Check out this hiddenhistory! John Howard Griffin wrote a book called Black Like Me, first published in 1960.

It is the story of how Griffin, a white man, colored his skin black and traveled around the segregated South in the late 1950's. The cover reads: "What was it like, really like to be black in the Deep South? Novelist John Howard Griffin darkened his skin and set out to discover by personal experience the night side of American life. This is his startling report." The book has sold more than 10 million copies.

John Howard Griffin changed nothing but the color of his skin. However that was enough to almost get him killed. He was continually mistreated, called names, given hateful looks, and despised for nothing other than his darkened skin.

This is a side of American history that has been played down, forgotten, or hidden in our day. Black Like Me brings out the awful truth of American segregation, persecution, racism, and Jim Crow laws.

The experience changed Griffin and charged him up for justice and equal rights. Afterward he became a prominent leader in the Civil Rights movement. John Howard Griffin was a courageous American hero who is mostly hidden in our day.

Read his book and you will be ashamed of how our country treated millions of its citizens for nothing more than skin color. But you will also be inspired by the love, courage, and commitment of a man who believed the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" enough to risk his life to personally learn about the horrible, mostly hidden, injustice of our country. And after he learned about it, Griffin personally put his life on the line many times protesting for human right in America.

So why is this great man hidden? I don't know. This is my small attempt to honor a wonderful American. Three cheers for John Howard Griffin!

The first two men on top of Mt. Everest were Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal.

"You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do things. You can be an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals." --Edmund Hillary

Why not get yourself motivated and go for a challenging goal today?

"Human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself." --Julio Cortazar

70 AD was an awful year--yet extremely significant in world history. That was the year Roman armies surrounded the city of Jerusalem and defeated it. Then they sacrificed a pig in the Jewish temple and totally demolished and flattened both the city and the temple. In the process they slaughtered more than a million Jews and drove all the rest out of Israel. This was written about by Roman historian Josephus who was an eye witness to it.

So why is 70 AD a very important date? 1) When the Jewish temple was demolished, that was the end of Old Testament Judaism. Never again in history have the required animal sacrifices been offered in the "Holy of Holies" in the God's Temple. That event totally changed the application of the Old Testament to Jewish and Gentile life. After 70 AD there was no longer an animal sacrifice for our sins.

2) The events of 70 AD also drastically effected the early Christians by greatly reducing the influence of Judaism and Jewish rituals on Christianity.

3) The events of 70 AD help us date the writings of the New Testament. Many people in an effort to discredit the New Testament writings say they were written after 90 AD all the way up to the second or third century. But in the light of 70 AD, how is this possible? How could such a huge and radical event as both the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the end of animal sacrifices not be mentioned one time in the books of the New Testament if they were written after 70 AD? The book of Hebrews says animal sacrifices are still going on--therefore it had to be written before 70 AD. Paul had great verbal battles with Jewish Christians that wanted all new believer's to be circumcised--if the Temple had been destroyed before Paul was writing, wouldn't he have used that as a great argument for his cause. Paul had to be writing before 70 AD. In fact, all the New Testament books must have been written before 70 AD, because no New Testament writer could have left out such an awesome event if it had happened before his writing.

This means that the New Testament was written by people who were no more than 40 years (70 AD minus the 30 years of Jesus' earthly life) removed from Jesus' earthly life. All of the New Testament writers actually knew Jesus physically or knew people who knew Him physically.

So why did the animal sacrifices end in 70 AD? Because the final blood sacrifice had been made by Jesus Christ on the Cross and the animal sacrifices were no longer meaningful.

70 AD shouts -- "THE NEW TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN BEFORE THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE BY EYEWITNESSES OF JESUS' EARTHLY LIFE AND IS VERY RELIABLE!" So since we have such an awesome witness of God's working in our world, shouldn't we devote some time to reading it?

"The Great Spirit is everywhere. He hears whatever is in our minds and hearts." --Black Elk