BY ATTY. BATAS MAURICIO

LIFE’S INSPIRATIONS: … “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit…” (1 Corinthians 2:14, the Holy Bible). 

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WHO IS TELLING THE TRUTH ON RP PROSTITUTION---ENRILE, LACSON OR THOMAS? So, can Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Senator Panfilo Lacson tell us, are they disputing the statement of US Ambassador Harry K. Thomas that 40 percent of foreign male tourists who visit the Philippines come here only for sex? 

Are our good senators saying that Thomas’ statement is not true, and that there is really no one among the foreign male tourists who visit our country who come only because they want  to have sex with Filipinas?

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SENATORS HAVE RAN OUT OF BETTER THINGS TO DO? Or are Enrile and Lacson disputing the statement of Thomas, merely to say that it is not really 40 percent, but a much lower number, of foreign male tourists who visit the Philippines have sex with our women while they are sojourning among us?

Any which way we look at this, one gets to wonder: have our senators ran out of better things to do for the Filipino people that they could even bother to tangle with the American ambassador on a matter that cannot be denied anyway, because many of our women really have no source of income other than selling their bodies, especially during difficult times such as what we are experiencing now?

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JUDAH, SON OF ISRAEL, AND TAMAR: Tales of women selling, giving up, or sharing their bodies, for financial or other gains, are as old as the Bible itself, and the Holy Book’s pages are replete with stories of this phenomenon. 

In fact, in the family line where Jesus Christ is supposed to have descended, there is a very poignant story of a woman who gave her body to her own father-in-law, Judah son of Jacob or, later, Israel, just to remind him of his forgotten promise that his youngest son would marry her in fulfillment of a tradition which said that a brother of a deceased man must marry the dead man’s wife.

The woman, who was called Tamar, managed to go to bed with Judah by pretending to be a prostitute, and later became pregnant with his twins, one of whom will become the great, great grandfather of the Lord Jesus Christ. This, to me, is a great story of a woman who was compelled to literally give up her body just to exact fulfillment of a promise made to her.

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GOD’S CURSES, PART XV: There are more curses from God, as we are about to wind up Deuteronomy 28:15-68 of the Bible: “… Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. 

“There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart…”