Brethren

This has nothing to do with the topic of this forum, yet I wanted to let you guys know, some of you are guilty as I am of going to seed here in the shade of this topic.

I have been called to Craig, Alaska and am planning on leaving to travel there this weekend. I have been previously contacted by this congregation concerning filling a pastorship. I am going there to meet the church and have them meet me before they would make a final decision in the matter and will be fullfilling an appointment to preach. Due to this I will be absent from the board and this seed bed for most of the time during the first part of the week and most certainly after Thursday. I am going to miss you guys.

I ask of each of you to be in prayer for this.

Thanks.

God Bless.
Bro. Dallas

 

Thanks Brethren for the encouragement and kind words.

Yelsew,

My wife and I have been doing some research on Craig, Alaska, however, your suggestion has been very valueable especially in locating affordable flight arrangements. I appreciate your help very much.

When I get settled you can come up and fish and worship with us. Maybe then the Lord could use me to convince of man's depravity etc.

When I do get there I don't know how accessible the web will be, so it may a long while before I will get to visit and fellowship with you guys, so know that my prayers will be with you and that I will be desiring your own.

For now we are going for a stay of 1 week just to meet the congregation and for them to meet me. They are in need of a pastor, however, I suggested the visit in order they would not call me without a better understanding of what I am and believe, which I believe can best be discerned in person face to face.

At any rate, I sincerely pray the Blessings of God on each of my Brothers and Sisters here on the BB.

God Bless.
Bro. Dallas

BTW, we won't be able to leave until Friday sometime so I will be able to visit til then.

 

First, just let me say:



This is an original and is destined to be a classic.

If I can stop long enough I do have a response though I do not have the proper platform for the depth and degree of doctrinal explanation it would entail for me to explain to you the depravity into which a fish is born, just consider some of their names, they are definitely liberalistic, and without doubt drowned in a sea of depravity, especially those off the coasts of Alaska, even the very waters in which they congregate are cold, this clearly speaks to their inherent natures. But it is more involved than the fish. All that is lacking in him is the realization of this depravity. Now, back to their names, the like of which among them are 'crappie' which depending on the geographic region are more or less depraved,(in S.C. you hear of crap-pie, here in KY we say it like it is, crawp-pie, then over there is the 'catfish' of which sect there is the "mud" variety, the "channel" why, these very names more than imply the fallen nature by which they suffer and are restricted to in their behavior. Can you imagine a channel cat changing his nature, to what can he improve himself, is a mud cat an improvement. Then you know there is the Bass of which denomination we hear of the Kentucky,(probably a Landmarker again geographic proximity, but can we say this is not the doings of the Creator Himself?), of course next is the Large Mouth and this one speaks for himself, a 'hyper-fish if ever there was one, determined always to have the last word and never without something to say, after him is his cousin, but rejecting fellowship, the Small Mouth, this particular school will accept nothing but his own waters, but of course will not speak of his convictions for fear of offending the bigger schools who are found in the Large Mouth brotherhood. But within this group, which is definitely a copy of the human species collectively called Baptists, because therein is found yet at least two more bodies who know themselves only as Black Bass or White Bass, now the Black Bass is one of a body whose chances of biting the hook are greater because his very name implies he is aware of his inherited condition. On the other hand, the White Bass betrays immediately the fact that the cloak of righteousness he displays is probably no more than a feigned self-righteousness. But the distinctions do not stop with these, tho, in my travels these are the most widely known, I am certain in the waters of Alaska I will encounter schools I have never imagined existed.

Then we must not stop with the various schools themselves in our quest to distinguish which fish, group of fishes, or whole schools would bite the hook. We must also carefully and diligently be about the business of perfecting the approach by which not just our hook, but our bait is presented. If we do not take great care in this first task, we shall find our labors will garner no more than the least desireable of these species, thus our hooks must be concealed by our bait until the moment of bite. At this point it becomes a question of do you set the hook hard or do you set the hook softly. In my personal experience I have found this is quite important a consideration for us to plan and execute exactly.

If we miscalculate the type of fish we have attracted, then an aggressive approach will result in a complete removal of the bait, hook, line and sinker from before our prospective catch. Yet, it is here that our dilemma most decidedly presents itself and we come to understand the degree of importance of our goal, having set the hook too lightly on another species and providing too much slack for personal descision (such as the ability to run on the line) will ultimately result in the loss of this type of fish. And this loss would be discovered to be the fault of the fisherman who has liberally provided the slack in order the trophy could "bust" the water and throw the hook and bait back at him.

It is such considerations brother which we must take into consideration if we plan to put our line into the water. The knowledge of our quest being in the hands of an All Knowing God is most reassuring here as we can all call up memories when we have failed to catch the big one and have brought in the one that in our minds has not been a "trophy" but in retrospect of the scheme of things this one, which seemed lacking, has been the one that has so blessed us in our own feeding.

This is as far as I can carry this. Thanks for the kind words and encouragement. Continue to pray for me and my family and this congregation.

I will be visiting them this coming week and request your prayers. We will be moving there after the end of my current semester at WKU on May 9. We still have a while of fellowship here and hopefully by then we will have dispelled the myths and brought to light the truth of the nature of man.

(I forgot to mention the blind fish found in Mammoth Cave, certainly they are a primary example of credibility to the doctrine of Total Depravity of Fish, for all they know all fish are as blind as they are, and perhaps rightly so, for all the other fishes know, they are "seeing" all of the truth in the world around them. Not to mention all the fish in captivity in aquariums etc. This is definitely a deep deep subject).

God Bless.
Bro. Dallas


[ March 17, 2003, 02:22 PM: Message edited by: Frogman ]

 

Good point Brother Glen, you got me.

God Bless.
Bro. Dallas

 

Brethren,

My trip to Alaska has been post-poned by joint agreement of myself and the church there in Craig until on or about the weekend of April 11 2003.

Continue to keep us in your prayers.

God Bless.
Bro. Dallas

 

After reading my post brother I was dissatisfied with it myself, however, what you see is what you get because that is what I got.

Some of the dialogue, I guess, could be "misinterpreted" and could read differently to what I meant, but wait, that is the reason places like the BB exist, isn't it?

God Bless.
Bro. Dallas

 

This is what my dad said...he asked me why I didn't go when he was younger...

Brother Dallas