Martin Luther, a monk in the Augustinian Order, priest, and professor, began to see a year or so before, some alarming problems in the Roman Catholic Church. It began for Luther with the selling of Indulgences. Indulgences are documents signed by the Pope to grant the purchaser a designated number of years off of their stay in purgatory. Luther’s mind, faith, and heart were continually opened by the Holy Spirit through the study of the Word of God. The more he studied, the more aggravated he...

It is a wonderful time of year. Every family with school aged kids is scrambling to buy all the materials for school. Stuff like, notebooks, uniforms, new clothes, pencils, crayons, markers, and all the other “stuff” that is needed. And teachers are working to get classrooms ready for the children under their care. Arranging desks and tables, decorating walls, filling cubby holes with needed material, writing lesson plans, and the like. There is a lot of preparation that goes into back to...

“Today is Your Birthday, America.” On July 4, 1776, representatives in the Continental Congress of the original 13 states, called colonies back then, ratified and approved as a national document, “The Declaration of Independence.” They said, in effect, “This is who we are. We are a group of former colonies of the British Empire now called states who are declaring our independence from the rule of Great Britain and its’ King. We will self-govern and determine, for ourselves, our present and...