text:
Please note that the last category should have been posted as Artifact 4, I've adjusted that, and therefore this makes Artifact number 5 on the poster.
SANS lists the following information within the poster within their File Download Category
Firefox has a built-in download manager application which keeps a history of every file downloaded by the user. This browser artifact can provide excellent information about what sites a user has been visiting and what kinds of files they have been downloading from them.
Location: Firefox
XP %userprofile%\Application Data\Mozilla\ Firefox\Profiles\<random text>.default\downloads.sqlite
Win7 %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\ Firefox\Profiles\<random text>.default\downloads.sqlite
Downloads.sqlite will include:
• Filename, Size, and Type
• Download from and Referring Page
• File Save Location
• Application Used to Open File
• Download Start and End Times
While we are on this topic I thought it might be timely to touch on a recent post by Patrick Olsen over at the System Forensics blog. Patrick posted this week about the creation of a new tool that he'd been working upon named BARFF which stands for Browser Artifact Recovery Forensic Framework. This tool is beneficial for both my last and current post but in particular the SANS poster category of "Browser Forensics". I haven't had the chance to download a copy myself as yet but I encourage anyone to give it a go and provide him with your feedback.
In terms of the structure of the Downloads.sqlite database and any of the databases associated with Firefox David Koepi has an excellent resource available here which will provide a strong resource for those wanting to get started on browser forensics. I thought it would be beneficial to first download a number of applications through Firefox and then using SQLite Manager, a plugin for firefox, we can run an initial query and take a look at what we see.
From the above screenshot there are a number of items we can use from a forensic perspective:
- The name which contains the name of the executable
- The source which contains the source of where the file was downloaded from.
- The target file path
- Start and end time which is what we'll use within our timelines
- The state of the download as mentioned by David Koepi
- "0" in the state object indicates download is in progress
- "1" in the state object indicates download is successful
- "3" indicates download is cancelled
- "4" indicates download is paused
- We have a referer field for the referring site
- Although not shown well in the above screenshot two important fields are preferredApplication and preferredAction which show the default application for opening
- "0" states that the file has been saved
- "4" I believe states that it was open with a preferred application but more testing is required
- In my tests i was unable to populate the preferredApplication field and again some further testing is required
- Lastly the currBytes and MaxBytes which can be used for a comparison between how large the file is in comparison to what has actually been downloaded.
To run the command you can run something like the following and obviously be aware that you're profile will be in a different location to mine.
firefox.exe -d -p C:/Documents and Settings/username/Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/fd9zh9ag.default -s WORKSTATION -u USERNAME > c:\temp\events.txt
Again this parses to Harlan's TLN timeline format and you can then convert it with the parse.pl/exe script that Harlan provides and turn this into a spreadsheet for your analysis.The output is the following.
1353362936|FIREFOX|WORKSTATION|USERNAME|dl:winscp511setup.exe src:http://download.winscp.net/download/files/201211192201657b470a18225537e6515b0e998929a1/winscp511setup.exe cB:4854080 mB:4854080
1353364779|FIREFOX|WORKSTATION|USERNAME|dl:sav32sfx(1).exe src:http://downloads.sophos.com/tools/sav32sfx.exe cB:72805712 mB:72805712
1353364806|FIREFOX|WORKSTATION|USERNAME|dl:483_ides.zip src:http://downloads.sophos.com/downloads/ide/483_ides.zip cB:3656900 mB:3656900
1354486120|FIREFOX|WORKSTATION|USERNAME|dl:googletalk-setup.exe src:http://dl.google.com/googletalk/googletalk-setup.exe cB:1606064 mB:1606064
1354493698|FIREFOX|WORKSTATION|USERNAME|dl:FTK 4.1.0 Intl.iso src:https://ad-iso.s3.amazonaws.com/FTK%204.1.0%20Intl.iso cB:0 mB:-1
Although Chrome is not specifically mentioned I felt it was of equal importance in this category and therefore it was best I showed examples for both. Again with these examples its important that when testing these tools you note the time that you download each of the files and confirm in the output, as we did in the last post, that your timeline produces the correct time while at the same time understanding any conversions required from UTC to local time.
Again I opened the database, the History file, using SQLite Manager
In this case we don't have as much detail in the downloads table as we do with the downloads database within firefox. Once again I ran the command using a similar command to the one we used above however this time using my chrome script
chrome -d -p "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default" -s WORKSTATION -u USERNAME > c:\temp\chrome_events.txt
The output is the following.
1347264951|CHROME|WORKSTATION|USERNAME|dl:C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\Downloads\ChromeSetup (1).exe src:https://dl.google.com/tag/s/appguid%3D%7B8A69D345-D564-463C-AFF1-A69D9E530F96%7D%26iid%3D%7B017F3DCB-E134-832D-5F16-ACB3A3AAB5E1%7D%26lang%3Den%26browser%3D4%26usagestats%3D0%26appname%3DGoogle%2520Chrome%26needsadmin%3Dfalse/update2/installers/ChromeSetup.exe cB:739808 mB:739808
1354584249|CHROME|WORKSTATION|USERNAME|dl:C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\Downloads\sav32sfx (1).exe src:http://downloads.sophos.com/tools/sav32sfx.exe cB:72805712 mB:72805712
1354584279|CHROME|WORKSTATION|USERNAME|dl:C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\Downloads\googletalk-setup (1).exe src:http://dl.google.com/googletalk/googletalk-setup.exe cB:1606064 mB:1606064
1354584297|CHROME|WORKSTATION|USERNAME|dl:C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\Downloads\sav32sfx (2).exe src:http://downloads.sophos.com/tools/sav32sfx.exe cB:72805712 mB:72805712
Well I think I've discussed this topic enough. Again not overly complex but like everything you'll have a return on your tools if you understand what they do and have some assurance that the output is expected and once again you're aware of any adjustments you may need to make to ensure you're looking at the correct local time if required. If you're looking for the tools mentioned above that I've written you can find them at the following location http://code.google.com/p/sploited/downloads/list
[1] http://davidkoepi.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/firefoxforensics/
[2] http://computer-forensics.sans.org/blog/2010/01/21/google-chrome-forensics/
[3] http://renaissancesecurity.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/firefox-4-browser-forensics-part-4.html
[4] https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/d/d5/Places.sqlite.schema3.pdf


text:
Gay rights ordinances pushed in small Kentucky towns
ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. — In a scene that has been playing out in small cities throughout Kentucky in recent weeks, local citizens working with the statewide Fairness Coalition — which includes groups such as the Louisville, Ky.-based Fairness Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky — are seeking local anti-bias protections for gay and transgender people.
In Elizabethtown, Ky., a dozen activists went to City Hall where they presented the City Council with a proposal for an ordinance banning discrimination in housing, accommodations and employment based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
"We're not asking for anything more than ... the right to be who we are and to live our lives peacefully without having any fear of discrimination," said Rose Marie Rocha of the nearby Hardin County, Ky., community of Cecilia.
Only Louisville, Lexington and Covington have such ordinances right now, but ordinances have also been proposed in Shelbyville, Bowling Green, Richmond and Berea. And Chris Hartman, director of the Fairness Campaign, said efforts may be launched in more towns early next year.
So far, small county seats and other conservative heartland communities in Kentucky have resisted such measures. A Henderson ordinance was repealed in 2001 less than two years after its passage, and a proposal for one fell short in Berea last year.
Support in elections
But gay rights advocates are taking heart from the national elections in November — even though Kentucky voters overwhelmingly voted for candidates running on conservative platforms — to make their push.
Until November, even blue states had never backed same-sex marriage by popular referendum, as Maine, Maryland and Washington did in this year's elections. In addition, President Barack Obama endorsed same-sex marriage, and polls show younger voters to be increasingly affirming of gays and lesbians.
"I think the nation's reached a tipping point," said Hartman, who also is calling on the General Assembly to pass statewide laws that would eliminate the need for a city-by-city campaign.
But Hartman and other advocates are quick to add that the current proposals in small cities do not address same-sex marriage, which Kentucky voters banned in a 2004 constitutional amendment.
Instead, they generally would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in housing, employment and public accommodations.
"You need to bring people along, make sure people know exactly what the ordinance is," said Jane Thomas, a Shelbyville resident who helped present the ordinance in her city in November. "It doesn't have anything to do with marriage, it has to do with fairness."
'Conservative county'
Shelbyville Mayor Thomas L. Hardesty said he wants to give City Council members time to review the proposal, but he doubted it would get support. "Shelby County is still a very conservative county," he said.
Shelby County, Shelbyville and Simpsonville have a joint Human Rights Commission that monitors cases of bias involving categories protected under state and federal law, such as race, religion, gender and age.
Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst for the Family Foundation of Kentucky, said he hasn't seen proof of the need for extending such protections to the categories of sexual orientation or gender identity. And "I don't perceive that those laws have any chance right now to pass the legislature," Cothran added.
While acknowledging national liberalizing trends on the issue, he said "there is going to be some point in which the culture shift which is happening stops and levels out. Obviously in the red states, that bottoming-out point is higher than in the blue states."
Kansas voters, for example, rejected gay rights ordinances in two cities last month. Yet, such ordinances are spreading in the heartland. In the past year in Indiana, smaller cities such as New Albany, Evansville and South Bend have adopted them.
"What the demographic information shows and what our experience shows is it matters less and less to people the reason you are treated unfairly," said the Rev. Kent Gilbert, pastor of Union Church in Berea and an advocate for an ordinance in that city. "It matters more and more that you are not."
In Elizabethtown, Mayor Tim Walker declined to say how he felt about the proposed ordinance until council members and the city attorney could review it. The measure would exempt certain religious organizations and certain small businesses.
Cothran said opponents of the ordinances have "serious religious liberty concerns about these kinds of laws" as they apply not only "to churches but owners of religious organizations that are not churches and religious owners of regular businesses."
Cothran cited the decision of Catholic adoption agencies to cease operating in some states where they were required to serve same-sex couples.
Hartman said the ordinances, such as the one proposed for Elizabethtown, exempt religious organizations and religious-operated nonprofit groups, though not for-profit business owners.
"Built into the law is a pretty explicit attempt to preserve religious freedom," he said. "But being able to eat at a local restaurant, that's the type of public accommodation that really has to be open to everyone."
Laws on bias, sexual orientation and gender identity
So-called fairness ordinances and laws vary in details, but they generally prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or both in matters of housing, employment and public accommodations.
Sexual orientation refers to the gender or genders to whom one is attracted; transgender people are those who identify with the gender opposite their birth gender.
Federal, Kentucky and Indiana laws do not prohibit such discrimination. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation; all but five of them also include gender identity.
Federal, Kentucky and Indiana civil rights laws generally prohibit discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin or disability.
Neither Kentucky nor federal civil rights laws prohibit private-sector bias against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity, although executive orders prohibit it in areas such as state hiring and federal public housing.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Looking together at the Word of God, I want to invite you to open your Bible to 1 Timothy chapter 1...1 Timothy chapter 1. The setting for the message this morning is found in verses 12 through 17...1 Timothy 1:12 through 17. I'd like to read that text so that you'll have it in mind as we look at it. "And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who hath enabled me in that He counted me faithful putting me into the ministry, who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am first. Nevertheless for this cause I obtained mercy that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them who should here after believe on Him to life everlasting. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen."
In the midst of that marvelous text there is a faithful saying. I want you to notice it for a moment. Verse 15 says, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Five times in the pastoral epistles and nowhere else the little phrase "this is a faithful saying" appears. There's little doubt what it indicates. It indicates a familiar recognized statement or saying that had already developed in the early church. It isn't something that Paul is saying for the first time, but something he is quoting that he knew everyone knew as a trustworthy saying. It seems as though in the time of the writing of 1 Timothy which was after Paul's first imprisonment, there had already developed a fairly well articulated theology. There were some creeds and some hymns and some faithful sayings, some trustworthy sayings that were really a summary of some great truth.
There are five of them, as I said, in the pastoral epistles. Two of those five have added to them the second statement "worthy" or "valued to be accepted." Worthy of all acceptance, just as an emphasis. They are summaries of very key important doctrines which should be believed, should be affirmed, should be accepted, worthy to be believed, worthy to be approved. And the summary statement here is a no-doubt familiar statement to the people to whom Timothy ministers as well as Timothy which acts as a condensed articulation of the gospel. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Every word is chosen carefully. The church had summarized the gospel in this one brief statement, a statement worthy of belief, a statement trustworthy beyond question.
Christ Jesus, the order is Paul's favorite order as he writes the pastoral epistles. He prefers Christ Jesus to Jesus Christ, using Jesus Christ six times and Christ Jesus 25 times. And I think that may be a reflection of his own conversion experience. It was the glorified Christ, the exalted Christ, the reigning Christ that he met on the Damascus Road before he knew it was also Jesus of Nazareth. Whereas the other New Testament writers who were His disciples who knew Him first as Jesus and then came to know that He was the Messiah prefer Jesus Christ. Paul seems to prefer Christ Jesus.
Bound up in those two terms is all that He is. He is the anointed King, He is the one who came to redeem. He is the one who became the earthly Jesus in His incarnation. Also the statement says He came into the world. That statement is a very important statement. It does not say He came into existence. It does not say He came into being. It does not say He was created. It does not say He was made. It implies not only His incarnation but His preexistence. He came into the world. He was somewhere else and He came into the world, the preincarnate Christ. This particular choice of terms sounds very much like John. And if you are to go carefully through the gospel of John, you will hear John repeatedly speak of the fact that Christ came into the world. In John 1:9 He was the true light, lighting every man who came into the world. In chapter 3 of John's gospel in verse 19, "Light is come into the world," a favorite choice of terms for John. You trace it all the way through chapter 16, chapter 18. And Paul here uses that same almost Johannine perception to speak of the one who was preincarnate, who preexisted...God the second person in glory who came into the world in the form of man as none other than Jesus Christ to be the anointed King, the anointed Monarch, the Christ.
Now notice also that it says He came into the world. The world, of course, has to do with our sphere of existence, the Earth, but more than that it speaks of the...of not just the Earth as a geographical entity but the world of men, the world of mankind, the world of humanity, the human race, blind and lost and condemned and damned to hell, hostile to God, engulfed in fallenness and evil as John again says in 1 John 5:19, "The whole world lies in the lap of the wicked one." It is that world to which He came, the world of sinners, the realm of unbelief and hostility toward God, the world of darkness. God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, says John 3:17, but that the world through Him might be saved. He came to redeem this fallen human race. In John's gospel also, chapter 12 verse 46, "I am come a light into the world that whosoever believes on Me should not abide in darkness. If any man hear My words and believe not, I judge him not for I came not to judge the world but to save the world." The world, the human realm He came to save.
You'll notice also that it very specifically says that, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save," to rescue is the implication. To deliver out of darkness and death into life. "You shall call His name Jesus," it says in Matthew 1:21, "for He shall save His people from their sins." Luke 19:10 records the words of our Lord Himself, "The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." The term "save" means to deliver from death and darkness and sin and hell and judgment. And who did He come to save but sinners, a term the Jews loved to use in reference to Gentiles. In Galatians 2:15 it is so expressed. But the Lord used it in reference not only to Gentiles but to Jews and everybody and the word hamartolos appears 47 times in the New Testament. It is a very repeated characterization of man. Man is a sinner. That notes his irreligious violation of God's law as a way of existence. He is not just one who sins, he is a sinner by nature and thus we hear the echo of the Publican in the temple beating his breast in Luke 18 crying, "Lord, be merciful to me a sinner," and save me is the cry of his heart.
So, here in eight Greek words you have a marvelous summation of all that the gospel can say. And would we take the time we could cover so much depth from just those eight Greek words, enough to say Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. The very purpose that God had in mind was redemption of sinners. And isn't it a wonderful thing to be able as Paul does in this passage to celebrate the saving work of God, the saving grace of God? Verse 12 begins with thanks and verse 17 ends the passage with a doxology of praise. The whole passage is offered as praise to God for salvation in Jesus Christ.
I remember as a boy being fascinated with the saving power of Christ, reading stories like the story of Afra Connor(??) who was the vicious savage, a Hottentot from a place in South Africa called Mimaqualand(?). And Afra Connor was someone that everybody feared. His men came along with him and hardened vicious attacks on people without feeling, resulted in death and devastation everywhere he went. And the governor of Cape Town put a price on his head to be given to someone who brought him in dead or alive. They were the terror of South Africa until a missionary came by the name of Robert Moffit(?) and Robert Moffit said that God had called him to the Hottentots and everybody warned him not to go. They said Afra Connor will use your skull for a drinking up. But feeling the call of God and knowing the power of the gospel, he went to the Hottentots and as God would have it the very first person who gave his life to Jesus Christ was Afra Connor and by saving grace he became an effective and useful tool in the advance of the Kingdom of God. A marvelous miracle of grace.
And I remember reading about Billy Sunday, a drunken base ball player who was walking down the street one day in Chicago with a lot of his teammates. And there was someone preaching on a corner and they were all mocking the one who was preaching. And something that he said touched the cords of the heart of Billy Sunday and he dismissed his friends and embraced Jesus Christ and became a great evangelist...great transformation.
I was reading the other day about Ty Cobb who at the end of his life gave his heart to Jesus Christ. And he said, "I came to Christ in the bottom of the ninth, I could only have wished that it was in the top of the first."
God has the ability to transform lives. Stories of the power of the grace of God to transform a life are to all of us fascinating. And in my own ministry I have experienced first hand or second hand amazing stories of God's saving power, drunks and drug addicts and murderers and mass murderers, adulterers and thieves and fornicators and homosexuals and recently people with AIDS coming out of unbelievable life styles. I remember baptizing right in this spot a leader of the Hell's Angels, the last time he had been in a church prior to the time he was baptized was when he rode his motorcycle down the main aisle of a church, threw a rope around the pastor and dragged him out the back. And he was in jail for murdering someone. And it was second degree so he had been released and come to Jesus Christ.
And I remember corresponding with that little lady on Death Row in North Carolina who killed her own family and came to know Jesus Christ in jail. And listened to our radio program all the time and wrote me all the time to have some help with her spiritual growth. And even when they took her life, which was a just thing to do, she went right into the arms of Jesus Christ.
I know stories of so many people. And you know what's more amazing? I have even seen God transform morally upright self- righteous Pharisaic zealous respectable legalistic sinners. Is that unbelievable? I have seen the grace of God do miracle after miracle. I open the Word of God and I am thrilled at the biblical account of the transforming grace of God, I read about a demon-possessed maniac of Gadara who was delivered by the grace of Jesus Christ and is sitting worshiping Christ clothed and in his right mind. And I read about Matthew, a despised tax collector, called by grace to pen the glorious gospel of Matthew. And all the disciples and women and people from the crowds whom He taught and healed and won to Himself. And I remember the story of blind Bartimaeus and his friend, also blind, who were healed and brought by the grace of Christ to salvation. And the man born blind and the adulteress woman at the well, and the leper who returned to say thanks and the sinner who beat on his breast, and Zacchaeus of whom it was said, "This day is salvation come to this house." And I remember the transformation of the centurion who saw that it was the Son of God and the thief who was hanging on the cross and the Jews at Jerusalem when Peter preached and Cornelius and the eunuch and the Philippian jailer and Lydia and all those others and I remember the people of Ephesus who under the preaching of the gospel took out all their occult idols and all their magical books and burned them in front of the whole city because the grace of Jesus Christ had transformed them all.
And so, I understand the spirit of the Apostle Paul. And I understand it because of my own conversion, when he says, "I thank Christ Jesus." And when he says, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Is that not so?
But the most remarkable conversion of all, if we could categorize them in order of significance, the most remarkable conversion of all to me is the conversion of the Apostle Paul. And I think that's what he's trying to say to us in this passage when he says, "of whom I am chief, or protos, first, foremost." His testimony here is that God can save the world's worst sinner. That's right. That's his testimony and a marvelous testimony it is.
You know, he was so thrilled with his testimony that he repeated it over and over again. Luke wrote it in chapter 9. Paul repeated it in chapter 9 of Acts, Paul repeated it in his testimony in Acts 22, he repeated it again in Acts 26, he repeats it in Galatians 1 and 2, he repeats in Philippians 3, and now he repeats it again in 1 Timothy chapter 1. It is because it was always to him a marvelous amazing reality that Jesus Christ saved him. There was always a certain sense of almost disbelief in the midst of his unwavering faith that this could even happen. And so did he celebrate the grace of God since he saw himself as the supreme example of that grace.
Now is this a digression in 1 Timothy? Is this a digression out of the order of what Paul is writing to young Timothy? I don't think so. The whole purpose of this epistle is to charge Timothy with the task of leading the church at Ephesus and the surrounding churches to reject false teachers who are preaching a false gospel. And so what he is saying in his testimony here is "I am a true teacher who has been touched by the true gospel and who has taught the true gospel," and so he's setting himself up as a testimony to the truth and to the power of the truth. Furthermore, he just mentioned in verse 11 the gospel of the blessed God and now he goes on to give a testimony to that gospel. Not only that, from verses 3 down through verse 10 he mentioned the false teaching of the false teachers and now he would like to postulate the true gospel. Not only that, in verses 8, 9 and 10 he talks about their misunderstanding of the law, thinking that the law is gospel and you don't need grace. And here he shows a proper understanding of the law which is to understand sin and realize the desperate need for grace.
It fits. This is no digression. This is no digression at all. In contrast to false teachers, Paul presents himself as a true teacher. In contrast to the impotence of the false gospel, he presents the power of a true gospel. In contrast to the proud self-righteous men who think they can attain salvation through the law, Paul presents himself as a humble defiled base sinner who must fall on the grace and mercy of God. In contrast to those who if followed would lead people away from the saving plan of God into empty talk and unsound doctrine and shipwrecked faith and corruption and lies and envy and strife and arguments and evil and blaspheming and ungodliness that damns men forever, Paul if followed will lead men to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which if believed will lead them, says verse 16, to life everlasting. It fits...it fits. And so this is Paul's testimony to the grace of God. And it's a testimony that Timothy needs to pass on to the people in that church so they can see the power of the true gospel, as over against the impotence of the false gospel being articulated by the false teachers.
As he gives this testimony, he celebrates the significance of God's grace. And he presents six tributes to grace...six elements of grace to which he offers tribute. First, the source of grace, then the need for grace, the power of grace, the extent of grace, the purpose of grace and finally the response of grace. And we'll look at those as we go.
Now let me start with a definition. What is grace? If we're going to discuss all of these features of grace we ought to know what it is. I'm going to give you a lengthy definition, don't write it down, just listen to it. And if you want to get it in detail buy the tape. Okay? Listen now. Grace...this is grace...God's loving forgiveness, exemption from judgment and promise of temporal and eternal blessing given to guilty and condemned sinners freely without any worthiness on their part and based on nothing they have done or failed to do. That's grace. God's loving forgiveness, exemption from judgment, promise of temporal and eternal blessing given to the guilty and condemned sinner freely by God without any worthiness on their part and based on nothing they have done or failed to do. It is God's free and undeserved and unearned forgiveness and favor. And Paul cries out of the blessedness of grace, it is not cold, logical, analytical terms that he uses to be dissected, it is the out flow of a praising passionate heart.
But let's see the elements of grace as he does this. First is the source of grace. Look at verse 12. He is thankful, he says, to Christ Jesus our Lord. Why does he direct his thanks there? Because therein is the source of grace. Over in verse 14, "And the grace of our Lord," and again it comes from Him. Verse 17, "Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God." And so he sees grace coming from Christ and God. And again this is another one of Paul's ways to put together Christ and God in equal essence. But his point here is that the source of grace is God and Christ. The verse literally begins in the Greek, "Grateful I am...grateful I am." The emphasis on the gratitude. And it is in the sense that he is saying I am continually grateful, continually grateful to Christ Jesus, the Messiah, the earthly Son of God with heavenly glory, our Lord, always emphasizing the lordship of Christ, and the our brings Timothy in and affirms the conversion also of Timothy. I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord.
Why? Because he knows He is the source of grace. He is the source of grace. The law was given by Moses, John 1:17 says, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. I suppose at least ten times in the epistles of the New Testament it says "grace and...grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." God is the source of grace. Romans 3:24 says we are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Do you remember Paul's testimony in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 9? "For I am the least of the Apostles, I am not fit to be called an Apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am and His grace which was bestowed on me was not in vain but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I but the grace of God which was with me." In Ephesians chapter 3 verse 8, "Unto me," he says, "who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given." I am what I am by the grace of God even though I'm nothing, I am not fit to be an Apostle. I am the least of all saints. I am the chief of sinners. Always he sees himself that way and it's always connected to his blasphemous slanderous Christ-hating Christian persecuting background. And he knows that if he has received salvation, it is all of grace...all of grace.
So we could say then that even in verse 12 there are four features of grace that come to him from the source. First is electing grace...electing grace. In Acts 9:15, again in Acts 22:14 when he gives his testimony, in Acts 26:16 when he repeats his testimony, in all those places it is very clear that the Lord says "I have chosen you to make you an Apostle." Paul had a tremendous sense of being chosen by God, called by God, separated unto the gospel of God. Not only in terms of ministry but in terms of his election to salvation. He was chosen. There isn't a greater illustration of electing grace than the Apostle Paul. He is on his way to Damascus, Acts 9, to kill Christians. He is stopped dead in his tracks. He is redeemed and he is called to the apostlate all by the sovereign intervention of Christ Himself. So we could say he's thankful for electing grace. Everything starts there. He was chosen for salvation. That was God's divine and glorious purpose. It was the grace of God that brought salvation.
Secondly, he is also grateful for enabling grace. Not only electing grace but enabling grace. It says, "I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me," literally, who has given me strength. He not only elected me to salvation, but gave me the strength I needed to live out that salvation. It wouldn't be enough to have electing grace without enabling grace, we'd get lost again. Not only do we experience the grace of salvation but the enabling grace to walk in that salvation and to continue in the faith. In the end of this epistle, chapter...the end of the second epistle rather, chapter 4 verse 17 of 2 Timothy, he says, "The Lord stood with me and strengthened me that by me the preaching might be fully known." And this is how he lived his whole life, in the strength of the Lord. "I can do all things," Philippians 4:13, "through Christ who strengthens me." "Be strong in the Lord and the power of His might," Ephesians 6:10. So he's looking back here, the form that he uses indicates he's looking...using the Aorist...to a specific moment when the power first came and continues to come throughout all his ministry. And it's wonderful to know that we are not only elect by grace but we are enabled by grace and that's why Paul writes in Romans 5 and says "This grace in which we stand." We didn't just receive grace to be saved and grace departed, we received grace and now we live in grace. And it is the grace of God that infuses the strength of God to enable us to live the Christian life.
Thirdly, he is thankful for entrusting grace...entrusting grace. He says, "In that He counted me trustworthy, or faithful." He is very very amazed that the Lord counted him trustworthy enough to deposit in his life the salvation that God gave him and the truth that God brought to him. And he is one committed to faithfulness. He says it is required in stewards above all things, 1 Corinthians 4:1 and 2, that a man be found faithful. And he says, in effect, it amazes me that He counted me to be trustworthy. Now did the Savior look around and say, "Hey, there's a trustworthy guy, boy, there's a guy I can trust?" No. It was grace that made him trustworthy.
Let me show you something. First Corinthians 7:25, very interesting statement, in his discussion about marriage and singleness and virgins and all that he covers in 1 Corinthians 7, he drops a wonderful little thought in here about how he viewed himself. Verse 25...
He says I want to speak concerning virgins but I can't quote the Lord, I have no commandment of the Lord. That is Jesus didn't say anything that was written down that I can look to so I'm going to give you my own inspired judgment by the direction of the Holy Spirit and I'm giving it...listen to this...as one that has obtained mercy from the Lord to be trustworthy. Did you get that? The only reason that we are trustworthy with the stewardship of the gospel and the stewardship of divine truth and the stewardship of ministry is because the Lord gives us the trustworthiness. That's a gift of grace, electing grace, enabling grace, entrusting grace and then employing grace. He put him in his service, verse 12, putting me in to the diakonia, a word for lowly service. He appointed me to lowly service. Colossians 1:23 and 25 says, "He made me a minister...He made me a minister, He made me a servant." He put me into His lowly humble service. And you can tell by that term that he's not bragging about his wonderful trustworthiness, his great faithfulness. He's not seeking honor for himself.
I was reading this week about the Spartans and some of the things about their battles. And Plutarch tells that when a Spartan won a victory in the games, his reward was that he might stand beside his king in battle. In fact, the victory for a Spartan in his games gave him the privilege of standing in front of his king in the battle to protect his king. And it went on to say there was a story of a Spartan wrestler at the Olympic Games, he was offered a considerable bribe if he would abandon the struggle. And he refused. Finally after a great effort he won the victory and someone said to him, "Well, Spartan, what have you got out of the costly victory you have won?" And he answered, "I have won the privilege of standing in front of my king in battle." I kind of have the feeling that that was the spirit of Paul whose joy was to say, "I bear in my body the marks intended for Jesus Christ," who cried out, "I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings, I want to even be conformable to His death."
No, Paul is not exalting himself here. He is talking about the incredible electing, the incredible enabling, the incredible entrusting and employing grace of God that not only saved him and strengthened him and made him worthy to hold the trust of his salvation, but allowed him to serve with humility and blessing. So when you think of grace you don't think of some very limited thing. That's why 2 Corinthians 9:8 says, "And God is able to make all grace abound to you so that you will have all sufficiency in all things and be able to abound unto every good work." Grace goes way beyond just the saving act. In 2 Corinthians 12:9 he said, "My grace is sufficient for you," for everything.
So, he speaks then of the source of grace as being God, the source of grace in its fullness for all of Christian life and ministry. And then the need for grace...the need for grace. In verse 13 the need is very clear, before his conversion he was a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious. The grace of God is so vivid in his mind because of what he used to be of what he was. He persecuted the church of God and wasted it, he says in Galatians 1:13. Because of what he was his need was profound. A great sinner has to be given great grace, to be chosen, to be empowered, to be trusted, to be appointed to serve Christ, to be made an Apostle is one thing, to have that done to someone who used to be a blasphemer, persecutor and injurious is quite something else.
What does it mean a blasphemer? One who slanders God. One who overtly openly slanders God, speaks evil of God. In Acts 26:11 he says, "I punished them...meaning Christians...often and compelled them to blaspheme." He was not only a blasphemer himself but wanted everybody else to blaspheme God, to blaspheme Christ. His attack was directly against Christ. That's why three times in the book of Acts it says, "Jesus said, Why persecutest thou Me?" Not the church, but Me. He was anti-God in that sense, he was anti-Christ, he was a blasphemer of the first order. And therefore he violated the first half of the Ten Commandments. All those that speak of a person's proper attitude toward God he violated, he shattered the first table of the law. He also shattered the second table of the law as the next two words indicate. He was a persecutor, relentless, maniacal pursuit to do harm to Christians. He wasted the church. Acts 8:3, Acts 9:1 pictures him making havoc of the church, breathing out threatenings and slaughter, binding people up, men and women, going into houses and dragging them out, throwing them in prison. He was a mass murderer. He was a ferocious aggressive evil persecutor of the church. And the last word is a very interesting word, translated injurious it really means the idea of a wanton aggressor, an aggressor with no thought for human kindness. Some have translated that word a bully. It is the idea of a violent aggressive person whose violence and contempt causes him to mistreat and hurt other people simply for the sake of the hurt. It isn't that he has some pure cause in mind. He gets glee out of watching people be humiliated and suffer and even die. He relishes that. It is a characteristically pagan sin indicated in...the same word is used in Romans 1:30, it is also the word used in Luke 18:32 to speak of what the crowd and what the Jewish leaders did to Jesus when they plucked His beard and spit in His face and punched Him and slapped Him just for the sheer sport of it. I suppose one way we could translate it would be sadism. He had personal glee and fulfillment out of watching people suffer pain even unto death. And when Ananias was told by the Lord to meet him in Acts chapter 9, it says Ananias said, "I have heard how much evil he has done." And when the early church was supposed to receive him, they were scared, they were frightened.
Now this was the need for grace. This is a desperate sinner. This is a mass murderer, a violent persecuting God- hating, Christ-rejecting sinner of the worst possible imagination. So great was the need for grace.
You say, "Well why does Paul bother to recite this?" Because it's very helpful to remember the pit from which you were dug, right? It has a lot to do with keeping your perspective, maintaining your humility and your heart of gratitude if you can go back over some of those things.
That leads us to the power of grace. The power of grace was expressed because the need was so great. In Romans 5:20 Paul knew exactly what he was saying when he said, "Where sin abounded grace did super abound." He was living proof. And he says at the end of verse 13, "But I was mercied...I was mercied, I was a doer of outrage, but I was mercied, I was smeared with mercy. I was treated with compassion in my wretchedness." And he could say with the hymn writer, "And from my smitten heart with tears, two wonders I confess, the wonders of His glorious love and my own worthlessness." But I was mercied, he says.
What is mercy? Mercy has to do with misery. Grace has to do with guilt. Grace takes away the guilt, mercy takes away the misery that accompanies the guilt. The undeserved relief of misery that comes with saving grace came to Paul and I was mercied, he says.
How so? How could such a wretched vile rotten sinner be mercied? Because, he says, "I did it ignorantly in unbelief, I didn't know what I was doing." He's not an apostate who knew exactly what he was doing and did it anyway. He's not someone who like the Pharisees had come to fully hear the Word of Christ, fully understand the power of Christ, saw all His miracles, heard all His teaching and concluded that He was out of the pit and He was devilish. He was no apostate. He was no rejecter of full light. He was not like those in Hebrews chapter 6 who were enlightened and tasted the heavenly gift and saw the powers of the age to come and partook of the energy and power of the Spirit of God and turned their back on that and walked away and thus were unredeemable. He is not an apostate. He is not one who knew everything and turned his back on it. Not at all. He didn't know what he did. And he's borrowing this concept, by the way, from his own Jewish background. If you were to read Leviticus 22:14 you would read about unwitting sins, sins that people do and they don't really realize what they've done. And if you were to go, and you ought to do this some time, read Numbers 15 and as it describes the Day of Atonement it says that the Day of Atonement provides an atonement for the sins of people who sin without knowledge, who sin ignorantly. But those who sin deliberately willfully, cold-blooded, arrogantly are beyond the atonement because they have no repentance. Someone who sins and repents understands what they've done and comes in repentance and confession and faith. They were covered in Israel by the atonement on the Day of Atonement. But those cold-blooded arrogant sinners with no confession and no repentance, their sin was not taken care of.
And it's the same here. Jesus dying on the cross looked out at a crowd that screamed for His blood, a crowd that wanted Him dead, a crowd that put Him on a cross and He said, "Father, forgive them," and the reason was, "for they...they don't know what they're doing, they don't fully understand." The sin is theirs and they've committed the sin and it's a vile heinous sin, but they really didn't understand what they were doing. And Peter affirms that in Acts 3:14 to 17 as he preaches and he says, "I know you did it ignorantly in unbelief." And that's the distinction here. It isn't that he was not guilty for his sin of persecution, he was a vile wretched sinner. He says he's the worst sinner of all sinners. But he is a forgivable sinner if when he sees the truth he turns from his sin to righteousness. You understand? It's the sinner who doesn't turn that's unforgivable.
And what does he say in Acts 26:19? "When I saw Christ on the Damascus Road," he says, "I was not disobedient to that heavenly vision." When I saw the truth I believed it, I saw my sin. Remember Romans 7? I thought I was alive, here I was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, perfect as concerning the law, circumcised, he goes all through that in Philippians 3, and all of those things but when I saw the law of God in its reality I died, he says, I was devastated. I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.
Could we say that he had a redeemable heart because he was not an apostate, he was not a cold-blooded arrogant willful deliberate sinner against full light? When he saw the truth, he believed the truth. And the power of grace is this, beloved, that it doesn't matter how wretched the sinner is, grace is powerful enough to transform the sinner if the sinner sees the sin as sin and believes the gospel. That's the issue. The power of grace to bring mercy to a willing heart, willing to do what is right and believe the truth.
What about the measure of grace? That's the power of grace to transform, to bring mercy to such a wretched heart. What power to transform that. But what's the measure? Verse 14, "And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant." It super abounded. You got a lot of sin, you got a lot of grace to cover that sin. And here we find the use of the term grace, which is central to the passage, and though it only appears here it permeates the whole of Paul's gratitude. Abounding sin gives way to super abounding grace, above the expected measure. Paul loves to add the word huper, super we call it, hyper, transliterated. He loves to add that on front of words. And if you go through the New Testament you'll find about a half a dozen places where he invents a word by adding hyper in the front of it, super abounding here, exceedingly abundant. And so, he gives us the insight into the surpassing measure of grace. The Bible says God is able to make all grace abound, all grace, electing grace, enabling grace, entrusting grace, employing grace, all can abound, exceedingly abundant.
And notice what else he says, with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. Now this grace is in Christ Jesus. You're not going to get grace anywhere else, is that right? You're not going to get saving grace anywhere besides in Christ Jesus, apart from believing in Him and receiving Him, there's no saving grace. But notice what he says, "Saving grace is not only abundant in and of itself...this is marvelous thought...you not only receive an abundant exceedingly abundant saving grace but along with it comes faith and love." Literally you could read it this way, "And the grace of our Lord was super abundant in the company of faith and love which are also in Christ Jesus." They're together.
What is that saying? That's saying this that when saving grace comes, with it comes faith. What does that mean? When God saved you, God granted you the grace to trust Him. And even your faith in Him is a gift. "For by grace are you saved through faith that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God." God brings grace to cover your sin and He brings with it faith to believe God and He brings with it love to love God and love to love others. I mean, it's a whole package, folks. Here you are a naked destitute useless condemned vile sinner without hope, without anything in the world, and when God by electing grace moves in to redeem you and responds to your willing heart, therein does He bring grace that super abounds beyond all your sin and even beyond that He brings you the capacity to trust God and the capacity to love God and love others. And that's the package that comes with saving grace. Isn't that marvelous? That's why when you go through the New Testament, I wish we had time, over and over and over again faith and love are linked with salvation. Faith and love...I mean, just for example, one epistle Ephesians 1:15, and this is one out of many, Ephesians 1:15, "I also after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints." Chapter 3 verse 17, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that you being rooted and grounded in love." Chapter 6 of the same epistle, verse 23, "Peace to the brethren and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." In 1 Timothy, right where we are, verse 5, "The end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith without hypocrisy." Chapter 2 verse 15 of 1 Timothy, "She shall be saved in child bearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness with sobriety."
Faith and love are linked so often because the package that comes with salvation includes trusting God as a gift. God enables us to trust Him and loving Him and loving others also as a gift. That's why Colossians 1:23 says you're saved if you continue in faith because faith is part of the salvation package and you can tell a true Christian by their continuing faith.
Secondly, you can tell a true Christian by their continuing love. Is that not so? If you say you're a believer but you don't love God and love His people, 1 John says you're not telling the truth. So grace is so abundant you not only get super abounding grace but in the package you get love and faith also. That's the measure of God's grace.
What's the purpose of it? What's the purpose of grace? Is that something also for which to rejoice? Let's move in to verse 15 again. "This is a trustworthy saying and certainly worthy of everyone's acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am protos, first," literally worst, I am the worst sinner in the world. You say, "Now wait a minute, Paul, you've got a bad self-image. You're not going to make it in the ministry, you've got to get your act together, calm down a little bit, you're a nice guy." No, I'm the worst sinner in the world. Do you say, "Oh, he's just...that's just sort of spiritual talk?" No, he really believed that. He really believed he was the world's worst sinner. In chapter 15 of verse...chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians verse 9, "I am the least of the Apostles, I am not fit to be called an Apostle...here's the reason...I persecuted the church of God." I read you earlier that one and Ephesians 3:8, "I am less than the least of all saints." He believed it. Why? Because it was...it was probably true. I don't see the Holy Spirit editorializing here and saying, "Don't believe this, this is just Paul exaggerating." I think he said he was the worst because he probably was the worst and nobody argued with it, not even God. I mean, how bad can you be but be a mass murderer of people who love Jesus Christ? From a human viewpoint, he was wretched, he was a blasphemer of God and Christ, he was a killer of Christians and he did it for the sheer joy of watching people suffer. Now that's a perverted mind. And when he says "I am the first," and uses the emphatic pronoun and the word first, he means it...he means it. He was a wretched vile sinner of massive proportions. He said I persecuted this way, that is Christianity, unto the death, binding and delivering both men and women into prison. And specifically his persecution and his crimes were committed against Jesus Christ, that's why the Lord said, "Why are you persecuting Me?"
That was a healthy self-view for Paul because it was accurate. And that's the basis of the purpose of his salvation. Look at verse 16, "Nevertheless, for this cause I obtained mercy." What cause? Because I was so wretched a sinner, because I was so rotten and so vile...now listen to this...because I was the worst sinner alive, I received mercy. Well what is...why that? Why does God save the worst sinner? Here it comes, "In order that in me first or me foremost Jesus Christ might show forth all...what?...long suffering or patience."
You know why God saved Paul? You say, "To keep him out of hell." No, that was a benefit. You say, "To get him in to heaven." No that was a benefit. You say, "To have him write the epistles." No, He could have anybody do that. "To preach." No, He could have anybody do that. "Well why did He save Paul?" Because God wanted to save the world's worst Christian...the world's worst pagan and make him the world's greatest Christian. God wanted to save the world's worst pagan and make him the world's greatest Christian. Why? To show the power of grace, to put Himself on display. You see, the purpose of salvation is to glorify God, to demonstrate His power and His long suffering.
And isn't that wonderful? Listen to this...if the Lord is so patient and so long suffering, and the word is makrothumia and it means to be patient with people. If the Lord is so patient with vile blaspheming slanderous persecuting outrageous conduct among the pagans, if He is so patient as to wait for that person as to endure all of those indignities, redeem that person, make that person an Apostle and let him write 13 books of the New Testament who was the worst sinner in the world, then nobody else is beyond His grace, right? That's the whole point. And you know something? You know what this says to Timothy, even those false teachers that are creating such havoc, Timothy, are not beyond salvation if they have done it ignorantly in unbelief.
God's willingness to endure the insults and the blasphemies and the rejection and the sins of men like Paul show how great His grace is, how magnanimous His mercy is. And so Paul says I am a pattern, I am a hupatoposis(?), which means an illustration, a model. I am...I like the word illustration...I am the supreme illustration for everybody who in the future will believe on Him to life everlasting, I am living proof that God can save any sinner. Isn't that wonderful? Somebody would say, "Well He can't save me, I'm too far gone." That's not so...not so. Have you overtly openly outwardly purposely blasphemed God? Have you blasphemed Jesus Christ? Have you systematically murdered Christians and put them in jail? And worse of all the whole time you did it thought you were righteous? This is bad stuff.
Now I don't want to push the point too far but certainly in Paul's mind he saw himself as the worst of sinner, and there's reason to agree. There may be others in history who would rank right with him, but you can't get any worse than that than to be the outward antagonist of God and Christ and the church. And so saving him then is proof positive that the Lord can save anybody and transform anybody...anybody, and turn them in to an evangelist, an apostle, a missionary, a useful servant.
And that's why we have in verse 17 the response to grace. "Now unto the King eternal," literally the king of the ages. What ages? The Jews had two ages, the past age and the age to come. The supremely sovereign one, immortal, that is imperishable, incorruptible, no death, decay or loss of strength, the invisible one known only by self-revelation for He cannot be seen by eyes nor heard by ears, only when He's self-revealed can He be known. The only God...the only God to Him be honor and glory forever and ever. And then he adds that little Jewish conclusion...Amen. Which means let it be said, let it be said.
You can't really exegete a doxology, you just say it and rejoice in it. Now I trust as you've heard this message you've heard the Spirit of God say to you...if you're a Christian there ought to be a thankful heart. And maybe if you've grown a little cold in that area of your life, you need to reach back and remember what you used to be and you need to remember your sinfulness and understand again the grace of God so that you have a thankful heart and so that you can cry out in a doxology of praise, "Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." And mean it with all your heart.
And others of you who have never embraced the Lord Jesus Christ at all, be assured of this that no matter what your sin might be, no matter how wretched it might appear to you, you're savable by the grace of God. That's the message here. Even if you've been a false teacher, if you did it ignorantly in unbelief and hearing the truth you desire to respond. Let's bow in prayer.
Father, we're reminded of the beautiful words of John Wesley who wrote, "Plenteous grace with Thee is found, grace to cover all my sin, let the healing streams abound and make and keep me pure within." We thank Thee, O God, for Thy great grace in Christ. We thank Thee for what Thou art able and willing to do in the life of a repentant sinner. O what transforming grace. May there be no one in this place who has not known that grace who is not grateful for that grace. Fill our hearts with the doxology of praise.
While your heads are bowed in closing moments of our message. If you have never embraced the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior, if you have not received His saving grace, you are in a dangerous eternally dangerous state and foolishly rejecting the gift of life. Simply and only because you love your sin. Say no to your sin and yes to Jesus Christ, hearing the truth believe it and know that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners...even sinners as bad as you, to transform them in to servants of His own. Right where you sit, if you've never received Christ, open your heart to Him right now, believe and receive Him. If you're a Christian, ask God to forgive you for the lethargy and indifference and fill you with gratitude and remember what you were and what you would be without that grace.
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CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — A slimmer Roy Halladay is optimistic he'll be ready when the season starts.
Halladay said he lost about 10 pounds in two days because of a stomach virus, but still expects to pitch during the Phillies' first series at Atlanta. Cole Hamels already was named Philadelphia's opening-day starter and Halladay is slated for the second game on April 3.
"My stomach is a lot better," Halladay said Tuesday. "Just trying to get strength back. I'm kind of a little bit weak and jittery right now I guess from not eating and passing a lot of fluids and stuff. I feel better. Just trying to get that strength and energy back.
"Hopefully each day I will get that strength back a little bit."
Halladay left Sunday's start against Baltimore after one inning after feeling ill. The two-time Cy Young Award winner was coming off a rough outing that raised concerns about his health. But the 35-year-old righty insists he's not bothered by the lower back and shoulder problems that forced him to miss two months last year.
"My bullpen (sessions) have felt really good, and I felt good when I first started throwing in the bullpen," Halladay said of his start against the Orioles. "Throwing today felt good. The arm slot and the stuff we are working on I think is there. I feel like I'm going in the right direction. It was just a bad time for a setback of not being able to get the pitches up to where I wanted to get to."
Halladay said he would be ready to go when the season opens if he can throw about 75 pitches in his next start and at least 90 in his last spring outing.
"I think that if I continue to get stronger and stronger each day, I'll be fine," Halladay said. "I haven't been on any teams where the first start of the season they let you go over 100 pitches. I think if I can get to 90 by the end of spring, I feel like I can throw 100 to 105."
Halladay threw a perfect game, tossed a no-hitter in his first career postseason start, won a National League Cy Young Award and was 40-16 in his first two seasons in Philadelphia. But last year, he had his fewest wins (11) since 2004 and the second-worst ERA (4.49) in his career.
The Phillies' streak of five-straight NL East titles ended last year with an 81-81 finish. They're counting on Halladay, Hamels and Cliff Lee to anchor the rotation and help them make another postseason run.
(© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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Delving into my domesticated side. Recipes tried, tested and true.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Morocco, The Caliph's House and Kefta Tagine...Here's Looking At You, Kid.
"Uhm, I dunno," I mumbled back.
"Really? Because the sweet lady asked me how our trip to MOROCCO and MAURITANIA had been?!" my mother countered, staring me down from across the table.
My dad chortled, I feigned innocence and everyone returned to their dinner. The story hasn't been forgotten, and I still get teased about the incident to this day. I, on the other hand, still cannot fathom where those two exotic and yet inaccessible countries had entered into my otherwise staid schema of normal 7 year old activities like dolls, fighting with the neighbors kids and stealing chocolate cake.
Had I been subjected to re-runs of the movie Casablanca as a baby?
I distinctly recall Sesame Street characters from my infancy, but definitely no Bogart.
Had a caregiver incessantly sung "As Time Goes By" to lull me to sleep? Highly unlikely, the constant stream of nannies that had passed through our household had not known English too well to be able to master that feat.
Chalk it up to unsolved mysteries (not so much, my parent's theory was that we had visited Mauritius earlier that year, and unable to bend my tongue around that name, I had come up with two fairly similar but highly unlikely destinations to enthrall my class with), but the fact remains that Morocco and the mysterious splendour that is Casablanca has been high up on my bucket list of places to visit (there is is an insatiable 7 year old in all of us, right?)
So I could totally relate to this months book choice at This Book Makes Me Cook which was The Caliph's House by Tahir Shah. Tahir Shah gets increasingly frustrated with his monotone, humdrum life in England, where the incessant grey skies and the conformity and boredom of his staid life starts to threaten his sanity. Against the warnings of his well-wishers and even family, some of whom ironically wish they could escape the same monotony that Shah detests, he packs up and sets off to Casablanca with his little daughter and heavily pregnant and highly sceptical Indian wife.
Morocco had always been refuge for Shah's wanderlust, he had travelled there as a child, and its mystery, landscape, heritage and culture re-ignites his passion for life and sets him on an even more personal and deeper quest, to retrace the last days of his grandfather's life there.
Ominous signs throughout the authors endeavour would have scared off lesser mortals like me. The day Shah signs papers for a derelict Moroccan mansion known as Dar Khalifa, a suicide bomber ignites a bomb, killing several innocent by-standers and Shah is grazed slightly in a terrorist attack that jolts the otherwise secular country into the throes of fundamentalist strife. It only gets worse, the princely house he has acquired is in a state of complete decay and borders a shanty town or bidonville, complete with rogue characters and a crumbling infrastructure.
The house also comes with three resident caretakers, part and parcel of the deal and who cannot be shaken off, who then appear to sabotage the authors every move to renovate the house, due to their unwillingness to change their ways and their steadfast belief that the house is possessed by jinns, supernatural beings that are honored and feared in North African Islamic culture.
The book is a lively account of everything Tahir Shah, his children and what sounds like his long-suffering wife, go through in restoring the house to some sense of normalcy. It is no lie that we deal with inept technicians and shoddy workmanship at times in the Western World, but they are small fry compared to the cast of characters, some ghoulish and some absolutely comedic, and outlandish scenarios that befalls the author as he tries to convert his dream into reality.
Interspersed with Shah's very light-handed account of his trails and tribulations is a fairly insightful look into how things are done in the mystical country of Morocco and the day-to-day life of its citizens, some of which may seem obtuse and unimaginable in our minds, but is reality in that part of the world.
There is a silver lining to this story, while it may not seem apparent as you read through the book. Here is a glimpse of the renovated house in Casablanca from NY Times and BBC reports of the place, which the author has turned into a bed-and-breakfast type resort.
While I enjoyed the book thoroughly, the parts where the author tries to find out more about his late grandfather and some of his secret dealings felt a little out of place in this story and lacked depth for me.
And to cook something from this book, I chose the tagine, which is the signature dish of Morocco. Typically a stew of protein and vegetables that is lightly spiced, the dish gets its name from the use of a special dish with a turret lid, which slowly re-utilizes the vapors of the food to produce a fork-tender product. In that case, since I am woefully lacking a tagine dish, I should have probably renamed my dish Kefta Calphalon Non-Stick. But, as in my second grade show-and-tell, lets just pretend we went the authentic Moroccan way.
When I went to source a recipe for kefta tagine, my first stop was the remarkable Sousou Kitchen, your one-stop shop for all Moroccan goodies. And if blogging wasn't hard already, you should check her site out, she has VIDEOS of every recipe prepared! I also wanted to incorporate what I had seen at Almost Bourdain's fantastic site, where her spicy egg and meat tagine had caught my eye.
Kefta Tagine (adaption from both Almost Bourdain's Moroccan Kefta Mkaoura and Sousou Kitchen's Kefta Tagine (this is a video link)
For the kefta/meatballs:
1 lb ground beef
2 Tbsp parsley, chopped fine
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper powder
1 Tbsp olive oil
1. Mix all ingredients except oil, and form small balls. Heat oil in non-stick pan, add meatballs, and toss till cooked and lightly brown on all sides. Remove from pan, drain on paper towels and reserve. Wipe pan and re-use for sauce.
For the Sauce:
1 medium onion, chopped
3 medium tomatoes, diced
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp black pepper powder
1 heaped tsp crushed garlic
1 large potato, diced into large pieces
1/2 tsp turmeric
large pinch saffron
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 - 1 cup warm water
chopped parsley/coriander for garnish
Salt to taste
* cooking times are approximate given how thick you want your sauce to be
1. Heat oil in a non-stick pan. Add onion, saute till they become soft, then add garlic.
2. When the garlic and onions have started to brown, add in the spice powders (except saffron and salt) and stir. Add tomatoes and continue frying over medium heat till the oil starts to separate out. Add potatoes, give them a quick stir fry and then add some warm water to form a gravy. How much water you add depends on your preference as to how "soupy" you want the stew to be. You may have to add some more water later on as the potatoes cook, so do not add too much water at this step.
3. Let the sauce simmer, covered, for about 10 minutes to develop the spice flavors..
4. Add salt to season the sauce, and add in the meatballs and the saffron. Adjust the sauce consistency by adding more warm water if you wnat more gravy or reducing it further in the next step.
5. Let the sauce cook further, covered, for about 5- 10 minutes to let the kefta absorb the flavors of the sauce.
6. Remove from heat, adjust for salt, garnish with parsley or coriander.
Serve with middle eastern flatbread or rice.
So we read stellar books every month at This Book Makes Me Cook, chaperoned by the very efficient Simran.
There is yet another internet Book Club that also Cooks Their Books (who knew?) and they sweetly asked if I could be a guest judge over at their place as they read Madhur Jaffrey's Climbing The Mango Trees.
Confused? Yes? No? Read my guest post over at their place , and then you can also read our reviews too.
12 comments:
- An Open Book said...
gosh casablanca is such an awesome movie..i can watch it again and again
- October 21, 2010 at 12:28 PM
- Simran said...
I just finished reading the book. Now just need to cook something before I post my super-late review.
Your tagine is lovely!
- October 21, 2010 at 12:29 PM
- Aparna said...
The flavours and your dish are just right. :)
I just read the blurb and knew I was buying this book, and I wasn't wrong. Loved it too.
- October 21, 2010 at 12:46 PM
- Marisa said...
Lovely review - sounds like a captivating book!
I like using meatballs in a tagine - have not tried that before. (Of course, mine is also a make-belief tagine).
- October 22, 2010 at 3:27 AM
- Srivalli said...
Ann, that was lovely to read. You guys really push me so much to take part in this event. Wish I could, really..but you have taken me through the book no doubt..nice pictures for the story too..is that your family picture?
- October 22, 2010 at 7:10 AM
- Ann said...
@Srivalli - gosh no, thats not us! That is the author Tahir Shah and HIS family ...LOL!
- October 22, 2010 at 9:32 AM
- Kulsum@JourneyKitchen said...
I had one and broke it and haven;t been able to replace it. This reminded me of how badly I want one. New to your blog and loving it :)
- October 23, 2010 at 7:25 AM
- Bharathy said...
I am so sooo happy to see your comment in the wine post! :)
in fact I had been checking on your reply almost everyday!! :)
yes yes yes..there will be some sediment, Ann...dont worry abt it..even I remember getting them when I made them and asked two of my wine expert friends who had replied to me not to worry abt it and asked me to just ignore the sediment and pour the clear part onto to a wine jar.you can always keep it out and mine stayed fine even after two years!! :)..
even I didnt caremelise the whole wine..so leave it that way!
waiting impatiently to see the wine you made, Ann..any chance??? ;)
P.S- I have to read this fabulous post later when I really get time..now I cant wait to post this comment :)
Tiiiiight hugs :)
- October 23, 2010 at 7:58 AM
- Bharathy said...
Ann..I am getting back after asking my best pal abt the wine sediment.
According to her, Californian grapes are the best to make wine..
the sediments will be cloudy and will take some time to settle down...since you have filtered it once, leave it undisturbed for few more days...if you still see little wine on top get back to me..
I have never used a filter paper nor my friends..so we can make use of it as a last abode!..fine??
No this is not becose of using a wet spoon or anything Ann..don't bother abt it..may be it has something to do with the fibre content of the grapes we use...mine was light pink coloured 'with seed' varietied local ones ;) and had very less sediment too..
- October 23, 2010 at 9:02 AM
- Sarah Naveen said...
oh Casablanca is such a classic..thoroughly njoyed reading the post..
btw.. i used frozen drumsticks this time..Thought it would be soggy too..but luckily it was pretty good...
- October 25, 2010 at 10:06 AM
- tasteofbeirut said...
I feel silly admitting that I have yet to visit Morocco; it seems like everybody has already done so and tells me I have got to go! Well, at least, I can semi-do it with your recipe (yummy) and this book and the beautful pics!
- November 22, 2010 at 3:11 PM
- permanent magenta said...
oh How exciting. I just finished the Caliph's House, getting ready fora trip to morocco myself, and loved it. So nice to find your story, review and RECIPE!!!! Thank you.
- January 22, 2012 at 4:13 AM


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The iconic British-born label Burberry Prorsum unveiled their Fall/Winter 2014 collection, along with many others, at the London Collection: Mens. Their elegant take on designs are traditional, particularly in comparison to some of the other collections showcased this season, and fuse menswear with over 150 years of craftsmanship. The lineup of outfits follows a similar pattern, with loose black tailored trousers acting as the foundation to a bohemian aesthetic. Open-patterned silk shirts are worn over string vests, with cardigans, jackets and coats layered on top, and patterned silk scarfs and bags finishing off the collection.
Burberry Prorsum Fall/Winter 2014 Collection
14 more


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Purchases of Dell products and services are governed by the relevant terms and conditions as indicated below. Clicking on the relevant link below will take you to your relevant terms and conditions. Please review the relevant terms and conditions carefully. If you are unable to access the relevant terms and conditions from your relevant link or for assistance in obtaining a copy of your the relevant terms and conditions applicable to you, please contact your Dell sales representative.
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Along with its needed effects, a medicine may cause some unwanted effects. Although not all of these side effects may occur, if they do occur they may need medical attention.
Check with your doctor as soon as possible if any of the following side effects occur:
Note: Some of the above side effects may also occur up to several weeks after you stop taking this medicine.
Some side effects may occur that usually do not need medical attention. These side effects may go away during treatment as your body adjusts to the medicine. Also, your health care professional may be able to tell you about ways to prevent or reduce some of these side effects. Check with your health care professional if any of the following side effects continue or are bothersome or if you have any questions about them:
More common
Less common or rare
Other side effects not listed may also occur in some patients. If you notice any other effects, check with your healthcare professional.
Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to the FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.
Alatrofloxacin and trovafloxacin may cause liver problems, including liver failure, at any time during treatment in a small number of people who are treated with these medicines. Check with your doctor immediately if you notice that your urine has become dark or your skin or eyes are yellow in color or if you experience loss of appetite, nausea or vomiting, severe abdominal pain, or unusual tiredness or weakness. These may be possible signs or symptoms of a liver problem.
If you are taking aluminum- or magnesium-containing antacids, citric acid buffered with sodium citrate (e.g., Bicitra), iron supplements or vitamins, intravenous morphine, or sucralfate, do not take them at the same time that you take trovafloxacin tablets. It is best to take these medicines at least 2 hours before or 2 hours after taking trovafloxacin. These medicines may keep trovafloxacin tablets from working properly.
Some people who take alatrofloxacin or trovafloxacin may become more sensitive to sunlight than they are normally. Exposure to sunlight, even for brief periods of time, may cause severe sunburn or skin rash, redness, itching, or discoloration. When you begin taking this medicine:
If you have a severe reaction from the sun, check with your doctor.
Alatrofloxacin or trovafloxacin may cause some people to become dizzy, lightheaded, or less alert than they are normally. Make sure you know how you react to this medicine before you drive, use machines, or do anything else that could be dangerous if you are dizzy or are not alert. If these reactions are especially bothersome, check with your doctor.
Do not take alatrofloxacin or trovafloxacin if you are pregnant. Do not give alatrofloxacin or trovafloxacin to infants, children, or teenagers unless otherwise specified by your doctor. These medicines have been shown to cause bone development problems in young animals.
Trovafloxacin tablets may be taken with or without meals.
If you are taking alatrofloxacin injection, use it exactly as directed by your doctor. If you have any questions, ask your health care professional.
To help clear up your infection completely, keep taking alatrofloxacin or trovafloxacin for the full time of treatment, even if you begin to feel better after a few days. If you stop taking this medicine too soon, your symptoms may return.
Alatrofloxacin and trovafloxacin work best when there is a constant amount in the blood or urine. To help keep the amount constant, do not miss any doses. Also, it is best to take the doses at evenly spaced times, day and night. For example, if you are to take one dose a day, that dose should be taken about the same time every day. If this interferes with your sleep or other daily activities, or if you need help in planning the best time to take your medicine, check with your health care professional.
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Ask your healthcare professional how you should dispose of any medicine you do not use.
In deciding to use a medicine, the risks of taking the medicine must be weighed against the good it will do. This is a decision you and your doctor will make. For this medicine, the following should be considered:
Tell your doctor if you have ever had any unusual or allergic reaction to this medicine or any other medicines. Also tell your health care professional if you have any other types of allergies, such as to foods, dyes, preservatives, or animals. For non-prescription products, read the label or package ingredients carefully.
Use is not recommended for infants, children, or teenagers up to 18 years of age since alatrofloxacin and trovafloxacin have been shown to cause bone development problems in young animals.
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The Sweetwater Jaycees – organizers of the "World's Largest Rattlesnake Round-Up" – entertained lawmakers, their staff and visitors at the Capitol Monday as part of an annual tradition dating back about 20 years.
Members of the group corralled and handled the rattlesnakes in the open rotunda in the Capitol extension while about 30 people watched. Riley Sawyers of the Jaycees held one of the snakes around those brave enough for a quick photo op.
David Sager, chief handler of the Jaycees, said the group rounded up seven snakes last weekend to bring to the state capital to raise awareness about their "hobby" and events and to shed light on possible law changes that could affect how and where they catch the infamous creatures.
For example, some counties have banned the practice of using gasoline fumes to force snakes out of their dens for capture, which is typically frowned upon by state game wardens. Sager added that some people aren't aware a small game license is required to catch rattlesnakes. He said three years ago, new regulations were placed on hunting snakes near roadways, such as requiring a bright-colored vests and prohibiting use of artificial light.
The Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater is March 8-10 this year and typically draws more than 25,000 spectators to marvel at about 5,000 snakes.


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Poet Langston Hughes is photographed around 1936 by Carl Van Vechten. The image is from Edward White's biography "The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America."(Carl Van Vechten / Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Although he would hardly cause a blip on cultural radar screens today, Carl Van Vechten was, at various stages of his long and storied life, a journalist, provocateur, novelist, nightlife denizen, music and theater critic, confidant to Gertrude Stein, patron of the Harlem Renaissance, literary dandy, urban impresario, portrait photographer, archivist of Modernism and all-together man about town. A person of seemingly endless contradictions, Van Vechten was known for his many affairs with men — yet married to Fania Marinoff, a Russian actress and dancer, for almost 50 years.
In the first half of the 20th century, Van Vechten connected more cultural dots than any of his contemporaries, as Edward White points out in his fascinating and thoroughly researched new biography, "The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America." Like many legendary New Yorkers, Van Vechten hailed from elsewhere; in his case, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a progressive Midwestern farm town around the time he was born in 1880.
"His one burning desire," White writes, "was to ditch the life of a bourgeois Midwesterner for the glamour and grime of the big cities."
He did just that: first escaping to Chicago, where he discovered the burgeoning classical music and opera scenes fresh off the boat from Europe, as well as the African American communities of the South Side, which thrived during the early years of the 20th century because of the Great Migration north from the Jim Crow South. A few years after graduating from the University of Chicago, Van Vechten left for New York, where he would live until his death in 1964 at age 84.
"Through his life of indulgence and excess, and in promoting his bespoke pantheon of celebrities," White writes in the prologue, "Van Vechten was one of the leading figures of a brash, iconoclastic generation of writers, artists and thinkers that helped Americans see that art and beauty existed amid the hum and buzz of their own cities and not just in the galleries and theaters of ancient European capitals. His life and legacy have been overlooked simply because of the extraordinary range of his interests."
Van Vechten's work as a cultural impresario took place, in many cases, at his own home. His apartment parties — most during the Prohibition years — were the stuff of legend: One night his guests might take in George Gershwin perfecting an early version of "Rhapsody in Blue" on the piano in the corner; on another night, they might be extolling the brilliance of Paul Robeson's black spirituals or an impromptu performance by Bessie Smith.
His embrace and zealous promotion of the African American community — especially in the heyday of Harlem — is what he is most remembered for today, a point White expounds on throughout the second half of this biography, pulling from Van Vechten's day book entries, as well as scores of letters and other correspondence he left behind. Not only did Van Vechten champion his African American friends to the white, upper crust of Manhattan, he helped such writers as Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston (and later, Chester Himes and James Baldwin) find publishers for their work.
Van Vechten himself published seven novels, mostly semi-autobiographical satires of the cosmopolitan society he loved to skewer. His fascination with black Harlem, however, led him to write a realist novel "Nigger Heaven" — a slang term used by African Americans at the time to describe the nosebleed seats in the balcony of Harlem nightclubs — which caused a stir when it was first published and divided some within the African American community.
In his later years, having discovered the portable Leica camera in the early 1930s, he took up photography — portraiture in particular — as a serious art. Over the next 30 years, a coterie of who's who would stop by his apartment studio and have their portraits taken. Despite creating an overwhelming amount of written and photographic output — all of which is at the special collections library at Yale and the New York Public Library — nearly all of Van Vechten's novels, essays and photography collections are out of print, and his oeuvre has largely been forgotten. There is one recent readable but academic study of his life by scholar Emily Bernard, but in "The Tastemaker," White delves deeper, producing a more nuanced portrait of Van Vechten's life and times, as opposed to just his work and his relationships with major figures of the Harlem Renaissance.
"Far more lasting than his output of essays, books, and photography," writes White, "was the example of the life he lived; no other man or woman before him embodied the vision of modern America. His urban odyssey made a virtue of racial and sexual diversity and collapsed the 19th Century distinctions between edifying art and facile entertainment, constantly probing the boundaries of what was considered good and bad taste."
Van Vechten's particular brand of narcissism might not be considered anything out of the ordinary in today's social-network-obsessed, post-digital age. But with his oversized ego and knack for championing others' work, he pushed the culture forward, regardless of his motivations.
"Though the world outside was changing as quickly now as when he first arrived in New York," White writes in the closing pages of "The Tastemaker," "inside the sanctity of his own apartment, Carl Van Vechten was still the only show in town."
Gabel, as well as editing books, is the editor and associate publisher of the Pitchfork Review, as well as the editorial and creative director of the Chicagoan.
The Tastemaker
Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America
By Edward White
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 352 pp, $30.00


text:
Nicole Hudgins
associate professor
Division of Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies
Additional Roles:
director, B.A. in History program
Contact Information:
Phone: 410.837.5303
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia
B.A., Northwestern University
Nicole Hudgins' C.V. (.pdf)
As a devourer of 19th-century novels, I was always intrigued with the contrast between British and French dispositions: On the one hand, you have Great Expectations, on the other, you have Madame Bovary (this was before I had discovered D.H. Lawrence). Despite their proximity to each other (about 20 miles apart), the English and French languages and attitudes toward life—not to mention the food—are so different. Historically, the British considered the French people to be frivolous, irrational and vicious. The French considered the British to be cruel, cold and unimaginative. Cultural antagonism between the two nations goes back to at least the Hundred Years War in the Middle Ages. But by the 20th century, they were fighting on the same side in two world wars. This early interest of mine led me to graduate school in Virginia, where I wrote a master's thesis on the reception of Emile Zola's novels in London. In the 1880s, Zola's English publisher was prosecuted for selling what some Britons felt was pornography.
After completing my master's degree, I decided I needed to switch gears a little. The next task was to create a dissertation project, and I wanted to find a topic that would keep my interest for up to five years (which is more or less the average time it takes to complete a history dissertation here in the States). I still wanted to do Anglo-French history, but the question was, with which materials? Meditating on the problem, the idea came to me that I was fascinated by old photographs. They seem so mysterious and are often so beautiful or sad. I can never resist pondering the fates of the people they contain. So I decided to pursue a comparative analysis of the history of photography. I was curious about photographs' ability to reveal and conceal information. But most of the literature on the subject failed to answer my questions about how photography became so popular or how the practice evolved. What I found was timelines, a handful of inventors and exhibition catalogs, but very little explanation. There was no social history of photography.
My research led me to fascinating Victorian networks of amateurs and professionals, artists and tinkerers, printers and female artisans. While doing research in Lille, a northern town in France, I realized that much of this activity came to an abrupt halt in 1914, when the First World War broke out and Lille (and much of northern France) was soon occupied by the German army. I knew quite a bit about the German occupation of France during World War Two but little about the situation in 1914-18. My curiosity led me to discover the sufferings of the northern French people during World War One, and I wondered how soldiers and civilians coped with the invasion and occupation of their country. These are the questions I'm currently working on and figuring out what role photography and other forms of visual culture played in France during the war.
I love incorporating photography and visual culture into my teaching, too. I've been fortunate enough to hone my teaching methods at Morgan State University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, before arriving at UB in 2009. The Division of Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies is a great place to teach courses on the ethics of war photography and "crisis photography." If there are any students in the schools of Communications Design or Information Arts and Technologies who would like a history of photography course, send me an e-mail. I am proud of joining UB's tradition of interdisciplinary learning.
When I was doing my doctoral research, I was often appalled at the condition of archival collections of pictures here and abroad, the lack of their organization or the lack of documentation. Also, it was frustrating to find beautiful portraits in antique shops or flea markets with nothing written or printed on the backs to indicate their origin. I wondered how such lovely prints of men, women and children ended up lost amidst the commerce of strangers. To some extent, a photograph remains a cipher if there is absolutely no accompanying information about it. It became my personal crusade to encourage individuals and institutions to organize, preserve and, most of all, label their photographs. Help the historians of the future, I say! I know from experience that there are people out there with incredible collections of old photographs lying in dusty shoeboxes under their beds or in closets. Consider taking some time to go through your collection and label your photographs with names, locations and dates with a wax pencil on the back of the pictures. Never write on the front of a picture, and wear cotton gloves, if you can, to prevent fingerprints. You never know where those pictures will end up in 100 years.