Snow spooked me from the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce annual banquet last Friday night, but not 500-plus people who attended the event (the snow stopped about 7 p.m.).

Two of my favorite people received awards: J. RONALD FISCHER received the RUSH H. LIMBAUGH Award. His impressive list of service to this community was shared by DAVID LIMBAUGH. (Limbaugh recently had his newspaper column picked up by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after favorable reader response followed a trial run).

My younger brother JIM RUST'S company ... R&M ENTERPRISES ... received the small-business award of 1999. I hear he did a good job thanking his partners and associates. I'm proud of him not only for persevering over a 10-year period of economic adjustments in some of his other ventures ... but also for the spiritual growth and leadership he provides to a small Bible group that meets each week at his home.

Recently, VISION 2000 recognized a select group of community leaders for 1999 (previously reported), but I would like to pay tribute to MELVIN GATELY ... the spark plug in back of this organization.

His persistence, optimistic enthusiasm and willingness to work hard for the community have gained him respect and appreciation from many.

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One of the benefits of the small Bible group (mentioned above) is that members send me e-mails about items they think are worth sharing.

I don't know if the following is true and will be happy for any verification or correction ... but there's no question that there are few scientists who are willing to challenge the thesis that the scientific predictability of this universe is hard to attribute to MAN.

NASA finds evidence that the Bible is TRUE! For all you scientists out there and for all the students who have a hard time convincing these people regarding the truth of the Bible ... here's something that shows God's awesome creation and shows that he is still in control. Did you know that the space program is busy proving that what has been called "myth" in the Bible is true? Harold Hill, president of Curtis Engine Co. in Baltimore, Md., and a consultant in the space program, relates the following development: I think one of the most amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Green Belt, Md. They were checking the position of the sun, moon and planets out in space, where they would be 100 years and 1,000 years from now. We have to know this so we won't send a satellite up and have it bump into something later on its orbits. We have to lay out the orbits in terms of the life of the satellite and where the planets will be so the whole thing will not bog down.

They ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries, and it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which meant there was something wrong either with the information fed into it or with the results as compared to the standards. They called in the service department to check it out, and they said, "What's wrong?" Well, they found there is a day missing in space in elapsed time. They scratched their heads and tore their hair. There was no answer.

Finally, a Christian man on the team said, "You know, one time I was in Sunday school and they talked about the sun standing still." While they didn't believe him, they didn't have an answer either, so they said, "Show us." He got a Bible and went back to the book of Joshua where they found a pretty ridiculous statement for any one with common sense. There they found the Lord saying to Joshua, "Fear them not, I have delivered them into thy hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee." Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy, and if darkness fell they would overpower them. So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still. That's right. "The sun stood still and the moon stayed -- and hasted not to go down about a whole day."

The astronauts and scientists said, "There is the missing day!" They checked the computers going back into the time Joshua was written and found it was close but not close enough. The elapsed time that was missing back in Joshua's day was 23 hours and 20 minutes, not a whole day. They read the Bible and there it was "about (approximately) a day." These little words in the Bible are important, but they were still in trouble because if you cannot account for 40 minutes you'll still be in trouble 1,000 years from now. Forty minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits.

As the Christian employee thought about it, he remembered somewhere in the Bible where it said the sun went BACKWARD. The scientists told him he was out of his mind, but they got out the Good Book and read these words in II Kings. Hezekiah, on his deathbed, was visited by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was not going to die. Hezekiah asked for a sign as proof. Isaiah said, "Do you want the sun to go ahead 10 degrees?" Hezekiah said, "It is nothing for the sun to go ahead 10 degrees, but let the shadow return backward 10 degrees." Isaiah spoke to the Lord, and the Lord brought the shadow 10 degrees BACKWARD!

Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes! Twenty-three hours and 20 minutes in Joshua, plus 40 minutes in II Kings make the missing day in the universe!

Isn't it amazing? Truth or creative fiction?

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A Super Bowl that was really super for once: The following is the first four paragraphs of a 14-paragraph column "ON SPORTS" about the RAMS vs. TITANS.

"After an upside-down season that shredded the usual scripts, the National Football League finally got something right at the Georgia Dome here on Sunday night. The St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans staged the best Super Bowl in the game's 34 renewals, one that will be remembered for many reasons, all of them right.

There was, first, the flashy first-half offensive performance by the Rams that netted many yards but only nine points because of the late-awakening tenacity of the Titan defense. There was the knife-through-butter touchdown drive that gave the Rams a safe-looking, 16-0 lead midway through the third quarter.

In Super Bowls past, the trailing team usually called it quits about there and a rout ensued, but, somehow, the Titans didn't. Without budging from their conservative game plan, they marched methodically to two touchdowns and a field goal to tie the score with just over two minutes left.

Then poof! the Rams scored on a single, electrifying play, a 73-yard pass and run involving quarterback Kurt Warner and wide receiver Isaac Bruce, that put them ahead again 23-16, but the Titans still weren't done. Starting at their own 12-yard line, they made it to the Rams 10, from where their quarterback, Steve McNair, hit Kevin Dyson with a pass at the four. Dyson was met head-on there by Ram linebacker Mike Jones. Dyson fell forward to the two and reached toward the goal line with the ball, but came up just short as time expired. A final blessing was that he wasn't close enough to warrant cranking up the league's ugly TV-review process." -- Frederick C. Klein, The Wall Street Journal

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Naked public television: Father Richard Neuhaus uses the phrase "the naked public square" to describe the way our culture has tried to strip faith from public life. Think of public education. Now the Federal Communications Commission has ruled to limit religious content on public television. In an astonishing decision released Dec. 29, the FCC set new guidelines saying that broadcasters operating on noncommercial educational licenses must devote at least one-half of their programming hours to topics that serve "educational, instructional or cultural needs of the community." That programming must not be "primarily devoted to religious exhortation, proselytizing or statements of personally held religious views and beliefs." A program that studies religious texts from a historical perspective would count and a church service wouldn't. The FCC has now tried to create a line impossible to observe between "religious education," which counts, and "exhortation," that doesn't. Would musings about God by Carl Sagan or Joseph Campbell be considered "educational" and a film depicting the life of Augustine be rejected for too many "personally held religious views"? Rep. Michael Oxley (R-Ohio) plans to introduce legislation to reverse these ridiculous guidelines when Congress reconvenes. -- Washington Update

NOTE: The FCC withdrew this ruling this week after much public and congressional protest as per the following report in The Wall Street Journal.

The FCC's religious test: Score one for religious freedom. In an order issued last month and discussed in these columns ("Test of Faith," Jan. 19), the Federal Communications Commission determined that some religious television programming could not count as educational, a ruling that jeopardized the licenses of some religious broadcasters. Amid much protest -- and the threat of legislation that would have nullified the order -- the FCC rescinded its ruling on Friday, acknowledging "the difficulty of minting clear definitional parameters for 'educational, instructional or cultural' programming." Republican lawmakers, led by Rep. Michael G. Oxley of Ohio, should be commended for reminding the FCC that we have a First Amendment.

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.