The "Buy and Hope" Strategy

This morning listening to a TV program the announcer was mocking to the "Buy and Hold" strategy you are always told is the wise one for buying stocks. This strategy would seem to be a "no lose" strategy with one caviat or assumption, that the economy is alive and that it's merely in a slump and will "come back". But they showed chart after chart of all these corporations that were essentially flat over the long term and lately were downright disterous in their downturn. Microsoft's graph stands out in my mind because for all the talk of Bill Gates being a billionaire several times over- - Microsoft seems to have peaked in price about ten years ago and right now is pretty much flat-lining. So I guess you have to ask yourself "is this economic sickness we are in- - a sickness unto death, or will the economy recover?" You know, things often die without our even knowing. A tree may be dead and yet it is still standing. When a person dies no doubt certain cells are not all dead. Skin cells and other cells may still be very much alive but the organisum is dead. In the story, The Lottery, the big question is whether there was once somehow a justification for human sacrifice in the minds of the people. Were there various other rituals that went along with the killing that now have been completely forgotten? So much so that the reason for doing the sacrifice of a human life is now in question? If hypothetically one were to put a death sentense on the economy would it die all at once, or would it "take time". For instance, we know that a freshly murdered corpse is still warm. It takes a while for a corpse to "assume room temperature" as Rush was so fond of saying. One could measure the temperature of the corpse and get readings and you'd say to yourself "Well the reading was 91 a few minutes ago and now it's 87 and I just took another one and it's 83. But in truth you're dealing with something that is essentially room temperature. So yesterday's unemployment "reading" came out and it was 8.1% and a month earlier it was 7.2. The question is are there yet undiagnosed things will still kill the patient or indeed have "already killed him" but it's just a matter of time for the symptums to manifest? You know when I became a Christian I participated in the "Buy and Hope" strategy. I figured I was "buying in" to good things headed my way. "Blessings are coming!" "The rapture is coming!" When you die you get to go to heaven so that's coming". But the truth is that even things I observed from the outside about Christianity, in my own case, were dying. My brother's Bible Study he'd had for years was in it's death throws but I didn't know that and would only last till the end of July. There was an adult Sunday school class I really liked and that one too died around July of 1976. It took a while for new entities to form that formerly I "knew not". But I don't want to complicate this. Sometimes the grass does always seem to be greener on the other side of the fence.

Jesus on the Jesus Christ show once had this disgusting analogy or imigry- - - to describe Terry Shivo, whose brean death status we all were arguing about four years ago. He used the sock puppet analogy. He said that Terry wasn't really alive but she was just a sock puppet animated by all these electronic devices and once these all were withdrawn like an animating hand, she could crumple like a piece of cloth. I find this very interesting. One might well ask about his own show. Could Jesus get his ideas out on KFI were he not present to say the words and be the human vehical for conveying his ideas? How far do you think God could get conveying Jesus's ideas without Jesus in the studio pitching them. And they are such alien, loveless ideas so foreign and at odds with the Gospells I don't see how God could possible get such ideas out without him. Is Jesus indeed the animating hand for God who in this analogy is reduced to a sock puppet. Does Jesus regard God as just s sock puppet? In the old testiment, Jehovah once (and probably several times) said of Baal worship, "Let Baal plead his own case. Why do you have to speak for him?" Jehovah said of the astrologers, "Let their own astrologers deliver them from the problems they now face". I might say the same thing to the Republicans. As you may know the Republicans were hoping that the Bush economy would hang on and fall apart the day after the election so that Mc Cain and Palin would win. Do you remember how afraid of Mc Cain and Sarah Palin we all were back in early September? There was a time back then when it looked as if Mc Cain and Palin had a pretty fair chance of winning the election. Why wouldn't all the Republican backers pray to their God to deliver them from a bad economy for another two months so they could win the election? After that they could tell all the lies they wanted. Of course look at the people they've got up front now. John Mc Cain and Mitt Romney. Neither one used to be a conservative. How is it that they seem to like to put "fresh meat" up front at the microphone. They salavated over Bob Dylan. But now I think Dylan has grown tired of the Born Again community. Who have they got? Raul Ruis? Ted Bundy? Charles Tex Watson? It seems like the longer people spend in the conservative movement, the more "second thoughts" they have about it. (Selah)

I'd like you to meditate on this phrase. "Death is an observed phenominum". People never experiance death first hand. Death is only observed in other people and things second hand. Once you are dead you are dead to everything. You're dead to God. If God is dead, then we ourselves observe that He is, for as the Bible says, "The dead know nothing". The dead know no sorrow or pain or joy or inspiration, nor the passage of time. As far as we know death lasts forever. Life is a passing phase; death is permanent. As we have mentioned before not only so we saints not go to heaven, but this "Heaven" that exists now is destined to be destroyed at the end of the book of Revelation, along presumably with all the angels and demons in it. St. Paul speaks of "Wars in the heavenlies". Jehovah tells us not to attempt to contact the dead. Jesus of KFI would have you believe because once you die you become more self centered and don't want to be disturbed after you die- - presumably in some sort of heroin induced exticy all of the time. Jesus speaks of hell in terms that are not at all alien to me in terms of "Unfulfilled desires and continued frustration". If that is Hell then I ought to feel right at home because that's what my life already is. Jesus never answers the question "If God never changes then how is it that the downtrodden and oppressed expect God to deal differently with them, more kindly, than he already had ample oppertunity to do with them when they were alive on earth? (Selah)

You really ought to think of the "What ifs" of life. What if this economy is destined never to come back. You can wait till Hell freeses over. By the way the only "Hell" that is "Final" is the Lake of Fire" and there is nothing "gradual" or "gradated" about that. This is the second resurrection and will occur after the destruction of the Universe, when the heavenly bodies melt and "disappear with a loud noise". That ought to be about twelve billion years or so from now. So for all practical purposes- - the dead stay dead. Some like my Dad say "Why can't the dead be simotaniously decaying corpses in a grave and also experiancing Eternity in heaven". To this I will just ask "What is your definition of Simotanious?" To be mathmatically precise- - simotanius means two things happening at the same time but for this to be so there has to be Time in both places, if you catch my drift. If there is no Time in heaven then we can't measure or quantify or compare it. (Selah) When Time Magazine said God was Dead, the inference is "- - - and He isn't coming back". Just as Gene Scott isn't coming back. You know in the Bible is speaks of people "going to sleep" or "he fell asleep" and we assume it's talking about their Bodies. First of all those people are smart enough to know a sleeping body from a dead body. So if they aren't talking about their bodies they must mean their souls. Because people aren't their bodies anyhow. People are souls. You know the expression "There isn't another soul around". There may be dead bodies if it's an old battle field, but nobody living". So now if the soul "sleeps" - - vualah! We have the Soul Sleep doctrine. Here's another one for you. If we are resurrected "at the end of Time" or after there is no more Time as we know it, then one might turn the statement around and say "There is no Time in the future when we will live again". Think about it. Death Don't Have No Mercy. You know the song "It's never too late- - - not while we're living". How do we ferret out the trees from wood? You know- - we all know that Rome fell. But even if you pin a date on it like 404 AD you can't sound a trumpet that day and say "OK the empire is officially dead today". People's lives keep on going. They probably continued to have gladiator fights in the Coloseum. Marriages were being conducted. But just when Rome died we can't be sure. But THAT the Roman Empire is gone- of this we can be certain. (Selah)