When a man came to Jesus complaining that his brother wasn't giving him the correct share of their inheritance, the Lord told this parable – "The ground of a certain rich man brought forth abundantly...." Go ahead and click on the barn to read the rest of it! The point isn't that we should not have any "barns" – savings for the future – but that it must not be the focus of our lives. Look at verse 21 – "So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." We should be laying up our riches in heaven, not just on the earth. The second greatest commandment – "Love your neighbor as yourself" assumes that we love and take care of ourselves, but too often we focus exclusively on ourselves and forget our neighbor, ignoring the whole world of hurt all around us!

Imagine that you woke up one morning and learned you had just won the Megabucks lottery: you have $200,000,000 in your account. What would you do with it? In Ecclesiastes 5:10-11, King Solomon wrote – "He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he who loves abundance, with increase: this also is vanity. When goods increase, those who eat them are increased; and what advantage is there to its owner, except to feast on them with his eyes?" To sum it up:
    1. Those who love money will never have enough.
    2. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!
    3. The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it.
    4. So what good is wealth – except to see it slip through your fingers!

So now that you've done it all and had it all... what's next? "As he came forth naked from his mother's womb, he shall go again as he came, and shall take nothing for his labor, which he may carry away in his hand" (verse 15). I've never seen a U-Haul being buried along with a coffin at the cemetery! So...

"Whoever wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; and whoever will lose his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mark 8:34-37).

The Apostles and leaders of the Early Church laid heavy emphasis on not striving after riches. St. James, step-brother of the Lord, wrote in his Epistle (ch. 2:1-20 and ch. 5:1-5) decrying those who profess Christ but live in luxury while neglecting the poor, as St. Clement (2nd cent.) echos this in his essay "Who is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?" (See www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#rich-man-saved). The title of Clement's essay refers to the incident in Matthew 19:16-22 where a certain rich man came to Jesus asking "What must I do to be saved?" He was a religious Jew who kept all ten commandments, but not the second greatest one – "Love your neighbor as yourself" So Jesus told him – "Go and sell what you have, and give to the poor, and come follow Me!" This story is so important that it's repeated in Mark and Luke as well.

St. Basil the Great (4th cent.) composed his famous sermon "To the Rich" on this same scripture from Matthew, quoting the passage in full in the start of his sermon (See www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#to-the-rich). St. Gregory the Theologian (4th cent.), considered by the Early Church as the greatest theologian since the Apostle John, wrote his essay "Love of Poverty" (See www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#love-of-poverty). And St. John Chrysostom (4th cent.), called "The Golden Tongue" because of his many eloquent and compelling sermons, penned his "Sermon on Almsgiving" on this same subject (See www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#almsgiving). These are considered to be the Three Greatest Church Fathers, whose writings are some of the most powerful expository sermons on the Scriptures.

In more recent times, the eminent theologian Protopresbyter Georges Florovsky, a Russian emigre' who fled to Paris after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, wrote "St. John Chrysostom: the Prophet of Charity" (See www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#chrysostom-charity). Chrysostom wrote often about freedom: man is created in God's image with a free will to choose and rationality to choose freely what is best, not merely to satisfy one's own desires. To conclude:

"To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: 'The Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Head of God's creation, says these things: "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, 'I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing,' and don't know that you are the wretched one, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me. He who overcomes, I will give to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father on his throne.' He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches" (Revelation 2:14-22).

"You can do something. You can't do everything, but that's not an excuse to do nothing!" So far, people have given almost nothing for Vision Complex's ARC (Agape Restoration Community) project in Tanzania. Our small non-profit has given over $10,000 to start laying the foundation for the ARC, but now we're almost broke. So we've sent $100 for them to raise and sell chickens and eggs. We need your help! Can you donate some chicken feed? Please go to https://Agape-Restoration-Society.org/Vision-Complex and do what you can!

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A Personal Note: C.S. Lewis is considered by many to be the greatest author of the 20th century. Shortly before his death, he wrote a short essay "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State" – (www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#Lewis") describing mankind's fear of a horrible death, either by nuclear war or by abject poverty, starving to death in the cold. So the Welfare State comes along to promise free healthcare, free housing, free grocery credits... a chicken in every pot! As Margaret Thatcher wrote – "Socialism can only survive until it finally runs out of other people's money." During the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Lenin rustled up mobs of people promising them "Land, Peace, and Bread" if they would join him in overthrowing the Tsar. But instead, the Bolsheviks confiscated their land, they got several more years of civil war, and they starved to death. Privately, Lenin called these mobs his "useful idiots" – fools who believe the impossible promises of the Revolution and its Welfare State.

This coming week is the election for the next U.S. President and Congress. Both candidates are making vast promises but are not exactly shining examples of virtue and honesty. One's sexual misconduct and shady business are trumpeted by the MSM (Main Stream Media), but the other's bedding down with the San Fran mayor is hushed up by the same MSM. That mayor was a great supporter of the communist Jim Jones who later moved to South America and gave his followers Kool-Aid laced with poison in his utopian communist village there: hundreds were killed.

The former is frequently called a "fascist" and a "nazi" by the MSM, but the latter's particpation in "progressive" (socialist) mass-protests starting from her childhood onward – sometimes violent and deadly – are scrubbed from the Internet. Among the leaders of one these anti-war protests that broke out at U. of Wisconsin in Madison was Professor of Marxist Economics Dr. Donald Harris, the latter's father, who led the Black Students Association in these riots, which resulted in the death of a graduate student when the mobs blew up a campus building. I found this on the Internet this summer, but since her nomination, this incident has been scrubbed from the Internet. (BTW, the word "nazi" is the German abbreviation for "National Socialist" – both German Fascism and Russian Marxism are nationalist and socialist, so both fit that "nazi" description.)

I graduated from U. of Colorado with a B.A. in Central European, Russian and Soviet history and politics, so I studied the Marxist takeovers in Russia and later in Central Europe: infiltrate the press to indoctrinate the masses so those "useful idiots" will join the Marxists in protesting and overthrowing the government, voting in a Marxist regime that arrests the opposition politicians... or "assists them" to fall from a fifth-story window, takes control of the police, military, legislature, and the electoral process: Stalin said – "It doesn't matter who people vote for, the only thing that matters is who counts the votes." After graduating, my wife and I moved to Madison, WI to begin a doctoral program in that same area of studies in 1967. A year or so later, the anti-war protests erupted in Madison. I was an army veteran who had become a pacifist, so when the "Veterans for Peace in Vietnam" began participating in these protests, I visited the home of one of the organizers. His bookshelves his bookshelves were filled with Marxist books: I and others there were being recruited as "useful idiots" to grow the mobs! I recognized from my B.A. studies what was going on, so I got out of there pronto! Please do not let yourself be duped into "drinking the Kool Aid" – becoming a "useful idiot" for the Manchurian Candidate.

Please Let Me Introduce Myself

Dear friend,

Are you getting 24 hours older every day, 168 hours older every week, and 8,736 hours older every year? We sure are! How can we turn around that fact to our advantage? Of those 168 hours, subtract 40 hours for work, 10 hours traveling to and from work, 56 hours for sleep, 30 hours for household tasks, leaving 32 hours of "leisure time." What if we re-imagine our use of that free time: give 10% of it, 3 hours per week, to doing actual diakonia-ministry for the widows, orphans, and people with disabilities? This would restore the Church to relevance in society, and us as well!

My wife Cheryl and I are semi-retired former Evangelical missionaries now living on Social Security and small annuities. We met through Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship at U. of Colorado, then ministered to Eastern European countries for 3.5 years. For 20 years I led a small mission support organization while also having a very successful career as an IT consultant managing $100M and $1B projects. Cheryl earned a master's degree and became a licensed vocational rehabilitation consultant.

Then we "semi-retired" before age 50, and during and after the collapse of the USSR (we were in Moscow for the August 1991 coup), we began living on 1/10th of our previous income and served in Russia for 17 years: I started churches, worked as general editor of Agape-Biblia - a revision of the Russian Bible - and earned master's and doctorate degrees. In 1998, Cheryl and I began our ministry to disabled people which became Agape Restoration Society.

I wrote the distance learning software for our *free* 6-course, 1-year online training program "Social Ministry of the Church" and Cheryl wrote most of the content (I wrote 1 course). It's in English and Russian and the objective is "to equip the saints to minister to build up the Body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:12): to serve "the poor, maimed, blind, and lame" (Luke 14:21) – a ministry to the disabled and elderly (they frequently occur together).

After coming back to the U.S. in 2007, we became Orthodox Christians and continued teaching our courses online and volunteering – Cheryl as a nurse and I as a job counsellor – at FOCUS+Pittsburgh. By "serving one another in love" (Galatians 5:13) – helping each other cope with what life throws at us – we can turn around the seemingly inevitable downward slide of aging and disability... and actually build up the Body of Christ, the Church! Our "Social Ministry of the Church" courses train those healthier among us as "home healthcare workers" to care for those who need it. And Join "The ARC" Chat/Video Forum to Build the ARC.... [read more...]