Spurgeon's Cigar

"For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews" (I Thess. 2:14). The ignorance which prevails in Christendom today concerning the truth about the Churches of God is deeper and more general than error on any other Scriptural subject. Many who are quite sound evangelically and are well taught on what we call the great fundamentals of the faith, are most unsound ecclesiastically. Mark the fearful confusion that abounds respecting the term itself. There are few words in the English language with a greater variety of meanings than "church." The man in the street understands by "church" the building in which people congregate for public worship. Those who know better, apply the term to the members in spiritual fellowship who meet in that building. Others use it in a denominational way and speak of "the Methodis...

A friend of mine inquired about a reading list. I compiled this about three years ago, and I am sure one can improve the list; nonetheless, for anyone interested, here it is: Eclectic and Interdisciplinary Reading List Antiquity                The Holy Bible                The Epic of Gilgamesh                Beowulf                The Heart of Hebrew History , Hester                The Sayings of Confucius                Bhagva Gita                The Art of War, Sun Tzu  ...

This is the fourth and final part of my adoption narrative. Part 1 is here , part 2 is here , and part 3 is here . We arrived a few minutes before the agreed-upon time. You may be wondering where one goes to pick up a newly-adopted child---McDonald’s, of course. We sat down in the middle of the restaurant so that we could keep an eye out through all the windows. To my right, in a booth against a wall, sat an elderly couple. It had to have been 90 degrees outside, but they were sipping piping hot coffee. They were positioned to watch The O’Reilly Factor on the elevated television set. The old man was pre-occupied with killing flies. Apparently, Nacogdoches has suffered a fly-infestation this year due to the mild winter, and this determined man with a high-sittin’ cap was determined to exert dominance over the noxious creatures. Armed only with a napkin, and an unbridled sense of determination, the old man destroyed his prey. His face lit up more than Ralph Macchio when he caught ...

Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here . The following day Faye (one of my law partners) and I called Katrina to come up with a game plan. Faye said she would drive down to Nacogdoches the following day to speak with Katrina and the birth mother and try to talk the birth mother into relinquishing her rights in my favor. Tish and I prayed again. Thursday I had a trial in Rusk, Texas. It was a little fender-bender case. My client was the spitting image of Eddie Murphy in “A Vampire in Brooklyn,” and at lunch told us that the plaintiff is rumored to have had an oedipal relationship with his mother, but he didn’t want to gossip. The trial went well, and I was on my way back to Tyler, curious as to how Faye’s meeting with the birth mother was going, but not really believing a woman would agree to give us a child, sight-unseen. Just as I was getting into Tyler, Tish called to tell me that Faye was driving back from Nacogdoches with an Affidavit of Relinquishment, and the child was,...

Fourteen months prior to that episode two important events occurred: Tish and I attended an informational meeting at a church near Lindale for potential adoptive parents through Loving Alternative (a local adoption agency), and a young child was born to a single mother and absent father in Nacogdoches, Texas. The most difficult aspect of adopting is the waiting. It took us from February of 2011 until December of that year to get all of our home-studies done and our paperwork together. From December of 2011 to May of this year was simply waiting.  While you’re doing home studies and getting references and such the wait is no big deal, because you’re doing something. Some document must be turned in before you get a child, so there’s no need to be concerned—that’s the attitude, and a source of comfort during that period. But once there’s nothing to do but wait, you just wait. Hopefully, you also pray, which we did (with varying levels of consistency). Feelings of...

This is the first of a series of posts regarding the Fair Tish and me adopting a baby boy. I've broken this up for readability, so I'll post a new part each day over the course of this week. On April 3 rd of this year, I drove down to Center, Texas, which, incidentally, is nowhere near the center of the state, in order to take the deposition of a police officer. This day was going to be an absolute whipping. After the officer’s deposition that morning, I was to take the deposition of a crusty old woman who was driving an 18-wheeler involved in the accident made the basis of the suit I was working. After that deposition, I was to be in Lufkin, Texas to meet with a new client on a case for which I had just been retained, the trial for which was set for a month later. When I set up in the conference room in Center, the court reporter came in beaming, “I just found a $100.00 bill outside!”  “Wow, I know who’s buyin’ us lunch today, Don,” I told the other lawyer. “O...