Coming This Wednesday: Comedian Brad Stine

Coming This Wednesday: Comedian Brad Stine

Published Monday, December 4, 2024 THIS WEDNESDAY COMEDIAN BRAD STINE & free Blue Bell IceCream! Former CEO of Blue Bell, Rickey Dickson, will help close out our meeting singing "Mary Did You Know?," and soprano Elizabeth Fischborn will end our time with "The Lord's Prayer." In the middle, Brad Stine will be here as the starting point of his Oklahoma tour this week. Bring a friend!!! Send this Newsletter to another here. Come and be a part of building an informed Oklahoma! Bring your family and friends Wednesday Bring your pastor and buy his lunch! Send this Newsletter to another here. Lunch is optional for $10 Doors Open 11 AM Meeting Noon to 1:15 PM OKLAHOMA HISTORY CENTER 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive, OKC, OK $5 ENTRY FEE Tax-deductible donations accepted at door. SEE YOU AT THE WEDNESDAY LUNCHEON Find us at Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. BOB LINN Our Calendar Points to Bethlehem. In an effort to appreciate the dramatic event celebrated the world over this month, I was drawn to an event of some significance which took place 55 years ago.  It was in 1969, the year I graduated from high school.  First, in my own self-interest, and to avert any suspicion I may have seen better days, I’m forced to brag a bit.  I made history that year by being the only three-year-old in the state of Indiana to earn a high school diploma.  I am also on an aggressive regimen of age-defying supplements, so put your calculator away. Getting now to my other point . . . It was July of 1969 when the Apolo 11 astronauts placed a plaque in what I imagine was a conspicuous area of the moon.  A place most moon walkers would likely pass by and take note of. A team of professional writers was assigned the task of crafting the plaque’s message to those who might one day stroll by.  Among them was famed White House speech writer, William Safire. Mr. Safire wanted to slip a subtle reference to God into the text in the event someone, or even an alien life form, might happen to be in the vicinity in a few thousand years.  Assuming the mantle of an evangelist, Mr. Safire added in the middle of the text: “1969 A.D.” HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON, JULY 1969 A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND. He presumed anyone with the wherewithal to get themselves to the moon would be well educated, know Latin, and understand that “A.D.” is an abbreviated form of “Anno Domini” which means, in English, “In the Year of Our Lord.” Regrettably, there was no spell checker available to the writing team.  William Safire was mortified once he discovered that a well-educated grammarian would instead have written, “A.D. 1969.”  He found solace in the area’s lunar traffic reports. In the 40 years from1969 to his death in 2009, traffic near the plaque was negligible. For about thirty years, he kept this embarrassment a secret.  Then, in 1997, he submitted an article in the New York Times. He confessed his grammatical short comings to the public.  The emotional catharsis was euphoric.  Such was the relief that he confessed one other faux pas as he bared his soul to the American public. In 1969, the year the plaque was placed, sophisticated folks were growing increasingly sensitive to overt references to the birth of you-know-who in Bethlehem.  For time immemorial, legal documents, academic books, parties and events of all sorts the world over were marked with “A.D.”, meaning, “the year of our Lord.” Clever folks were tasked with the duty to cleanse world affairs from being christened (and Christianized) by the reference to Jesus Christ.   The solution came with a theory. It was one small step to begin the erasure of God and of history. What if we were to say that it was not until (an absolute coincidence) the year that Jesus was born that life on planet earth became “common.”  This gives us a secularized dating moniker. Life on earth will be said to be divided by the "common" and the "uncommon" eras! And we don't have to change the actual dates on the calendars. The calendar will be sanitized from the reference to “Christ” and “Lord”. We may now publish our academic books and articles using “BCE” (before the “common” era) and “AC” (after the “common” era). Welcome the dating myth that has made the world safe for the secularist. Common folks no doubt scratch their heads. What is that radical change the secular community is pointing to? What was the profoundly important event that had nothing to do with the birth of Christ, the spread of Christianity, Western Civilization, the distribution of Bibles, Christopher Columbus, the American Colonies, and so on?  The year dates remain the same as before. To what does the secular historian point as history’s transforming event? Does the secularist have an explanation as to how secularist history's point of transformation is, coincidentally, simultaneous with religious history and the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem? England’s Peter Mullen noted that: In substituting meaningless terms for real ones, we introduce the notion that there is something wrong with the meaning behind them--the very intolerance that such censorship purports to stamp out. Changing B.C. to BCE does not change the fact that Christ's birth remains the basis of our dating system. Are secularists are more interested in mythology than truth? A THOUGHT FROM SHAKESPEARE Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet challenges the idea that changes in a family name or changes in the taxonomic nomenclature of a botanical species are of any consequence. It was Shakespeare speaking through his Juliet who made the point that: A Rose by any other name will still smell the same. Shakespeare’s point was that it mattered not whether Romeo was a Montague or a Capulet.  Romeo would still be Romeo. And Juliet would still love him. This December, we remember the birth 2,024 years ago that radically transformed the world, its people, and its nations. This Wednesday, we will praise him and comedian Brad Stine will help us chuckle at the demented ravings and imaginations of those who don't. History has no coincidences. Only divinely ordained trajectories. Join us this Wednesday as we have a lot of fun and also celebrate the birth of the King. SEE US THIS WEDNESDAY FOR OUR SEASON FINALE!  SEND THIS NEWSLETTER TO A FRIEND HERE. OUR 2024 FINALE COME BACK TO SEE US JANUARY 15, 2025 JONATHAN ASHBACH Join us at the THE OKLAHOMA HISTORY CENTER Doors open 11 AM Meeting begins at noon. I encourage each of you to support our mission. To get started, we are suggesting: The Century Club To join, mail a cancelled check to: OCPAC FOUNDATION P.O. Box 721212 Norman, OK 73070 Your $100 per month donation will help support the development of the Foundation’s work to widen our audience and outreach capabilities with quality meetings and enhanced educational video content. Our beginning financial goals will allow us to secure the initial permanent staff positions necessary to the function of a foundation with ambitions to change the world. We are in desperate need of returning our nation and our state to Biblical foundations. Thank you for your activism.

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