The Pillar & Bulwark of Truth
by Michael L. Patten

At Spirit & Truth Fellowship we believe strongly in the first-century model of the “home church,” that is, a group of Christ’s followers who get together regularly in whatever format they choose, for the purpose of spiritual growth and support. The home church most closely follows the pattern God provided for basic relational interaction, which is the family. God has provided the best foundation for both families and churches, which is Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:11).

1 Timothy 3:14 and 15
(14) Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that,
(15) if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation (hedraioma) of the truth.

Robertson says of hedraioma: “Probably it means stay or support rather than foundation or ground.” [1] Moffatt translates this word as “bulwark, a defensive wall.” [2] This verse establishes the purpose of the Church in the context of relationship (how people ought to conduct themselves). The Church is to be a pillar where the truth is displayed for others to see and a bulwark defending the integrity and veracity of God’s holy Word. Both the “pillar” and “bulwark” rest upon the foundation, who is Jesus Christ.

God has always related to people through the prism of family. He goes to great lengths developing the narratives of family dynamics to convey truth. Examples in the Old Testament are many and varied. A few poignant examples are: Ruth, Naomi and Boaz; Esther and Mordecai; and David’s family. One of the most dramatic, perhaps, is the contrast between two families in 1 Samuel. The book opens with Elkanah, whose wife Hannah was barren. As Hannah beseeches the Lord earnestly, her prayer is answered and a son is born. In gratitude, Hannah dedicates the boy, Samuel, to the Lord. Even though Hannah is the main character in this drama, we have a snapshot of this family where Elkanah, the husband, is serving as the head.

1 Samuel 1:21
When the man Elkanah went up with all of his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the Lord and to fulfill his vow,

Many times when this record is considered, the heart and commitment of Hannah is the focus, and with good reason. Yet, as we look closely we see both of Samuel’s parents steadfastly ministering to the Lord. 1 Samuel 1:3 tells us that Elkanah went up to worship at Shiloh year after year. It is very obvious that Samuel received a solid foundation of faith from both parents. The family of Eli the priest however stands in stark contrast.

1 Samuel 2:11 and 12
(11) Then Elkanah went home to Ramah, but the boy ministered before the LORD under Eli the priest.
(12) Eli’s sons were wicked men; they had no regard for the LORD.

God devotes 40 verses to display Samuel’s family, a godly couple who dedicate their only son to the Lord. Then, in one short, terse statement God reveals the tragedy that defines Eli’s family. The consequence of Eli’s failure as a father is dramatic. By the end of chapter four he and his sons are dead and the ark of God is captured by the Philistines. Just as with these two families, every family is defined in significant ways by parents fulfilling their calling to lead their children in God’s ways, or by the tragedy that results from not doing so.

Both aspects of the pillar and bulwark of truth are evident in the life of Samuel. As prophet to Israel, Samuel spoke for God and thus clearly set forth truth from God for Saul, the man who would be king. Later he had to defend the truth by confronting Saul.

1 Samuel 15:1
Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD.

1 Samuel 15:26
But Samuel said to him, “I will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel!”

God has always needed great people like Samuel to set forth, and stand for, the truth. Jesus Christ was the epitome of this, and so it follows that God would make it clear to all of us in Christ’s Body what qualifies a person for leadership in His Church. In the Apostle Paul’s first letter to his protégé, Timothy, qualifications for positions of responsibility within the Church are listed in chapter 3. These qualifications for both overseers (episkopos) as well as servants (diakonos, “deacons”) have several qualifying traits common to both. This is quite logical since overseers will have previously proven themselves as ones who serve well.

In effect, Paul’s letter to Timothy provides us with a developmental track of training for church leadership in reverse order, because he covers overseers first, then those who serve in official capacities in the Church. Paul, with authority from Christ (1 Tim. 1:11), is mentoring his replacement, Timothy (1 Tim. 1:18) as to how leaders in the church will be identified from among those serving (1 Tim. 3:1-15). One of the qualifications given in 1 Timothy 3 for both those who serve, as well as those who oversee the work, is related to the management of their personal families:

1 Timothy 3:12
A deacon (diakonos) must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and his household well.

A prerequisite to holding positions of responsibility in any church is managing one’s own family well. This is true of a diakonos, one who serves in a given capacity on behalf of the church, and then later for those who are called to be overseers (episkopos) within the church.

1 Timothy 3:4 and 5
(4) He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect.
(5) (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)

Paul closes out this section on qualifications by reiterating the basic premise of how God views the Church of Jesus Christ in light of the family unit (1 Tim. 3:14 and 15). Both aspects of pillar and bulwark are vital to the health of families and churches. If one is lacking, eventually the other will be in jeopardy. God has given His Word so that we might know what His family looks like. In that picture will be seen a pillar and a bulwark of the truth resting firmly upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, The Rock of Ages.

Virginia Nurse Sentenced to Federal Prison for Tax Fraud
Jeffrey Charles, a resident of Grimstead, Va., was sentenced today to serve 46 months in federal prison for conspiring with his daughter and son-in-law to defraud the United States, aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns in his daughter’s name, and filing a false tax return in his own name, the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced.

On Nov. 6, 2012, following a six-day jury trial in Newport News, Va., Charles was convicted of one count of conspiracy, three counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns, and one count of filing a false tax return. According to the evidence presented at trial, Charles, a registered nurse and the administrator of a rehabilitation center, conspired with his daughter and son-in-law to impair and impede the IRS in ascertaining, computing, assessing and collecting federal income taxes. The evidence also proved that Charles aided and assisted in the preparation of three false tax returns in his daughter’s name for tax years 2000, 2001 and 2005, and attached false documents to each tax return.

Finally, the evidence at trial also established that Charles filed a false tax return in his own name for tax year 2006 in which he allegedly falsely reported earning $0.00 income. Charles joined American Rights Litigators (ARL), a Florida-based organization, and paid ARL to send fraudulent documents to the IRS on his behalf and on behalf of his daughter. In August 2004, a federal district judge permanently enjoined ARL and two of its promoters from the sale of a nationwide tax scam. In August of 2010, three promoters of ARL were each sentenced in the District of Columbia to 10 years in prison along with ARL founder Eddie Ray Kahn, who received a 20 year sentence.

Senior Judge Henry Coke Morgan Jr. also ordered Charles to pay over $300,000 in restitution to the IRS as part of his sentence.

In a separate but related case, Charles’s co-conspirators, his daughter and son-in-law Kathryn Miles and John Miles, each pleaded guilty to conspiracy and were sentenced to federal prison.

Assistant Attorney General Kathryn Keneally for the Justice Department’s Tax Division commended the investigative efforts of special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation, and Tax Division Trial Attorney Justin K. Gelfand and Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Samuels, who prosecuted the case.
13-367Tax Division

Challenging the dollar’: Bitcoin total value tops $1 billion
Get short URL Published time: March 31, 2013 13:06
Edited time: April 01, 2013 06:59
Bitcoins (Image from bitcoinworld.blogspot.ru)

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Crime, Currencies, Information Technology, Internet
Already bigger than many sovereign currencies, Bitcoin has broken the $1 billion in value mark this week. In the wake of continuing economic crises and liquidity shortages, this new virtual currency is poised to challenge the euro and US dollar.

By not being tied to any particular financial institution and independent from world governments, Bitcoin will become a safe haven for anyone trying to save their money from the crippled international banking system, claimed Max Keiser, the host of RT’s Keiser Report.

“It is inevitable that Bitcoin will become a multi-trillion dollar enterprise because every other currency in the world is tied to dying central banks that are encumbered with impossible-to-pay debts and bankrupt counter-party risks,” Keiser said.

Crypto-currency
Bitcoin emerged in 2009 amid the global financial meltdown. The digital currency was created by someone who identified himself as Satoshi Nakamoto. It is based on open-source software, and uses peer-to-peer connections for monetary transactions to avoid centralized authorities.

Bitcoin aims to provide safe and secure exchange by verifying transactions with encryption that is used in military and government applications. And unlike bank services, the Bitcoin network is free, except for a voluntary to speed up transaction processing.

Bitcoins can be bought for other currencies, virtual or real, and are accepted as payment for goods or services. They can also be won through gambling, received as gifts or donations, or simply ‘mining’ – the process by which new bitcoins are introduced into the system.
Bitcoins (BTC) are bought and sold for other currencies at online exchanges. The Japan-based Mt. Gox is the largest of its kind, where BTC have recently traded at an average exchange rate of $90 per bitcoin.
Issuance of the currency is completely automated, with 25 new bitcoins generated every 10 minutes; inflation is set to be halved every four years, until a total of 21 million bitcoins is reached. In theory, the currency would not lose its purchasing power unless individuals and businesses refused to use bitcoins.

With numerous financial companies already exchanging bitcoins into any of the world’s currencies, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, Rick Falkvinge, estimated that Bitcoin could capture between 1 and 10 percent of the global foreign exchange market. This implies that the price of each and every bitcoin would rise to between $100,000 and $1 million, Max Keiser explained.

“I have stated that myself,” Keiser said. “I think bitcoin’s price will reach $200,000 per bitcoin before Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway’s stock.”

Ten years ago, few predicted that Facebook would have more than 1 billion users worldwide/ By the same token, few today imagine bitcoin could take on the G20 nations, but Keiser believes this may soon take place: “Bitcoin’s valuation, already bigger than many sovereign currencies, will challenge the most-traded currencies today, including the US dollar, the euro, the yen and the renminbi.”

Image from Flickr.com/zcopley

Regulatory hand reaches out
Because the virtual currency bypasses authorities and cannot be taxed unless the person deliberately reveals his transactions, the US government and the Treasury Department are seeking to enact stricter regulations and new money-laundering rules.

Bitcoins are vulnerable to being stolen by hackers, thieves and fraudsters, though the Bitcoin community has made efforts to curb such crimes.
The largest Bitcoin scam reportedly ran in 2012, and was structured like a classic Ponzi scheme. Investors lost at least 200,000 BTC worth $2.2 million at the time, according to the Bitcoin Forums. The high estimate puts the number at 500,000 BTC, or 5 percent of the total number of bitcoins in circulation at the time.
The largest Bitcoin hacking heist, in March 2012, robbed the victims of 46,653 BTC ($230,468). The perpetrators exploited a vulnerability in the customer service of Bitcoinica exchange to get access to users’ wallets.
Satoshi Nakamoto, who created Bitcoin in 2009, left the system to develop on its own in 2011; his true identity was never revealed.
One popular theory among Russian bloggers speculates that Nakamoto is Grigory Perelman, a reclusive Russian mathematician famous for solving the Poincaré conjecture and receiving the Fields Medal – the ‘Nobel prize of math,’ – for the achievement.
It is difficult to predict this new policy would play out: Patrick Murck, a legal counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, a trade group promoting industry standards, said the framework “would be infeasible for many, if not most, members of the Bitcoin community to comply with.”

Keiser believes that Bitcoin users and the currency itself have little to worry about, unlike most of Internet startups feeling themselves suddenly vulnerable to government oversight. Bitcoins are not issued by a central body, and rely on a network of verification nodes to regulate transactions; in the future, Bitcoin users may achieve enough political clout to defend itself in traditional arenas.

“As Bitcoin’s price increases, the new Bitcoin millionaires and billionaires will use their economic clout to rewrite laws in favor of Bitcoin, the same way banks like JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs lobby government to write laws that favor them,” he explained.

Web 3.0?
Bitcoin could also offer relief to debt-stricken countries such as Cyprus. “Cyprus was Bitcoin’s ‘come to Jesus’ moment and it’s fitting it happened around the Easter Holiday,” Keiser said.“For millions of people around the world who have been victimized by banksters and their corrupt politician friends, the light bulb went off and they suddenly realized they could save their wealth by parking it in Bitcoin and no government or bankster could stop them.”

After the initial rush of interest in the Internet in the mid-1990s, and the follow-up boom of Web 2.0 and the growth of social networking, Bitcoin is the third and “perhaps the most disruptive wave of all,” Keiser said.

“This is Web 3.0,” he said. “For me it’s extremely exciting since I pioneered the idea of virtual currencies back in the mid 1990s and have four US patents in my name covering virtual trading and virtual currencies. Most people I talked to back then about these ideas and the possibility that something like Bitcoin could exist didn’t think it was possible. They were wrong.”

Message Body:
Chunky and his brides
This is comment on his page when he heard ppl sending around the broadcast saying him and his woman is chunky n the bride

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Title: horse face

Message Body:
she says shes a bad bitch, but had to sleep with a married man mash up him marriage an end up breed fi him. now him move in with her an her family inna 4 bedroom house an a 7 a dem. an when she people she gwaan like she hype. a bare bun the man a give har.

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