Witness Lee Quotes

You sounded like Dolly parton on helium." (After kristy lee cook of season 7 on american idol,sang her country rendition of the Beatles'"Eight Days A Week.)

Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food.

A nation is great not by its size alone. It is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people and the quality of their leaders which ensure it an honourable place in history.

A society to be successful must maintain a balance between nurturing excellence and encouraging the average to improve.

if you can’t acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk.

I believe that life is a process of continuous change and a constant struggle to make that change one for the better.

At this time in history, sick, afraid, and despondent are the general conditions that affect the majority of poeple almost everywhere. It's difficult and challenging to follow the call of conscience when we're under the dark veil of these forces. At the same time, it's painful not to follow it. When you become healthy, courageous, and hopeful, following your conscience becomes easier. When people are healthy, courageous, and hopeful, it's difficult to bend their mind and will. You can't force them to do what you'd like them to do against their will. They will speak out what they believe, and stand up and do what is right even when it means a loss to them. I am hopeful because I have witnessed this change throughout my life. From the realization of what I really am, I became hopeful, courageous, and passionate for life, and I felt responsible for the general condition of humanity and the Earth because they are not separate from me.

Go home all you boys who fought with me and help build up the shattered fortunes of our old state

Atticus sometimes said that one way to tell whether a witness was lying or telling the truth was to listen rather than watch.

You are equipped with strong bodies and educated minds. Add to these an unshakable faith in a divine providence and you have the tools by which you may build a successful life. Make each day your masterpiece and live so nobly that you may witness honestly each day: Whatever came to your hands this day, you did it to the best of your ability

The will of God for us is that we know the all-inclusive Christ, experience Him, and live Him as our life. To know Christ in this way is to have the full knowledge of God's will.

The Lord's appearing, His coming back, is a warning, an encouragement, and an incentive to us; we should love His appearing and look forward to it with earnest expectation and joy.

All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbours was that, if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white.

To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place... It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses, whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. Now, there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewel was beaten - savagely, by someone who led exclusively with his left. And Tom Robinson now sits before you having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses... his RIGHT. I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the State. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. But my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man's life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say "guilt," gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She's committed no crime - she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did. Now, what did she do? She tempted a *****. She was white, and she tempted a *****. She did something that, in our society, is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young ***** man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards. The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption... the evil assumption that all Negroes lie, all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all ***** men are not to be trusted around our women. An assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is, in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable *****, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against TWO white people's! The defendant is not guilty - but somebody in this courtroom is. Now, gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system - that's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality! Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review, without passion, the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision and restore this man to his family. In the name of GOD, do your duty. In the name of God, believe... Tom Robinson

Both were military. That was clear.Reacher could tell by their haircuts. No civilian barber would be as pragmatic or as brutal.

According to my experience, I can testify that both riches and poverty pass away, but God abides. Whether we are rich or poor, God is.

Lord, I contact You in Your way. I don’t contact You by my thought, concept, or knowledge. Lord, You are my way.

Charles Darwin, who had witnessed the atrocities perpetrated against Argentina’s native Indians by Juan Manuel de Rosas, had predicted that “the country will be in the hands of white Gaucho savages instead of copper-coloured Indians. The former being a little superior in education, as they are inferior in every moral virtue.

The strongest person is not the one who is able to do something, but the one who is able not to do what he has the power to do. This self-denial is the unique way to usher in God's kingdom and to realize the kingdom life.

The specialty in all life is expecting the exception, while ignorant of real acceptance, until unexpectedly you re-witness your own ignorance to 'be' the cause that awakens others. One does not do this yesterday, or today. You do this with expressing honesty everyday.

Do not simply know God according to what He does, but know Him according to what He is. Whether or not God does something for us means nothing.

Our drinking of God as the living water is for the church as His increase; our drinking is for the producing of His enlargement, His fullness, for His expression.

The purpose of God’s calling...is not to give His people a little enjoyment of the animal life and the vegetable life in Egypt; it is to bring them into a spacious land flowing with milk and honey.

Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don’t already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food. Do it, and you’ll often get an answer you don’t want, an answer that might wreck your case.

However, there is no retirement in the spiritual life, and God intervened to upset what appeared to be Jacob’s retirement.

After having had so many dealings under God’s hand, Jacob was undoubtedly tired of human life. He was weary of supplanting, cheating, struggling, and fighting.

Only when we live, walk, behave, and have our being altogether in our spirit, not in our natural man, are we in the kingdom of God and, in reality, are the kingdom of God.

The art of government is the art of building up team spirit.

Humor and wit are the universal solvents of the serious and the scholarly.

[To] Immediately...turn to our spirit and exercise our spirit to contact God...practically means that we do not trust in ourselves but in God.

You were brave to do what you did," he said slowly. "And I know you did it out of live for our friends. But if you ever do something like this again, I can promise you that Ten Men and Executives are going to be the least of your worries- do you understand?" His espression was very severe, his jaw was set, and his words were clipped and terse as if spoken with much suppressed anger. Kate burst out laughing. "Milligan," she said, "I'll bet you scare the wits out of bad guys, but as a dad you don't scare anyone very much." "She's right." Constance said. "I can tell you aren't really angry." Milligan frowned and looked at Reynie, but Reynie averted his eyes to avoid disappointing him- for he, too, had been unfazed by Milligan's stern admonition. Only Sticky, furiously polishing his spectacles in the back seat, showed the effect Milligan had hoped for. But Sticky was easily unnerved and could hardly be used as a measure. "Well," Milligan said, his face relaxing. "At least I tried." "... Speaking of which, the boys weren't actually touching the breifcases in the trunk, I hope?" Wondering how Milligan knew, Kate stuck her head out the office door and gave Reynie and Sticky a warning look. They nodded and tried to close the trunk as quietly as possible. "They aren't now anyway." "Good," Milligan said, picking up his duffel bag. "I'd hate to have to speak sternly to them again. It embarasses me to be so ineffective.

The tent was for Abraham’s living. Abraham did not take care of his living first. That was secondary. With Abraham, the primary matter [560] was to consecrate everything to God, to worship and serve God, and to have fellowship with God. Only then did Abraham pitch a tent for his living.

The tree of life is the center of the universe. According to the purpose of God, the earth is the center of the universe, the garden of Eden is the center of the earth, and the tree of life is the center of the garden of Eden. We must realize that the whole universe is centered on this tree of life: nothing is more central and crucial to both God and man than this tree. It is very meaningful to see man in the garden standing before the tree of life.

Calling on the Lord’s name solves all our problems. If you are filled with sorrow and worry,...are disappointed, discouraged, or distracted,...are weak [or]...strong, [call on the Lord]. By calling you receive and take the living water.

You can bargain for better wages, you can bargain for higher productivity bonuses. But once the bargain has been struck, then you must enter into the spirit of the agreement, and put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage. There must be no fooling around, work means discipline. Singapore’s success depends on the spirit in which workers, management and government, all three, enter into the spirit of cooperation, necessary for prosperity.

Because God is the source of life, He recovers the oneness of the universe by entering into man to be man’s life.

We do not need religion, and we do not need regulations and rituals. We need Christ to be our spiritual food.

As long as he can keep us from God’s way and frustrate us in fulfilling God’s purpose, Satan will even motivate us to do things for God. This was how he worked in Cain.

You can never forget His appearing and His speaking to you.

But it was not merely her choice to be a witness of the dirty work on Tier 1A. It was her role. As a woman she was not expected to wrestle prisoners into stress positions or otherwise overpower them, but rather just by her presence, to amplify their sense of powerlessness. She was there as an instrument of humiliation...The MPs knew very little about their prisoners or the culture they came from, and they understood less. But at Fort Lee, before they deployed, they were given a session of “cultural awareness training,” from which they’d taken away the understanding—constantly reinforced by MI handlers—that Arab men were sexual prudes, with a particular hang-up about being seen naked in public, especially by women. What better way to break an Arab, then, than to strip him, tie him up, and have a "female bystander," as Graner describer Harman, laugh at him? American women were used on the MI block in the same way that Major David DiNenna spoke of dogs—as "force multipliers." Harman understood. She didn’t like being naked in public herself. To the prisoners, being photographed may have seemed an added dash of mortification, but to Harman, taking pictures was a way of deflecting her own humiliation in the transaction—by taking ownership of her position as spectator.

There is a glorious rainbow that beckons those with the spirit of adventure. And there are rich findings at the end of that rainbow. To the young and the not too old, I say look at the horizon, find that rainbow, go ride it. Not all will be rich; quite a few will find a vein of gold; but all who pursue that rainbow will have a joyous and exhilarating ride and some profit.

Calling on the name of the Lord follows the building up of an altar to the very God who has appeared to us. In the church life, under the oak of Moreh, we have the intimate appearing of the Lord. What shall we do in response to this? We should build an altar to Him and put everything we are and have on the altar. We need to tell the Lord that everything we are and have is for Him, and then we need to call on the name of the Lord to [549] maintain a deeper, richer, and more intimate fellowship with Him.

Prosecutors often wince when they have to take a child abuser to trial, because usually the only witnesses they can use are children who are terrified at the prospect of testifying against their parents.

The presence of atrocity doesn’t mean you have to put your life on hold. You’ll arguably be better at dealing with the horrible things you have to witness, or even to perpetrate, if you allow yourself time to do the small, simple things that make you happy. Instead of looking for ways to destroy yourself.

The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber. Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson’s skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.

Some people believe that, having debauched themselves in one political party or front, they can, like the phoenix, arise from the ashes of the old in the feathers of a new party, front or movement as fresh as if nothing had happened. In fact, there is no such magic formula for longevity in political life other than the simple and the obvious: just honour your promises; do not corrupt and debauch your party. 1956

Whenever we read a line of the Bible, we must say, “Lord Jesus, let me contact You in the divine Word. Lord, You are the living Word. Without You as the living Word I can receive nothing as life from the written Word. Lord, I must contact You. Although You are so mysterious, I praise You that You have given me such a tangible Word. This Word is solid, concrete, and substantial. I thank You for the Word that I can read and pray with. Yet, Lord, what I need is not the letter in black and white, but You, the living Spirit.

As I witness and participate in our visionary efforts to revitalize Detroit and contrast them with the multibillion dollars' worth of megaprojects advanced by politicians and developed that involve casinos, giant stadiums, gentrification, and the Super Bowl, I am saddened by their shortsightedness. At the same time I rejoice in the energy being unleashed in the community by our human-scale programs that involve bringing the country back into the city and removing the walls between schools and communities, between generations, and between ethnic groups. And I am confident just as in the early twentieth century people came from around the world to marvel at the mass production lines pioneered by Henry Ford, in the twenty-first century they will be coming to marvel at the thriving neighborhoods that are the fruit of our visionary programs.

One fundamental difference between American and Oriental culture is the individual’s position in society. In American culture an individual’s interest is primary. This makes American society more aggressively competitive, with a sharper edge and higher performance. In Singapore, the interests of the society take precedence over that of the individual. Nevertheless Singapore has to be competitive in the market for jobs, goods and services. On the other hand the government helps lower income groups to meet their needs for housing, health services and education so that their children will have more of an equal chance to rise through education.

Since the church life is the proper life, it brings in God’s blessing. Peace, joy, love, sympathy, kindness, normal living—all are signs of such a blessing of life which comes by the experience of Christ through the cross.

However, if you live the church life, the very Christ whom you offer to God will heal you. He is better than any psychiatrist. Do not go to a psychiatrist—come to Christ and offer Him to God. Then you will be healthy, sober, and emotionally balanced.

Atticus had urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defence for anybody.

As the Almighty God, Jesus is high, but when He came to us as food He was lowly. He was a loaf of bread. He was even the crumbs under the table (Matt. 15:21-27). The very Jesus who came to us as life in the form of food was not tall and great; He was small and lowly.

Every time we look back on this moment when we signed this agreement which severed Singapore from Malaysia, it will be a moment of anguish. For me it is a moment of anguish because all my life … you see, the whole of my adult life … I have believed in Malaysia, merger and the unity of these two territories. You know, it’s a people, connected by geography, economics and ties of kinship … Would you mind if we stop for a while?

We need to be impressed with these words in verse [2 Cor. 1:]9—“we should not base our confidence on ourselves but on God.” Through the redemption of Christ, the very God, who is in the heavens, has come into us, into our spirit (Col. 1:27; 2 Tim. 4:22). Thank the Lord that He is now in our spirit, calling us to forget about the soulish things and turn to our spirit to meet Him. We should no longer trust in our self, in our soul, but in God who is in our spirit.

Unless every member of this church gains for himself an unshakable testimony of the divinity of this church, he will be among those who will be deceived in this day when the "elect according to the covenant" are going to be tried and tested. Only those will survive who have gained for themselves that testimony. . . . It is not alone sufficient for us as Latter-day Saints to follow our leaders and to accept their counsel, but we have the greater obligation to gain for ourselves the unshakable testimony of the divine appointment of these men and the witness that what they have told us is the will of our Heavenly Father.

In a perverse and fearful way, I like the looking; but I am not so crazy about this business of shaking with fear that the unfolding story inspires in me. I have some doubt about the intelligence and safety of staying behind to witness, but some piece of me believes that doubt is somehow the best part of being alive; I love the suspiciousness of doubt and all the angles for retelling stories that this doubt spawns. This story deserves to be told; all stories do. Even the waves of the sea tell a story that deserves to be read. The stories that really need to be told are those that shake the very soul of you. I prepare to be shaken.

I've been thinking about what it means to bear witness. The past ten years I've been bearing witness to death, bearing witness to women I love, and bearing witness to the [nuclear] testing going on in the Nevada desert. I've been bearing witness to bombing runs on the edge of the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge, bearing witness to the burning of yew trees and their healing secrets in slash piles in the Pacific Northwest and thinking this is not so unlike the burning of witches, who also held knowledge of heading within their bones. I've been bearing witness to traplines of coyotes being poisoned by the Animal Damage Control. And I've been bearing witness to beauty, beauty that strikes a chord so deep you can't stop the tears from flowing. At places as astonishing as Mono Lake, where I've stood knee-deep in salt-water to watch the fresh water of Lee Vining Creek flow over the top like water on vinegar....It's the space of angels. I've been bearing witness to dancing grouse on their leks up at Malheur in Oregon. Bearing witness to both the beauty and pain of our world is a task that I want to be part of. As a writer, this is my work. By bearing witness, the story that is told can provide a healing ground. Through the art of language, the art of story, alchemy can occur. And if we choose to turn our backs, we've walked away from what it means to be human.

Our walk is for the fulfillment of God’s purpose, our living is for the satisfaction of Christ, and our fighting is for the defeat of God’s enemy.

To merely search the Scriptures is to come to the tree of knowledge; to contact the Lord through the Word is to come to the tree of life.

Lee infiltrated the plot to kill President Kennedy, was set up as the patsy, and was then murdered to protect the real assassins by silencing him.

In the three-year period which followed the murder of President Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, 18 material witnesses died:

The world is not a source of enjoyment; it is a place of tyranny, and every aspect of the world is a form of tyranny (Gal. 4:8).

Satan has usurped people so that they care only for their existence, not for God’s purpose in their existence (Matt. 6:25, 31-33).

Knowledge or religion means to be good and to do good, to worship God or to work for God without having the living presence of God.

At Babel, men built a tower to make a name for themselves. At Shechem, Abraham did not build anything to make himself a name; he built an altar for calling on the name of the Lord (12:8).

I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the state, but my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man’s life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. “I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white. She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. She persisted, and her subsequent reaction is something that all of us have known at one time or another. She did something every child has done—she tried to put the evidence of her offense away from her. But in this case she was no child hiding stolen contraband: she struck out at her victim—of necessity she must put him away from her—he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offense.

She averted her eyes from his naked chest and reached up to close her window. He lifted his arms, curling his hands around the sash of his own window. Between his upraised arms, he stared at her, and his smile widened. "What's wrong, Lily? Are you shutting your window because you're afraid I'll breathe the same air you do?" She met his gaze across the short distance that separated them. "I didn't know leeches could breathe." He didn't get angry at the insult. Instead, he laughed. "You're a worthy opponent. I don't think I've ever met a woman with a quicker wit than you. If you'd been a man, there's no telling what you might have accomplished." "If I'd been a man, I'd have called you out in the fine old Southern tradition five years ago and shot you. That would have been a fine accomplishment." She slammed the window shut and closed the curtains. Daniel was right, of course. Within minutes, the room became suffocatingly hot. She desperately wanted to open the window again, but she didn't want to give him any victory, no matter how small. So, she waited in the dark as her bedroom became an oven, listening to the clock on her dressing table tick away the minutes. When the clock chimed the quarter hour twice, she got out of bed and walked to the window. He was sure to be asleep by now. She slipped the curtains open, and as quietly as possible, she raised the sash. "Told you so," a sleepy male voice murmured. Lord, she hated him.

I’ve heard that lawyers’ children, on seeing their parents in court in the heat of argument, get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel to be the personal enemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and are surprised to see them often go out arm-in-arm with their tormenters during the first recess. This was not true of Jem and me. We acquired no traumas from watching our father win or lose. I’m sorry that I can’t provide any drama in this respect; if I did, it would not be true. We could tell, however, when debate became more acrimonious than professional, but this was from watching lawyers other than our father. I never heard Atticus raise his voice in my life, except to a deaf witness.

Col. 1:12-13 Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you for a share of the allotted portion of the saints in the light; who delivered us out of the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.

Anything that exceeds our need becomes worldly, “Egyptian,” something of Pharaoh, and it frustrates us from the economy of God’s purpose....Our living and our existence depend on the provision from the heavenly source, not on the supply from the world.

Dios creó al hombre con la intención de que el hombre fuese un sacerdote, es decir, una persona que se acerca a Dios, le permite a Dios fluir por medio de él, es saturado con Dios y expresa la gloria de Dios. Dios también tuvo la intención de que el hombre ejerciera Su autoridad.

In Genesis 3 the fire keeps the man who is under the curse away from the tree of life, away from God as the source of life. But in Exodus 3 the flame of fire visits the thornbush and indwells it. This indicates that through the redemption of Christ the very God Himself, the holy One whose holiness excludes sinners from His presence, can come to visit us, to stay with us, and even to dwell in us. Hallelujah, Christ has taken away the curse and has cast down to earth the fire of the Holy Spirit! Now that the curse has been taken away, we are no longer excluded from God as life.

The American media struggled to sustain a semblance of calm and order, still insistent Lee Harvey Oswald had been the lone crackpot assassin and had acted unilaterally. But observers and journalists in other countries had already started speculating Oswald had been killed to keep him from talking.

What kind of Bible do you have? You need to say, “I have a Bible of victory.” This is a book of victory, not a book of defeat....In the eyes of the Lord, Satan has been defeated already. This is a matter of fact; it is a settled matter. If we have this foresight and insight, then day by day we will sing Hallelujah. With the church there is no difference between a defeat and a victory. Even a defeat is for a victory. We must tell Satan, “Satan, even your victory is a preparation for our victory. We can never be defeated. Eventually you will be the one who is defeated. I do not care how much you attack and how much you damage.

The first two chapters appear to be a record of creation, but this is superficial. The underlying thought is focused on life. These two chapters are a record of life. They are too simple and too brief to be an adequate account of creation. Genesis 1 and 2 were not intended by God to be a record of creation, but a revelation of life.

Reacher got to them on the plane. He put them out of action and stole their wallets.” “On the plane?” “He broke Lozano’s fingers and Baldacci’s arms and no one noticed.” “That’s not possible.” “Apparently it is. One against two, on an airplane, with a hundred witnesses. It’s a blatant humiliation. And now he’s renting cars on our dime? Who does this guy think he is?

John 7:37-39 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. But this He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Christ is the bread of life (John 6:35). Whatever we take into us as food will be assimilated into our being. This is very meaningful and significant. God is life to us in the form of food. We need to receive Him by eating Him. Once God enters into us, He becomes the flow of life within us. For proper eating we need food and drink. John 6 covers the bread of life for our eating, and John 7 covers the living water for our drinking.

Erm…I don’t know maybe for kissing me and tasting so damn delicious, maybe for holding my hand in public, maybe for looking far too hot in that sexy, snug tee when you should just be looking like Jo’s little brother. The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I chose the much more sophisticated reaction of scowling, hard. I would have kicked him again, but I was convinced he’d moved his legs out of the way. Coward.” ~ Ella, A Perfect Moment

Neither Noah nor his sons were for their own interests. They were all for God’s goal. What was God’s goal? God’s goal was that man should express Him and represent Him. Noah and his family had no other God and no other goal. Their goal was not farming, education, or industry. Their goal was not their own self-interests. Their unique goal was to express God and represent Him. We must be deeply impressed with this. Although we have one God, we may have different goals. If we have different goals, we shall be divided. What is your goal? Is it to make a name for yourself or to be famous? Is it to build up something other than God’s purpose? We are here in Anaheim to express God and represent Him. We have a strong standing to declare to the whole universe, even to Satan and to all the rebellious angels, principalities, powers, and demons, that we, the local churches, are standing one with God for His purpose. Our unique goal is to express our God. We are here to express Him.

Our spirit is connected to the heavens by God as the Spirit. In spirit we are therefore in the heavens, in ascension. To live in ascension requires that we live, act, move, and do everything in our spirit. Thus, we must learn how to discern our spirit. If we do not know our spirit, if we do not know how to discern our spirit from our soul, we cannot be a spiritual person. When we live in our spirit, we are in ascension as the new creation in resurrection. We are a new person living in a new universe. (Life-study of Song of Songs, pp. 36-38)

The disciples, under the influence of a natural, religious concept, asked Him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” (v. 2). Listen to the Lord’s answer. “Neither has this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be manifested in him” (John 9:3). Here is the significance of the Lord’s reply: people always appraise situations according to yes or no, right or wrong, which are the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but the Lord Jesus always brings people back to the tree of life, which is God Himself.

If we see that God’s intention is to work Himself into us, we shall automatically eat and drink of Him. Mothers know that babies eat and drink automatically, not caring for any forms, manners, or regulations. Infants are better at eating and drinking than adults are. Our eating and drinking are often hindered by all the attention we give to table manners. Sometimes the more we pay attention to manners, the less we enjoy our food. I heard of a Chinese ambassador who attended a formal state dinner in Germany. Because he was so concerned about proper etiquette and table manners, he did not enjoy the food at all. He spent his time watching how others at the dinner conducted themselves and how they used their eating utensils. Table manners kept him from eating. Children are not like this. When my little granddaughter visits us, her grandmother often gives her something to eat. My granddaughter enjoys her food in a spontaneous and informal way. She is a good example of how we should pay less attention to forms and more to eating and drinking. At the very time the Lord Jesus was speaking with the Samaritan woman, the priests in the temple were worshipping God in the formal, systematic, prescribed manner. But where was God at that time? Was He in the temple with [517] the priests, or was He with the woman by the well in Samaria? As we all know, He was with the Samaritan woman. He met with her in the open air, away from the temple and the altar, without religious forms and rituals. Eventually, this Samaritan woman drank of the living water and offered real worship to God. At that time the true worship to God was offered not by the priests in the temple, but by the Samaritan woman who was drinking the living water. The priests worshipped God in vain; the Samaritan woman worshipped Him in reality by drinking Him into her being. The Spirit as the living water was infused into her. God was seeking real worship, and He received it from this Samaritan woman who drank of the Spirit as the living water. Today’s Christians need to see what real worship is. They condemn those in the Lord’s recovery as heretical, when they themselves are heretical and ignorant of the truth. Like the priests in the temple, they are blind to what true worship is. In John 4 the Lord Jesus did not spend time talking to typical Jews according to the Old Testament way of worship. Instead, He conversed with an immoral, semi-heathen woman concerning the worship which satisfies God’s heart. This woman worshipped God in her spirit by drinking of Him as the water to quench her thirst. Thus, God was worshipped by her in a genuine way. How much different this is from formal, religious worship! Throughout the centuries, most Christian worship has been like that of the priests in the temple. Only a small number have worshipped God in spirit by drinking of Him as living water.

The priesthood of Christ is “not according to the law of a fleshy commandment, but according to the power of an indestructible life” (Heb. 7:16). Aaron was constituted high priest according to the powerless letter of the law, but Christ according to the powerful element of an indestructible life. Our High Priest is constituted of a life which nothing can conquer, but which rather conquers everything! It is a life which cannot be destroyed. A life which saves to the uttermost. The endless, eternal, divine, uncreated life. The resurrection life which has passed the test of death and Hades.

When we realize that our need corresponds to God’s need and then pray accordingly, God will answer our prayer. Actually, His answer to our prayer is the fulfillment of His purpose. Our need must be God’s need, and the prayer for our need should also be the prayer for God’s need. When our need corresponds with God’s and when we then pray for our need, God’s need will be met also. When Isaac prayed for a child, whose need was greater—Isaac’s or God’s? Surely God’s need was greater. Nevertheless, the greater need of God could only be fulfilled in the smaller need of Isaac. Only when man realizes his need and prays for it does God have the way to come in to fulfill His need. God has a purpose, and we have a need which corresponds to God’s purpose. But God cannot do anything until we realize our need and pray about it. Then God will answer our prayer to meet our need for the fulfillment of His purpose. Eventually, Isaac had a son, Jacob, who not only fulfilled Isaac’s need but also fulfilled God’s eternal purpose. [845] Out of Jacob came Christ, who brings in the church, the kingdom, and the New Jerusalem. All these eternal things came about through the meeting of Isaac’s need, a need which corresponded with God’s need.

Dan’s failure was that he was individualistic. Gad’s success was that he was corporate, moving with the brothers. Dan was for himself, but Gad was for all the tribes. Whenever you are concerned only for your own spiritual interests, you are a Dan. But when you forget your own spiritual interests and care for all the other brothers, that is, care for the Body, you are a Gad. We must care for the Body and move with the Body. Are you a Dan or a Gad? Are you taking care only of your locality or of the whole Body? As long as we do not care for the Body, we are today’s Dan, and we have fallen into a form of apostasy. (Life-study of Genesis, pp. 1324-1325)

In times of crisis you either deepen democracy, or you go to the other extreme and become totalitarian. Our struggles for democracy have taught us some important and valuable lessons. Over a million citizen activists of all ethnic groups, mostly young people, made history by going door to door, urging voters to go to the polls and send Barack Obama to the White House in 2008. We did this because we believed and hoped that this charismatic black man could bring about the transformational changes we urgently need at this time on the clock of the world, when the U.S. empire is unraveling and the American pursuit of unlimited economic growth has reached its social and ecological limits. We have since witnessed the election of our first black president stir increasingly dangerous counterrevolutionary resentments in a white middle class uncertain of its future in a country that is losing two wars and eliminating well-paying union jobs. We have watched our elected officials in DC bail out the banks while wheeling and dealing with insurance company lobbyists to deliver a contorted version of health care reform. We have been stunned by the audacity of the Supreme Court as it reaffirmed the premise that corporations are persons and validated corporate financing of elections in its Citizens United decision.

God’s eternal purpose is to work Himself into us as our life so that we may take Him as our person, live Him, and express Him. This is the desire of God’s heart; it is also the focal point of the Bible. In order to fulfill this purpose, God created man in His image and after His likeness. God’s intention in creating man was that man would receive God into him and take Him as his life and everything to him. For this reason, after God created man, He placed him in front of the tree of life. This indicates that God wanted man to eat of this tree, which is a symbol of God Himself as life. To eat of the tree of life is to take God into us as our life and life supply.

God has a purpose, and for the fulfillment of His purpose He created man as a vessel to contain Him, making him with a human spirit. The Lord Jesus told the Samaritan woman that God is Spirit and they that worship Him must worship in spirit (John 4:24). If we are going to worship God, we must use the proper organ. For example, we cannot drink water with our ears, but with our mouth. God is living water. If we want to drink Him as our living water, we must exercise our spirit to contact Him. When we exercise our spirit to contact God the Spirit, we are actually drinking of God as the living water (John 4:24, 14). Thus, God made man with a spirit to contact and worship Him.

Why do we care about Lizzie Borden, or Judge Crater, or Lee Harvey Oswald, or the Little Big Horn? Mystery! Because of all that cannot be known. And what if we did know? What if it were proved—absolutely and purely—that Lizzie Borden took an ax? That Oswald acted alone? That Judge Crater fell into Sicilian hands? Nothing more would beckon, nothing would tantalize. The thing about Custer is this: no survivors. Hence, eternal doubt, which both frustrates and fascinates. It’s a standoff. The human desire for certainty collides with our love of enigma. And so I lose sleep over mute facts and frayed ends and missing witnesses. God knows I’ve tried. Reams of data, miles of magnetic tape, but none of it satisfies even my own primitive appetite for answers. So I toss and turn. I eat pints of ice cream at two in the morning. Would it help to announce the problem early on? To plead for understanding? To argue that solutions only demean the grandeur of human ignorance? To point out that absolute knowledge is absolute closure? To issue a reminder that death itself dissolves into uncertainty, and that out of such uncertainty arise great temples and tales of salvation? I prowl and smoke cigarettes. I review my notes. The truth is at once simple and baffling: John Wade was a pro. He did his magic, then walked away. Everything else is conjecture. No answers, yet mystery itself carries me on.

When you come to our meetings, you can see nothing outwardly. But in all [454] probability you do see something—God Himself expressed. Perhaps after attending a meeting you wonder within yourself, “My, it was very good there with them, but I can’t pin down exactly in what way they are good. Their singing is not that musical. No one is dressed in an attractive way. There is no outward beauty or form. But, there is something there among them.” This “something” is the expression of God. God is our expression. He is our form, beauty, and attraction. As the church, we have returned to God’s original purpose, to the purpose He had in the beginning—that man express Him and represent Him. This is the Lord’s recovery.

The same mass media that told us Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy—and that James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert F. Kennedy, Arthur Bremer was the lone gunman when George Wallace was shot, and Ted Kennedy was responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne—brainwash this society every single day. The creation of the SLA is only one more propaganda lie. We can’t discuss Patty’s brainwashing without looking at our own. Our sensitivities and emotions were tested over the same period of time as Patty Hearst’s and Donald DeFreeze’s. Patty was taken to a building near the death trap on 54th Street to witness six of her close associates and intimates for the last four months shot and burned to death. We watched the event in living color over Friday’s TV Dinner. All of us took part. The only ones to gain from the maneuvers of the SLA were the military and police agencies. They have already spent between $5 and $10 million “pursuing” the SLA. Ten thousand young adults were stopped, searched or arrested within a three-week period. SWAT police teams are now located in every major city. Police helicopter contracts are escalating. Computerized police information systems will increase. And the CIA will openly take over local police departments, no longer hide behind public relations doors. The creation of the fictitious Symbionese Liberation Army was a cruel hoax perpetrated on the American public.

At Columbia and far beyond, T.D. was renowned and celebrated. At the weekly research seminars I attended ... every speaker felt compelled to focus on him; as they spoke, their eyes fixated only on him, and he let no statement he did not fully agree with pass hi by. No matter who lectured at the seminar, T.D. concentrated intensely on their argument, and interrupted at the first instant something was not satisfactory. At times he broke in on the initial sentence of the talk, refusing to let a speaker proceed until the point was clarified. Sometimes clarification never came; I once witnessed the humiliation of a visiting postdoc who was forced to defend the first sentence he uttered for the entire hour and a half allowed for his seminar. No one dared restrain T.D.

Listen to what I’m tellin’ you, boy! This is why we couldn’t tell you the truth—’cause you wasn’t lookin’ for the truth. You was lookin’ for confirmation of what you already believed. The truth was starin’ you in the face and you didn’t want it. How the hell could I get away wit’ killin’ somebody and authorities never come? Huh? I know we in the country, but we ain’t on Mars! That don’t make no sense! But you couldn’t swallow the truth that I had done changed, so you held on to the ignorance you always believed—that I was a mean, nasty, evil woman. That’s what’s wrong wit’ the world. We don’t let people change.” She paused, frowning. “Sometimes, when people change, we change ’em right back into what they was ’cause the change don’t fit how we know ’em. So people get tired of fightin’ to make other folks see ’em differently. Most stop tryin’.” TL

Whereas our words represent our person, our character is our very person. A person’s usefulness, the things which can be entrusted to him, the responsibilities he can bear, and the things he is able to accomplish altogether depend on his character. A carpenter determines the use of a piece of wood based on its quality. Laziness ruins one’s usefulness. Accordingly, character has very much to do with the Lord’s service. Consider those persons in the Bible whom God used. They were used by God because they possessed a character that was fit for His use. Their character was simply their person. They became persons useful to God because their character could be used by Him. Since Abraham, Moses, and Paul all had an excellent character, God greatly used them. The destiny of our usefulness to the Lord hinges on our character. Whether we are useful before God depends upon the suitability of our human character.

As she gazed into the ball of confession,she questioned, “Who will I be in this profession?” Years of life have come to show she is the portrait of a woman we have grown to love and know. With her heart on her sleeve and the wit that shows, she has inspired them all with her intensity and glow. Not the ordinary woman who walks without purpose, she lives to share her vigor with the children who walk Earth’s surface. A special woman who has awakened their minds, she has created a class of comfort and pleasure without intensity from father time. For the knowledge and warmth she brings the children follow her with looks of admiration. With her critical thoughts and queries she has opened their minds without invitation. She’s not a preacher of her own thoughts,but rather one who supplies the knowledge, One who allows their visions to flourish without indifference or carnage. So as she gazes into theball of confession, she will no longer question… For she will be a special woman I must say one beyond her own comprehension. A woman full of progression and forever a Teacher that will leave a lasting impression…” ― Diana Lee Santamaria

1. In the tabernacle there was acacia wood overlaid with gold and also linen embroidered with gold thread; both the acacia wood and the linen signify humanity, and the gold signifies divinity (Exo. 25:10-11; 26:15, 29; 36:34; 37:1-2; 28:6; 39:3). 2. In Exodus 3 God’s dwelling was a thornbush, but in Exodus 40 His dwelling was the tabernacle made of humanity overlaid by and interwoven with divinity; such an overlaid and embroidered humanity is a transformed humanity. ‹‹    DAY 3    ›› F. Both the thornbush and the tabernacle are symbols; God’s actual dwelling place was neither the physical thornbush nor the tabernacle; it was His people: 1. After the children of Israel had been dealt with by God, they became acacia wood overlaid with gold and also linen embroidered with gold thread; the church today is the fulfillment of this type. 2. At present, the church may be a redeemed thornbush; however, the day is coming when we shall be gold, pearl, and precious stone (Rev. 21:18-21). 3. Praise the Lord for this marvelous vision of God’s dwelling place! This vision covers God’s habitation from the initial stage, the stage of the thornbush, to the consummate stage, the stage of the New Jerusalem.

I also gained a deeper appreciation of what it must have been like for my mother to be in a foreign country unable to speak the language (in her case, unable to read or write any language). As I walked around by myself, however, it was obvious that based on my body language people perceived me as American but at the same time different enough from other Americans that they felt free to come up and ask me all kinds of personal questions about where I came from, what kind of work I did, whether I was married, how many people there were in my family. Back in the 1930s when I asked personal questions like these of a Chinese student at Bryn Mawr, she reprimanded me for being too personal. I’m not sure whether that was because she came from a higher social class or because the revolution has opened things up. I answered their questions as best as I could in my limited Chinese. The ingenuity and energy of the Chinese reminded me of my father, for example, the way that they used bicycles, often transformed into tricycles, for transporting all kinds of things: little children (sometimes in a sidecar), bricks and concrete, beds and furniture. I was amazed at the number of entrepreneurs lining the sidewalks with little sewing machines ready to alter or make a garment, barbers with stools and scissors, knife sharpeners, shoe repairmen, vendors selling food and other kinds of merchandise from carts. Everywhere I went I saw women knitting, as they waited for a bus or walked along the street, as if they couldn’t waste a minute. I had never seen such an industrious people. It was unlike anything that I had witnessed in England, France, the West Indies, Africa, or the United States.

There are many who profess to be religious and speak of themselves as Christians, and, according to one such, “as accepting the scriptures only as sources of inspiration and moral truth,” and then ask in their smugness: “Do the revelations of God give us a handrail to the kingdom of God, as the Lord’s messenger told Lehi, or merely a compass?” Unfortunately, some are among us who claim to be Church members but are somewhat like the scoffers in Lehi’s vision—standing aloof and seemingly inclined to hold in derision the faithful who choose to accept Church authorities as God’s special witnesses of the gospel and his agents in directing the affairs of the Church. There are those in the Church who speak of themselves as liberals who, as one of our former presidents has said, “read by the lamp of their own conceit.” (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine [Deseret Book Co., 1939], p. 373.) One time I asked one of our Church educational leaders how he would define a liberal in the Church. He answered in one sentence: “A liberal in the Church is merely one who does not have a testimony.” Dr. John A. Widtsoe, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve and an eminent educator, made a statement relative to this word liberal as it applied to those in the Church. This is what he said: “The self-called liberal [in the Church] is usually one who has broken with the fundamental principles or guiding philosophy of the group to which he belongs. . . . He claims membership in an organization but does not believe in its basic concepts; and sets out to reform it by changing its foundations. . . . “It is folly to speak of a liberal religion, if that religion claims that it rests upon unchanging truth.” And then Dr. Widtsoe concludes his statement with this: “It is well to beware of people who go about proclaiming that they are or their churches are liberal. The probabilities are that the structure of their faith is built on sand and will not withstand the storms of truth.” (“Evidences and Reconciliations,” Improvement Era, vol. 44 [1941], p. 609.) Here again, to use the figure of speech in Lehi’s vision, they are those who are blinded by the mists of darkness and as yet have not a firm grasp on the “iron rod.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when there are questions which are unanswered because the Lord hasn’t seen fit to reveal the answers as yet, all such could say, as Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said, “I accept all I read in the Bible that I can understand, and accept the rest on faith.” . . . Wouldn’t it be a great thing if all who are well schooled in secular learning could hold fast to the “iron rod,” or the word of God, which could lead them, through faith, to an understanding, rather than to have them stray away into strange paths of man-made theories and be plunged into the murky waters of disbelief and apostasy? . . . Cyprian, a defender of the faith in the Apostolic Period, testified, and I quote, “Into my heart, purified of all sin, there entered a light which came from on high, and then suddenly and in a marvelous manner, I saw certainty succeed doubt.” . . . The Lord issued a warning to those who would seek to destroy the faith of an individual or lead him away from the word of God or cause him to lose his grasp on the “iron rod,” wherein was safety by faith in a Divine Redeemer and his purposes concerning this earth and its peoples. The Master warned: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better … that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6.) The Master was impressing the fact that rather than ruin the soul of a true believer, it were better for a person to suffer an earthly death than to incur the penalty of jeopardizing his own eternal destiny.