Published Monday, November 21, 2022 | | | NO MEETING This Wednesday ______ | | | A note from OCPAC FOUNDATION PRESIDENT BOB LINN |  | | ENSURING GODLY PATHWAYS FOR OKLAHOMA'S FUTURE
Last week, a hundred or so of us gathered to pay our last respects for Tom Daxon, a great Oklahoman, a great American, and an even more devout Christian.
Those in attendance included former Governor Frank Keating, former Superintendent of Public Instruction, Janet Barresi, and former Speaker of the House, Todd Hiett. Below, I have devoted a section to the amazing impact of Tom Daxon’s career on Oklahoma.
While at Tom’s funeral, I spoke to Janet Barresi about the most recent developments in the Tulsa Public School district (TPS). TPS has suspended all academics in every high school biology class for the remainder of the first semester. (Until January 6.)
Tulsa biology students will focus, among other things, on queer and gender identity and the ways those identities are expressed in the bedroom. Complete with all the technical details. In other words, alternate realities and the pornographic material which explains every raw detail of those realities.
On the surface, it appears to represent the revenge of the present Superintendent of Public Instruction, Democrat Joy Hofmeister and her associates, including TPS Superintendent, Deborah Gist. Revenge on the Oklahoma voters who denied her the Governorship of Oklahoma and denied her Democrat party the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction. |  | | In the midst of two of the three most Christian holidays on the calendar, Tulsa’s children are scheduled to be subjected to the Marxist theories of gender dysphoria and the allurement of the many specific details of how all that is expressed with no clothes on.
THE DEVIL'S PLAYHOUSE ALIVE IN OUR CLASSROOMS
The level of crude debauchery is stunning. The shocking news is a trumpet sound to the church. It is a public cry that is beseeching every pastor in the state of Oklahoma to issue a call for civic engagement on the part of the people of God to alert a sleeping community as to the war being waged in the classrooms.
Our children are under an assault launched by the administrative unions, the teacher’s unions, the superintendents and the school boards. They have opened the doors to what cultural critic, Michael Walsh, refers to as the Devil’s Playhouse. It appears that playhouse is alive, well, and very active under the leadership of Joy Hofmeister and the Tulsa Public School superintendent, Deborah Gist.
FROM A TULSA TEACHER Listen to a Tulsa teacher express her concern over the material and the lack of communication with parents in order to allow them to remove their children from the sexual indoctrination.
Watch the video here.
THANK GOD FOR CHRISTIAN VOTERS & FOR KEVIN STITT AND RYAN WALTERS |  | | This Thanksgiving, we must give thanks for the crushing defeat Oklahoma’s Christian patriots served to the future of the Marxist elements in leadership in Oklahoma secondary education.
We must thank God that Kevin Stitt encouraged Ryan Walters to run for the office of State Superintendent and we must thank God for Ryan Walters who ran such a bold race on the issues of decency and the Christian principles which built this great Republic.
OCPAC Foundation Chairman, Wade Burleson, warns us in his article below of impending destruction of civilization should we become complacent in our momentary victories. It is a must read.
We must focus, with Governor Stitt and Superintendent Walters, on the future of Oklahoma’s classrooms. They represent the path to our children’s future.
Insurgents and purveyors of evil have gathered upon those pathways and we must see that they and their influence are removed. We can no longer sit on the sideline and allow unions and administrators to dictate to Oklahoma's many fine teachers and our children the Marxist playbook.
Parents and citizens must discuss these issues with their legislators with a clear and united voice. Only then will the legislature be able to refuse to be moved by the intense onslaught of pressure from the following organizations who are advocating this debauchery:
CCOSSA (Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administrators)
OSSBA (Oklahoma State School Boards Association)
NEA (National Education Association)
OEA (Oklahoma Education Association)
I look forward to engaging with all of you as we move forward for a new and a more Godly day in Oklahoma education. | | We are in desperate need of returning our nation and our state to Biblical foundations.
Thank you for your activism. | | | Table of Contents
WADE BURLESON Don't Take This Thanksgiving for Granted
LAST WEEK Memorial for Tom Daxon | | WADE BURLESON Don't Take This Thanksgiving for Granted | | Sobering Comments from Archbishop Bashar Warda by Wade Burleson Nov 21, 2022 | | Archbishop Bashar Warda, a Chaldean Catholic bishop living in Erbil, Iraq, delivered a chilling talk at the Fifth Annual Conference on International Religious Liberty in New York City. His speech was entitled Act in Time: Protecting Imperiled Christians in Ancient and Other Lands.
Warda told the assembly about his fear of growing attacks and hostility against Christians in the United States.
Could you let that sink in for a moment?
An Iraqi Catholic archbishop, ministering among Christians surrounded by radical Muslims in the heart of Iraq, spoke of his fear for Christians the United States.
Is Archbishop Warda from Iraq correct in his assessment of Christian persecution in the United States?
Let's start by examining this Thanksgiving Holiday.
In September 1620, Christian Pilgrims came to America. One year later, the Pilgrims set aside a day to thank God for His provision. |  | | The Pilgrims were Christian people. After purchasing land from the Native Americans and building friendships with them, the Pilgrims welcomed their new friends to a banquet in November 1621, where they thanked Jesus Christ for His provision and protection. This Thanksgiving marks the 401st anniversary of that original day of Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving prayers were not recorded for posterity. A contemporary prayer from the well-known “Short Direction for the Daily Exercise of the Christian” by George Webb (London 1625), illustrates the type of prayer they would have prayed:
O Lord our God and heavenly Father, which of Thy unspeakable mercy towards us, hast provided meate and drinke for the nourishment of our weake bodies. Grant us peace to use them reverently, as from Thy hands, with thankful hearts: let Thy blessing rest upon these Thy good creatures, to our comfort and sustentation: and grant we humbly beseech Thee, good Lord, that as we doe hunger and thirst for this food of our bodies, so our soules may earnestly long after the food of eternal life, through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, Amen.
During the Revolutionary War, in tribute to those first Pilgrims, Samuel Adams and the Continental Congress voted into law the following one-sentence, 360-word Thanksgiving Proclamation, expressing the sentiments of an entire nation:
“Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received…together with penitent confession of their sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor; and their humble and earnest supplications that it may please God through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance…it is therefore recommended…to set apart Thursday the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feeling of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine Benefactor…acknowledging with gratitude their obligations to Him for benefits received….To prosper the means of religion, for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth ‘in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost’.
THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS |  | | The Continental Congress law passed the above mandate exactly 183 years after the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving Day. Our Founding Fathers officially recognized the day by proclamation from the Constitutional government.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN | | Thanksgiving Day became a national November holiday in 1863 during the height of the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln asked in November of that year for Americans pray to God and request Him to “commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and “to heal the wounds of the nation.”
President Lincoln signed a bill proclaiming Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday to be celebrated the last Thursday of November. Americans have celebrated Thanksgiving Day ever since.
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT (FDR) |  | | In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving Day up by a week to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. Culture always has trouble when a desire for money supersedes moral principles. Americans derided Roosevelt for moving America's sacred holiday by calling it Franksgiving. Two years later, President Roosevelt reluctantly signed a bill making the fourth Thursday in November the permanent date for America’s Thanksgiving Day.
U.S. CONGRESS TODAY | | Today, members of the United States Congress, including Minnesota's Muslim US Representative Ilhan Omar and New York's Marxist US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, wish to do away with Thanksgiving Day. They also verbally punish anyone who celebrates our Christian heritage as Americans.
SENATOR TOM COTTON ARKANSAS |  | | MOCKED IN THE U.S. CONGRESS FOR ARTICULATING OUR CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Neither of these two Congresswomen are American patriots. They are destroying our country by canceling our Christian culture and history. Ilhan Omar, a devout Muslim, mocked Arkansas U.S. Senator Tom Cotton on Twitter after he gave an inspiring speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, paying respect and honor to the Pilgrims and America's Thanksgiving Holiday, as well as the importance of the Christian faith.
Last Friday, Senator Tom Cotton said: “Just today for instance The New York Times called the [Pilgrims’} story a myth and a caricature. In the Food Section, no less. Maybe the politically correct editors of the debunked 1619 project are now responsible for pumpkin pie recipes at the Times as well.”
The persecution of Christianity is coming from the halls of power in government and from our national media. |  | | Bishop Warda was right to be concerned for Christians in the United States.
OCPAC Foundation must continue to do all we can to help Americans realize that American exceptionalism is due to our Christian heritage and that the enemies of our Republic wish to erase it all and silence Christians by persecution.
We do not want to our generation to be the one that loses our nation to socialism, Marxism, and humanism.
Let’s start by not taking this week’s Thanksgiving Holiday for granted.
Wade Burleson | | LAST FRIDAY We said goodbye to an Oklahoma Great | | TOM DAXON December 19, 1947-November 2, 2022 | Very few men have so impacted life in the state of Oklahoma as did Tom Daxon. It is why, on Wednesday, October 28, Governor Kevin Stitt, Governor Frank Keating, Bill Price, and a number of Oklahoma luminaries honored Tom Daxon with the OCPAC Lifetime Achievement Award. |  | | In 1978, at age 30, Tom Daxon was elected to be State Auditor and Inspector. He was the youngest person ever to be elected to state-wide office in Oklahoma.
Immediately, he delivered Oklahoma from federal scrutiny which has resulted from the deficiencies of its audits. He also exposed the questionable practices of Oklahoma’s tag agents and the Department of Human Services (DHS).
Two years later, in 1980, he worked alongside of the FBI in what became the largest public corruption scandal in U.S. history. More than 200 people, mostly county commissioners, were sent to jail.
In 1994, Governor Frank Keating appointed Tom Daxon to be his budget director. California Governor Pete Wilson convinced Oklahoma Governor Keating to loan Tom to the Golden State until April of that year to clean up a tangled mess in California’s Orange County.
One day, a book should be written to chronicle the impact of Tom’s life on our state as well as the nation with his meticulous accounting skills.
Eclipsing even his accounting brilliance was his devotion to Christ. No doubt, he will be best known in the larger panorama of world history for that devotion and his work to bring His Kingdom to earth.
This was on display at last Friday’s memorial when both his sons, Ben and Johnny, provided remarkable commentaries on the life of their father. After hearing his two sons speak, it was clear that the wake of Tom Daxon will continue to grow for at least another generation. |  |  | | | | | |
