James the Servant

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

The apostle James was honored with a favored position by Jesus Christ. Not only was he one of the twelve chosen disciples of Jesus, but he was also one of three men in Christ's inner circle. The others were James' brother John and Simon Peter. One more great distinction of the apostle James was to be the first to die a martyr's death.

Apostle James

Also Known as: James of Zebedee; Nicknamed by Jesus, the “Son of Thunder.” Known for: James followed Jesus as one of the twelve chosen disciples. This apostle James (for there were two) was the brother of John, and a member of Christ’s inner circle of three, along with Peter and John. He proclaimed the gospel after Jesus' resurrection and was the first apostle to be martyred for his faith.
Bible References: The apostle James is mentioned in all four Gospels and his martyrdom is cited in Acts 12:2.
Father: Zebedee
Mother: Salome
Brother: John
Hometown: He lived in Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee.
Occupation: Fisherman, disciple of Jesus Christ.
Strengths: James was a loyal disciple of Jesus. He apparently had outstanding personal qualities that are not detailed in Scripture, because his character made him one of Jesus' favorites.
Weaknesses: With his brother John, James could be rash and unthinking. He did not always apply the gospel to earthly matters.
Who Was the Apostle James?
James was among the first of the twelve disciples. When Jesus called the brothers, James and John were fishermen with their father Zebedee on the Sea of Galilee. They immediately left their father and their business to follow the young rabbi. James was probably the older of the two brothers because he is always mentioned first.

Three times James, John, and Peter were invited by Jesus to witness events no one else saw: the raising of the daughter of Jairus from the dead (Mark 5:37-47), the transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-3), and Jesus' agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-37).


But James was not above making mistakes. When a Samaritan village rejected Jesus, he and John wanted to call down fire from heaven upon the place. This earned them the nickname "sons of thunder." The mother of James and John also overstepped her bounds, asking Jesus to grant her sons special positions in his kingdom.

James' zeal for Jesus resulted in his being the first of the twelve apostles to be martyred. He was killed with the sword on order of King Herod Agrippa I of Judea, about 44 A.D., in a general persecution of the early church.

Two other men named James appear in the New Testament: James, the son of Alphaeus, another of Christ's chosen apostles; and James, the brother of the Lord, a leader in the Jerusalem church and author of the book of James.

Life Lessons
In spite of everything James experienced as a disciple of Jesus, his faith remained weak until after the resurrection. Once, when he and his brother asked Jesus for the privilege of sitting beside him in glory, Jesus promised them only a share in his suffering (Mark 10:35–45). They were learning that the greatest calling of a servant of Jesus is to serve others. James discovered that following Jesus Christ can lead to hardship, persecution, and even death, but the reward is eternal life with him in heaven.

Key Verses
Luke 9:52-56
And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village. (NIV)


Matthew 17:1-3
After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. (NIV)

Acts 12:1-2
It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. (NIV)

William James Roop, M.A.B.S.

Roop-Crappell Ministries

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Apostolic Theological Seminary

The Phone Harvest

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

I was talking to my mother earlier, and she told me the story that she heard from her brother Jerry Mankowski, in Wautoma, Wisconsin. Jerry is my Uncle and he still lives on the old family dairy farm. 

Jerry lives in the farmhouse and still has twenty-six acres around it. He doesn't do anything with it, but he lets his son do some farming on the acreage. His son Mike has a small farm a few miles away. Mike is a middle-aged full-bearded, ex-biker, who now farms, after he had a major heart attack.

After harvesting a crop of corn, on ten acres behind the barn, Mike decided it's time to disc under what remained of the crop. After you harvest corn you still have the stubble from where the corn stocks or cut, And the old root system. All this leftover plant material gets disc under into the dirt, to be ready for next year's planting.

Mike was driving his antique, 1941 Farmall H tractor, pulling his disc, and discing under the plant material when somehow his phone slipped out of his pocket and he lost it!  He drove around and looked everywhere for his phone but could not find it anywhere. So he had to buy another phone and forget about the old one.

After waiting out the long Wisconsin winter, when the land was cut covered with snow, which now has melted, Mike could think about replanting in the spring.

His father Jerry walked the fields just to look for any large stones that might damage the equipment. When is spotted a strange looking item in the dirt!  He walked over and picked it up. It was Mike's old phone! The phone was in the dirt and covered with snow the entire cold winter!

Just because he had nothing better to do Jerry decides to plug in the phone and recharge it. He took it to the barn cleaned it up real good and plugged it into the charger. After several hours he came back and tried to turn the phone on. The phone came on, and it worked just fine, as if nothing happened!

My cat already long bought a new phone. So my uncle Jerry kept the phone, and he still using it today! Once or twice a week you use the same phone call my mother down in Texas. Every time he calls I think of the day that the phone was harvested from the old corn field!

William James Roop

 Roop-Crappell Ministries 

 Hospice Volunteer Stories 

 The Trucking Tango 

 Apostolic Theological Seminary 

A Visit To Hell

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

I was traveling for work, when I meet a co-worker in Waller Texas. We worked together for a few years, but we both worked for different companies. We both met again while we were pumping fuel next to each other.

You start telling me a lot of different spiritual experiences he was having throughout his life. It started when he was praying whether or not I changed jobs. You said that God told him to, "stay where you're at."

After a few different stories you told me about a man in England named Tandell. You said that twenty years prior he had raped and murdered a woman from Thailand in London England. He says for so long he would never be caught. But after twenty years he had a major heart attack and his heart stopped!

Who was rushed to the hospital while the paramedics tried to work on him. This man said that he was looking down on his body when they are paramedics arrived. We then start walking away with a very thick, black cloud, chasing after him. He would say later the thick, black cloud, was time closing in on him!

He was running from the thick, black cloud, when it came to three tunnels. He said the tunnels were his three big mistakes in life. He chose to go down one of the tunnels. He was running down the tunnel with darkness closing in on him. I came out of the tunnel and started walking on a rope bridge. Who wrote bridge spanned a lake of boiling blood!

When he got to the other side, demons that resembled frogs standing upright, jumped on him and started stabbing him and beating him over and over again! They kept killing him over and over again but he would not die! This went on over and over again until he woke up in the hospital! He woke up screaming for help!

The doctors revived his heart by shocking his chest. That's what brought this man alive again, and back from the dead!  This man knew immediately when he was revived, that he was being punished for the murder that he committed twenty years ago!  

He know that the doctors and nurses to call the police immediately. He was a murderer that he wanted to confess his crimes! The medical staff was confused, but they called the police anyway. Two detectives arrived and he confessed to the murder and everything else that he was guilty of. He confessed to all his crimes to the place but especially to the murder of the woman.

The courts pronounce him guilty and gave him a life sentence in prison. This man spent the remaining years of his life in prison reading the Bible. That's how he died years later, It is prison cell reading his Bible!

William James Roop, M.A.B.S.

 Roop-Crappell Ministries 

 Hospice Care and Dying 

 The Trucking Tango 

 Apostolic Theological Seminary 

The Admirals Steaks

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

I was just up to central Wisconsin visiting family. My wife and I escorted my elderly mother there. My mother was raised there on a dairy farm. My Aunt and Uncle are still living there today.  My Uncle Jerry is my mother's older brother.

One afternoon, Uncle Jerry was telling me about his navy days. He served in the early fifties on a destroyer named the USS Wadleigh, DD 689. Named after the World War One admiral, George H. Wadleigh.

My Uncle Jerry's job was in the boiler room, and the engineering department in the bottom of the ship. One of those jobs was to maintain the temperatures of the food refrigerators and freezers. One of the items in the food freezers were steaks specifically for the captain of the ship, and the admiral of the fleet.

Once in a while when Jerry wanted to get in good with the cook, He would bring up a couple of the Admirals steaks to the kitchen. The cook with fry up the steaks, and Jerry and the cook with dine on the admiral steaks! Jerry said they always had plenty and didn't miss a few once in awhile!

The ships cook appreciated the gesture of a steak now and then, so my Uncle Jerry never went without eating a good meal on the ship during his cruise!  My Uncle Jerry has been out of the Navy for sixty-five years now, so I guess it's safe to tell the story!

William James Roop

 Roop-Crappell Ministries 

 Hospice Care and Dy

 The Trucking Tango 

 Apostolic Theological Seminary 

Oh My God, It's A Baby!

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

Elysia Laub, a nine-year-old from Indiana, was playing in the backyard when she heard some noises. At first, she assumed it was one of her family’s pigs that had escaped.

Then she looked closer and screamed!

Naturally, her mother came running to see what was going on.

“It just freaked me out, I didn’t know what it was,” she told CBS 2’s Brad Edwards in 2016.

Her mother, Heidi Laub, explained that it was a newborn baby with the placenta and umbilical chord still attached.

“That’s when she was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s a baby,’ and I was like, ‘What?!” Elysia recalled.

“I just saw pink legs kicking away,” Elysia said. “I knew it was alive and I knew we had something. I could not second guess myself. I knew we had to get help.”

Authorities at the Lake County Sheriff’s office believed the baby was less than a day old. Sheriff John Buncich later called Elysia the child’s “guardian angel."

The baby suffered from sun exposure, but was expected to be fine not long after being taken to St. Anthony’s Hospital for treatment.

“I didn’t do this myself,” Elysia said. “Somebody helped me — God. He put me in that place.”

“If I wasn’t there and God didn’t tell my brain – if my brain didn’t make me go over there, we would find a dead baby in the yard this afternoon,” Elysia said. “It would be much worse and much different.”

The officers are taking care of the newborn as one of their own and, for now, the baby has Elysia to thank for getting a second chance at life.

This was an article I had found on the internet. It is free to reproduce and share.  If you enjoy these stories, you can follow this blog and enjoy all of them. If you have any comments, please share them in the comments section.

William James Roop

Roop-Crappell Ministries

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Apostolic Theological Seminary

Hot Tub Fish Tank

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

My wife and I was just recently in the Morgan City, Louisiana area. We had not been there for a couple of months. While we were there we stayed at my father-in-laws house. Herbert Crappell and his wife Lynn.

My Father-in-laws house, we call him Herby,  is in a small town, few miles northeast, called Stephensville.  It's a small quiet place along the bayou. Houses along the Louisiana Bayou's are called "camps."  We both had a wonderful time visiting with family.

While my wife and I were sitting on the porch, we looked at the hot tub sitting next to us. It's a hot tub but the motor  burned out, so they didn't use as a hot tub anymore. Instead  Herbie made it into a very large fish tank! He has about a dozen goldfish in there, with plenty of room to swim around.

You can play the video of the actual hot tub fish tank on my YouTube channel, "Brother Roop teaches the Bible." In the video I called it a waste of a good hot tub, but it's actually a pretty cool idea. My father-in-law is full of very cool ideas!

William James Roop

 Roop-Crappell Ministries 

 Hospice Volunteer Stories 

 The Trucking Tango 

 Apostolic Theological Seminary 

The Profane Father

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

My wife and I was just recently in the Morgan City, Louisiana area. We had not been there for a couple of months. While we were there we stayed at my father-in-laws house.

My Father-in-laws house is a few miles northeast, called Stephensville.  It's a small quiet place along the bayou. We were sitting and watching tennis when Herby starred to talk about people cussing.

He said that he was playing golf with someone he knew from around town. He playing with his two kids. Herby joined them for a round. Herby told me how this man was cussing all of the time while they were playing! He was also cussing in the presence of his two small kids!

Herby ask him why he wants to cuss in front of his children. The man said it didn't matter too much. Herby said it doesn't matter It's just not right to cuss in front of your children. Plus, I'm offended by it as well, I don't want to hear your profanity. The man continued cussing in their presence. So Herbie walked around and started leaving.

The man said, hey where are you going? Herby told him again that he didn't want to hear his profanity, in front of his children, and himself. Herby left that day, and never played golf with that man again, or had anything else to do with him.

Years later he saw one of the sons of that man in a pool hall. When he asked about his father the boy started crying and confessed that his father had molested both him and  his brother all of his life! The father was charged and put in jail for his crimes.

Herbie said he never had any respect for people who cussed a lot. He said that was always a bad omen for bad character. You freely admitted that he cussed a little at work, but he never brought it home to his wife and kids. There's just some things a man should never do!

William James Roop,

 Roop-Crappell Ministries 

 Hospice Volunteer Stories 

 The Trucking Tango 

 Apostolic Theological Seminary