed as judgements … The shortcomings of men—their limits—were written in the eyes of those who watched them. And this was why everyone seemed so desperate to secure the good opinion of others—why everyone played the mummer. They knew without knowing that what they saw of themselves was only half of who they were. And they were desperate to be whole. The measure of wisdom, Kellhus had said, was found in the distance between these two selves. Only afterward had she thought of Kellhus in these terms. With a kind of surpriseless shock, she realized that not once—not once!—had she glimpsed shortcomings in his words or actions. And this, she understood, was why he seemed limitless, like the ground, which extended from the small circle about her feet to the great circle about the sky. He had become her horizon. For Kellhus, there was no distance between seeing and being seen. He alone was whole. And what was more, he somehow stood from without and saw from within. He made whole …

Tie your camel and rely on God: Prophet Muhammad (saw)

That’s not the whole of it. As with many other faiths—including our own Christian one—a small group of zealots have distorted Islam to further their own agenda. When many women took to imitating the fashions of the Prophet’s wives, some Moslem men saw an opportunity to put all women under their thumb. They espoused foul laws like those allowing a man to beat his wife or force her into his bed.

One way or another, I think virtually all of the prophets and early Apostles had their visionary moments of our time--a view that gave them courage in their own less successful eras. Those early brethren knew an amazing amount about us. Prophets such as Moses, Nephi, and the brother of Jared saw the latter days in tremendously detailed vision. Some of what they saw wasn't pleasing, but surely all those earlier generations took heart from knowing that there would finally be one dispensation that would not fail.

Sheikh Ali Bin Haiti’s Dream Once al-Ghawth al-A’zam Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) was delivering a lecture. Sheikh Ali bin Haiti (r.a) was seated in front of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) in this gathering. During the lecture of the great Ghawth, Sheikh Ali bin Haiti (r.a) fell asleep. Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a), who saw this, descended from the Mimbar and stood in front of the sleeping Sheikh Ali bin Haiti (r.a) with both his hands folded in respect. After a while Sheikh Ali bin Haiti (r.a) awoke to find Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) standing in front of him. He immediately stood up in respect. Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) smiled and said, “The reason I am standing in front of him is because he was seeing the Holy Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in his dream and I was seeing the Prophet ﷺ with my physical eyes.

I now saw, in my situation, several points of similarity with that of the oxen. They were property, so was I; they were to be broken, so was I. Covey was to break me, I was to break them; break and be broken—such is life.

In the Middle of This Century” In the middle of this century we turned to each other With half faces and full eyes like an ancient Egyptian picture And for a short while. I stroked your hair In the opposite direction to your journey, We called to each other, Like calling out the names of towns Where nobody stops Along the route. Lovely is the world rising early to evil, Lovely is the world falling asleep to sin and pity, In the mingling of ourselves, you and I, Lovely is the world. The earth drinks men and their loves Like wine, To forget. It can’t. And like the contours of the Judean hills, We shall never find peace. In the middle of this century we turned to each other, I saw your body, throwing shade, waiting for me, The leather straps for a long journey Already tightening across my chest. I spoke in praise of your mortal hips, You spoke in praise of my passing face, I stroked your hair in the direction of your journey, I touched your flesh, prophet of your end, I touched your hand which has never slept, I touched your mouth which may yet sing. Dust from the desert covered the table At which we did not eat But with my finger I wrote on it The letters of your name.

This is why Isaiah and Samuel didn't care, why they clung to each other even when it was offensive to the people who had once shown them a kindness: it had to be known. And why would this be offensive? How could they hate the tiny bursts of light that shot through Isaiah's body every time he saw Samuel? Didn't everybody want somebody to glow like that? Even if it could only last for never, it had to be known. That way, it could be mourned by somebody, thus remembered—and maybe, someday, repeated.

When a man kills another man, the people say he is a murderer, but when the Emir kills him, the Emir is just. When a man robs a monastery, they say he is a thief, but when the Emir robs him of his life, the Emir is honourable. When a woman betrays her husband, they say she is an adulteress, but when the Emir makes her walk naked in the streets and stones her later, the Emir is noble. Shedding of blood is forbidden, but who made it lawful for the Emir? Stealing one's money is a crime, but taking away one's life is a noble act. Betrayal of a husband may be an ugly deed, but stoning of living souls is a beautiful sight. Shall we meet evil with evil and say this is the Law? Shall we fight corruption with greater corruption and say this is the Rule? Shall we conquer crimes with more crimes and say this is Justice? Had not the Emir killed an enemy in his past life? Had he not robbed his weak subjects of money and property? Had he not committed adultery? Was he infallible when he killed the murderer and hanged the thief in the tree? Who are those who hanged the thief in the tree? Are they angels descended from heaven, or men looting and usurping? Who cut off the murderer's head? Are they divine prophets, or soldiers shedding blood wherever they go? Who stoned that adulteress? Were they virtuous hermits who came from their monasteries, or humans who loved to commit atrocities with glee, under the protection of ignorant Law? What is Law? Who saw it coming with the sun from the depths of heaven? What human saw the heart of God and found its will or purpose? In what century did the angels walk among the people and preach to them, saying, "Forbid the weak from enjoying life, and kill the outlaws with the sharp edge of the sword, and step upon the sinners with iron feet?

But he was also known for being a lion. Once the Prophet was teaching a group of Qurayshī women. When they noticed that ʿUmar was coming, the women fled into another room. This was before the commandment for ḥijāb was revealed. ʿUmar came to the Prophet and saw that he was amused. ʿUmar asked the Prophet about what had amused him. The Prophet said, “It is these Qurayshī women: when they see you, they flee.” The Prophet called back the women, whereupon ʿUmar asked them, “How is it that you flee from me and you are not shy in front of the Messenger of God? He is more worthy of your shyness!” And they said, “You are harsher than the Messenger of God. He does not become angry.” And the Prophet laughed and said, “If you, ʿUmar, went down one path, Satan would take another.

Maggie held a pail of river water. She knew the well water would be too sweet. The river would have a bit of salt in it, and any healing comes first through hurt before it makes it to peace. That was a terrible thing, she knew. Yet there was nothing truer. She knew it was why so many people saw no point, didn’t have the resolve to make it through, and got stuck. A sucking mud. The sinking kind. There were a lot of people there. Knee-deep. Some submerged. Some clawing their way to solid ground. How few would make it.

You're innocent, Casaubon. You ran away instead of throwing stones, you got your degree, you didn't shoot anybody. Yet a few years ago I felt you, too, were blackmailing me. Nothing personal, just generational cycles. And then last year, when I saw the Pendulum, I understood everything." "Everything?" "Almost everything. You see, Casaubon, even the Pendulum is a false prophet. You look at it, you think it's the only fixed point in the cosmos. but if you detach it from the ceiling of the Conservatoire and hang it in a brothel, it works just the same. And there are other pendulums: there's one in New York, in the UN building, there's one in the science museum in San Francisco, and God knows how many others. Wherever you put it, Foucault's Pendulum swings from a motionless point while the earth rotates beneath it. Every point of the universe is a fixed point: all you have to do is hang the Pendulum from it." "God is everywhere." "In a sense, yes. That's why the Pendulum disturbs me. It promises the infinite, but where to put the infinite is left to me. So it isn't enough to worship the Pendulum; you still have to make a decision, you have to find the best point for it. And yet..." "And yet?" "And yet... You're not taking me seriously by any chance, are you, Casaubon? No, I can rest easy; we're not the type to take things seriously.... Well, as I was saying, the feeling you have is that you've spent a lifetime hanging the Pendulum in many paces, and it's never worked, but there, in the Conservatoire, it works.... Do you think there are special places in the universe? On the ceiling of this room, for example? No, nobody would believe that. You need atmosphere. I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but we don't recognize it. Maybe, to recognize it, we have to believe in it. Well, let's go see Signor Garamond." "To hang the Pendulum?" "Ah, human folly! Now we have to be serious. If you are going to be paid, the boss must see you, touch you, sniff you, and say you'll do. Come, let the boss touch you; the boss's touch heals scrofula.

I think that when Jesus was put before you, you did not see a God or a prophet, you did not see a lunatic or an innocent, you didn’t even see a human being. I think, Mister Pilate, that what you saw before you that morning was just one more Jew, and you didn’t hesitate. Why would you?

When John accuses "evildoers" of leading gullible people into sin, what troubles him is what troubled the Essenes: whether—or how much—to accommodate pagan culture. And when we see Jesus' earliest followers, including Peter, James, and Paul, not as we usually see them, as early Christians, but as they saw themselves—as Jews who had found God's messiah—we can see that they struggled with the same question. For when John charges that certain prophets and teachers are encouraging God's people to eat "unclean" food and engage in "unclean" sex, he is taking up arguments that had broken out between Paul and followers of James and Peter about forty years earlier—an argument that John of Patmos continues with a second generation of Paul's followers. For when we ask, who are the "evildoers" against whom John warns? we may be surprised by the answer. Those whom John says Jesus "hates" look very much like the Gentile followers of Jesus converted through Paul's teaching. Many commentators have pointed out that when we step back from John's angry rhetoric, we can see that the very practices John denounces are those that Paul had recommended.

I’ve found a way to drive Scythe half insane. Where is he? Tzana, pretend to quarrel with me.” “His name is Pet!” Tzana argued, so emphatic that Ela knew she meant it. Kien frowned. “No, he’s Scythe!” On the other side of the clearing, the huge destroyer stopped eating and began to pace. Ela was certain she saw him sweating.

There is too wide a gap, for most of us, between what we say and what we mean. Between our words and our thoughts. The first thing the Prophet Isaiah said when he saw the living and exalted God was, “Woe is me, I am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). Isaiah was one of the most godly men who ever walked the earth. But seeing God, he sees also, abrupt and stark and grief-making, his own duplicity. Then God does what only God can do: he sears his lips clean (Isaiah 6:6-7). And herein lies our hope: truly seeing God, we truly see ourselves, in all our woe-begotten duplicity; but crying out to God, we are truly and greatly helped.

From the time of Adam and Eve man has tried to escape suffering in any form. It is a mystery to all except the holy ones of God. The Prophets saw it as a call from God to repent.

Anyhow, I had found something out about an unknown privation, and I realized how a general love or craving, before it is explicit or before it sees its object, manifests itself as boredom or some other kind of suffering. And what did I think of myself in relation to the great occasions, the more sizable being of these books? Why, I saw them, first of all. So suppose I wasn't created to read a great declaration, or to boss a palatinate, or send off a message to Avignon, and so on, I could see, so there nevertheless was a share for me in all that had happened. How much of a share? Why, I knew there were things that would never, because they could never, come of my reading. But this knowledge was not so different from the remote but ever-present death that sits in the corner of the loving bedroom; though it doesn't budge from the corner, you wouldn't stop your loving. Then neither would I stop my reading. I sat and read. I had no eye, ear, or interest for anything else--that is, for usual, second-order, oatmeal, mere-phenomenal, snarled-shoelace-carfare-laundry-ticket plainness, unspecified dismalness, unknown captivities; the life of despair-harness or the life of organization-habits which is meant to supplant accidents with calm abiding. Well, now, who can really expect the daily facts to go, toil or prisons to go, oatmeal and laundry tickets and the rest, and insist that all moments be raised to the greatest importance, demand that everyone breathe the pointy, star-furnished air at its highest difficulty, abolish all brick, vaultlike rooms, all dreariness, and live like prophets or gods? Why, everybody knows this triumphant life can only be periodic. So there's a schism about it, some saying only this triumphant life is real and others that only the daily facts are. For me there was no debate, and I made speed into the former.

The process of industrialization is necessarily painful. It must involve the erosion of traditional patterns of life. But it was carried through with exceptional violence in Britain. It was unrelieved by any sense of national participation in communal effort, such as is found in countries undergoing a national revolution. Its ideology was that of the masters alone. Its messianic prophet was Dr Andrew Ure, who saw the factory system as ‘the great minister of civilization to the terraqueous globe’, diffusing ‘the life-blood of science and religion to myriads… still lying “in the region and shadow of death”.’ But those who served it did not feel this to be so, any more than those ‘myriads’ who were served. The experience of immiseration came upon them in a hundred different forms; for the field labourer, the loss of his common rights and the vestiges of village democracy; for the artisan, the loss of his craftsman’s status; for the weaver, the loss of livelihood and of independence; for the child, the loss of work and play in the home; for many groups of workers whose real earnings improved, the loss of security, leisure and the deterioration of the urban environment.

The fact is that man’s mind is limited, and his understanding only partial. The biblical narrative makes this point unequivocally with respect to Moses, in reporting that he could not see God’s face, but only his back.59 And it was no less true of the other prophets of Israel, who saw things in different ways because each of them was limited in his understanding, and to his own point of vantage.60

Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech? The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle. Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us." And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread. Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us." The tired and the weary say, "Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit. Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow." But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains, And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions." At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east." And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset." In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills." And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair." All these things have you said of beauty, Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied, And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears. It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw, But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight. People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

But in a few years, as part of their effort to push Jews out of German public life, the Nazis would attempt to puah them out of the German church too. That these "non-Aryans" had publicly converted to the Christian faith meant nothing, since the lens through which the Nazis saw the world was purely racial. One's genetic makeup and ancestral bloodline were all that mattered; one's most deeply held beliefs counted for nothing.

The type medicines that the Prophet SAW and his Companions used to take was nothing like the chemical mixtures that are called Aqrabathayn (pharmacopeia). Rather, the majority of their medicine consisted of only one ingredient. Sometimes, they would take another substance to assist the medicine or make it taste better. This was and still is, the case with most of the medicine used by many cultures such as Arabs, Turks, Indians and nomads.

She loved herself when she could. She regretted nothing but her limp (not the limp itself, but how it came to be). The world tried to make her feel some other way, though. It had tried to make her bitter about herself. It had tried to turn her own thinking against her. It had tried to make her gaze upon her reflection and judge what she saw as repulsive. She did none of these things. . . When she felt her shape, it evoked in her another outlawed quality: confidence. None of this was visible to the naked eye. It was a silent rebellion, but it was the very privacy of it that she enjoyed most. Because there was precious little of that here—privacy, joy, take your pick.

If A Tree Could Wander Oh, if a tree could wander and move with foot and wings! It would not suffer the axe blows and not the pain of saws! For would the sun not wander away in every night ? How could at ev'ry morning the world be lighted up? And if the ocean's water would not rise to the sky, How would the plants be quickened by streams and gentle rain? The drop that left its homeland, the sea, and then returned ? It found an oyster waiting and grew into a pearl. Did Yusaf not leave his father, in grief and tears and despair? Did he not, by such a journey, gain kingdom and fortune wide? Did not the Prophet travel to far Medina, friend? And there he found a new kingdom and ruled a hundred lands. You lack a foot to travel? Then journey into yourself! And like a mine of rubies receive the sunbeams? print! Out of yourself ? such a journey will lead you to your self, It leads to transformation of dust into pure gold!

I have come to trust the power of a few well-chosen words to reveal to the world something I cannot say, or don’t want to say, or didn’t even know I needed to say until I saw it spelled out in front of me in the prophetic hand of the poet.

He then said something in Arabic to Ali, who made a sign of obedience and withdrew, but not to any distance. As to Franz a strange transformation had taken place in him. All the bodily fatigue of the day, all the preoccupation of mind which the events of the evening had brought on, disappeared as they do at the first approach of sleep, when we are still sufficiently conscious to be aware of the coming of slumber. His body seemed to acquire an airy lightness, his perception brightened in a remarkable manner, his senses seemed to redouble their power, the horizon continued to expand; but it was not the gloomy horizon of vague alarms, and which he had seen before he slept, but a blue, transparent, unbounded horizon, with all the blue of the ocean, all the spangles of the sun, all the perfumes of the summer breeze; then, in the midst of the songs of his sailors, -- songs so clear and sonorous, that they would have made a divine harmony had their notes been taken down, -- he saw the Island of Monte Cristo, no longer as a threatening rock in the midst of the waves, but as an oasis in the desert; then, as his boat drew nearer, the songs became louder, for an enchanting and mysterious harmony rose to heaven, as if some Loreley had decreed to attract a soul thither, or Amphion, the enchanter, intended there to build a city. At length the boat touched the shore, but without effort, without shock, as lips touch lips; and he entered the grotto amidst continued strains of most delicious melody. He descended, or rather seemed to descend, several steps, inhaling the fresh and balmy air, like that which may be supposed to reign around the grotto of Circe, formed from such perfumes as set the mind a dreaming, and such fires as burn the very senses; and he saw again all he had seen before his sleep, from Sinbad, his singular host, to Ali, the mute attendant; then all seemed to fade away and become confused before his eyes, like the last shadows of the magic lantern before it is extinguished, and he was again in the chamber of statues, lighted only by one of those pale and antique lamps which watch in the dead of the night over the sleep of pleasure. They were the same statues, rich in form, in attraction, and poesy, with eyes of fascination, smiles of love, and bright and flowing hair. They were Phryne, Cleopatra, Messalina, those three celebrated courtesans. Then among them glided like a pure ray, like a Christian angel in the midst of Olympus, one of those chaste figures, those calm shadows, those soft visions, which seemed to veil its virgin brow before these marble wantons. Then the three statues advanced towards him with looks of love, and approached the couch on which he was reposing, their feet hidden in their long white tunics, their throats bare, hair flowing like waves, and assuming attitudes which the gods could not resist, but which saints withstood, and looks inflexible and ardent like those with which the serpent charms the bird; and then he gave way before looks that held him in a torturing grasp and delighted his senses as with a voluptuous kiss. It seemed to Franz that he closed his eyes, and in a last look about him saw the vision of modesty completely veiled; and then followed a dream of passion like that promised by the Prophet to the elect. Lips of stone turned to flame, breasts of ice became like heated lava, so that to Franz, yielding for the first time to the sway of the drug, love was a sorrow and voluptuousness a torture, as burning mouths were pressed to his thirsty lips, and he was held in cool serpent-like embraces. The more he strove against this unhallowed passion the more his senses yielded to its thrall, and at length, weary of a struggle that taxed his very soul, he gave way and sank back breathless and exhausted beneath the kisses of these marble goddesses, and the enchantment of his marvellous dream.

He did not consider himself a hero, if a hero is defined by success in his chosen mission. Perhaps Rudolf Vrba saw himself instead in the tradition of the Jewish prophet, who comes to deliver a warning, only to grieve when that warning is not heeded.

I want to stay here with you and Tom." Prophet glanced at him. He was so steadfast in his insistence, but then, just for the second, something akin to fear skittered across Remy's face. "What's wrong?" "It's just... is that going to ruin your plans to kill yourself?" he asked seriously, and Prophet saw the fear in the young man's face again, and realized it was more for Prophet than for himself. "No. That dick already did that." He pointed in Tommy direction - still on the phone, his expression tight with anger.

Above all, they cover two periods of time, one leading up to the first coming of the Messiah and one leading to the second. It’s as if Daniel looked through a prophetic telescope and saw two ‘peaks’ of history, a lower in front of a higher, without realizing the length of the valley between them.

Perhaps the forces of winged retribution. The prophet Elijah being fed to the ravens. Like Baida, I have killed my three pigeons.’ ‘Two,’ Adam said. ‘Two died instead of Vishnevetsky. One died instead of my brother. Long ago. Attar, the Persian poet, saw the destiny of souls as a flight of birds across the seven valleys of Seeking, Love, Knowledge, Independence, Unity, Stupefaction and Annihilation, before at last being lost in the divine Ocean and thenceforth happy. A charming, if sterile, conceit. Next time, the bird may escape,’ Lymond said. ‘Happy pigeon. Next time, the archer may die.

One thing was for sure: I had no interest in questioning whether Islam was inherently a religion of peace or one of war, whether the terrorists had misappropriated an innocent faith or the liberal Muslims were only in denial of what Islam actually taught. I'd never claim to know what "true" Islam stood for; religions were too big to make it that simple, there was too much history and too many verses, and everyone just took the parts that they wanted anyway. For a prophet's message to become what they call a world religion, it'd have to be big enough to accommodate all kinds of personalities. Good ones, mean ones, greedy ones, kind ones, hard ones, soft ones, and they all own Islam as much as it owns them. The water has no shape; it's shaped by the bottle. I could see that as a Muslim, contrasting Qari Saheb's sweetness with that maniac Rushdie, and I even saw it with Catholics in Geneva, between sweet Gramps and that dickhead monsignor or Fat Ed.

She is watching a man lying dead or asleep on a blanket nearby dressed in a crumpled tan suit with blood discolouring his sleeve, his hand clutching a plastic bag filled with bread rolls, alone black shoe on a foot. Another man she saw been carried into the emergency room was wearing just one sport shoe, so many shoes gone astray she thinks, so many shoes dislodged while their owners are carried by the arms and legs or dragged by the armpits into the backs of cars and vans and dragged again into emergency rooms without a gurney, the orphaned shoes kicked aside in the rush or left to die on the street or on footpaths like an unblinking eye awaiting the return of its owner

THE DEATH OF SALADIN You left ground and sky weeping, mind and soul full of grief. No one can take your place in existence or in absence. Both mourn, the angels, the prophets, and this sadness I feel has taken from me the taste of language, so that I can't say the flavor of my being apart. The roof of the kingdom within has collapsed! When I say the word YOU, I mean a hundred universes. Pouring grief water, or secret dripping in the heart, eyes in the head or eyes of the soul, I saw yesterday that all these flow out to find you when you're not here. That bright fire bird Saladin went like an arrow, and now the bow trembles and sobs. If you know how to weep for human beings, weep for Saladin.

Let there be no mistake in your mind as to the special character of the man who has come to Christ, and is a true Christian. He is not an angel, he is not a half-angelic being, in whom is no weakness, or blemish, or infirmity - he is nothing of the kind. He is nothing more than a sinner who has found out his sinfulness, and has learned the blessed secret of living by faith in Christ. What was the glorious company of the apostles and prophets? What was the noble army of martyrs? What were Isaiah, Daniel, Peter, James, John, Paul, Polycarp, Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Ridley, Latimer, Bunyan, Baxter, Whitefield, Venn, Chalmers, Bickersteth, M’Cheyne? What were they all, but sinners who knew and felt their sins, and trusted only in Christ? What were they, but men who accepted the invitation I bring you this day, and came to Christ by faith? By this faith they lived; in this faith they died. In themselves and their doings they saw nothing worth mentioning; but in Christ they saw all that their souls required. The invitation of Christ is now before you. If you never listened to it before, listen to it today. Broad, full, free, wide, simple, tender, kind, that invitation will leave you without excuse if you refuse to accept it. There are some invitations, perhaps, which it is wiser and better to decline. There is one which ought always to be accepted: that one is before you today. Jesus Christ is saying, “Come! Come unto Me.

Prayer isn’t just the way we cultivate our own potential; prayer is the way we recognize potential in others. Like Paul, who saw gifts in Timothy that Timothy couldn’t see in himself, we, through prayer, are enabled to see with prophetic eyes. We are given supernatural insight. Then we are prepared to speak with prophetic boldness into the lives God has positioned in our path.

Even they were frightened, not at the boy’s terrible words, but at his terrible audacity. It did not seem possible that any living creature could thus beard Wolf Larsen in his teeth. I know for myself that I was shocked into admiration of the boy, and I saw in him the splendid invincibleness of immortality rising above the flesh and the fears of the flesh, as in the prophets of old, to condemn unrighteousness.

From my childhood I had heard read, and read the Bible myself. Morning and evening the sacred volume was opened and prayers were said. The Bible was my first history, the Jews were the first people, and the events narrated by Moses and the other inspired writers, and those predicted by prophets were the all important things. In other books were found the thoughts and dreams of men, but in the Bible were the sacred truths of God. Yet in spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God. He was so saving of mercy, so extravagant in murder, so anxious to kill, so ready to assassinate, that I hated him with all my heart. At his command, babes were butchered, women violated, and the white hair of trembling age stained with blood. This God visited the people with pestilence -- filled the houses and covered the streets with the dying and the dead -- saw babes starving on the empty breasts of pallid mothers, heard the sobs, saw the tears, the sunken cheeks, the sightless eyes, the new made graves, and remained as pitiless as the pestilence. This God withheld the rain -- caused the famine, saw the fierce eyes of hunger -- the wasted forms, the white lips, saw mothers eating babes, and remained ferocious as famine.

Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15and remained there until the death of Herod.  y This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet,  z “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Herod Kills the Children 16Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. 17 a Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:     18  b “A voice was heard in Ramah,         weeping and loud lamentation,     Rachel weeping for her children;         she refused to be comforted, because they  c are no more.

And his soul cried out to them, and he said: Sons of my ancient mother, you riders of the tides, How often have you sailed in my dreams. And now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream. Ready am I to go, and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind. Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward, And then I shall stand among you, a seafarer among seafarers. And you, vast sea, sleeping mother, Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream, Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade, And then I shall come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean. And as he walked he saw from afar men and women leaving their fields and their vineyards and hastening towards the city gates. And he heard their voices calling his name, and shouting from field to field telling one another of the coming of his ship.

After the loss of so much of the learning of the past, the destruction of manuscripts and the slaughter of scholars, it was more important to recover what had been lost than to inaugurate more change. Because the Mongol military code made no provision for civil society, the ulama continued to govern the lives of the faithful, and their influence tended to be conservative. Where Sufis such as Rumi believed that all religions were valid, by the fourteenth century the ulama had transformed the pluralism of the Quran into a hard communalism, which saw other traditions as irrelevant relics of the past. Non-Muslims were forbidden now to visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and it became a capital offence to make insulting remarks about the Prophet Muhammad. The trauma of the invasions had, not surprisingly, made Muslims feel insecure. Foreigners were not only suspect; they could be as lethal as the Mongols.

....It was to complete his marriage with Maimuna, the daughter of Al Hareth, the Helalite. He had become betrothed to her on his arrival at Mecca, but had post-poned the nuptials until after he had concluded the rites of pilgrimage. This was doubtless another marriage of policy, for Maimuna was fifty-one years of age, and a widow, but the connection gained him two powerful proselytes. One was Khaled Ibn al Waled, a nephew of the widow, an intrepid warrior who had come near destroy- ing Mahomet at the battle of Ohod. He now became one of the most victorious champions of Islamism, and by his prowess obtained the appellation of " The Sword of God." The other proselyte was Khaled's friend, Amru Ibn al Aass ; the same who assailed Mahomet with poetry and satire at the commencement of his prophetic career ; who had been an ambassador from the Koreishites to the king of Abyssinia, to obtain the surrender of the fugitive Moslems, and who was henceforth destined with his sword to carry victoriously into foreign lands the faith he had once so strenuously opposed. Note.— Maimuna was the last spouse of the prophet, and, old as she was at her marriage, survived all his other wives. She died many years after him, in a pavilion at Serif, under the same tree in the shade of which her nuptial tent had been pitched, and was there interred. The pious historian, Al Jannabi, who styles himself "a poor servant of Allah, hoping for the pardon of his sins through the mercy of God," visited her tomb on returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 963, a.d. 1555. "I saw there," said he, "a dome of black marble erected in memory of Maimuna, on the very spot on which the apostle of God had reposed with her. God knows the truth ! and also the reason of the black color of the stone. There is a place of ablution, and an oratory ; but the building has fallen to decay.

Jesus spoke of miracles because he saw all of life as miraculous. Miracles appear to us as the eyes of our hearts are opened, and we see clearly. But, as defined by the churches, a miracle is a monstrosity—something contrary to nature, rather than in harmony with it.  Jesus respected Moses and the Hebrew prophets, but didn’t limit himself to repeating their insights. He spoke from the heart, not from a book, and brought forth a new revelation: the divinity of the soul.

Order Out of Chaos ... At the right temperature ... two peptide molecules will stay together long enough on average to find a third. Then the little trio finds a fourth peptide to attract into the little huddle, just through the random side-stepping and tumbling induced by all the rolling water molecules. Something extraordinary is happening: a larger structure is emerging from a finer system, not in spite of the chaotic and random motion of that system but because of it. Without the chaotic exploration of possibilities, the rare peptide molecules would never find each other, would never investigate all possible ways of aggregating so that the tape-like polymers emerge as the most likely assemblies. It is because of the random motion of all the fine degrees of freedom that the emergent, larger structures can assume the form they do. Even more is true when the number of molecules present becomes truly enormous, as is automatically the case for any amount of matter big enough to see. Out of the disorder emerges a ... pattern of emergent structure from a substrate of chaos.... The exact pressure of a gas, the emergence of fibrillar structures, the height in the atmosphere at which clouds condense, the temperature at which ice forms, even the formation of the delicate membranes surrounding every living cell in the realm of biology -- all this beauty and order becomes both possible and predictable because of the chaotic world underneath them.... Even the structures and phenomena that we find most beautiful of all, those that make life itself possible, grow up from roots in a chaotic underworld. Were the chaos to cease, they would wither and collapse, frozen rigid and lifeless at the temperatures of intergalactic space. This creative tension between the chaotic and the ordered lies within the foundations of science today, but it is a narrative theme of human culture that is as old as any. We saw it depicted in the ancient biblical creation narratives of the last chapter, building through the wisdom, poetic and prophetic literature. It is now time to return to those foundational narratives as they attain their climax in a text shot through with the storm, the flood and the earthquake, and our terrifying ignorance in the face of a cosmos apparently out of control. It is one of the greatest nature writings of the ancient world: the book of Job.

As we have seen so often in this book, religion may begin with mystical experiences but it always leads to politics. It starts with the voice heard by the prophets who are its chosen instruments. And what they hear always leads to actions that affect the way people live: with politics. Sometimes the politics are bad. People are persecuted for following the wrong faith or for listening to the wrong voice. Or they are forced to embrace the message announced by the latest hot prophet. So the history of religion becomes a study in different forms of oppression. But sometimes the politics are good. They are about liberation, not oppression. We saw good politics in the stand the Pennsylvanian Quakers made against slavery in 1688. And in the African American Church today the politics of Christianity are still about liberation. The tactics of Moses and the promises of Jesus are used to make the world a better place. Religion is no longer used as an opiate to dull the pain of injustice and inequality but as a stimulant to overcome it. That’s what keeps many people in the religion game.

Social life was similarly affected by the teachings of the Koran. At a time when in Christian Europe an epidemic was regarded as a scourge of God to which man had but to submit meekly - at that time, and long before it, the Muslims followed the injunction of their Prophet which directed them to combat epidemics by segregating the infected towns and areas. And at a time when even the kings and nobles of Christendom regarding bathing as an almost indecent luxury, even the poorest of Muslim houses had at least one bathroom, while elaborate public baths were common in every Muslim city (in the ninth century, for instance, Córdoba had three hundred of them): and all this in response to the Prophet’s teaching that ‘Cleanliness is part of faith’. A Muslim did not come into conflict with the claims of spiritual life if he took pleasure in the beautiful things of material life, for, according to the Prophet, ‘God loves to see on His servants an evidence of His bounty’. In short, Islam gave a tremendous incentive to cultural achievements which constitute one of the proudest pages in the history of mankind; and it gave this incentive by saying Yes to the intellect and No to obscurantism, Yes to action and no to quietism, Yes to life and No to ascetism. Little wonder, then, that as soon as it emerged beyond the confines of Arabia, Islam won new adherents by leaps and bounds. Born and nurtured in the world-contempt of Pauline and Augustinian Christianity, the populations of Syria and North Africa, and a little layer of Visigothic Spain, saw themselves suddenly confronted with a teaching which denied the dogma of Original Sin and stressed the inborn dignity of earthly life: and so they rallied in ever-increasing numbers to the new creed that gave them to understand that man was God’s vicar on earth. This, and not a legendary ‘conversion at the point of the sword’, was the explanation of Islam’s amazing triumph in the glorious morning of its history. It was not the Muslims that had made Islam great: it was Islam that had made the Muslims great. But as soon as their faith became habit and ceased to be a programme of life, to be consciously pursued, the creative impulse that underlay their civilisation waned and gradually gave way to indolence, sterility and cultural decay.

Although Travels with Charley is replete with whimsical vignettes, charming dialogue, and lyrical descriptions of the natural landscape that often rise to the level of poetry, there is beneath its surface a sense of disenchantment that turns, eventually, into barely suppressed anger. Steinbeck seems never quite able to bring himself to say that he was truly and often disgusted by what he saw on his journey, but the reader is left with that impression. One puts down this book aware of how remarkably prophetic it really was, and how America continues to wrestle with the problems raised in its pages.

The Sound Of Silence" Hello, darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains Within the sound of silence In restless dreams I walked alone Narrow streets of cobblestone 'Neath the halo of a streetlamp I turned my collar to the cold and damp When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light That split the night And touched the sound of silence And in the naked light I saw Ten thousand people, maybe more People talking without speaking People hearing without listening People writing songs that voices never share No one dared Disturb the sound of silence "Fools," said I, "You do not know Silence like a cancer grows Hear my words that I might teach you Take my arms that I might reach you." But my words like silent raindrops fell And echoed in the wells of silence And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said, "The words of the prophets Are written on the subway walls And tenement halls And whispered in the sounds of silence." Paul Simon, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM (1964)

Belloc led the charge in his critique of this misguided sense of superiority and myopic view of progress. But it was he alone among historians, social commentators, and counter-cultural voices who predicted that Islam—or as he called it, “Mohammedanism”—would rise again and, as it had in the past, harness the technology of the West as a weapon to turn back on the West and crush it by degrees. After September 11, 2001, no one is surprised to learn that Islam is turning the West’s superiority back on itself; what is surprising is that a lone historian and essayist saw this coming in the 1930s. That he captivates and places the reader in the middle of the action is an added bonus to the prophetic vision of what embroils our age.

He told me about his basic disagreement with Warren. “One of the most frequent questions asked is about a power struggle between me and Warren,” Blackmore said. “Now I don’t know what that is, but I will tell you about my own struggle. I had to struggle when I was told that there was not enough time left to help anyone repent. I struggled when I saw men who had been restored and forgiven in the days of Uncle Roy and Uncle Rulon, and now have their families swept away from them and their homes given to another. I struggled when I saw men’s wages given to the church, and then see their boss go buy a new Lexus. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t struggle trying to believe there could be anything ‘Mormon’ about what was happening.

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!

THERE WERE BANKS of candles flickering in the distance and clouds of incense thickening the air with holiness and stinging his eyes, and high above him, as if it had always been there but was only now seen for what it was (like a face in the leaves of a tree or a bear among the stars), there was the Mystery Itself whose gown was the incense and the candles a dusting of gold at the hem. There were winged creatures shouting back and forth the way excited children shout to each other when dusk calls them home, and the whole vast, reeking place started to shake beneath his feet like a wagon going over cobbles, and he cried out, “O God, I am done for! I am foul of mouth and the member of a foul-mouthed race. With my own two eyes I have seen him. I’m a goner and sunk.” Then one of the winged things touched his mouth with fire and said, “There, it will be all right now,” and the Mystery Itself said, “Who will it be?” and with charred lips he said, “Me,” and Mystery said “GO.” Mystery said, “Go give the deaf Hell till you’re blue in the face and go show the blind Heaven till you drop in your tracks because they’d sooner eat ground glass than swallow the bitter pill that puts roses in the cheeks and a gleam in the eye. Go do it.” Isaiah said, “Do it till when?” Mystery said, “Till Hell freezes over.” Mystery said, “Do it till the cows come home.” And that is what a prophet does for a living, and, starting from the year that King Uzziah died when he saw and heard all these things, Isaiah went and did it.

And thus did We show Abraham the realm of the heavens and the earth that he would be among the certain [in faith] When the night covered him over, He saw a star: He said: 'This is my Lord.' But when it set, He said: 'I love not those that set.' When he saw the moon rising in splendour, he said: 'This is my Lord.' But when the moon set, He said: 'unless my Lord guide me, I shall surely be among those who go astray.' When he saw the sun rising in splendour, he said: 'This is my Lord; this is the greatest (of all).' But when the sun set, he said: 'O my people! I am indeed free from your (guilt) of giving partners to Allah. 'For me, I have set my face, firmly and truly, towards Him Who created the heavens and the earth, and never shall I give partners to Allah.

On September 2, the day the Democratic National Convention in Chicago nominated George McClellan for president, news flashed across the country of the fall of Atlanta to General William Tecumseh Sherman after a long siege. Just as the Democrats met to declare the war a failure and crafted a platform that would lead to a negotiated Confederate independence of some kind, Sherman famously sent a telegram to Washington: “Atlanta is ours and fairly won.” Confederates’ rising hopes plummeted, and many war-weary Northerners, represented by the famous New York diarist George Templeton Strong, saw victory now on the immediate horizon: “Glorious news this morning—Atlanta taken at last!!! It is . . . the greatest event of the war.”45 The Democrats’ peace platform put Lincoln’s apparent moderation in a different light; and Douglass had seen a devotion in the president’s heart and mind

It was not only that the Bolshevik bureaucracy subjectively saw itself as the exponent of socialism and that it cultivated, in its own manner, the tradition of proletarian revolution. Objectively, too, by the force of circumstances, it had to work as the chief agent and promoter of the country's development towards collectivism. What ultimately governed the behaviour and the policies of the bureaucracy was the fact that it was in charge of the publicly owned industrial resources of the Soviet Union. It represented the interests of the 'socialist sector' of the economy against those of the 'private sector', rather than the specific interests of any social class; and only to the extent to which the general interest of the 'socialist sector' coincided with the general or 'historic' interest of the working class could the Bolshevik bureaucracy claim to act on behalf of that class.

Darwin’s Bestiary PROLOGUE Animals tame and animals feral prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral: the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile, rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile. Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride—every peril was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural, while Courage, Devotion, Thrift—every bright laurel crowned a creature in some mythological mural. Scientists think there is something immoral in singular brutes having meat that is plural: beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral. Yet between the lines there’s an implicit demurral; the habit stays with us, albeit it’s puerile: when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel. 1. THE ANT The ant, Darwin reminded us, defies all simple-mindedness: Take nothing (says the ant) on faith, and never trust a simple truth. The PR men of bestiaries eulogized for centuries this busy little paragon, nature’s proletarian— but look here, Darwin said: some ants make slaves of smaller ants, and end exploiting in their peonages the sweating brows of their tiny drudges. Thus the ant speaks out of both sides of its mealy little mouth: its example is extolled to the workers of the world, but its habits also preach the virtues of the idle rich. 2. THE WORM Eyeless in Gaza, earless in Britain, lower than a rattlesnake’s belly-button, deaf as a judge and dumb as an audit: nobody gave the worm much credit till Darwin looked a little closer at this spaghetti-torsoed loser. Look, he said, a worm can feel and taste and touch and learn and smell; and ounce for ounce, they’re tough as wrestlers, and love can turn them into hustlers, and as to work, their labors are mythic, small devotees of the Protestant Ethic: they’ll go anywhere, to mountains or grassland, south to the rain forests, north to Iceland, fifty thousand to every acre guzzling earth like a drunk on liquor, churning the soil and making it fertile, earning the thanks of every mortal: proud Homo sapiens, with legs and arms— his whole existence depends on worms. So, History, no longer let the worm’s be an ignoble lot unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Moral: even a worm can turn. 3. THE RABBIT a. Except in distress, the rabbit is silent, but social as teacups: no hare is an island. (Moral: silence is golden—or anyway harmless; rabbits may run, but never for Congress.) b. When a rabbit gets miffed, he bounds in an orbit, kicking and scratching like—well, like a rabbit. (Moral: to thine own self be true—or as true as you can; a wolf in sheep’s clothing fleeces his skin.) c. He populates prairies and mountains and moors, but in Sweden the rabbit can’t live out of doors. (Moral: to know your own strength, take a tug at your shackles; to understand purity, ponder your freckles.) d. Survival developed these small furry tutors; the morals of rabbits outnumber their litters. (Conclusion: you needn’t be brainy, benign, or bizarre to be thought a great prophet. Endure. Just endure.) 4. THE GOSSAMER Sixty miles from land the gentle trades that silk the Yankee clippers to Cathay sift a million gossamers, like tides of fluff above the menace of the sea. These tiny spiders spin their bits of webbing and ride the air as schooners ride the ocean; the Beagle trapped a thousand in its rigging, small aeronauts on some elusive mission. The Megatherium, done to extinction by its own bigness, makes a counterpoint to gossamers, who breathe us this small lesson: for survival, it’s the little things that count.

This is even more puzzling than the Asian flushing gene’s failure to sweep through the world. As Tomáš Masaryk saw clearly, a culture that spends entire evenings consuming liquid neurotoxins—created at great expense and to the detriment of nutritious food production—should be at an enormous disadvantage compared to cultural groups that eschew intoxicants altogether. Such groups exist, and have for quite some time. Perhaps the most salient example is the Islamic world, which produced Ibn Fadlan. Prohibition was not a feature of the earliest period of Islam, but according to one hadith, or tradition, it was the consequence of a particular dinner at which companions of Mohammed became too inebriated to properly say their prayers. In any case, by the end of the Prophetic era in 632 CE, a complete ban on alcohol was settled Islamic law. It cannot be denied that, in the cultural evolution game, Islam has been extremely successful.

SPIEGEL: You have a lot of respect for the Dalai Lama, you even rewrote some Buddhist writings for him. Are you a religious person? Cleese: I certainly don't think much of organized religion. I am not committed to anything except the vague feeling that there is something more going on than the materialist reductionist people think. I think you can reduce suffering a little bit, like the Buddhists say, that is one of the few things I take seriously. But the idea that you can run this planet in a rational and kind way -- I think it's not possible. There will always be these sociopaths at the top -- selfish people, power-seekers who want to spend their whole lives seeking it. Robin Skynner, the psychiatrist that I wrote two books with, said to me that you could begin to enjoy life when you realized how bad the planet is, how hopeless everything is. I reached that point these last two or three years when I saw that our existence here is absolutely hopeless. I see the rich people have got a stranglehold on us. If somebody had said that to me when I was 20, I would have regarded him as a left-wing loony. SPIEGEL: You may not have been a left-wing loony, but you were happy to attack and ridicule the church. The "Life of Brian," the story of a young man in Judea who isn't Jesus Christ, but is nevertheless followed like a savior and crucified afterwards, was regarded as blasphemy when it was released in 1979. Cleese: Well there was a small number of people in country towns, all very conservative, who got upset and said, "You can't show the film." So people hired a coach and drove 15 miles to the next town and went to see the film there. But a lot of Christians said, "We got it, we know that the joke is not about religion, but about the way people follow religion." If Jesus saw the Spanish Inquisition I think he would have said, "What are you doing there?" SPIEGEL: These days Muslims and Islam are risky subjects. Do you think they are good issues for satire? Cleese: For sure. In 1982, Graham Chapman and I wrote a number of scenes for "The Meaning of Life" movie which had an ayatollah in them. This ayatollah was raging against all the evil inventions of the West, you know, like toilet paper. These scenes were never included in the film, although I thought they were much better than many other scenes that were included. And that's why I didn't do any more Python films: I didn't want to be outvoted any longer. But I wouldn't have made fun of the prophet. SPIEGEL: Why not? Cleese: How could you? How could you make fun of Jesus or Saint Francis of Assisi? They were wonderful human beings. People are only funny when they behave inappropriately, when they've been taken over by some egotistical emotion which they can't control and they become less human. SPIEGEL: Is there a difference between making fun of our side, so to speak, the Western, Christian side, and Islam? Cleese: There shouldn't be a difference. [SPIEGEL Interview with John Cleese: 'Satire Makes People Think' - 2015]

Hermione!” She stirred, then sat up quickly, pushing her hair out of her face. “What’s wrong? Harry? Are you all right?” “It’s okay, everything’s fine. More than fine. I’m great. There’s someone here.” “What do you mean? Who--?” She saw Ron, who stood there holding the sword and dripping onto the threadbare carpet. Harry backed into a shadowy corner, slipped off Ron’s rucksack, and attempted to blend in with the canvas. Hermione slid out of her bunk and moved like a sleepwalker toward Ron, her eyes upon his pale face. She stopped right in front of him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide. Ron gave a weak, hopeful smile and half raised his arms. Hermione launched herself forward and started punching every inch of him that she could reach. “Ouch--ow--gerroff! What the--? Hermione--OW!” “You--complete--arse--Ronald--Weasley!” She punctuated every word with a blow: Ron backed away, shielding his head as Hermione advanced. “You--crawl--back--here--after--weeks--and--weeks--oh, where’s my wand?” She looked as though ready to wrestle it out of Harry’s hands and he reacted instinctively. “Protego!” The invisible shield erupted between Ron and Hermione: The force of it knocked her backward onto the floor. Spitting hair out of her mouth, she leapt up again. “Hermione!” said Harry. “Calm--” “I will not calm down!” she screamed. Never before had he seen her lose control like this; she looked quite demented. “Give me back my wand! Give it back to me!” “Hermione, will you please--” “Don’t you tell me what to do, Harry Potter!” she screeched. “Don’t you dare! Give it back now! And YOU!” She was pointing at Ron in dire accusation: It was like a malediction, and Harry could not blame Ron for retreating several steps. “I came running after you! I called you! I begged you to come back!” “I know,” Ron said, “Hermione, I’m sorry, I’m really--” “Oh, you’re sorry!” She laughed, a high-pitched, out-of-control sound; Ron looked at Harry for help, but Harry merely grimaced his helplessness. “You come back after weeks--weeks--and you think it’s all going to be all right if you just say sorry?” “Well, what else can I say?” Ron shouted, and Harry was glad that Ron was fighting back. “Oh, I don’t know!” yelled Hermione with awful sarcasm. “Rack your brains, Ron, that should only take a couple of seconds--” “Hermione,” interjected Harry, who considered this a low blow, “he just saved my--” “I don’t care!” she screamed. “I don’t care what he’s done! Weeks and weeks, we could have been dead for all he knew--” “I knew you weren’t dead!” bellowed Ron, drowning her voice for the first time, and approaching as close as he could with the Shield Charm between them. “Harry’s all over the Prophet, all over the radio, they’re looking for you everywhere, all these rumors and mental stories, I knew I’d hear straight off if you were dead, you don’t know what it’s been like--” “What it’s been like for you?” Her voice was now so shrill only bats would be able to hear it soon, but she had reached a level of indignation that rendered her temporarily speechless, and Ron seized his opportunity. “I wanted to come back the minute I’d Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of Snatchers, Hermione, and I couldn’t go anywhere!” “A gang of what?” asked Harry, as Hermione threw herself down into a chair with her arms and legs crossed so tightly it seemed unlikely that she would unravel them for several years.

Then he took him by the hand, and led him into a very large parlor full of dust, as if it had never been swept. The Interpreter called to a man and told him to sweep. The man grabbed a broom and swept and in so doing stirred a thick cloud of dust into the air. The dust grew so dense it almost choked Christian. The Interpreter then spoke to a woman who stood nearby. “Bring some water here and sprinkle the room.” The woman did as she was told and the entire room was easily swept and cleaned. Christian asked, “What does this mean?” The Interpreter answered, “This parlor is the heart of a man who was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the gospel. The dust is his sin and inward corruption which has defiled the whole man. The one who began to sweep at first is the law, but she who brought water and sprinkled it is the gospel. Interpreter shows Christian the room full of dust “Now while you saw the room fill with the great cloud of dust when first swept, the dust flew about in such a way that the room could not be cleansed and its dust almost choked you. This is to show you that the law, instead of cleansing the heart from sin, does in fact arouse it. (So that without the law I lived for some time; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. – Rom. 7:9) It also gives it greater strength (The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. – 1 Cor. 15:56), and causes sin to flourish in the soul (Moreover the law entered that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. – Rom. 5:20), for even as the law uncovers sin and forbids it, it does not provide the power to subdue it. “In the same way, the woman you saw sprinkle the room with water which made it easy to clean – this is to show you that when the gospel comes with its sweet and precious influences and indwells the heart, just like the dust settled by sprinkling the floor with water, sin is also vanquished and subdued and the soul made clean, through faith. Consequently, the soul becomes a suitable place for the King of Glory to inhabit.” (Now to him that is able to confirm you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was concealed from times eternal but now is made manifest, and by the writings of the prophets, by the commandment of God eternal, declared unto all the Gentiles, that they might hear and obey by faith. – Rom. 16:25, 26)

Because of A Prayer for Owen Meany, many of my readers assume I am “religious.” I go to church only occasionally—like a lot of people, I believe in God in times of crisis. But I have had no religious “experience”; I’ve never been a witness to a miracle. The reason A Prayer for Owen Meany has a first-person narrator is that you can’t have a religious experience or witness a miracle except through the eyes of a believer. And the believer I chose, Johnny Wheelwright, has been so tormented by what happens to his best friend that he is more than a little crazy—as I expect most witnesses to so-called miracles are. Both Johnny Wheelwright’s anger and his craziness are inseparable from what he saw. The other religious question I am asked about the novel—second only to “Are you a believer?”—is “Do the capital letters mark Owen Meany as a Christ figure, sort of like those red-letter editions of the Bible?” Sort of, yes. To have Owen speak in red letters might have been too expensive for my publishers, but I also thought the capitals would be more irritating than red letters. Owen’s voice is irritating, not only because of how it sounds but because of how right he is. People who are always right, and are given to reminding us of it, are irritating; prophets are irritating, and Owen Meany is decidedly a prophet.

let there be no mistake in your mind as to the special character of the man who has come to Christ, and is a true Christian. He is not an angel, he is not a half-angelic being, in whom is no weakness, or blemish, or infirmity - he is nothing of the kind. He is nothing more than a sinner who has found out his sinfulness, and has learned the blessed secret of living by faith in Christ. What was the glorious company of the apostles and prophets? What was the noble army of martyrs? What were Isaiah, Daniel, Peter, James, John, Paul, Polycarp, Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Ridley, Latimer, Bunyan, Baxter, Whitefield, Venn, Chalmers, Bickersteth, M’Cheyne? What were they all, but sinners who knew and felt their sins, and trusted only in Christ? What were they, but men who accepted the invitation I bring you this day, and came to Christ by faith? By this faith they lived; in this faith they died. In themselves and their doings they saw nothing worth mentioning; but in Christ they saw all that their souls required. The invitation of Christ is now before you. If you never listened to it before, listen to it today.Broad, full, free, wide, simple, tender, kind, that invitation will leave you without excuse if you refuse to accept it. There are some invitations, perhaps, which it is wiser and better to decline. There is one which ought always to be accepted: that one is before you today. Jesus Christ is saying, “Come! Come unto Me”.

The Saints will reign in celestial splendor—Christ will come, and men will be judged—Blessed are they who keep His commandments. 1 And he shewed me a pure river of awater of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. 2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the atree of blife, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the cleaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 And there shall be no more acurse: but the bthrone of God and of the cLamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: 4 And they shall asee his bface; and his cname shall be in their foreheads. 5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the asun; for the Lord God giveth them blight: and they shall creign dfor ever and ever. 6 And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and atrue: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must bshortly be done. 7 Behold, I acome quickly: bblessed is he that keepeth the csayings of the prophecy of this book. 8 And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I afell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. 9 Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God. 10 And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. 11 He that is aunjust, let him be bunjust still: and he which is cfilthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. 12 And, behold, I acome quickly; and my breward is with me, to give every man according as his cwork shall be. 13 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the afirst and the last. 14 Blessed are they that ado his bcommandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. 15 For without are dogs, and asorcerers, and bwhoremongers, and cmurderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a dlie. 16 I Jesus have sent mine aangel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the broot and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning cstar. 17 And the Spirit and the bride say, aCome. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the bwater of life freely. 18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall aadd unto these things, God shall add unto him the bplagues that are written in this book: 19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the abook of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. 20 He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I acome quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. 21 The agrace of our bLord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

As the violence of the storm increased, trees, buildings, rocks, and earth were hurled in every direction. The terror of man and beast was beyond description. Above the roar of the tempest was heard the wailing of a people that had despised the authority of God. Satan himself, who was compelled to remain in the midst of the warring elements, feared for his own existence. He had delighted to control so powerful a race, and desired them to live to practice their abominations and continue their rebellion against the Ruler of heaven. He now uttered imprecations against God, [100] charging him with injustice and cruelty. Many of the people, like Satan, blasphemed God, and had they been able, they would have torn him from the throne of power. Others were frantic with fear, stretching their hands toward the ark and pleading for admittance. But their entreaties were in vain. Conscience was at last aroused to know that there is a God who ruleth in the heavens. They called upon him earnestly, but his ear was not open to their cry. In that terrible hour they saw that the transgression of God’s law had caused their ruin. Yet while, through fear of punishment, they acknowledged their sin, they felt no true contrition, no abhorrence of evil. They would have returned to their defiance of heaven, had the judgment been removed. So when God’s judgments shall fall upon the earth before its deluge by fire, the impenitent will know just where and what their sin is—the despising of his holy law. Yet they will have no more true repentance than did the old-world sinners.

Of Enoch it is written that he lived sixty-five years, and begat a son. After that he walked with God three hundred years. During these earlier years Enoch had loved and feared God and had kept his commandments. He was one of the holy line, the preservers of the true faith, the progenitors of the promised seed. From the lips of Adam he had learned the dark story of the Fall, and the cheering one of God’s grace as seen in the promise; and he relied upon the Redeemer to come. But after the birth of his first son, Enoch reached a higher experience; he was drawn into a closer relationship with God. He realized more fully his own obligations and responsibility as a son of God. And as he saw the child’s love for its father, its simple trust in his protection; as he felt the deep, yearning tenderness of his own heart for that first-born son, he learned a precious lesson of the wonderful love of God to men in the gift of his Son, and the confidence which the children of God may repose in their heavenly Father. The infinite, unfathomable love of God through Christ became the subject of his meditations day and night; and with all the fervor of his soul he sought to reveal that love to the people among whom he dwelt. [85] Enoch’s walk with God was not in a trance or vision, but in all the duties of his daily life. He did not become a hermit, shutting himself entirely from the world; for he had a work to do for God in the world. In the family and in his intercourse with men, as a husband and father, a friend, a citizen, he was the steadfast, unwavering servant of the Lord.

The count, fearing to yield to the entreaties of her he had so ardently loved, called his sufferings to the assistance of his hatred. “Revenge yourself, then, Edmond,” cried the poor mother; “but let your vengeance fall on the culprits,—on him, on me, but not on my son!” “It is written in the good book,” said Monte Cristo, “that the sins of the fathers shall fall upon their children to the third and fourth generation. Since God himself dictated those words to his prophet, why should I seek to make myself better than God?” “Edmond,” continued Mercedes, with her arms extended towards the count, “since I first knew you, I have adored your name, have respected your memory. Edmond, my friend, do not compel me to tarnish that noble and pure image reflected incessantly on the mirror of my heart. Edmond, if you knew all the prayers I have addressed to God for you while I thought you were living and since I have thought you must be dead! Yes, dead, alas! I imagined your dead body buried at the foot of some gloomy tower, or cast to the bottom of a pit by hateful jailers, and I wept! What could I do for you, Edmond, besides pray and weep? Listen; for ten years I dreamed each night the same dream. I had been told that you had endeavored to escape; that you had taken the place of another prisoner; that you had slipped into the winding sheet of a dead body; that you had been thrown alive from the top of the Chateau d’If, and that the cry you uttered as you dashed upon the rocks first revealed to your jailers that they were your murderers. Well, Edmond, I swear to you, by the head of that son for whom I entreat your pity,—Edmond, for ten years I saw every night every detail of that frightful tragedy, and for ten years I heard every night the cry which awoke me, shuddering and cold. And I, too, Edmond—oh! believe me—guilty as I was—oh, yes, I, too, have suffered much!

do you think Jesus would do if he came back to earth tonight in Bremerton?” C asked, as he spooned some rice onto his plate. “I don’t know,” I said, savoring a mouthful of Mongolian beef. “Would he come in a white robe and sandals, or the dress of this time?” C pressed on. I shrugged my shoulders, forking in the fried rice. “Would he be white, black, Asian, or maybe look like Saddam Hussein instead of Kevin Costner or Tom Cruise? What if he didn’t fit our image of him? What if he was bald? Or, for God’s sake, what if he was gay? “He wouldn’t have any cash, no MasterCard, Visa, Discover Card, or portfolio of any kind. If he went to a bank and said, ‘Hello. I’m Jesus, the son of God. I need some of those green things that say “In God We Trust” on them to buy some food and get a place to stay,’ the bank manager would say, ‘I’m sorry, but I looked in my computer and without a social security number, local address, and credit history, I can’t do anything for you. Maybe if you show me a miracle or two, I might lend you fifty dollars.’ “Where would he stay? The state park charges sixteen dollars a night. Could he go to a church and ask, ‘May I stay here? I am Jesus’? Would they believe him?” As I took a sip of my drink, I wondered just who this character was sitting across from me. Was he some angel sent to save me? Or was he, as the Rolling Stones warned in their song, Satan himself here to claim me for some sin of this life or a past life of which I had no recollection? Or was he an alien? Or was he Jesus, the Christ himself, just “messing” with me? Was I in the presence of a prophet, or just some hopped-up druggie? “‘Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.’ That’s what Jesus said. What doors would be opened to him?” he asked. “The Salvation Army—Sally’s?” I guessed. “That’s about all,” C said. “Unless he saw Tony Robbins’ TV formula to become a millionaire and started selling miracles to the rich at twenty-thousand dollars a pop. He could go on Regis, Oprah, maybe get an interview with Bill Moyers, or go on Nightline. Or joust with the nonbelievers on Jerry Springer! Think of the book deals! He

LXXII In sooth, it was no vulgar sight to see Their barbarous, yet their not indecent, glee, And as the flames along their faces gleam’d, Their gestures nimble, dark eyes flashing free, The long wild locks that to their girdles stream’d, While thus in concert they this lay half sang, half scream’d: Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy ’larum afar Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war; All the sons of the mountains arise at the note, Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote! Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote, To his snowy camese and his shaggy capote? To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock, And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock. Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live? Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego? What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe? Macedonia sends forth her invincible race; For a time they abandon the cave and the chase: But those scarves of blood-red shall be redder, before The sabre is sheathed and the battle is o’er. Then the pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves, And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves, Shall leave on the beach the long galley and oar, And track to his covert the captive on shore. I ask not the pleasure that riches supply, My sabre shall win what the feeble must buy; Shall win the young bride with her long flowing hair, And many a maid from her mother shall tear. I love the fair face of the maid in her youth, Her caresses shall lull me, her music shall soothe; Let her bring from her chamber the many-toned lyre, And sing us a song on the fall of her sire. Remember the moment when Previsa fell, The shrieks of the conquer’d, the conquerors’ yell; The roofs that we fired, and the plunder we shared, The wealthy we slaughter’d, the lovely we spared. I talk not of mercy, I talk not of fear; He neither must know who would serve the Vizier: Since the days of our prophet, the Crescent ne’er saw A chief ever glorious like Ali Pasha. Dark Muchtar his son to the Danube is sped, Let the yellow-haired Giaours view his horsetail with dread; When his Delhis come dashing in blood o’er the banks, How few shall escape from the Muscovite ranks! Selictar, unsheath then our chief’s scimitar: Tambourgi! thy ’larum gives promise of war; Ye mountains, that see us descend to the shore, Shall view us as victors, or view us no more!

When we speak of God’s will, we are usually speaking only of some recognizable sign of His will. The signpost that points to a distant city is not the city itself, and sometimes the signs that point to a great place are in themselves insignificant and contemptible. But we must follow the direction of the signpost if we are to get to the end of our journey. Everything that exists and everything that happens bears witness to the will of God. It is one thing to see a sign and another thing to interpret that sign correctly. However, our first duty is to recognize signs for what they are. If we do not even regard them as indications of anything beyond themselves, we will not try to interpret them. Of all the things and all the happenings that proclaim God’s will to the world, only very few are capable of being interpreted by men. And of these few, fewer still find a capable interpreter. So that the mystery of God’s will is made doubly mysterious by the signs that veil it from our eyes. To know anything at all of God’s will we have to participate, in some manner, in the vision of the prophets: men who were always alive to the divine light concealed in the opacity of things and events, and who sometimes saw glimpses of that light where other men saw nothing but ordinary happenings. And yet if we are too anxious to pry into the mystery that surrounds us we will lose the prophet’s reverence and exchange it for the impertinence of soothsayers. We must be silent in the presence of signs whose meaning is closed to us. Otherwise we will begin incontinently to place our own superstitious interpretation upon everything— the number of steps to a doorway, a card pulled out of the pack, the shadow of a ladder, the flight of birds. God’s will is not so cheap a mystery that it can be unlocked by any key like these! Nevertheless, there are some signs that everyone must know. They must be easily read and seen, and they are indeed very simple. But they come sparingly, few in number; they show us clearly enough the road ahead but not for more than a few paces. When we have taken those few paces, what will happen? We must learn to be poor in our dependence on these clear signs, to take them as they come, not to demand more of them than we need, not to make more of them than they really tell. If I am to know the will of God, I must have the right attitude toward life. I must first of all know what life is, and to know the purpose of my existence.

I was standing lost, sunk, my hands in my pockets, gazing toward Tinker Mountain and feeling the earth reel down. All at once, I saw what looked like a Martian spaceship whirling towards me in the air. It flashed borrowed light like a propeller. Its forward motion greatly outran its fall. As I watched, transfixed, it rose, just before it would have touched a thistle, and hovered pirouetting in one spot, then twirled on and finally came to rest. I found it in the grass; it was a maple key…Hullo. I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown, pushed by the witless winds of convection currents hauling round the world’s rondure where they must, but like a creature muscled and vigorous, or a creature spread thin to that other wind, the wind of the spirit that bloweth where it listeth, lighting, and raising up, and easing down. O maple key, I thought, I must confess I thought, o welcome, cheers. And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense I will try at length to explain. Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. That breath never ceases to kindle, exuberant, abandoned; frayed splinters spatter in every direction and burgeon into flame. And now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I see a photograph of earth from outer space, the planet so startlingly painterly and hung, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes, I will think two maple keys. If I am maple key falling, at least I can twirl. Thomas Merton wrote, “There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It’s no self-conscious, so apparently moral, simple to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Ezekiel excoriates false prophets who have “not gone up into the gaps.” The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once blind man unbound. The gaps are the cliffs in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fjords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock- more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend the afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.

WALKING WITH ANGELS IN THE COOL OF THE DAY A short time later I felt someone poke me hard in the left arm. I turned to see who it was, but there was no one there. At the time, I dismissed it and returned my attention to my thoughts. After a minute I was poked again, only this time the poke was accompanied with an audible voice! The Holy Spirit said, “I want to go for a walk with you in the cool of the day.” I jumped up totally flabbergasted. I quickly left the room and grabbed my coat, telling everyone that I was going for a walk in the “cool of the day.” It just happened to be minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit (or minus 24 Celsius)! The moment I walked out the door, the presence of the Holy Spirit fell upon me, and I began to weep again. The tears were starting to freeze on my cheeks, but I did not mind. God began to talk to me in an audible voice. I was walking through the streets of Botwood in the presence of the Holy Ghost. I could also sense that many angels were accompanying us. The angels were laughing and singing as we strolled along the snow-covered streets. It was about 8:00 A.M. The Holy Spirit led me along a road which was on the shore of the North Atlantic Ocean. For the first time since leaving the house, I began to notice that it was very cold. However, it was worth it to be in the presence of the Lord. I was directed to a small breezeway that leads out over the Bay of Exploits (this name truly proved to be quite prophetic) to a tiny island called Killick Island. As we were walking across the breezeway, the wind was whipping off the ocean at about 40 knots. Combined with the negative temperature, the wind was turning my skin numb, and my tears had crystallized into ice on my face and mustache. THE CITY OF REFUGE I said, “Holy Spirit, it is really cold out here, and my face is turning numb.” The Lord replied, “Do not fear; when we get onto this island, there will be a city of refuge.” I had no idea what a city of refuge was, but I hoped that it would be warm and safe. (See Numbers 35:25.) The winter’s day had turned even colder and grayer; there was no sun, and the dark gray sky was totally overcast. Snow was falling lightly, and being blown about by a brisk wind. As we walked onto Killick Island, it got even colder and windier. The Holy Spirit whispered to me, “Do not fear; the city of refuge is just up these steps, hidden in those fir trees.” When I ascended a few dozen steps, I saw a small stand of fir trees to the left. Just before I stepped into the middle of them, a shaft of brilliant bright light, a lone sunbeam, cracked the sky to illuminate the city of refuge. When I entered the little circle of fir trees, what the Holy Spirit had called a “city of refuge,” I encountered the manifest glory of God. Angels were everywhere. It was 8:50 A.M. As we entered, I walked through some kind of invisible barrier. Surprisingly, inside the city of refuge, the temperature was very pleasant, even warm. The bright beam of sunlight slashed into the cold, gray atmosphere. As this heavenly light hit the fresh snow, there appeared to be rainbows of colors that seemed to radiate from the trees, tickling my eyes. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit began to ask me questions. The Lord asked me to “describe what you are seeing.” Every color of the rainbow seemed to dance from the tiny snowflakes as they slowly drifted

DANCING ANGELS During October 2001, the Lord began to speak to me about traveling to Newfoundland, Canada. I had no desire to go there, especially in the middle of the winter! At this time I was still concerned about my inability to “feel the Lord” and began to press into God all the more. At times I locked myself into the little house and fasted and prayed for up to seven days, or until the presence of God fell. After many confirmations in the spirit, I pooled all of my earthly wealth and made the trip to the great white North. The night before I was to depart, the Lord instructed me to “pray in tongues all the way to Newfoundland.” Somehow through the grace of God I succeeded in praying in the Spirit for about 18 hours until I touched down in Canada. In Springdale, Newfoundland, Canada, the Lord began instructing me to complete a series of prophetic actions. I attended an intercessory prayer meeting on Wednesday, November 21. We were interceding for an upcoming series of healing meetings. During this meeting, I began to “see” into the spirit. As the Lord opened my spiritual eyes, I incrementally saw the heavens open over Living Waters Ministries Church. In addition to this, I also began to hear angelic voices singing along with the worship team. At one point during the meeting, I saw a stream of golden oil pour out from Heaven and land on a certain spot in the sanctuary. At the leading of the Lord, I knelt upon that spot. The glory and anointing began to flow into and over my body. The sensation and anointing was very similar to what I experienced when the angel put his hands upon me the night of August 22, 2001. As I knelt under the spot where the golden oil was beginning to pour onto the altar, I was praying earnestly. I could feel the liquid oil raining down on my body. I could sense and smell this heavenly oil as it rolled off my head. The Holy Spirit began to talk to me in a very clear and direct way that I had never experienced before. I collapsed onto the carpet in a pool of golden oil and laid there in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Then I sensed angels dancing all around the pool and me. I felt an angel as it brushed its wings across my face. I had a “knowing” that the angel was asking me to raise my hands into the air. When I raised my hands up to about two feet, the angel would push my hands back down with its strong, warm hands. I tried again, and when my hands were almost totally up, the angel tickled my nose with the feathers of its wings. I laughed, and my hands fell. The angel and I continued to interact in this fashion for nearly an hour. I did not actually see this angel, but the force and reality of its touch was very tangible. There was no doubt that I was interacting with a heavenly being. This experience was both refreshing and real. SEEING IS BELIEVING On Thursday, November 22, the healing meetings started; they would last through Sunday, the 25th. In these meetings God began to open my spiritual eyes beyond anything I could have ever imagined. On the first night of these meetings, I began to see an “open heaven” forming in the sanctuary. I could also hear and sense the activity of angels as the heavens continued to open up to a greater degree. On Friday, I began to see “bolts of light” shoot through the church, and again the stream of golden oil was flowing from the open heaven in a greater volume. On Saturday night during the worship service, I began to see feathers falling around the church and