Published Monday, December 12, 2022 | | | WE ARE MEETING This Wednesday at NOON Central Oklahoma Home Builders NO ENTRY FEE | | | PROCLAIMING CHRIST TO AN ENTIRE CITY THE ONE ENID | | THE TREE IS A MARKER FOR THE TRUE ONE THE IMMEASURABLE ONE
With the intention of building community, strengthening bonds and reinvigorating the meaning of Christmas, Kyle Williams, our speaker this Wednesday, is seeking to make Christ the center of life in Enid, Oklahoma.
Kyle Williams is a wildly successful businessman and entrepreneur in Enid. | Kyle and his talented team of The One Enid, have set out to capture the hearts and minds of their city, championing as their keystone piece, the Christ Tree. It is a 140-foot tall, live-cut Christmas tree. For perspective, the ever-famous Rockefeller Christmas Tree averages 77 feet. |  | | The tree is a marker for the true One, the immeasurable One, God.
The massive tree, containing countless sprigs of fir, also represents us and our community. No two sprigs are the same, and they come together to form a magnificent sight. Each one is unique, yet an integral part of the whole, just like we are described in 1 Corinthians 12.
When the town’s residents and the 40,000 guests of the city gather with their families, all are surrounded by the project’s beautiful Christmas trees. Many fun events are also at hand. However, the one thought the team hopes all will remember is this:
Soli Deo Gloria. All glory be to God.
May you find your Joy, Hope, and Peace through Christ, not only this holiday season, but everyday.
Come meet Kyle Wednesday and hear him tell the story of the project, the connections to the forests of California, and the many political and community leaders who share his vision to transform our state. __________
The One is a multi-event experience spanning through the holidays in Enid, Oklahoma. The keystone of our event is the world's tallest fresh-cut Christmas tree, measuring at an astonishing one hundred and forty feet tall. | | | Please bring your friends, family, church leaders, and your pastors! | | | THERE IS NO ENTRY FEE Tax-deductible donations accepted at door. | | WEDNESDAY LUNCH Central Oklahoma Home Builders | | | 11:00 AM Doors open 11:30 AM Lunch NOON to 1:15 PM Meeting
Central Oklahoma Home Builders Association 420 East Britton Road, OKC, OK 73114 | | SEE YOU AT THE WEDNESDAY LUNCHEON! | | | WEDNESDAY LUNCH Doors open 11:00 AM ENTRY IS FREE Tax-deductible donations accepted at door. Lunch 11:30 AM Meeting NOON to 1:15 PM Optional Lunch: $10 | | | Table of Contents
BOB LINN Returning to our Foundation WADE BURLESON C.S. Lewis & Politics
LAST WEEK Billboard Chris Elston Video | | BOB LINN Returning to our Foundation | | The day after Thanksgiving, Jane and I spent two nights in Enid with our “Colorado” family. We were there to be a part of the festivities surrounding the lighting of the world’s tallest Christmas tree.
What impressed me was the 40,000 people in the public square who heard about the majesty of Christ and the need for the entire community to pay Him reverence. Many came only to watch the lighting of the world’s tallest Christmas tree. All heard about the divine light revealed in the world’s greatest story.
U.S. Senator James Lankford and U.S. Senator-elect, Markwayne Mullin were both there to support the project and to lend their influence to the message of the need of all people everywhere to make Christ the center of their lives. | | In the prologue of The Book that Made Your World, East Indian scholar, Vishal Mangalwadi, wrote this:
The Bible created the modern world of science and learning because it gave us the Creator’s vision of what reality is all about. That is what made the modern West a reading and thinking civilization. | The Enid event is a reminder of the dependence of mankind upon divine verbal revelation (the Bible) for its foundation in science, literature, philosophy, music, and the fundamentals of all economic endeavors and governmental structures. | | Professor Stanley Mattson, founder of the C.S. Lewis Foundation, noted that:
In polite society, the mere mention of the Bible often introduces a certain measure of anxiety. A serious discussion of the Bible can bring outright contempt.
Indeed, political leaders like Italy’s Marcello Pera and Hungary’s Victor Orbán are rare even in the Bible belt of Oklahoma. We hope for more who will state first and foremost that we as a culture must return to our Christian roots or suffer the loss of any kind of civil society. | | For those reasons, I admire the participation of Senator Lankford and Congressman Mullin in the important Christ-event hosted in Enid. May God give us many of those who will represent without apology our fundamental ideals from our city councils to Washington.
Professor Mattson is quite passionate about the importance of a return to the Christian roots that nourished and guided Western Civilization. He said:
A culture can barely begin, let alone sustain, any serious intergenerational attempt to comprehend, interpret, and respond to the riddles of life and the universe unless it has some reasonably comprehensive worldview. In the Closing of the American Mind, Alan Bloom – a Jewish professor – acknowledged that it was the Bible that gave critical impetus to, and sustained, the West’s intellectual endeavor of examining al the great ideas, be they true or false. | | Another associate with the C.S. Lewis Foundation is Dr. Harry Lee Poe, the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University.
He states: The Bible forms the background for any discussion of science and religion in the West. The dominant religious view in the West for the last fifteen hundred years has been Christianity. For centuries, the Bible served as the foundational source for the Western understanding of reality.
I invite you to join me this Wednesday as OCPAC Foundation welcomes Enid’s Kyle Williams, one of the leaders in the resurgence to re-discover the foundations of Western Civilization. Foundations which have been masked by the cloak of secularism. It is these anti-Christ advocates who have sought to bury academia, and with it, the church, the family, and the nation with it in a sea of confused darkness.
Come be a part of the OCPAC Foundation family as we seek to shine the light of Christ on all of Oklahoma, the nation, and the world.
________
I've made a number of references to C. S. Lewis. Below, Wade Burleson notes the thoughts of the one-time atheist who became a noted Christian writer. C.S. Lewis played his role well in re-introducing a new generation to the profound and critical role of Christ in all things. | We are in the midst of a cultural war in Oklahoma, as are all Americans. It is a war that pits autonomous mankind against Christ and his people. | | ____________
Christianity is the very foundation of human thought. It is the foundation of a free & prosperous societies. | | We are in desperate need of returning our nation and our state to Biblical foundations.
Thank you for your activism. _________ | | I'll see you at this Wednesday's luncheon!
11:00 AM Doors open 11:30 AM Lunch NOON to 1:15 PM Meeting
Central Oklahoma Home Builders Association 420 East Britton Road, OKC, OK 73114
God bless! | | WADE BURLESON Chairman of the Board | | "A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion; to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for one as for the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind—if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else—then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease" — C.S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis believed that like digestion, politics is not everything, nor is it nothing. It's important, but it's not life itself. Politics is a practice that is necessary to protect and promote the temporary life God has provided for us on earth. |  | | POLITICS HAS ITS LIMITS
The important principle for Lewis was that Christians ought to remember politics has its limits. Lewis believed that the best Christian political thought and action was accomplished not by pastors wanting a "Christian America" but by Christian businessmen in business and Christian doctors in medicine, and Christian citizens in society, practicing the craft of politics by applying the Golden Rule to the ugliness of politics. | | “The practical problem of Christian politics is not that of drawing up schemes for a Christian society, but that of living as innocently as we can with unbelieving fellow subjects under unbelieving rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be very wicked and very foolish."
~C.S. Lewis, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," in God in the Dock, 292 | | Lewis believed that the best way for Christians in any nation to view politics and politicians was through the lens of Natural Law, what Lewis called the Tao (pronounced 'Tow'). | | Lewis believed that the Tao (Chinese for "The Way") was a set of "Natural Laws" impressed on the heart of every human being. The Tao leads people to treat others with respect and dignity, to protect and provide for the defenseless, to resist oppression, and to pursue justice. How this is done may vary, but the moral principle, or Tao, abides within all men and all religions.
I am reading The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis, and in the appendix of this classic work, there is a thorough description of Lewis' Tao. In politics, Lewis argued that you ought to listen to the words and carefully observe the behaviors of those candidates running for office, for in the end, those who live their lives by natural law will be the only effective leaders in a sick society that is anti-everything Christian. |  | | Unfortunately, we live in a day when young people only know Tao as a nightclub in Las Vegas and have never considered it as the laxative for the clogged and polluted politics of our day.
And even worse, we live in a time when pastors don't even know Tao is a nightclub, nor do they know that in the sick society in which we live, it's more important to practice Tao in the race for office than it is to say you are a Christian.
We would do well to listen to C.S. Lewis. | | | LAST WEEK
A STUNNING PRESENTATION | | | When we asked Billboard Chris to come to OCPAC Foundation, we knew it was going to be an incredibly interesting meeting. We had no idea that the presentation would have such a dramatic impact on our members.
This presentation is a classic and a must-see.
BILLBOARD CHRIS AT OCPAC FOUNDATION: WATCH HERE
WATCH BILLBOARD CHRIS PROMO ONE-MINUTE PROMO
WATCH ENTIRE OCPAC FOUNDATION MEETING HERE
SEND THIS OCPAC FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER TO A FRIEND HERE
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