Published Monday, December 27, 2021 | | This Wednesday at Central Oklahoma Home Builders CELEBRATING 2021 LOOKING TO 2022 | | AT NOON WEDNESDAY Central Oklahoma Home Builders | | This Wednesday, Governor Stitt, Attorney General, John O'Conner, Secretary of Education, Ryan Walters, and others will be at the OCPAC luncheon to help us enjoy a festive close to the 2021 OCPAC season.
They will participate with us in a light-hearted celebration of the close of an important year in the life of OCPAC. | | THE SOUNDS OF CHRISTMAS by INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN EDGAR CRUZ Guitarist Extraordinaire | | Headliner for the Chet Atkins Guitar Festival each year, Edgar Cruz has been named Oklahoma's Top Performing Artist for the past ten years. His You Tube Video of Bohemian Rhapsody has over 20 million hits worldwide.
He will begin playing at 11:30 Wednesday morning as we begin serving lunch. He will present the sounds of the Christmas Season. | | JOINING EDGAR CRUZ WILL BE
Grammy & Emmy nominated Artist
DAVID HOOTEN | | David has been a soloist with symphony orchestras around the world. He was responsible for bringing Edgar Cruz to OCPAC and will join Mr. Cruz in bringing the sounds of Christmas to our closing meeting of 2021. _________________ | | WE EXPECT A PACKED HOUSE. HELP US ESTIMATE HOW MANY TO PLAN FOR
REGISTER HERE SO WE CAN PLAN
| | WE ARE NOT DONE YET!
A number of Oklahoma's celebrities have hidden talents! We will showcase them on Wednesday. You will be quite amazed. | | Included in the festivities will be two of Oklahoma's top movement leaders
Don Spencer President of OK2A
Liza Greve Director of Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights
Yes, they both have surprises in store for us! | | INSPIRATION LOOKING TO 2022
JESSE LEON RODGERS | | Jesse Leon Rodgers is the dynamic leader of City Elders which is rapidly growing into a nation-wide organization establishing governmental, spiritual, and community leadership county by county.
Historian David Barton is first up for City Elders in 2022. David Barton is known as one of the most influential figure in the United States and is excited about helping build City Elders across America.
Jesse will speak briefly about what is ahead for 2022 and encourage us that Jesus is Lord over the past, the present, and the future. Our best days are before us! _________________ | | WE WILL BE GIVING CHECKS TO THE CAMPAIGNS OF SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATES STATE-WIDE | | There will be school board candidates from all over the state of Oklahoma at our meeting who will be receiving campaign checks for their upcoming races. These will be SB4Kids-approved candidates.
We will also be distributing checks to candidates for other offices.
Come help us impact Oklahoma's future. | | WE EXPECT A PACKED HOUSE. HELP US ESTIMATE HOW MANY TO PLAN FOR
REGISTER HERE SO WE CAN PLAN
| | MEETING LOCATION
Central Oklahoma Home Builders 420 East Britton Road, OKC, OK 73114 | | WEDNESDAY
REGISTRATION ($5) & optional $10 lunch at 11:30 A.M. MEETING FROM NOON to 1:15 PM
FREE to those 18-years old and under FREE to college students 21-years old and under.
$5 entry for all others
| | Table of Contents
BOB LINN Centering History DR EVERETT PIPER Get on the Christmas Train _______ RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP Renew Today OCPAC WAR CHEST Keep us Growing for the Future | Was this newsletter forwarded by a friend?
Sign up to get your own copy here. | BOB LINN Centering History | OCPAC founder, Charlie Meadows, called me from the hospital today to tell me that your memberships expire at midnight Friday, December 31.
So, you need to frantically renew your membership today (at the bottom of this newsletter) or give your money to Susan this Wednesday!
The future of Western Civilization is counting on you.
He also called to let me know that OCPAC made Face the Nation this weekend during their discussion of Critical Race Theory. Charlie thinks it is the first time we have made national news. | This past week, Bill Federer’s American Minute noted that on December 25, we celebrate the dividing point of history. He said, “The first Christmas Day stands as the Great Divide for the timing and recording of all people, things, and events that have taken place upon this earth.”
Each of history’s events from the beginning of time (Genesis 1:1 onward) bear the label of having taken place before Christ (“B.C.”) or after Christ, Anno Domini, the year of our Lord (A.D.) | He went on to say that the advent of Christ is “the one place on the long trail of time where the magnetic needle of history stands vertically and points up.” | Indeed, it is the wise among us who frame all of life in view of the Advent. This includes our family, our community affairs, the church, and government at all levels.
Join us this Wednesday as we celebrate what God has done in 2021 and what we have to look forward to in 2022.
WE EXPECT A PACKED HOUSE. HELP US ESTIMATE HOW MANY TO PLAN FOR
REGISTER HERE SO WE CAN PLAN
| LET'S REBUILD THE FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICA | I'll see you this Wednesday!
God bless! | DR. EVERETT PIPER
Get on the Christmas Train | 'Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, I am free at last!'
By Everett Piper - - Saturday, December 25, 2021
OPINION:
One of the Christmas movies our family repeatedly watched when my boys were growing up was “The Polar Express.”
As you likely know, this is an animated film starring Tom Hanks as the conductor of a train that takes its passengers on a magical Christmas Eve trip to the North Pole, where the children are challenged to “believe” in Christmas. | At the end of the movie, one little boy is still wrestling with what to think of his adventure. What should he believe? What is true and what is false? Is Christmas real or just a childhood dream?
As the train chugs to a stop dropping each child off at their respective homes for Christmas morning, the conductor (Mr. Hanks) turns to this little boy and says, “The one thing about trains: It doesn’t matter where you’re going. What matters is deciding to get on.”
I can’t watch this movie without thinking of how our nation’s schools have completely bought this lie. “It is the journey that matters,” we are told over and over again, “not the destination.” | There is no such thing as a final answer. It doesn’t matter what worldview, morality, sex or gender you choose as long as you choose one. To travel is better than to arrive. Just get on a train — any train — and enjoy the ride. It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as it works for you.
But we all intuitively know something is desperately wrong with this. We know there must be more to life than simply choosing from an amoral smorgasbord of personal values, opinions, desires and passions.
At the end of the day, we understand some things are true, and some things are false, some are right, and some are wrong. When it all comes out in the wash, everyone knows some ideas are good, and some are simply evil. | When I was a college president, I reminded my students of this all of the time.
I told them repeatedly that the “liberal” arts goal was liberty.
I beat this drum over and over again. It was my one-string banjo. “A truly ‘liberal’ education is one that liberates,” I’d shout. It frees you from the consequences of those things that are wrong and lets you enjoy the beauty of those things that are right.
Put simply, I wanted my students to get on the right “train” going in the right direction so that they, and others around them, would enjoy the blessings of living a right life; a life guided by the good, the true and the beautiful rather than the opposite.
In the 1990s, another movie also featured a train ride. This train, however, was not leading to the snow-filled skies of the North Pole but, instead, to the ash-laden courtyards of Nazi prison camps.
The movie was “Schindler’s List” and, in this film, the point is made quite clear that the choice of trains does matter and that getting on the wrong one headed in the wrong direction can be a matter of life and death. | Who can watch fellow human beings herded like cattle into boxcars bound for the furnaces of Auschwitz and Dachau and argue that the joy is in the journey and that the destination is of little consequence? Who among us would be so calloused as to look our Jewish brothers and sisters in the face and say, “The one thing about trains: It doesn’t matter where you’re going. What matters is deciding to get on one and just enjoying the ride.” | Truth is always directional, and so are lies. The ideas we embrace do not remain stagnant. They are never morally neutral. Every idea — every train — will take us somewhere. We are always going in one of two directions: either toward the forgiveness and freedom that only God’s revelation offers or toward the brokenness and bondage that always and inevitably results from our fantasies and fabrications. Our choice to either embrace the truth or imbibe lies sets our course for not just our days on earth but for all eternity. It is a choice between freedom and slavery, a choice between heaven and hell.
Two thousand years ago, a child born in a manger grew to proclaim, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free,” and the direction of the world changed. | Maybe the best Christmas reflection for all of us is this:
When we get on the right train and go in the right direction, we can celebrate and sing, “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, I am free at last!” | TIME TO RENEW OCPAC MEMBERSHIPS | If you are on a monthly draft, you are fine. However, all others will need to renew.
Not already a member? Join the fight!
Renew your membership here. | Help us continue to build the OCPAC war chest.
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