The Resurrected Christ Appears To Disciples On the Road to Emmaus

 THIS IS TRULY ONE OF THE MOST INSPIRING STORIES OF THE GOOD NEWS OF JESUS CHRIST. It is His second appearance after He is risen from the dead to of his disciples walking and talking along the road to Emmaus from Jerusalem.

Taken from Luke: Luke 24:13-35New International Version (NIV)

On the Road to Emmaus

¹³ Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles^[a] from Jerusalem. ¹⁴ They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. ¹⁵ As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; ¹⁶ but they were kept from recognizing him.

¹⁷ He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”

They stood still, their faces downcast. ¹⁸ One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
¹⁹ “What things?” he asked.

“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. ²⁰ The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; ²¹ but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. ²² In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning ²³ but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. ²⁴ Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”

²⁵ He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

 ²⁶ Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” ²⁷ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

²⁸ As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. ²⁹ But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.

³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. ³² They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

³³ They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together ³⁴ and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” ³⁵ Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

Amazing Breakthrough For Joint Repair/ Regeneration In Early Stages of Development

OBAMA'S FIRST HUNDRED DAYS AS EX-PRESIDENT
 THIS IS A VIDEO MADE IN 2016 FROM A MEDICAL RESEARCH GROUP IN AUSTRALIA....Clearly this procedure is in the early stages of exploration and not yet ready for human consumption. Still it holds tremendous promise for joint repair and treatment, among many other things. I like  that it uses fat tissue/stem cells from your own body and not placental stem cells.

I found out last week that my torn meniscus would not respond well to surgery. That's fine with me since I'm much better, in far less pain and walking again. Still, knowing this procedure is in the pipeline for the future, thrills me no end. It's another reason to keep a little fat tissue in reserve on the body.....but just a little. SOURCE

One other thing:  there are a number of stem cell 'practioners' now in the U.S who use placental tissues and frequently operate out of chiropractic offices using people with a minimal of training and very marginal results.  These are not the real thing, in my opinion and I would steer clear of them and wait.. May the buyer beware.

Ivanka Dazzles In Berlin

MEANWHILE: OEDIPUS IN PARIS @ HAD ENOUGH THERAPY? YOU CAN SAY WHAT YOU LIKE ABOUT THE FIRST DAUGHTER, but I think Ivanka Trump is a knock-out and stunner in many ways: She's smart, articulate, hard working and resourceful, tough, stylish and beautiful. What a combo! How refreshing that she can represent her father and our country on the world stage. And what fun!  I continue to wish her and the Trump administration well.  My only other feedback is those earrings make my earlobes hurt and walking in those super-high heels makes for a grand entrance but nonetheless makes me very nervous.....

Source:  Daily Mail

The Bible Project: The Overlap of Heaven and Earth

Monday, Red Fishing In the Gulf

VERY BREEZY, BUT NOWHERE I'D RATHER BE. With my son and a very good guide....going after reds.

If You Had Been Here, A Poem For Easter

TOO POWERFUL FOR WORDS....

Via The Gospel Coalition

Annual Spring Picnic With Family In the Historic Cemetery of My Hometown During Dogwood Season

UPDATE: ROGER---TRUMP'S TILT TO CHINA SPELLS TROUBLE FOR PUTIN


THIS LAST WEEK, I HAVE BEEN FAR TOO BUSY with business, tax matters and getting ready to go to Houston to see the Gs this week. Am now on my way down there, for perhaps the last time, as they are packing up, selling their beautiful home and moving to.....wait for it....moving to.....I'll tell you later....it's out of the country.  I'm still trying to adjust to this big change!  Let's just say, it's a place I can't drive to.  Will have to fly.

Meanwhile, I want to say how thrilled I am that Neil Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate and already been sworn in to the Supreme Court of the United States. Simply wonderful.

In addition,  since coming back from hiking in Arizona this winter,  I have been limping around from pain in my right knee.  In typical style,  I did not go get it checked for a month thinking it would magically get  better on its own. Wrong again.....finally,  I went to an orthopedic guy and was tentatively diagnosed with a torn meniscus.  Went yesterday for an MRI, so will soon see.   It has been very painful and I don't take any pain pills.  If necessary, will get it repaired when I get back.  I don't want to, but will if the orthopedic doctor says I should.

But enough about my knee problems.

Spring here is glorious and I hope it is where you are.  I will blog as I can between Easter, family, and limping around.  Thanks for coming by.

Finally the picnic with some of my oldest relatives----two in their ninties,  one in her eighties was simply splendid.  I sat near the tomb of my forebearer who had the same name as I.  Will      try to post another pic later.

Sunday: What Is the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Godhead/Trinity?

WHY JESUS SENT THE SPIRIT: JOY WILL KEEP YOU FROM FALLING AWAY

SINCE THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF HOLY WEEK, and it is the explosive power of Holy Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead after His Crucifixion, it seems like a good time to post a video on this mysterious force within the Trinity.  Pretty amazing, isn't it?

History Question: Do you Know the Name of the First Atom Bomb Dropped on Japan At Hiroshima? He's Back In the Senate Today

UPDATE: TRUMP BLASTS SYRIAN BASE

RUNNING OUT THE DOOR TO EXERCISE; BUT WILL BE BACK LATER TO WATCH THE GORSUCH SPECTACLE IN THE SENATE.

The answer: Little Boy was the name of that first atomic bomb.

Five Susan Rice Scandal Facts Every American Should Remember

DID RICE COMMIT A CRIME?  IT'S LOOKING THAT WAY @ IBD

ROGER SIMON: SUSAN RICE, OBAMA'S HATCHET WOMAN PROVES LORD ACTON RIGHT AGAIN

This Walk Down Memory Lane From Breitbart:

It was revealed Monday that President Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice allegedly ordered the unmasking of the identities of Trump campaign aides who were reportedly being surveilled during the 2016 election.

The recent reports further prove, at least in part, President Donald Trump’s claims that senior Obama officials had collected intelligence on Trump aids and disseminated it throughout the government. Rice’s involvement — as it relates to her reported role in the unmasking of Trump aids and circulating sensitive information — places the longtime Obama operative at the center of another major political scandal.

1. Susan Rice allegedly ordered surveillance of Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign aides as part of a political intelligence operation. 

Rice allegedly maintained spreadsheets of Trump aides’ telephone calls “one year before the 2016 presidential election,” according to the Daily Caller.
The Daily Caller reports:

“What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals,” diGenova told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group Monday.

“The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,” diGenova said. “In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.”

2. Rice claimed that climate change was responsible for the deadly civil war in Syria. 
“In the years prior to civil war breaking out in Syria, that country also experienced its worst drought on record,” Rice said in October 2015, during a speech at Stanford University. “Farming families moved en masse into urban centers, increasing political unrest and further priming the country for conflict.”

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed in the conflict since President Barack Obama drew his infamous “red line” in 2012, promising to retaliate against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime if it used chemical weapons on its own people.

3. Rice once declared that there is “no military solution” to the raging conflict in Yemen.
“As in Syria, there is no military solution to the crisis in Yemen,” Rice said in April 2015, during a speech at the Arab American Institute’s Kahlil Gibran Gala.

Seven months before Rice’s speech, President Obama had called his administration’s drone strike-driven military operation in Yemen a success story.

President Trump, however, ordered more airstrikes against al-Qaeda in Yemen in February than any year in Obama’s presidency.

4. Susan Rice said accused deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl served “with honor and distinction.”
In March 2015, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was charged with treason for allegedly deserting his fellow soldiers and abandoning his Afghanistan outpost in 2009.

In a June 2014 broadcast of ABC’s This Week, Susan Rice defended Bergdahl, saying he “served the United States with honor and distinction. And we’ll have the opportunity eventually to learn what has transpired in the past years.”

As Breitbart News reported, six soldiers lost their lives searching for then-Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl after he abandoned his outpost.

5. Susan Rice was the driving force behind a misinformation campaign about the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi terror attacks. 

Then-UN Ambassador Rice, acting as the Obama White House’s spokeswoman, appeared on five Sunday morning talk shows and repeatedly claimed that the Benghazi attacks had been caused by an anti-Islam video.

Rice appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, and CNN and regurgitated talking points purporting that the protests that had erupted “spontaneously” near two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya and were a result of a “hateful video” that was offensive to Islam.

But government documents, released following a Judicial Watch lawsuit, reveal that government officials monitoring the attack in real-time did not cite an anti-Islam video as an explanation for the paramilitary attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

In May 2015 interview, former Obama CIA Director Mike Morell said Rice’s Benghazi talking points blaming an anti-Islam YouTube video crossed “the line between national security and politics.”
“I think the line in there that says one of our objectives here right on the Sunday show is to blame the video rather than a failure of policy,” Morell said on Fox News’ Special Report. “And as you know, I say in the book that I think that that is crossing the line between national security and politics.

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson

Bombshell: What Does "Unmasking" Mean and Why Is It Important?

PJMEDIA: INCIDENTAL, UNCISMENTAL

(ABOVE, SUSAN RICE, FORMER PRESIDENT OBAMA'S RIGHT HAND  MAN AND UNMASKER-IN-CHIEF)

THE NEW WORD OF THE HOUR  IS UNMASKING.  So we might as well  figure out what it  means, since we're going to be hearing a lot about it for weeks to come. It's a nice, seeming  innocuous word for what may be a dynamite story with major national and international implications.

Here's a description of the term from today's Washington Examiner:

"UNMASKING" IS THE TERM BEING USED in the press about decisions to uncover people who were incidentally caught up in routine surveillance of foreign officials, which reportedly happened to members of President Trump's transition team.

Here's how to think about the procedure that's being described, what unmasking can lead to, and why it matters:

U.S. intelligence agencies routinely do legal surveillance of foreign nationals thanks to a section of law in the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," generally referred to as FISA. FISA only authorizes electronic surveillance of non-U.S. people, but it can pick up communications in which a U.S. citizen is one of the parties in the conversation. For example, if the ambassador another country under surveillance calls a U.S. citizen, both would be captured.

In that example, when the phone call or other communication is eventually transcribed into an intelligence product, the name of the U.S. citizen is not supposed to be identified in the document, to stay consistent with FISA. Instead, the intelligence agencies use a simple alias, such as "U.S. person number 1," rather his or her proper name. This is known as masking, and masking should also apply in cases where two foreign nationals simply mention the name of a U.S. citizen.

However, there are times when the intelligence agency needs to know the name of the person in the communication, and so they must ask that the alias be removed. Removing the alias is known as "unmasking."

There are legal reasons to unmask someone, and officials are required to follow proper procedures to make sure the unmasking is being done for a good reason. But it's also possible that someone could have been unmasked illegally, and that's what Trump's team says happened.

Specifically, Trump's team charges that the Obama administration unmasked some of the Trump transition team officials for political reasons, in order to show that Trump's team was talking to the Russians.

Got that? Unmasking means  identifying anonymous people who are secretly spied on by the government for various reasons---including political gain. It appears that this surveillance happened to a number of Trump's inner circle before, during and after the November election by the inner circle of the Obama administration in order to de-legitimize Trump. Trump has been saying this all along. Now with this bombshell revelation that former NSA head Susan Rice---of Benghazi and Bergdahl fame---is the Obama operative who requested the "unmasking" to take place, it appears, the president might be right after all.

This is a very big story with major implications from a little harmless seeming word.  Guess we'll have to stay tuned....

Fourth Sunday in Lent: Lament

DON'T WASTE YOUR SUFFERING @ TGC

PSALM 44:9-16

BUT NOW you have rejected and humbled us;
   You no longer go out with our armies.
¹⁰ You made us retreat before the enemy,
    and our adversaries have plundered us.
¹¹ You gave us up to be devoured like sheep
    and have scattered us among the nations.
¹² You sold your people for a pittance,
    gaining nothing from their sale. ¹³ You have made us a reproach to our neighbors,
    the scorn and derision of those around us.
¹⁴ You have made us a byword among the nations;
    the peoples shake their heads at us. 
15 I live in disgrace all
    and my face is covered with shame
¹⁶ at the taunts of those who reproach and revile me,
    because of the enemy, who is bent on revenge.

LAMENT: When we think of the essential forms of prayer, we think of adoration and thanksgiving, confession, and supplication.Learning to do these three kinds of prayer in the midst of suffering----and about our suffering---is so critical for spiritual growth (and for survival) that it should be cosidered a spiritual skill on its own. Most of us in in suffering stop praying or put up a brief petition for help. Here the psalmist nearly shouts his pain, frustration, and even anger to God, but the significant thing is he does so before God, processing his grief in sustained prayer. God understands us so well that he permits, even encourages, us to speak to him with uncensored hearts. 

PRAYER:  LORD, I praise you for being a God who invites us to give you long lists of complaints!  How patient, loving and caring you are to all your children.  Thank you for the invitation to unburden myself fully,  without the need to say everything in the 'right way.' Amen 

 Psalm devotional for April 2, From The Songs of Jesus, Timothy Keller