Billy Graham<\/b><\/p>\n
I<\/b>n his autobiography, Just as I Am, Billy Graham tells about a conversation he had with John F. Kennedy shortly after his election:<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the way back to the Kennedy house, the president-elect stopped the car and turned to me. \u2018Do you believe in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ?\u2019 he asked.<\/p>\n
\u2018I most certainly do.\u2019 \u2018Well, does my church believe it?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018They have it in their creeds.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018They don\u2019t preach it,\u2019 he said. \u2018They don\u2019t tell us much about it. I\u2019d like to know what you think.\u2019<\/p>\n
I explained what the Bible said about Christ coming the first time, dying on the Cross, rising from the dead, and then promising that he would come back again. \u2018Only then,\u2019 I said, \u2018are we going to have permanent world peace.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Very interesting,\u2019 he said, looking away. \u2018We\u2019ll have to talk more about that someday.\u2019 And he drove on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several years later, the two met again, at the 1963 National Prayer Breakfast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had the flu,\u201d Graham remembers. \u201cAfter I gave my short talk, and he gave his, we walked out of the hotel to his car together, as was always our custom. At the curb, he turned to me.<\/p>\n
\u2018Billy, could you ride back to the White House with me? I\u2019d like to see you for a minute.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Mr. President, I\u2019ve got a fever,\u2019 I protested. \u2018Not only am I weak, but I don\u2019t want to give you this thing. Couldn\u2019t we wait and talk some other time?\u2019<\/p>\n
It was a cold, snowy day, and I was freezing as I stood there without my overcoat.<\/p>\n
\u2018Of course,\u2019 he said graciously.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the two would never meet again. Later that year, Kennedy was shot dead. Graham comments, \u201cHis hesitation at the car door, and his request, haunt me still. What was on his mind? Should I have gone with him? It was an irrecoverable moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just as I Am, Billy Graham<\/p>\n
Ob Portu<\/b><\/p>\n
In the days before modern harbors, a ship had to wait for the flood tide before it could make it to port. The term for this situation in Latin was ob portu, that is, a ship standing over off a port, waiting for the moment when it could ride the turn of the tide to harbor.<\/p>\n
The English word opportunity is derived from this original meaning. The captain and the crew were ready and waiting for that one moment for they knew that if they missed it, they would have to wait for another tide to come in. Shakespeare turned this background of the exact meaning of opportunity into one of his most famous passages. It\u2019s from Julius Caesar, Act 4, Scene 3:<\/p>\n
There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.<\/p>\n
On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.<\/p>\n
Bits & Pieces, March 2, 1995, pp. 16-17<\/p>\n
Quote<\/b><\/p>\n
\u2022 Napoleon said he was able to win all of those battles because he understood the value of five minutes. – Zig Ziglar<\/p>\n
Source unknown<\/p>\n
Anxious Times<\/b><\/p>\n
The Irish Potato Famine (1846\u20131851) resulted in a 30 percent drop in the population of the west of Ireland. The prolonged suffering of the Irish peasantry had broken the survivors in body and spirit.<\/p>\n
John Bloomfield, the owner of Castle Caldwell in County Fermanagh, was working on the recovery of his estate when he noticed that the exteriors of his tenant farmers\u2019 small cottages had a vivid white finish. He was informed that there was a clay deposit on his property of unusually fine quality. To generate revenue and provide employment on his estate, he built a pottery at the village of Belleek in 1857. The unusually fine clay yielded a porcelain china that was translucent with a glass-like finish. It was worked into traditional Irish designs and was an immediate success.<\/p>\n
Today, Belleek\u2019s delicate strength and its iridescent pearlized glaze is enthusiastically purchased the world over. This multimillion-dollar industry arose from innovative thinking during some very anxious times.<\/p>\n
Bits & Pieces, June 25, 1992<\/p>\n
Sirhan Sirhan<\/b><\/p>\n
We missed him. Our chance to change things came and passed and we did not know it was there. A dark-skinned little boy sat through Sunday School classes for three years at a great Baptist Church (First Church, San Antonio) but someone missed him. His name was Sirhan Sirhan, and at age 24 he shot and killed Senator Robert Kennedy. In a welter of words and the shudder of grief throughout our nation, the persistent thought keeps recurring…someone missed him.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jimmy Allen, former pastor of First Baptist Church, San Antonio, Texas in Pulpit Helps, May, 1991<\/p>\n
F. W. Woolworth<\/b><\/p>\n
Some years ago an energetic young man began as a clerk in a hardware store. Like many old-time hardware stores, the inventory included thousands of dollars\u2019 worth of items that were obsolete or seldom called for by customers. The young man was smart enough to know that no thriving business could carry such an inventory and still show a healthy profit. He proposed a sale to get rid of the stuff. The owner was reluctant but finally agreed to let him set up a table in the middle of the store and try to sell off a few of the oldest items. Every product was priced at ten cents. The sale was a success and the young fellow got permission to run a second sale. It, too, went over just as well as the first. This gave the young clerk an idea. Why not open a store that would sell only nickel and dime items? He could run the store and his boss could supply the capital. The young man\u2019s boss was not enthusiastic. \u201cThe plan will never work,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause you can\u2019t find enough items to sell at a nickel and a dime.\u201d The young man was disappointed but eventually went ahead on his own and made a fortune out of the idea. His name was F. W. Woolworth.<\/p>\n
Years later his old boss lamented, \u201cAs near as I can figure it, every word I used in turning Woolworth down has cost me about a million dollars!\u201d<\/p>\n
Bits and Pieces, Vol. F, #41<\/p>\n
Wise Men<\/b><\/p>\n
In 1269 Kublai Khan sent a request from Peking to Rome for \u201ca hundred wise men of the Christian religion…And so I shall be baptized, and when I shall be baptized all my baron and great men will be baptized, and their subjects baptized, and so there will be more Christians here than there are in your parts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mongols were then wavering in the choice of a religion. It might have been, as Kublai forecast, the greatest mass religious movement the world has ever seen. The history of all Asia would have been changed. But what actually happened? Pope Gregory X answered by sending two Dominican friars. They got as far as Armenia, could endure no longer and returned home. So passed the great missionary opportunity in the history of the church.<\/p>\n
R. Dunkerly, in Resource, No. 2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Billy Graham In his autobiography, Just as I Am, Billy Graham tells about a conversation he had with John F. Kennedy shortly after his election: \u201cOn the way back to the Kennedy house, the president-elect stopped the car and turned to me. \u2018Do you believe in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ?\u2019 he asked. \u2018I … Continue reading “Opportunity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}