Cornerstone Fellowship *Psalm 118* 8/2/20 Rev. Michael L. Wilson

Remembering the Franklin Day Planner

This week I have been rereading Hyrum Smith's book "The 10 Natural Laws of Productivity and Happiness." This book was written in the late 1980s and I remember reading it for the first time when I was working at Seagate Technologies, after my time in the Air Force. The core tool talked about in the book is the Franklin Day Planner . I remembering having one such planner, long before smart phones and Palm devices. Mine was a leather bound loose-leaf binder with calendar and note pages in it. I kept my daily tasks list and appointments in that binder, which became a record of my work history at Seagate and beyond. The Day Planner binders, pages and supplies were sold at a store called Franklin Quest , which was located at Valco Mall in Sunnyvale. At that time, I was a computer programmer. I was able to keep a record of all request for software, who made the request and when and what the requirements were. It seemed that I was the only one keeping a record of this b...

Thoughts on the tactics of war

Back in the day, during World War I and World War II in America, and back to the beginning of recorded time in the rest of the world, there has been a war tactic that is based on dehumanizing the enemy. It is also called objectifying the enemy. This philosophy teaches soldiers that the enemy is not human, and therefore deserves to be slaughtered. After all, dangerous animals are to be slaughtered. During World War II, posters on Army bases would depict Germans and Japanese as sub-human to condition soldiers to dehumanize the enemy and kill without conscious. Since soldiers were convinced the enemies were sub-human (by the way, this happened on all sides during World War II, it was not just the Americans) then soldiers could do anything to win. Today, Hezbollah and Hamas actually have nursery rhymes teaching the young children that the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, drinks blood and grinds up children for his breakfast. This is taught from a very young age, i...

Thoughts on Pelagius

Back in the late 300 AD time, Constantine had converted to Christianity and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. He also bankrolled seminaries and theological schools. From this time, therefore, people arose, debating and writing about what Christianity was, what it meant and how it all worked. One such writer was Augustine . He wrote about original sin and how people were born into sin and the need for grace. One person arose to oppose him and that was Pelagius . Pelagius said that people were born neutral or sinless with a completely free will. People had the capacity, unaided by God, to keep most of the commandments and to please God. He said that people could, on their own, reason out what God wanted and therefore accept Christ and be saved. God still did the saving work, according to Pelagius, but God would be sitting back waiting for people to come to him. Pelagius said that there was a universal grace given...

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