WILLIAM MCKINLEY IS [QUOTE OF THE FORTNIGHT ~ SUNDAY 27 JANUARY 2013 TO SATURDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2013]

President William McKinley, the 25^th President of the United States was born on this date, 29 January 1943. He would have been 170 years old if he was alive today. In loving memory of him, I will post a Christian quote from him. 

QUOTE: Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness, and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth. [Speech delivered at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York (September 5, 1901)]

AUTHOR: William McKinley (January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was the 25th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1897 until his assassination in September 1901. McKinley led the nation to victory in the Spanish–American War, raised protective tariffs to promote American industry, and maintained the nation on the gold standard in a rejection of inflationary proposals. Though McKinley's administration was cut short with his assassination, his presidency marked the beginning of a period of dominance by the Republican Party that lasted for more than a third of a century.

McKinley was the last President to have served in the American Civil War, beginning as a private in the Union Army and ending as a brevet major. After the war, he settled in Canton, Ohio, where he practiced law and married Ida Saxton. In 1876, he was elected to Congress, where he became the Republican Party's expert on the protective tariff, which he promised would bring prosperity. His 1890 McKinley Tariff was highly controversial; which together with a Democratic redistricting aimed at gerrymandering him out of office, led to his defeat in the Democratic landslide of 1890. He was elected Ohio's governor in 1891 and 1893, steering a moderate course between capital and labor interests. With the aid of his close adviser Mark Hanna, he secured the Republican nomination for president in 1896, amid a deep economic depression. He defeated his Democratic rival, William Jennings Bryan, after a front-porch campaign in which he advocated "sound money" (the gold standard unless altered by international agreement) and promised that high tariffs would restore prosperity.

Rapid economic growth marked McKinley's presidency. He promoted the 1897 Dingley Tariff to protect manufacturers and factory workers from foreign competition, and in 1900, he secured the passage of the Gold Standard Act. McKinley hoped to persuade Spain to grant independence to rebellious Cuba without conflict, but when negotiation failed, he led the nation in the Spanish–American War of 1898; the U.S. victory was quick and decisive. As part of the peace settlement Spain turned over to the United States its main overseas colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; Cuba was promised independence but at that time remained under the control of the U.S. Army. The United States annexed the independent Republic of Hawaii in 1898 and it became a U.S. territory.

McKinley defeated Bryan again in the 1900 presidential election, in a campaign focused on imperialism, prosperity, and free silver. President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in September 1901, and was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. Historians regard McKinley's 1896 victory as a realigning election, in which the political stalemate of the post-Civil War era gave way to the Republican-dominated Fourth Party System, which began with the Progressive Era. He is generally placed near the middle in rankings of American presidents.

The McKinley household was, like many from Ohio's Western Reserve, steeped in Whiggish and abolitionist sentiment. Religiously, the family was staunchly Methodist and young William followed in that tradition, becoming active in the local Methodist church at the age of sixteen. He was a lifelong pious Methodist.

BIBLE VERSE OF THE WEEK [SUNDAY 27 JANUARY 2013 TO SATURDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2013]

Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. - Psalm 100 verse 3 (NKJV)

REBORN [DEVOTION OF THE WEEK ~ SUNDAY 27 JANUARY 2013 TO SATURDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2013]

NOTICE: The following article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.

PAGE TITLE: CBN Daily Devotional

ARTICLE TITLE: Reborn

DATE: N.A

AUTHOR: Dianne Neal Matthews

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Dianne Neal Matthews is a freelance writer and the author of four daily devotional books. Her newest release is Designed for Devotion: A 365-Day Journey from Genesis to Revelation (Baker Books). Visit her at her website, on Facebook, or on Twitter.

URL: http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/devotions/matthews-reborn.aspx

I stamped the snow off my feet and walked into the church for the memorial service. Although I'd never met my friend's father, I knew that he had become a Christian during his final months on earth. As I sat in the quiet sanctuary, the beautiful arrangement on the altar caught my attention—brilliant red roses scattered among snow white flowers. How appropriate, I thought. Like roses blooming in winter, this elderly man's faith had blossomed in the winter of his life.

Nicodemus may have been an old man when he visited Jesus to learn more about him and his teachings (John 3:1-12). Although Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish council, he believed that Jesus had been sent from God. "Rabbi," he began, "we know that God has sent you as a teacher. No one can perform the miracles you perform unless God is with him." Jesus wanted Nicodemus to understand that he was much more than a teacher. He immediately challenged Nicodemus with the declaration that no one can see God's kingdom without being born again, or born from above.

The well-educated Jewish leader struggled to make sense of Jesus' words. "How can anyone be born when he's an old man?" he asked. "He can't go back inside his mother a second time to be born, can he?" Jesus patiently explained that he wasn't talking about a physical birth, but a spiritual rebirth. The conversation introduced a revolutionary concept: although the Jews were God's chosen people, they would not enter God's Kingdom on the basis of their ethnicity, their spiritual heritage, or their attempts to live a "good" life. Each individual could only become a part of God's family by being spiritually reborn—something accomplished not through human effort but through the power of the Holy Spirit and God's Word.

When we place our faith in Christ and his sacrificial death on our behalf, God re-creates us. We aren't just a reconfigured model of our former self, but a brand-new person. We enter into the New Covenant and God begins a new work of creation in us. He gives us a new heart, a new self, and a new song. We're called to have new attitudes and a new lifestyle. That means each one of us starts our spiritual journey as a baby, having to "grow into" our new life with its transformed desires, attitudes, goals, and behaviors. 

Just as in the physical realm, we all mature at different rates. But as long as we nurture our relationship with God through prayer, Bible study, obedience to his commands, and fellowship with other believers, we will be making progress. Regardless of our chronological age, whether eight years old or eighty, all of us who have been reborn are trying to grow up to be just like our Father.

Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence. 2 Corinthians 5:17 (GW) 

Ask yourself: How does my life show that I have been reborn?

THE LAST RITE IN THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER [QUOTE OF THE FORTNIGHT ~ SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013 TO SATURDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2013]

Administering the last rites (Dutch School, c. 1600).

QUOTE: ALMIGHTY God, with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity: We give thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world; beseeching thee that it may please thee, of thy gracious goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten thy kingdom; that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of thy holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in thy eternal and everlasting glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [Burial of the Dead 1662]

AUTHOR: The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. In addition it is used in the Lutheran Rite Church in America. The original book, published in 1549 (Church of England 1957), in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English Reformation following the break with Rome. Prayer books, unlike books of prayers, contain the words of structured (or liturgical) services of worship. The work of 1549 was the first prayer book to include the complete forms of service for daily and Sunday worship in English. It contained Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, the Litany, and Holy Communion and also the occasional services in full: the orders for Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, 'prayers to be said with the sick' and a Funeral service. It also set out in full the "propers" (that is the parts of the service which varied week by week or, at times, daily throughout the Church's Year): the Collect and the Epistle and Gospel readings for the Sunday Communion Service. Old Testament and New Testament readings for daily prayer were specified in tabular format as were the Psalms; and canticles, mostly biblical, that were provided to be said or sung between the readings (Careless 2003, p. 26).

The 1549 book was soon succeeded by a more reformed revision in 1552 under the same editorial hand, that of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. It was used only for a few months, as after Edward VI's death in 1553, his half-sister Mary I restored Roman Catholic worship. She herself died in 1558, and in 1559 Elizabeth I reintroduced the 1552 book with a few modifications to make it acceptable to more traditionally minded worshippers, notably the inclusion of the words of administration from the 1549 Communion Service alongside those of 1552.

In 1604 James I ordered some further changes, the most significant of these being the addition to the Catechism of a section on the Sacraments. Following the tumultuous events leading to and including the English Civil War, another major revision was published in 1662 (Church of England 1662). That edition has remained the official prayer book of the Church of England, although in the 21st century, an alternative book called Common Worship has largely displaced the Book of Common Prayer at the main Sunday worship service of most English parish churches.

A Book of Common Prayer with local variations is used in churches inside and outside the Anglican Communion in over 50 different countries and in over 150 different languages (Careless 2003, p. 23). In many parts of the world, other books have replaced it in regular weekly worship.

Traditional English Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian prayer books have borrowed from the Book of Common Prayer, and the marriage and burial rites have found their way into those of other denominations and into the English language. Like the Authorized King James Bible and the works of Shakespeare, many words and phrases from the Book of Common Prayer have entered common parlance.