An Examination of Biblical Precepts Involved in Issues at Hand |
CORT KIRKWOOD REAL
MEN
THE MAGICIANS. Exodus
7
ARTICLES OF INTEREST
Married Means Minority
Coming Storm
Education for Restructuring
Wal-Mart finances Sodomy
Who Will you Serve, God or World?
Writing off Reading
Brave New Schools
High Fructose Corn Sweetener
GMO, Monsanto, &c.
Evangelicals Played for Suckers
THE UNKNOWN GOLDWATER
GIRL
PERSONAL
Apology
Accident
Postoffice
Anniversary
Nancy Pelosi
Fenceless
Best for Free
Letter
BOOK REVIEW: BLOOD MONEY
MILLER TIME -- THE END OF
THE WORLD, 1944
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
SUPERFICIAL GOSPEL
STONEWALL JACKSON
NEW MATERIAL
A few weeks ago, I passed through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. During my trip, I paused to visit a good friend, R. Cort Kirkwood, who is the Managing Editor of Harrisonburg's Daily News-Record. Kirkwood recently published his second book, Real Men, which is a wonderful collection of mini-biographies of ten famous American men. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, I interviewed Kirkwood about his book, and the transcript appears below. Enjoy.... then go out and buy this book!
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September 4th Interview with R. Cort Kirkwood, author of Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans to Know and Admire, Cumberland Press, 2006.
MC: Is this your first book?
CK: This is my second book. My first book was Soldiers of Misfortune: Washington's Secret Betrayal of American POWs in the Soviet Union. It was published in 1992, and I collaborated with two other authors.
MC: In Real Men, you sketch out the lives and exploits of ten Americans. Were they all soldiers?
CK: No. Two of the men were athletes. I purposefully did not include only soldiers, because you don't have to wear a military uniform to have honor or to be masculine or have all the other attributes we want to see in our sons.
MC: What attracted you to this topic of "Real Men?"
CK: Friends and I at work were having a lot of discussions about why men seem to be so effeminate today. And we would sit around and talk about history and discuss remarkable men like Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson. These were men who would not tolerate being put upon the way modern men are today.
MC: So, by writing this book, you reintroduce these famous American men to a new generation of Americans who have been taught to look at Bono as a hero instead of Davy Crockett.
CK: Yes. One of the problems with modern education is that young boys no longer read non-fiction biography, high adventure, military stories. Instead, they are forced to read social issues fiction. How "Johnny is so happy now that he's finally come out of the closet as a ballet dancer." And "how Henrietta is mastering football and taking her rightful place on the gridiron with ten other boys."
This isn't the stuff we read when I was little. We read biographies of Andrew Jackson and Davy Crockett. To the degree that boys are not reading the material that people used to read 40, 50, or 60 years ago, they are absorbing modern cultural poison and undermining their masculinity. They are questioning their own masculinity, their desire to compete and to become champions. All these masculine traits are anathema in modern society.
MC: Touching on that point, do you see the modern man as an endangered species?
CK: Yes. When you read newspaper headlines like "Male Executives Find Female Traits Pay Off in the Workplace," you know you have a problem. When you see television programs like "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," you know you have a problem.
Popular entertainment has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. When I was growing up, we used to watch "Combat." We watched "The Rifleman." We watched "Leave it to Beaver." It may have been corny, but, as a friend of mine said, we didn't know it was corny. The fathers and the men on these shows were all good, strong, and decent. They took care of their families, they loved their wives, and they did the right thing.
Now, the men depicted on television are aimless. Many are androgynous, preoccupied with sex, and they have no characteristics that anyone would want to imbue in their children. Not only that, they're stupid. Their wives and children tell them what to do.
MC: Why do you think the forces that control the entertainment industry hate men? Why do "Real Men" threaten them?
CK: Real men threaten the establishment because they threaten the ultimate triumph of the feminist ethos.
MC: Which is?
CK: When you have a society in which the laws say it is okay to kill unborn children. In which it is wrong to tell girls they can't play on a football team. In which women have to be exalted and put in places they don't belonglike the military. When you have men around who oppose that ethos, what they're going to create in entertainment are men who embody that feminist ethos. So, consequently, you have movies like "Courage under Fire," where a woman wins the Medal of Honor and the men don't know what to do. Or "GI Jane," featuring a woman who's a Navy Seal. Film after film after film portrays the truly masculine man as oppressive, dementedeven dangerous.
We now have so-called "studies" showing domestic violence rises during the Super Bowl or some nonsense like that. So anything that is masculine is attacked as patriarchal, oppressive, and wrong.
MC: Of all the men you wrote about, what are some of the common traits they exhibited, regardless of their background?
CK: All these men were disciplined people. Often they were disciplined in their youth by their parents or their teachers. They could control themselves. They all had physical courage. They were unafraid of physical harm. If they were afraid, they conquered their fearwhich is the true definition of courage.
Eddie Rickenbacker said that courage is not the absence of fear; courage is overcoming fear. Audie Murphy, the most decorated combat soldier in WWII, said that "In war, fear always walks beside you." So it's the person that overcomes fear who is the real hero. Someone who is not afraid of a dangerous situation is insane. It's overcoming fear that makes a man courageous.
These real men were all deferential to women. They stood up for the little guy. They always stood up for what was right. Most were devout Christians. They appreciated history. They understood who they were. They understood what society expected of them and what they expected of themselves. They knew what their wives and children expected of them, and they conducted themselves accordingly.
MC: Were any of these men what we would call "adolescents?"
CK: Probably not. I doubt it. The way we think about adolescence today is different from how these men considered it in Robert E. Lee's day. The concept of sewing your wild oats, etc., was foreign to these men. They worked.
MC: Were they forced into an early adulthood?
CK: Most were. Very few had what we think of as a normal childhood. They were not expected to behave like children until they were twenty. Men like that would have been considered ridiculous.
MC: What you're describing to me in the course of this interview are independent, self_governing, free men. Do you see the rise of statism today directly corresponding with our dwindling manhood?
CK: Absolutely. As the state assumes more and more domestic duties, it takes away from what men are supposed to do for their families. When you tell a family that they no longer have to take care of their elderly, that they can just use Social Security, you diminish the family and the sense of obligation a man has towards his parents. In fact, in an early draft of this book, I mentioned that not only have men been effeminized, they have been "infantilized" by the state. The state will take care of the family. The government will do this. The government will do that. Men no longer have the obligation to do what's right.
An interesting thing about the men in my book is that most had father problems. David Crockett had father problems. Robert E. Lee had father problems. Eddie Rickenbacker had father problems. Yet, they all turned out right.
MC: Let me pursue this, because we have a lot of young men today with father problems who are not turning out like Robert E. Lee or the other men you mention in the book. Why did these men not become "statistics" like so many of our modern boys with father problems? Unlike the men in your book, we have all these social programs specifically targeted at children with "father problems." Robert E. Lee didn't have this socialist "safety net," so why did he turn out all right?
CK: It was precisely because he did not have all these social programs. He had to make it. But in many cases, these men had mothers who respected masculinity and expected them to behave like men. Robert E. Lee was one of them. Andrew Jackson's mother told him to never sue a man in court who insulted him. "Settle the matter yourself," she said. Of course, that meant to beat the man senseless if he didn't apologize. Don't just go get a lawyer. Mothers today are too often emasculating their sons.
MC: How do they do this?
CK: They do this by being overprotective; also by undermining the father's authority in the household. They don't permit their sons to compete in healthy endeavors or run, jump, and play because they're going to get hurt. Or not permitting fights with bullies. Instead, they call "the bully patrol." It amazes me to watch commercials with McGruff the Crime Dog and the "bully patrol." Wild Bill Hickok didn't need a bully patrol. Andrew Jackson did not need a bully patrol. They knew what to do with bullies.
Parents don't want their boys defending themselves they teach them that all violence is bad. Well, all violence is not bad. If it were, Hitler would still be running Europe.
MC: The great untold story of the 20th Century was the mass exodus of women from the home and to the workplace. Do you think this has contributed toward the feminization of men?
CK: Yes. I believe it has not only contributed to the feminization of men but also to the diminution of the family. Women began leaving the home in the late 1890s. This was greatly accelerated in World War II. They were essentially forced out of the home to work in factories while the men fought. But it should also be mentioned that the government and corporate America wanted them to work. The whole system began to favor working moms. For instance, a working mom today gets a tax break for shelling out hundreds of dollars a week for day care. But a stay-at-home mother gets no breaks.
MC: So, I guess the more independent women became, the more it contributed towards men being replaced by the state.
CK: Exactly. There is a difference between being independent in the sense of being independently fulfilled, and independent in the sense of a rootless individual with no family, living by herselfor himself. If a man goes off on his own, with no connection to anything, it's unnatural. It creates a void that the State rushes in to fill.
MC: Were these Real Men highly educated?
CK: Some were highly educated, but many hardly went to school at all. Audie Murphy may have gotten through the 5th grade. Davy Crockett may have had 6 months of schooling, yet he became a congressman and entrepreneur. He didn't have a public school teacher looking over his shoulder, making sure he wasn't "left behind."
MC: Of all the men you include in the book, do you have a personal favorite?
CK: I have three personal favorites: Robert E. Lee, Audie Murphy, and Rocky Versace.
MC: What did you like about Rocky?
CK: Rocky Versace had more than just physical courage of the momentmore than just an impulse of courage that might occur in a battle. Rocky was captured in Vietnam and tortured for years. The Communists tried to make him renounce his country. Not only did Rocky stand firm, but being a highly educated man, he would argue with his captors in Vietnamese and French. He never bent. He couldn't bend. He was finally executed while singing "God Bless America" at the top of his lungs.
MC: What about Robert E. Lee?
CK: Robert E. Lee may have been the greatest American. He was a man who embodied what it meant to be an American and a good Christian. I don't think it is too far from the truth to say that if you look at his life, he lived almost a holy life. You can't say that about a lot of people. Anybody who knew him and commented about him spoke about his reverence, humility, devotion to duty, and absolute commitment to doing what was right. God truly blessed him with many talents and virtues. Lee just towers over other men.
MC: And Audie Murphy?
CK: A very interesting fellow. He came out of abject poverty. His father abandoned the family. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Audie tried to enlist with the Navy and the Marines, but they turned him down because he was too small. He finally made it in the Army and won 33 combat decorations, including the Medal of Honor. Audie Murphy's life is the stuff of fiction. If you look at the way he conducted himself, you would not believe he had any fear.
Once when he was at a race track, he was reading a racing form, and a big Italian fellow walked by with a pretty wife. Murphy looked up, then back down to his racing form. The big Italian looked at him and said "Hey! If I catch you looking at my wife again ." But before he finished, Murphy stopped him and said, "Are you finished?" He then pulled out a .45 caliber pistol and put it in front of the Italian and said, "Let me tell you something. I killed 350 of you guys during the war, and one more ain't gonna make any difference."
His entire demeanor bespoke someone who would not be put upon. A man today is expected to take any insult to his wife, his children, to himself, etc. He is not expected to do anything about it. He is not taught to fear the word "coward."
But to men like Audie Murphy, you didn't insult them. He did not suffer fools gladly. And all these real men were taught to fear the word "coward."
MC: Is this a book for women?
CK: Yes. One of the major reasons I wrote the book was to give mothers some examples of men they need to encourage their daughters to marrynot the waxed-legged metro-sexuals walking around today.
MC: Besides buying books like this, what are some practical things parents can do to raise their sons to be real men and their daughters to marry real men?
CK: One thing is to make sure your children are reading the right material. Books of non_fiction biography. Fathers need to spend a lot of time with their sons. They need to take them shooting, fishing, or golfing, etc. The best family time should not be spent in front of the television.
Television shows don't have to contain lots of sex and gratuitous violence to be destructive. Look at shows like "Rosanne," where the father was portrayed as a stupid, fat, slovenly adult. He had a wife who was a wisenheimer. He was constantly being led around by his children. Compare that to the television shows of 40 years previous. The men in these early shows were in control of their families and themselves. These are the kind of men we want our sons to emulate. These are the kind of men we want our daughters to marry.
MC: One of the nice things about this book is that it begs for a sequel. Can you give me a little hint on some possible candidates for a Real Men 2?
CK: My son wants me to include George S. Patton in the next book, so I'll have to consider it. But one of the things I try to get across in the book is that real men aren't just tough guys. They are also virtuous. They were not perfect, but virtuous. That's an important consideration. For this reason, George Washington would be a good candidate for a sequel.
MC: Anything you'd like to add before closing?
CK: In writing Real Men, I wanted to reacquaint the American people with the heroes of our pastbut not so distant past. I don't think most people know about these men. They don't know the story of Andrew Jackson or Robert E. Lee, or so many others. Nine out of ten people today don't know who Frances Marion was.
We need our boys to read about their hero ancestors. Boys don't read today, and who can blame them? Who'd want to read the The Color Purple? What boy wants to read about Johnny excelling at ballet? Nobody wants to read that. Boys want to read about adventure. They want to read about men they can emulate. I want my boys to read about men they can emulate.
That's why I wrote Real Men.
Matt Chancey is married to Bettie's oldest daughter, Jennie. He is a political adviser, and she is a stay-at-home mom with 7 children, 9 and under. She maintains a very popular web site, and designs patterns. (Simplicity now uses some of her patterns. See http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/) http://mattchancey.blogspot.com/
The account of Moses up to his confrontation with the Magicians of Egypt is known well enough that we do not need to go over it again. So, we will pick up the account at the confrontation with the magicians before Pharaoh. The Word of God is alive, and the lessons from that encounter are very much for us today. In fact, these things took place and are written for our admonition. Let us learn what God has for us in these ancient events. (1 Corinthians 10:11.)
Egypt
Egypt's religion was naturalistic, i.e., they worshiped nature and all parts of nature. They used a supernatural magic to control nature, and thus they controlled the people. The Lord through Moses would totally destroy all authority of Egypt's gods in the people's eyes.
At the Lord's command, Aaron cast his rod to the ground and it became a serpent. Pharaoh may have said: "That's nothing. Let me show you what my men can do." And they imitated the hand of the Lord doing in like manner with their enchantments. It is said that the magicians of Egypt could charm a serpent so that it would become as stiff as a rod. Was this something like that, or did they actually duplicate the trick' of Moses? Scripture says that they did indeed duplicate what happened to Aaron's rod.
The wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt...
We know not only that magic formed part and parcel of the religion of Egypt, but we have actually restored to us their ancient magical Ritual itself! We know their incantations and their amulets, with a special reference to the dead ; their belief in lucky and unlucky days and events, and even in the so-called "evil eye." But what is most to our present purpose, we know that the care of the magical books was entrusted to two classes of learned men, whose titles exactly correspond to what, for want of better designation, is rendered as "magicians," or perhaps "scribes," and "wise men!" (Edersheim on Joseph before Pharaoh, p. 156.)
The magicians held almost total sway in Egypt. Note the words, the magicians of Egypt, not the magicians of Pharaoh, v. 11. These were the absolute best in the nation, and were considered as belonging to Egypt. Obviously, their control over Pharaoh would depend upon their magical abilities; it was when they failed to interpret Pharaoh's dream that Joseph was called before Pharaoh. Egypt's religion was centered in Pharaoh, and Pharaoh was supported by these magicians acting in his name. (I wonder what would have taken place if the magicians had turned against Pharaoh? Did they have enough power to usurp the throne or set up another of whom they approved?)
Moses was initially looked upon as just another magician by Pharaoh. When his magicians duplicated in the slightest any of Moses' tricks,' Pharaoh's suspicion was confirmed, and his heart hardened. Hastings (Encyclopedia of Religion & Ethics, vol. 5, p. 237) tells us that "it seems not too much to say that an Egyptian was dominated throughout his life by the belief in the magical control exercised upon the gods, upon spirits in life and in death, and upon material objects."
When Moses confronted Pharaoh, and Pharaoh called for the magicians of Egypt, Moses and Aaron were facing the very foundation of the religious and social center upon which the structure of Egypt, the world-power of that day, was built. When Egypt's religious foundation was shattered, Egypt's structure fell apart, and Egypt ceased being a world-power. God destroyed Egypt, not with a mighty army, but with frogs, bugs and blights. When Egypt's religion was destroyed, Egypt was destroyed.
Observe:
I) Every plague was a direct confrontation against an Egyptian deity. The first plague against the river was against what the Egyptians considered their source of life; it became a source of death. The last plague was darkness and was again against what Egypt worshiped as the source of life, the sun-god Ra.
II.) Even though each plague might have had something similar in nature (i.e., the Nile annually turned red as it carried down the red fertile silt from upriver to be deposited in the Egyptian valley of the Nile), we must conclude that what Moses did in every instance was supernatural enough to set the plagues apart from any naturalistic explanations which rebellious sinful men could develop.
III) The plagues were clearly against particular gods of Egypt, showing their absolute vanity. Egypt's gods were nothing before the Lord God of the Hebrews.
Egypt worshiped these vain gods of nature; therefore, all Egyptians would have recognized any connection with natural events. After a couple of attempts, even the magicians had to admit that what Moses was bringing upon the land was totally beyond any naturalistic explanation.
The Lord, through Moses, proved each Egyptian god to be no more than a figment of the imagination which could do nothing. (Paul gives an excellent description of false gods, 1 Corinthians 8:4. The Lord was proving that Egypt worshiped nothingness. What will happen in the US when the citizens realize they are worshiping nothingness, in the form of fiat moneygreenbacks?)
V. 12. but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods. Though the enemy of God, the perverter of all good, has power, his power is subject to the power of God. Furthermore, we are here shown that the power of God will not only overcome evil, but it will totally obliterate evil. The final victory, after much conflict, will be the Lord's, for He is the One who gave evil the power to do any action at all.
Aaron's rod swallowing Egypt's serpents before Pharaoh shows that Egypt is about to be destroyed by the God of the Hebrews: He will swallow Egypt. How many rods did Aaron's rod swallow up? Probably two according to Paul. (2 Timothy 3:8.)
V. 13. First, throughout history, it is the Lord that must move in the hearts of the king. For the king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will. (Proverbs 21:1.) Thus, supernatural signs and wonders were useless without the hand of the Lord working in the heart. Even in the Old Testament, Romans 8:24, 25 is true. If men must see signs and miracles to be saved, they cannot be saved.
Second, supernatural signs and wonders are nice to consider, but the only hope for mankind is the hand of the Lord moving in the hearts of the people.
Third, the supernatural sign presented by Moses before Pharaoh "right up front" protected Moses from the personal wrath of Pharaoh later on. Pharaoh, as did all the ancient pagans, worshiped nature. Moses and Aaron's ability to turn their rod into a serpent showed Pharaoh that they did indeed have some kind of supernatural power working through them. This placed enough fear of them in Pharaoh's heart that he dared not lay his hands upon them personally. He would lie to them and use every means to avoid having to obey them, but he would not harm them.
Comments:
Keil (Keil-Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament) makes some interesting observations here.
The first sign with the serpents has a direct relation to the art of snake-charming. "What the magi and conjurers of Egypt boasted that they could perform by their secret or magical arts, Moses was to effect in reality in Pharaoh's presence, and thus manifest himself to the king as Elohim (v. 1), i.e. as endowed with divine authority and power." In other words, the magicians summoned by Pharaoh understood how to charm snakes into a stick-like rigid state.
But, Keil does not stop there. He goes on to say that we must not overlook the fact that the demonic powers of darkness were working in an unbroken manner, for their power was not broken until Christ's work on the cross. (Colossians 2:15.) Therefore, Jannes and Jambres (2 Timothy 3:8) could well have been able to summon the demonic powers to actually turn the rods into serpents. "The supremacy of Jehovah over the demoniacal powers of Egypt manifested itself in the very first miraculous sign, in the fact that Aaron's staff swallowed those of the magicians; though this miracle made no impression upon Pharaoh (v. 13)."
"Jannes and Jambres, interpreters of the mysteries of Egypt, were in great repute at the time when the Jews were sent out of Egypt. It was the opinion of all men that these were inferior to none in the art of magic. For by the common opinion of the Egyptians, these two were chosen to oppose Moses, the ring leader of the Jews. Moses' prayers were most prevalent with God and they alone were able to undo and end all those most grievous calamities that God brought upon all the Egyptians." (The Third age of the World. 2513b AM, 3223 JP, 1491 BC. §178. Ussher's Revised Annals of the World.)
§181. But when Pharaoh's magicians could do no more, God through Moses sent his ten plagues upon the Egyptians. These are summarised in the Psalms. {Ps 78:1-72 105:1-45}. According to the Jews, these plagues lasted a year, but in fact they were all sent within one month, in the following order. [E14] (Ibid.)
I believe that the demonic explanation fits best into the situation. The Lord starts at the foundation of Egypt's false religion in his destruction of Egypt's power and authority over his people.
Furthermore, according to Edersheim (& Keil), the serpent here before Pharaoh is not the same serpent as appeared at the bush and before the elders of Israel. This serpent of 7:10 was one specifically used by the "Egyptian conjurers, and bore pointed reference to the serpent as the great symbol of Egypt. Hence also the expression dragon,' which is the proper rendering of the word, is frequently in Scripture used to denote Egypt. Accordingly Pharaoh should have understood that, when Aaron's rod swallowed up the others, it pointed to the vanquishment of Egypt, and the executing of judgment against all the gods of Egypt.' "
Before we move on, let's consider Edersheim's assessment of the plagues:
1) Though the plagues were miraculous, they were not wholly unknown in Egypt. "The supernaturalness of the plagues consisted in their severity, their successive occurrence, their coming and going at the word of Moses, their partial extent, and the unusual seasons and manner in which they appeared."
2) They are divided up into three groups of 3 for a total of 9. The tenth was actually the judgment by Jehovah Himself: He personally "went out into the midst of Egypt' to slay its firstborn. Of these nine, the first three were in connection with that river and soil which formed the boast of Egypt, and the object of its worship. They extended over the whole country. and at the third the magicians confessed: This is the finger of God.' By them the land was laid low in its pride and in its religion. The other six came exclusively upon the Egyptians, as the Lord had said: I will put a division between My people and thy people,' to the end that thou mayest know that I am Jehovah in the midst of the land.' If the first three plagues had shown the impotence of Egypt, the others proved that Jehovah reigned even in the midst of Egypt. Finally, the three last strokes'(the literal meaning of the word rendered plagues" were not only far more terrible than any of the others, but intended to make Pharaoh know that there is none like Me in all the earth.' To show that Jehovah, He is God; that He was such in the midst of Egypt; and finally, that there was none like Him in the midst of all the earthor, that Jehovah was the living and the true God--such was the threefold object of these strokes.'"
Edersheim's final statement before he deals with the strokes' of God against Egypt is worth repeating. "There is... a terrible irony about the plagues' of Egypt, since in the things in which Egypt exalted itself it was laid low. We seem to hear it throughout: He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.'"
Note, Great is the truth, and will prevail. The cause of God will undoubtedly triumph at last over all competition and contradiction, and will reign alone, Dan. 2:44. (Matthew Henry.)
What a wonderful day that will be when God's truth prevails.
Lessons to be learned:
1) First and foremost, the actions here before Pharaoh show us that there is a battle going on; a battle between the forces of evil and the force of God. It is a real battle, requiring real action, sacrifice and cost. (2 Corinthians 10:4.)
2) The devil's crowd has power to do signs and wonders. The New Testament teaches that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14.) The Magicians of Egypt conjured up live serpents (one of the gods' of Egypt), not figments of one's imagination.
3) The Wicked one has genuine power, but his power comes from the Lord Who has all power. Signs and lying wonders would refer to genuine signs and wonders, but the idea behind them is a lie. The sign which these evil men did was true, but it represented a lie.
4) Note that though the devil and his followers have power, it is subject to not only the approval of, but the power of God, and it is limited by God. Exodus 7:12, 8:18.
Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain. (Psalms 76:10)
All power belongs to God alone, so he must give power to the wicked for them to continue in their wicked ways. The enemy can bring nothing to pass on his own. (Matthew 28:19.) God does not give the wicked unlimited power to do wickedness. What power and authority the wicked might have remains under God's control, and he allows only as much as will bring praise to himself.
Illustration:
My first wife's father, Jessie Love, could "blow out fire." Though I never saw him do it, both Carol and Jessie told me of the ability. In fact, one time there was a very badly burned child brought to him. If I remember right, he read the Lord's Prayer, and then he blew on the burn. The burn went out of the injury. However, when he realized the power was not from God, he renounced it, claiming the victory of Christ over principalities and powers. The power was then gone.
For a much more thorough study on the issue of modern demonic magical activity and how it is broken by the power of Christ, see any book by the late German Theologian, Kurt E. Koch (1913-1987). Kregel published his works, and they can easily be found on the web by searching for Kurt E. Koch.
5) Logically, we can be assured that the same enemy has the same power today which he uses for the same purpose: to undermine the message of the Lord to the heart of the sinner. The enemy can also give power to gain worldly wealth. An important point is that the message of the Lord was being delivered through Moses. The enemy is still today trying to undermining the command of the Lord as delivered by Moses.
6) One reason the Lord gives power to the enemy is found in Deuteronomy 13:
1 If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, 2 And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
7) How many good sincere people have fallen for the devil's lie and into his trap because they mistook all supernatural power for God's power. They accept the working of the enemy of God for the working of the Spirit of God.
Furthermore, they assume that because the enemy of God has supernatural power, he is in sovereign control of the world today. They feel that Satan's power is independent of God's power; therefore, Satan is acting on his own and is to be feareda totally corrupt view of power because all power belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. (Matthew 28:19. I find it strange that many who believe in the sovereignty of Satan in this present age, also believe Matthew 28:19. This kind of thinking is extremely illogical.)
8) An important point here is the fact that supernatural signs and wonders do not prove that the messenger is from God; in fact, many times it is just the opposite today. The indication from Romans 8:24 is that supernatural signs which might accompany a message point more to the fact that the message is probably false. I am sure that there are exceptions.
9) Another point which should be made here is that dependence on any answer to the surrounding ills other than repentance and obedience to the Word of the Lord (as delivered basically through Moses, John 5:46, 47), is to depend upon magic. Fallen man, including the saved, desires anything except the Word of God, and there is an abundance of magicians around to provide the magic. The natural man loves the wisdom of this world.
10) Pharaoh's magicians could increase the first plagues, but could not do anything to ease them. The devil's crowd can only kill and destroyhis followers can only make a devastating situation more devastating. The antinomians promise life, but can only deliver more death.
Observe that all the wisdom of this world cannot improve one iota the conditions around us. These magicians could only make matters worse; they could make more blood for a people who were being destroyed by blood; they could make more frogs come up from the river for a people who were being overrun by the frogs, but they could not make anything better for anyone, not even for themselves.
I can imagine what the people thought in both instances as they saw the magicians only making matters worse: "We don't need any more blood nor frogs. Give us something to relieve the suffering we are going through."
And we must say this about all of the world's answers to the difficulties facing society todaythey are only making matters worse. The only hope in hopeless situations is repentance and obeying the voice of the Lord.
The cry of mankind today is, "Give us something that will address the desperate situation in which we find ourselves." The magicians, even Christian magicians, rush in with their answers, but the situations worsen. How long will it be before people discover the truth that there are no answers apart from every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God?
11) Finally, when Pharaoh saw that the magicians indeed could do something (even make matters worse), Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
As the saying goes: "Any old port in a storm," and Pharaoh's port in this storm, so he would not have to obey the Lord, was the fact that the magicians could do something. How many people have we met with hardened hearts, looking for an excuse to refuse to obey the Word of the Lord; any excuse will justify their rebellion. Why do they refuse to obeyThey are hardened in sin, and they will accept any answer other than fear God, and keep his commandments that is, repent, believe and obey the word of God. (Ecclesiastes 12:13.)
12) When a nation's religion is destroyed, the nation is destroyed. The followers of Mohammad realize this fact. Thus, conversion from Mohammedanism is considered treason, punishable by death. Yet Protestants cannot grasp the fact that when the Protestant foundation of the US is destroyed, so will be the US. And thus they allow, and even pay, the pagans to train their children in the Government education facilities. They see little problem with Catholics flooding into this country from Mexico, and they preach toleration for Muhammadans who convert with the sword.
In the Old Testament, there was no death penalty for treason against the state among God's people. However, there certainly was capital punishment for treason against God. Deuteronomy 13.
The Christian Foundation of this nation has been destroyed by the indifference of Christians, who have and are letting the pagans train their children. (Leviticus 18:3-5. Exodus 20:8, God's fury is being poured out upon this nation for serving the pagan gods: money, education, personal peace and prosperity, &c. Deuteronomy 12, &c.)
Judgment
"Judgment is here. Thanks to our civil government officials, our common religion is destroyed, and our common language is gone. All the things that once held us together have been systematically ripped apart. The foundations of this nation have been destroyed, just as much as were Egypt's. The next logical and Biblical step is the final collapse of the US, just as sure as Egypt collapsed, to be replaced with a one-world government." (Evidently, the "one worlders" believe they can bring order out of the chaos they have created, and the population will thank them. "Bomb them back to the stone age, and they will thank us for rebuilding what we destroyed!" How stupid is this line of thought?)
Of course, overlooked in the dream of bringing a one world order out of the created chaos is Genesis 11:5-9. God did not allow man to unite in rebellion against him. Nor will he allow such uniting today, regardless of the hopes and dreams of wicked men today.
1757d AM, 2467 JP, 2247 BC
§47. When Eber was thirty-four years old, Peleg, his son, was born. {Ge 11:16} He called him Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided. {Ge 10:25 1Ch 1:19} If this happened at the day of his birth, then it seems that when Peleg was born, Noah, who formerly knew all the places which were now covered with bushes and thorns, divided the land among his grandchildren. When this was done, they then went from those eastern parts (where they first went from the mountains of Ararat), into the valley of Shinar. {Ge 11:2} [E4] Here the people impiously conspired, as we find in the Apocrypha, {/Apc Wis 10:5} to hinder their dispersion, which had been commanded by God and begun by Noah (this can be seen by comparing the following verses: Ge 11:4,6,8,9). They co-operated together to build the city and tower of Babylon. God frustrated this project by the confusion of languages he sent among them. (Hence it took the name of Babel {Ge 11:9}.) The dispersion of nations followed. Many companies and colonies settled down in various places according to their languages. The thirteen sons of Joktan, the brother of Peleg, as recorded in #Ge 10:26-30 were among the captains and heads of the various companies. These brothers were not yet born when Peleg was born. Eber was only thirty-four years old when Peleg was born to him. Even if we suppose that Joktan was born when Eber was only twenty years of age, and that Joktan's oldest son was born to him when he was likewise twenty years old, yet still it appears that the oldest son of Joktan must be six years younger than Peleg. So that at least the youngest of those thirteen sons of Joktan, namely, Jobab and three other brothers of his who are mentioned before him, must be younger still. The countries in which they settled, and which were rich in gold: Sheba, {Ps 72:15} Ophir {1Ki 9:28} and Havilah, {Ge 2:11} were named after these men. Because of their youth, these brothers could not have been capable of such an expedition of leading colonies until some years after Reu was born to Peleg.
§48. Man's lifespan was now a quarter of the length it was before the flood.
1762d AM, 2472 JP, 2242 BC
§49. The Tower of Babel happened five years after the birth of Peleg, according to Georgius Syncellus' translation of the Book of Sothis. {*Manetho, Book of Sothis, l. 1. 1:239} (Ussher, Revised Annals of the World.)
It is quite tempting to say, "What do we do now as Christians under a wicked, ungodly government that is bent on destroying the common foundations of this nation?"
Judgment:
1. Causes man to know that the Lord, he is God, and there is none else beside him. Jeremiah 16:21, Deuteronomy 4:35.
2. Results in salvation. Isaiah 51:6, Zephaniah 3:8ff.
3. Brings righteousness; therefore, it should be prayed for. Isaiah 26:9 With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. In the wisdom of God, we need to pray for His judgment against the wisdom of man. And this judgment means that everything that is built upon that wisdom must collapse. Then the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.
4. Judgment, as rain, comes down that righteousness might be exalted. Judgment makes the earth bring forth fruit for God's glory. Psalms 72, 96, Isaiah 11:4, & ch. 55.
5. God is exalted in judgment. Isaiah 5:16.
Finally, note Malachi 2:17.
2:17 Ye have {d} wearied the LORD with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied [him]? When ye say, Every one that doeth {e} evil [is] good in the sight of the LORD, and he delighteth in them; or, Where [is] the God of {f} judgment?
(d) You murmur against God, because he did not hear you as soon as you called.
(e) In thinking that God favoured the wicked, and had no respect for those that serve him.
(f) Thus they blasphemed God in condemning his power and justice, because he did not judge according to their imaginings. (Geneva.)
We are to pray for God's judgment against those who do evil, for such praying separates us from them. Justice is corrupted by those in power, so we have no appeal against their injustice; therefore, pray for God's just judgment against them. Yet we must not question God's timetable in his judgment.
How long will God's judgment last? What form will it take? His normal means has been to judge with natural events, such as unusual weather, earthquakes and natural disasters of all kinds, as he did against Egypt. However, he also uses invading armies, as he did when the final judgment came against Israel and Judah. Mexicans, with our permission, have been and even now are invading America in astounding numbers.
OUR RESPONSIBILITY
1. First and foremost is 1 Corinthians 4:2 Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful to what is required of him by Scripture, faithful regardless of the circumstances in which he finds himself.
2. Speak out and stand against wickedness in high places, though it may cost us our head: Mark 6:18 For John had said unto Herod, It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife.
3. Obey when the civil requirements are not contrary to God's word: Acts 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.
Note Jeremiah 29. This chapter is dated about 599 BC. Daniel 1 is dated about 607 and Daniel 3 being 580. Daniel 3 is the command to bow to the image, which the 3 Hebrews violated. Therefore, Jeremiah's letter of chapter 29 is sent to the captives in Babylon who were under the thumb of Nebuchadrezzar for about 20 years before the situation at the image in Daniel 3. All of Daniel takes place (except the first 2 chapters) after Jeremiah sends his letter (ch. 29) to the ones who were in Babylon.
4. Continue on with the normal Christian life-style, training up a new generation to fill the void that will be left by God's judgment against the wicked.
Jeremiah 29 contains good instructions for God's people who are in the midst of God's judgment. This chapter contains a letter to the Jewish captives in Babylon, who had been carried there as judgment against their sin in Jerusalem. God is the author of the letter, as well as the author of their captivity. It tells them to provide for their comfort in their captivity, and not to think about being freed any time soon. It tells them to build houses, plant gardens, marry, give in marriage (raise godly children who fear the Lord), and seek and pray for the prosperity of the place where they find themselves. They are not to listen to the false prophets who tell them what they want to hear. They are assured that they will be released according to God's time table
Application: We, as a nation, are clearly under God's judgment. Surrounding events prove that God's hand is heavy. What are we as Christians to do in such a situation? We must continue to be faithful doers of the word (James 1:22), obey God rather than man, stand against wickedness in high places, and continue to have, rear and train godly children who can take the leadership when God's timing is right. (The promise to Abraham in Genesis 22:17 is of the Gospel Church through the victory of the Promised Seed. Psalms 127:5.)
Bro Need
If you would like copies of the complete articles, let me know. I can e mail them to you.
Editor's note:
WW II sent the women into the factories, where they were praised as being able to do a man's job just as well as a man. By the way, have you noticed how aggressive the younger female drivers have become. I am an aggressive driver, but I cannot hold a candle to some females we encounter around here. It certainly is a new and distressing phenomenon. Our young ladies have been trained to be "one of the boys," and they act like it. (See our color site for many images of women in WWII Factories. ww2.color.com.) The result was that those moms who were placed in the factories then taught their "baby boomer" children the same thing, and those women went into the work force.
Some things that perpetuate this destruction of the Biblical family: 1) Social pressure "You mean, you do not work outside of the home, and actually stay home and take care of your family. How old fashioned! Your talents are being wasted." 2) The seeming hatred for large families, even among Christians. The "me first" generation has exchanged children for a materialistic standard of living. 3) The emphasis on education at all levels. "You cannot succeed without an education", with no thought of a Biblical education. The result is that working with one's hands is no longer an accepted kind of work. Everyone wants a "white collar" job. Thus, foreign workers now fill those voids, and send vast amounts of US dollars to their foreign homes. 4) The shipping of US jobs overseas. In the past, a family could get along well on the husband's income, but those manufacturing jobs went to Mexico, thanks to NAFTA and other one-world efforts. Now those manufacturing jobs are in China, leaving the Mexicans with nothing, so they flood into the US. 5) Abortion cannot be overlooked. The US work force has been killed off in the womb. If you will think for a moment, you will be reminded of many things that have contributed to the destruction of the Biblical family, including the promotion of Sodomy by the government's education system, the public schools.
God's word proves true again:
Follow the money trail. People no longer amount to any more than an entry on a ledger sheet. A company must show a profit for the stock market, or it is done.
Christians, we must return to the Godly joys of a large family, consistently trained up in the ways of the Lord. [I wonder if now the married will get minority status?]
Government: A federal constitutional amendment may be the only way to head off a church-state clash over same-sex marriage. By Lynn Vincent
With emphasis on academic subject matter stressing order, discipline, and individual effort, the old paradigm for America's early public education was notably "Christianized." Having begun in 1789, and reaching its peak the first decade of the 20th century, the Sunday school movement set the standard.
In 1850 Horace Mann sold America on the fanciful notion that, in one hundred years, secular education would solve crime and poverty; thereafter, reform under the likes of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield took a dive.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the liberal theology movement captivated the mainstream. Although secularism evolved slowly, it effectively fashioned John Dewey's Progressive Education Movement. Organized in 1919, the Progressive Education Association denounced rote learning, recitation, and conventional textbooks. At the same time, it promoted affective and holistic curricula, cultural relativism, and cooperative consciousness. By Dewey's death in 1952, the Protestant character of early public schools had disappeared. No longer was public education "Christianized." It was "secularized."
As we enter the 21st century, a new course is being charted. The mission of today's educational reform was best stated by Dr. Shirley McCune at the 1989 National Governors Conference namely, "What we're into is the total restructuring of our society." Eventually, "change agents" (teachers) will train all "human resources" (students) for placement in specific, pre-determined, entry-level vocations with the best interest of our global economy in view. ...
From God-centered Judeo-Christianity, through me-centered secular humanism, America's fast developing new public education paradigm smacks of Earth-centered mystical humanism. Global citizens-in-the-making follow the anti-intellectual, highly politicized, psychologicalyes, even spiritualprocess crafted for them. The predetermined outcome is to posture an oligarchy over a compliant global community of meticulously groomed workers, not thinkers; followers, not leaders; group members, not individuals; subjective feelers, not objective thinkers. As if an octopus in the sea of nations, globalism extends one of eight sucker-bearing tentacles to grasp and subsequently own America's public education system.
Editor's note: "God-centered Judeo-Christianity" is a misnomer, to say the least. First, Judaism since Christ does not worship the Christian God, who can only be approached through Christ. Second, this nation was founded by Christians, for Christians and for the furtherance of the Gospel of Christ.
Comment:
Christianity has been and is being restructured by the change agents in the government education system. Go into the average church, and you will find that Christianity has been changed from God-centered to man-centeredthat is, secular humanism. Moreover, my experience with Christian schools has been that the curriculum is seldom true to history, nor true to the total of Scripture. Christian Home education allows the parents to enforce an honest, God-centered education of the children the Lord has placed in their stewardship.
Godly Christian parents who have trained up their children in the way they should go can thank God for his justice as they see the dishonest education systems fall apart, taking the pagan society with them into the abyss of failure. (Psalms 58:10, Revelation 18:20.) They know they have equipped the upcoming generation to know, understand and apply the truth into the failed society.
Retail behemoth Wal-Mart has teamed up with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in an effort to advance diversity within the store's associate, supplier, and customer bases. ...
America's kids are attending government schools and universities run by liberals who are indoctrinating them into their "value-free" culture. No one disputes that anymore. Yes, many teachers are wonderful people with no ax to grind and no political agenda. As a matter of fact I have friends who are bleeding heart liberal teachers. But that's beside the point. What parents need to come to grips with is the Leftist indoctrination going on right under their noses.
Wake up and smell the coffee, people! ...
By Michael Skube,
(Il-lit-er-ate adj. 1 ignorant; uneducated; esp., not knowing how to read or write.)
We were talking informally in class not long ago, 17 college sophomores and I, and on a whim I asked who some of their favorite writers are. The question hung in uneasy silence. At length, a voice in the rear hesitantly volunteered the name of . . . Dan Brown.
No other names were offered. ...
In our better private universities and flagship state schools today, it's hard to find a student who graduated from high school with much lower than a 3.5 GPA, and not uncommon to find students whose GPAs were 4.0 or higher. They somehow got these suspect grades without having read much. Or if they did read, they've given it up. And it shows in their writing and even in their conversation. ...
As freshmen start showing up for classes this month, colleges will have a new influx of high school graduates with gilded GPAs, and it won't be long before one professor whispers to another: Did no one teach these kids basic English? The unhappy truth is that many students are hard-pressed to string together coherent sentences, to tell a pronoun from a preposition, even to distinguish between "then" and "than." Yet they got A's.
How does one explain the inability of college students to read or write at even a high school level? One explanation, which owes as much to the culture as to the schools, is that kids don't read for pleasure. And because they don't read, they are less able to navigate the language. If words are the coin of their thought, they're working with little more than pocket change.
Say this but no more for the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act: It at least recognizes the problem. What we're graduating from our high schools isn't college material. Sometimes it isn't even good high school material.
When students with A averages can't write simple English, it shouldn't be surprising that people ask what a high school diploma is really worth. In California this year, hundreds of high school students, many with good grades, faced the prospect of not graduating because they could not pass a state-mandated exit exam. Although a judge overturned the effort, legislators (not always so literate themselves) in other states have also called for exit exams. It's hardly unreasonable to ask that students demonstrate a minimum competency in basic subjects, especially English.
Exit exams have become almost a necessity because the GPA is not to be trusted. In my experience, a high SAT score is far more reliable than a high GPA more indicative of quickness and acuity, and more reflective of familiarity with language and ideas. College admissions specialists are of a different view and are apt to label the student with high SAT scores but mediocre grades unmotivated, even lazy.
I'll take that student any day. I've known such students. They may have been bored in high school but they read widely and without prodding from a parent. And they could have nominated a few favorite writers besides Dan Brown even if they thoroughly enjoyed "The DaVinci Code."
I suspect they would have understood the point I tried unsuccessfully to make once when I quoted Joseph Pulitzer to my students. It is journalism's job, he said, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Too obvious, you think? I might have thought so myself if the words "afflicted" and "afflict" hadn't stumped the whole class.
Comment:
The loss of reading skills means loss of hearing from God through His Word. This nation was founded on the good literacy ability of the average man. The purpose was so the Word of God could be read and understood. It is not uncommon today to meet young people who have no desire to read. Parents who home educate can keep close tabs on the reading ability of their children. Those who set an example for the children can open a wide door of reading experience. We cannot overemphasize the importance of children being able to read well, and of knowing the great joy of reading.
Georgetown gets $20 million from prince promoting Islam Just months later, university ejects evangelical Christians from campus
HFCS has nothing to do with fruit. Rather, it is a complicated process which involves fermenting corn starch, using fungus and chemicals. "Four companies control 85 percent of the $2.6 billion businessArcher Daniels Midland, Cargill, Staley Manufacturing Co. and CPC International." Since it is cheaper than beet or cane sugar, there are vast amounts of money to be made in HFCS. Those who profit from it, including the FDA, produce all kinds of studies supporting HFCS.
Consumers trying to avoid genetically modified foods should avoid HFCS. It is almost certainly made from genetically modified corn and then it is processed with genetically modified enzymes." Estimates are "that virtually everythingalmost 80 percentof what we eat today has been genetically modified at some point. Since the use of HFCS is so prevalent in processed foods, those figures may be right.
HFCS has been shown to lead to multiple health problems, such as anemia, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and bone loss. HFCS affects the liver, causing elevated levels of trigylcerides, which are linked to an increased risk of heart disease. It affects the production of insulin, leaving one more hungry than before ingesting HFCS. In rats, HFCS caused the hearts to enlarge until they exploded.
The medical industry develops expensive drugs to counter the results of HFCS. HFCS, like cancer, is a cash cow for everyone except the consumer.
Read your food labels.
<westonaprice.org/motherlinda/cornsyrup.html> <westonaprice.org/modernfood/highfructose.html> <washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8003-2003Mar10?language=printer>
NewsWithViews.com
Jeffrey M. Smith is working with a team of international scientists to catalog all known health risks of GM foods. He is the author of Seeds of Deception, the world's best-selling book on GM food, and the producer of the video, Hidden Dangers in Kids' Meals.
MONSANTO WHISTLEBLOWER: GENETICALLY ENGINEERED CROPS MAY CAUSE DISEASE, http://www.newswithviews.com/Smith/jeffrey14.htm
GENETICALLY MODIFIED CORN STUDY REVEALS HEALTH DAMAGE & COVER-UP, (Monsanto) http://www.newswithviews.com/Smith/jeffrey7.htm
GOT HORMONES THE CONTROVERSIAL MILK DRUG THAT REFUSES TO DIE, http://www.newswithviews.com/Smith/jeffrey3.htm
EATING GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOOD IS GAMBLING WITH YOUR HEALTH, http://www.newswithviews.com/Smith/jeffrey1.htm
You probably eat genetically modified (GM) foods at every meal without knowing it. Most Americans do. While the biotech industry claims that the FDA has thoroughly evaluated GM foods and found them safe, internal FDA documents made public from a lawsuit, reveal that agency scientists warned that GM foods might create toxins, allergies, nutritional problems, and new diseases that might be difficult to identify....
Monsanto is the primary mover and shaker behind the approval by the FDA and the national movement to all GM foods. As their vast amount of money has flowed to politicians, their GM (Genetically Modified) products have been approved by the FDA. Those within Monsanto who try to sound the alarm are fired, and those within the FDA who try to sound the alarm are silenced.
See http://www.biblicalexaminer.org/w200102.html for the 2001 thorough article we did on Monsanto, the leading producer and promoter of Genetically Modified Organisms. Follow the money, and it will lead to some very high places.
No president in American history played the "God card" any better than George W. Bush. Early in his 2000 presidential campaign, Bush convinced fundamentalist/evangelical Christian leaders that he was "their" man. Those Christian leaders went on to promote and support Mr. Bush to the tune of two successful presidential election victories. To this day, they comprise his most loyal base of support.
But was it all a sham? Did G.W. Bush and Karl Rove simply dupe the Religious Right? A Bush insider now says that is exactly what happened: GOP strategists played evangelical believers for suckers.
David Kuo has a long record of Christian conservatism. His resume includes tenure with such notable Republican leaders as William Bennett, John Ashcroft, Bob Dole, and Congressman J.C. Watts. Most recently, he served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
In his column, Shooting from the Heart, Kuo wrote that receiving President Bush's invitation to become Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives "was a dream come true for me." Kuo believed he had teamed with a man who sincerely intended to promote Christian conservatism in and through his administration. Now Kuo believes that he (and the entire evangelical community) had been duped.
Kuo has written a new book entitled Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. ...
No matter how badly evangelical Christians want to believe President Bush, no matter how desperately they want to enjoy access to the White House, no matter how deeply they feel obligated to support the Republican Party, it is time to face the truth that the GOP's only interest has been to use them for the simple purpose of winning elections. ...
As Thomas Jefferson said, "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
Christians need to be less enamored with the religious professions and promises of politicians and much more committed to making sure that their elected representatives uphold their oaths of office to the Constitution. Fidelity to the Constitution will successfully address most of the issues evangelical Christians care about. It will even address the ones they don't care about, but should. It's not a "fast" from politics that Christians need, it's a rededication to constitutional government.
David Kuo's book should serve as a wake up call for America's evangelical community. We have been had. It's time to admit it.
This column is archived as http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2006/cbarchive_20061017.html
"The decline in gas prices has diminished the significance of an issue that has the power to move voters to the Democrats. In may, when the average gasoline prices were $2.95 a gallon, 15 percent of Americans in a Washington Post-ABC News survey cited the issue as the single most important in determining their vote. An ABC News poll in early September, when the average price of a gallon was $2.73, showed that just 5 percent of those surveyed cited it as their most important issue. Gasoline prices have fallen even farther since then." (Republican Fortunes Appear to Turn Rosier, by Dan Balz. Washington Post, 6/24/06. A7. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2006092301077.html>)
Then the New York Times, "Better Mood at the Gas Pump. What About the Voting Booth?"
The sudden decline has also ignited suspicions that the Republican administration and giant oil companies conspired to cut gasoline prices for electoral gains. ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/business/30gasoline.html?th&emc=th
Comment: We are being told what is going on, if we will read between the lines. Oil prices, as are many other things, are manipulated for politial gain. Hold onto your money, checkbook or your charge card after the election, for the price of gas (oil) could well exceed the old highs. If you have watched, precious metals value (gold, silver) follow closely the price of oil. Now is the time to purchase such things if possible. Contact Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger, 888 218 9226. <http://www.the-moneychanger.com/entry.phtml>
You will find Live Market Quotes at http://www.kitco.com/market/
Fall is a special time of year for me as it is the time when there are three major sports all going on at the same time. Baseball is winding down with the playoffs and the World Series, Football is in full swing and basketball is right around the corner. It is a wonderful time of the year for a sports fan like myself.
The other night, I was watching the World Series when, between innings as I surfed the channels to avoid watching commercials, I came across some channels that we don't subscribe to but which were available on some kind of a weekend trial. As I scrolled through these channels, I came upon a documentary on Barry Goldwater, the five term Senator from Arizona and one time presidential candidate, that grabbed my attention to the point I missed the rest of what I later learned was a very exciting baseball game.
This documentary, entitled "Mr. Conservative, Goldwater on Goldwater" grabbed my attention first of all, because it was about a fellow native to Arizona and although I currently reside in Indiana, Arizona will always be my home. However, this particular documentary was especially interesting because it was about a man that had been a hero of mine growing up. Senator Goldwater ran for President in 1964, losing to Lyndon Johnson by a landslide but his motto, "In your heart you know he is right" had a particular impact on my young thinking.
I was a Freshman in high school during that campaign and although this was the second campaign I had followed, it was the first one where I really felt strongly for someone. In 1960, my father and therefore I, was strongly opposed to John Kennedy because he was Catholic, but we strongly supported Barry Goldwater because of the things that he stood f,or and I was being trained to stand for right without fear of the consequences.
Goldwater lost the election in 1964 with only 38.8 % of the people voting for him, but it was the title to his autobiography written a few years later, that pointed up the spirit that I admired in him. It was entitled, "With No Apologies," and I admired him for the fact that he could take the enormous humiliation of such an incredible defeat and not back down from principle. Of course his political positions were vindicated when Ronald Reagan was elected to the office of President of the United States by a similar landslide. You seldom hear it mentioned, but if there had not been the "burial of Barry", there would never have been the "Reagan Revolution."
A few years after the election of 1964, we had the opportunity to get to know some of the Goldwater family as his daughter, Joanne Ross and her family moved to Sedona, Arizona were we lived. My sister was the Nanny for some of the Goldwater grandchildren, including CC who put together this documentary. I don't know why the name "Ross" was not used in the documentary by mother or daughter, but that was their name when we knew them.
My sister told me that Joanne and her husband were going through a divorce, and she was asked to come and live with the children during this time. But she had the opportunity to minister to the children, even bringing them to Church, where at least one of the children made a profession of faith in Christ.
If Barry Goldwater was my great hero as a teenager, he was an even greater disappointment to me later on when I had the opportunity to get involved in the political process myself. In 1986 Evan Mecham upset the political world in Arizona by being the first man elected to be Governor who was not a part of the political machine that had run the State since territorial days. Needless to say, the "powers that be" were not going to stand for such, and just a little over a year after he was elected, he was impeached and removed from office.
That miscarriage of justice aroused the spirit of "right at any cost" that had been instilled in me, at least in part, by Sen. Goldwater. The next thing I knew, I was the campaign manager for the man who defeated the Speaker of the House who initiated the impeachment. Later I was campaign manager for our county for Gov. Mecham as he ran for re-election, and even though he did not win that election, I am proud of the fact that he did win our county.
Now the kicker in this is the fact that Barry Goldwater was the leader in the opposition against Evan Mecham, and it was the same political machine that ousted Gov. Mecham that had supported Sen. Goldwater in all of his campaigns. The political corruption that traced all the way back to the first governor of the State, George W.P. Hunt, a man my father says was reputed to be a sodomite, had now finally been exposed. My hero led the charge. That was a tough pill to swallow. I recently talked to a long time friend who lives out there still, and he told me that things are beyond imagination out there now.
Over the last years of his political career, Barry Goldwater was an outspoken opponent of anything Christian in government. Wesley Darby has literally been a lifelong friend of mine, loving to remind me every time I talk to him, that he held me as a baby, and he has been a pastor and political activist for close to 60 years in Arizona. He was involved in trying to put God back in our government 30 years before the "Moral Majority" came along. He was a personal friend and ardent supporter of Barry Goldwater in the early days, but he told me recently that when he invited Goldwater to speak to a group of pastors, they were told that they had no business in politics and should stay out of that arena. And Sen. Goldwater was consistently vocal in that position.
When Sandra Day O'Connor, another native of Arizona, was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1981, some in the Religious Right were concerned that she might be pro abortion. Jerry Falwell warned that "every good Christian should be concerned." And Sen. Goldwater, replied "Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass."
At one point later he told The Advocate, "I don't have any respect for the Religious Right. There is no place in this country for practicing religion in politics. That goes for Falwell, Robertson and all the rest of these political preachers. They are a detriment to the country."
He told U.S. News & World Report in 1994, that the religious right ". . .could do us in." In an interview with The Post that same year, Goldwater observed, "When you say radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."
The documentary, "Mr. Conservative, Goldwater on Goldwater" by CC Goldwater dealt quite at length with this issue, interviewing a Goldwater daughter who confessed to having had an illegal abortion when she was young and a Goldwater grandson who is a sodomite. They both praised Sen Goldwater for his open understanding of their situations. Then the documentary went on to play sound bites where Sen. Goldwater had embraced both abortion and sodomy.
So the question begs to be answered, "How can we have a man who calls himself a conservative be so opposed to the principles of conservativism?" The answer given in the documentary which I believe to be accurate is that abortion, sodomy and moral issues were not political issues in 1964, and so it was very consistent for Sen. Goldwater to oppose the right on moral issues.
It was Ronald Reagan who brought moral issues into political conservativism, not because of any great conviction on his part, but for political expediency. We know that Reagan did not embrace the moral issues because of conviction by the fact that he never turned his hand the first time to do away with abortion, he had a son who is an open sodomite, and he himself was divorced from his first wife while his second wife aided him in consulting with the witches over governmental policy. Some would argue that his hands were tied and that he could not do anything concerning the moral issues. But he had a tool called the "executive order" which has been used since Abraham Lincoln to do great mischief to the nation, that he failed to use. He could have issued executive order banning abortion and sodomy, but he did not.
In truth, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater were, in their lives, very similar men and their moral character is very consistent with what the National Republican Party has been since it's beginning with Abraham Lincoln. In fact, all three men were men of base character using religion only when needed for political expediency.
When the Moral Majority tried to take over the National Republican Party, it was embraced for political expediency, but the Party has been trying to find a way to distance itself from the Christian Right while keeping the voter base loyal to the party. I don't know if it is the political acumen of the Party or the stupidity of the Christian Right or both that has been able to accomplish this purpose, but for the past 26 years, the Christian Right has been the "trumpet section" for the Republican Party while the Republican Party has systematically destroyed whatever was left of our Constitutional Republic and transformed us into a nation of sodomites and baby killers. These people even go so far as to proclaim it our patriotic responsibility to try to enforce a government of sodomites and baby killers on Iraq and any other nation that won't accept it.
Perhaps the most telling part of the documentary "Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater" was the fact that they interviewed a woman named Hillary Rodham Clinton who boasted that she was a "Goldwater Girl" in 1964, and she was very proud of it.
I could not help but wonder if CC Goldwater was helping to set up Hillary as the "true conservative," the conservative of Barry Goldwater, hoping to drive a wedge between the political conservatives of the Republican Party and the religious conservatives?
Whatever the motives, it points up the utter stupidity of the Religious Right as it has been manipulated into believing that the conservative Republicans had a similar agenda to themselves. The Republican Party was begun by men who desired to drive Biblical Christianity from the face of the earth, and the agenda has never changed. For the past 26 years, the Religious Right has been used, not to further the Kingdom of God, but to further the agenda of the very antichrist Republican Party. A careful look at what has actually taken place in the last 26 years since Ronald Reagan was elected President will clearly show that very little if anything has been done to advance the moral issues of the Christian Right, but the agenda of the antichrist has taken quantum leaps. Not one thing has been done to curb the murder of babies. The sodomites have all but completely taken over. Divorce, drugs, cohabitation, and public nudity are all on the increase without so much as a whimper of protest from the White House. Evolution continues to be taught, unchallenged, and there is no prayer in our schools.
At the same time, many of our liberties have disappeared. Our national debt has spiraled completely beyond comprehension. Churches have been padlocked, or sold for taxes. Pastors who preach the Word of God have been jailed or otherwise persecuted. And it has been the conservatives who have done the bulk of the damage. As wicked as he was personally, Bill Clinton did not wage the war on our rights and liberties to the extent that the conservatives have.
As I already said, when I sat down to watch this documentary, "Mr. Conservative, Goldwater on Goldwater" I did so only to see something about a fellow native to Arizona. It really was not until after it was over and I began to ruminate on what I had seen that I realized I had seen an ominous report of the triumphs of the ungodly over those who name the name of Christ. I had listened to a little girl who was as mean as she was cute when she was young, who had grown up and was now defending her grandfather's rebellion against God, and was using that rebellion to rationalize her rebellion and that of an entire generation.
When it was all over, I wasn't "warm and fuzzy" for having seen someone from home, I had seen the account of a wicked man who had set himself against God. He was a man who wanted to be a ruler so he could take counsel, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. Psalms 2:2, 3
God help us.
We mentioned last time that Bettie, Christina and I were involved in a rear-end collision in May. Christina has been released by the doctor, I still have quite of bit back pain around my left shoulder blade. However, Bettie has some damage that is more serious. She had her left arm around Christina when we were hit, and it wrenched her shoulder. Her left shoulder is very sore, the use of her left arm is limited, and she is losing muscle mass in her left arm. The MRI revealed a torn rotator cuff, requiring surgery to repair, which is scheduled for November.
For folks who are supposed to be "semi-retired", we sure are busy. At 65 (where does time go?), I like to stay physically active, so I cut our own firewood. We heat a large house with a wood stove, so we have no heating bill. A friend gave me about 20 of the tallest, straightest oak trees you have seen. The problem is that they were blown over by a small whirlwind in the midst of a woods, and at the bottom of a hill. They have been on the ground for some time, and I must "go get them", and pull them out of the valley in which they fell. It requires a good bit of work to get them, and split the wood to dry for burning two years from now.
The horrendous property tax bill in this area (to build big, beautiful government education facilities where the children can be reduced to brain dead, docile machines) and medical expenses may force me into the secular work force. Periodically, keep an eye on our web site to see what is going on. The web site can be kept up with minimal time and expense.
The Lord has graciously opened some doors for promoting the slide collection. A major flying magazine, FlyPast, which circulates from England into 50 countries gave us a major article. It included a nice front page coverage, Colour [sic] Legacy - Fantastic WW2 Images, then an index coverage, and a very beautiful 3 page spread. (Nov. 06. You can find it at large book stores, such as Borders.) Also, the Manassas VA airport has a museum, Freedom Museum. In conjunction with the Smithsonian, they are planning a large, permanent display of several of our images. "Jeff Ethell Collection Color Archives." November 11th is the dedication. If you have any interest in WW II, check the images. They are primarily "WarBirds," but there are many non-aircraft and human interest images. Particularly if you have broadband, check the site. http://www.ww2color.com
I get very distressed, as I am sure other mailers do, about the incompetency of the PO. My sad experience with the PO has been that the government is a place where incompetence is a means of reward and advancement promoting with the hope the incompetent person will be someone else's problem or he or she retires. (I had one such woman as a postmaster in Indiana.) And it appears as though I encounter that incompetence regularly with our mailings. I, and no doubt many other mailers, are looking for the day when the PO is turned over to private enterprise where the incompetent workers can be removed.
We have mailed bulk mail since 1984, with whatever endorsement is required at the time to get address corrections returned. We have been using ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED since it came into use. With it, the piece of mail is to be forwarded for 12 months and the new address returned to us, and then for another 6 months, the piece is returned with the correct address. After 18 months, the new address is removed from the PO data base. We update our data base before each mailing. We try to mail 4 times a year.
I have contacted the PO many times, and tried to explain the problem to them. However, there is no one at the "top" who is willing to take the responsibility to enforce the law upon those below. We are charged 75¢ for this service. However, probably 50% of the time, the new address is removed from the data base without returning it to us, and we lose the address. We are still charged the 75¢. After every mailing, I am totally exasperated with the PO, but I, like all other mailers, can do nothing to change their culture of incompetence. This problem not only costs us money, but costs us addresses.
Please let us know if you move. It will not only save us the 75¢, but will allow us to retain a good address for you.
As many of you remember, October 28, 1999, I had a "heart attack." My blood pressure had dropped so low that I was very close to death. The next day, they placed two stents in that area of my heart. (Then within two weeks after that procedure, my first wife was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, and she died about 6 months later.) Since then, I had to have have "roto rooter" to clean out one stent, and then about a year and a half ago, the VA restented that one place that insisted on closing again.
It seems like every year I must celebrate the anniversary of my first event in the emergency room. I think I have only missed one anniversary. The first cardiologist told me that it is not uncommon for a body to remember the outstanding events, and react to those events with seemingly another attack. Well, this year turned out to be no different. The evening of October 21, I felt my heart racing out of control. My wife took my blood pressure and it was 208/192, and my pulse was very irregular at 174. Obviously, close to panic set in, so we went to the ER here in Front Royal. She was fearful to drive me to the VA hospital about 50 minutes away. The difference this time over my past trips to the ER was that I have no insurance now. If needed, the local hospital will transfer a veteran to the VA after they stabilize the individual. In the meantime, the veteran must pay all local hospital fees up to the time they get to the VA.
I had forgotten about my annual visit to the ER for my anniversary, so we went in, which was a mistake. By the time they got me into a bed, things for me were pretty well back to normal. Of course, I was there now, so they did everything, and all tests came back normal, including the blood enzymes. After administering no treatment, for none was needed, they sent me home a couple hours later with blood pressure 120/60 and pulse of 55, where it normally remains. The bill is what you would expect it to be for an ER with EKG, blood work, x-rays, &c., about $2,000.
I told my wife that from now on, we need to set aside the end of October and the first of November on our calendar, and remember that we will probably celebrate that important anniversary, so there is no reason to rush to an ER.
We watched 60 Minutes Sunday evening, 10/22/06. They had a section about Nancy Pelosi, who could well be the first female Speaker of the House after this election. (She may be by the time you get this.)
She is as liberal as anyone can be, yet she has whipped the Democrats into line.
The thing that stood out to us was that she was raised in a strict home with five brothers. She has 4 girls and a boy, and is proud of being a grandmother. She insisted on having strict discipline in her home. She took what she learned worked with her children, discipline, &c., into the public arena. She enforced the rules she found worked in her home upon the Democratstreating the Democrat party as a family, she insisted upon no public disagreements among themselves, no fighting in public, and any challenge against her family by the Republicans had to be met. The result is that the Democrats are united in a great way.
My point: Women in places of authority and the fact that she stands for just about everything a Christian should be against aside, she has taken what she learned worked in her family out into the public, and is making her mark. We Christians must understand that our family life growing up and enforced in our own families is our training ground for what works. Nancy shows us that her strict family experiences can be used to conquer our society. Nancy has done it.
Excerpt from Washington Post Friday, October 6, 2006
"No sooner did Congress authorize construction of a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexico border last week than lawmakers rushed to approve separate legislation that ensures it will never be built, at least not as advertised, according to Republican lawmakers and immigration experts."
GOP leaders have singled out the border fence as one of their premier "tough on illegal immigration" accomplishments of the recently completed Congressional session. Many lawmakers plan to highlight their $1.2 billion "down payment" on border fence construction as they campaign in the weeks before the midterm elections. ...
Did we really think a good fence would be built?
David, Bettie's son, informed me of an excellent open-source, free, Spam filter, POPFile. I believe you will find it better than any you can purchase. After training it with a few hundred e-mails, you will find that it is close to 100% accurate. In about 5 days, it scanned 750 messages for me, and has been almost 80% accurate, including the training period. Accuracy will improve to about 95%. It is FREE, and works excellent with Thunderbird. <http://popfile.sourceforge.net/> The e-mail program Thunderbird (open-source, also free) has left all of Microsoft's e-mail programs in the dust. Microsoft will never catch up. Of course, AVG is as good as, if not better than, any anit-virus program. AVG has a free, non-commercial version, which is updated several times a day with new virus definitions. <http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1> Also, OpenOffice (open-source, free) by Sun Microsystems is a lookalike to Microsoft Office Word. <http://www.openoffice.org> Its files easily interchange with MS Word. Don't forget the open-source browser, Firefox. Again, Microsoft IE has been left in the dust. Use the Lord's money wisely.
Praise the Lord God our Heavenly Father and our Saviour Jesus Christ. Dear Brothers and Sisters. What a blessing to have received The Biblical Examiner. I received The Biblical Examiner from a dear friend and brother, Chaplain Mack Besser. He is from Fellowship Baptist Church in Aurora, IL. I am truly blessed to have read the Biblical Examiner from front to back. What a blessing the Lord has given to me by the family at Biblical Examiner News Paper. I truly would love to receive my own if the funds are permitted. I know the Lord will make a way for me to give to this cause which is a purpose to all people. I also would like to be a part of the work at the Examiner. Would like to write to other brothers and sisters in the Lord God. ...
I am a brown skinned man, 5'7, 180 lbs. I am 45, and I love the Lord God. I sing and play and write songs for the choir here at the Robinson CC. I preach the word. I teach the word. I pray the word. I now live in the word. I play the drums for the Lord. Amen. The work of the Lord needs to be done. I am willing and able to do. I kind of feel like the Apostle Paul when he was in prison. He was a outstanding brother in the Lord God. Even in prison, he did not give up. And I would love to write to brothers and sisters to encourage them not to give up. Anyone, everybody, could write to me, Brother Dwayne Griffin. Everyone calls me the name, Preacher man. What a blessing, Amen. The Preacher Man. the Lord's. the Heavenly Father's Preacher man. That's me. I end this letter of love and prayer and encouragement to all the brothers and sisters to hold on to God's unchanging hand.
Brother Dwayne Griffin, #NO3392, PO Box 900, Robinson IL 62454
1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Follow the money!! Timothy's words can be expected of the unsaved, but Timothy warns of Christians abandoning the faith for that love. Though the problem has been around since the fall, we, as many before us have, are caught in the results of that love.
Bro Sprinkle handed me Blood Money one day at church. It is a book that should stir up any red blooded man who loves the liberty upon which this nation was founded.
The book opens with this statement:
"Rather than assume the care of the slaves, they would control labor with the use of capital. It necessarily followed that, when the laborer ceased to be of service because of sickness or old age, he would be of no concern to capital. He could either get well or die without the capitalists being obliged to provide medical attention or bury the dead. Such was the interest that capital had in the result of the Civil War. The people of this country poured out both their treasure and their blood to establish the political and industrial independence of humanity, and the mercenary capitalists turned a trick of finance and converted the enormous sacrifice made by the people during that struggle into a victory for capital in order that they might enforce upon humanity the industrial slavery that the trusts preferred rather than the chattel slavery which then existed in the Southern States." Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. of Minnesota in Banking and Currency. and the Money Trust. National Capital Press, Washington, 1913, pp. 102-103.
The Civil War was about money how many wars, how many wicked actions are not? Mr. Graham then sets out to cultivate the above ground ploughed by Mr. Lindbergh, setting before us irrefutable evidence for the above statement.
Consider what Lindbergh said. Setting aside the "politically correct" propaganda of our day as presented in the works of fiction as found in, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", the employer, i.e., slave owner, was responsible for cradle to grave security for his property. (Facts abound showing that the general attitude of the owner toward his property was not unkind, and certainly nothing like the attitude today of capital toward labor as jobs are outsourced with no regard for the employee. It was far more like what is depicted in the old Walt Disney movie, Song of the South.) The last several decades have shown us that when capital is responsible for the employee, the employee is left out in the cold as capital does everything possible for the bottom line. And thus a new slave owner steps inthat is, the Federal Government offering cradle to grave security for those who will blindly serve it.
Capital, the bankers, won the War between the States, and bathed the land in blood to gain that control. It was actually a War for Southern Independence, not unlike the War for Independence from England. (Please note: No doubt the average banker has no idea concerning these War matters, as well as the outcome. To him or her, banking is just another occupation, as might be working at Wal-Mart.)
Big money worked very hard and invested vast amounts of funds to stir up antagonism in the North against the South:
The divisive antagonisms between the North and the South, finally erupting in the spring of 1861, were not unfortunate historical accidents, nor the result of some inexorable momentum in events. Those antagonisms, rather, were deliberately agitated during the 1850s by great international banking houses with a preconceived motive of provoking secession. And secession was to be used as a pretext for a bloody and expensive war of conquest, which was actually launched and carried out. The war was planned as a brutal slaughter, as it tragically became. The war was planned to generate a stupendous national debt, mostly represented by bonds, and such a national debt was in fact generated. The private interests acquiring these bonds successfully plotted to secure the passage of legislation which enabled them to convert the paper by them acquired in financing the war into a new and dominant system of banking and currency under their ownership and control. And those private interests fully succeeded in their sinister program, and set up a huge financial empire centered on Wall Street from which they have ever since governed the United States from behind the scenes. (Blood, pp. 15, 16.)
Henry Clay Dean, a lawyer living in Iowa during the war, said:
"The capitalists and stock gamblers in Europe by their alliance with political adventurers of America, carefully planned this war in the interest of despotism and the funding systems. They anticipated every argument, and prepared the public mind for the war in advance. During the war they prepared for the debt and continued the war that the debt might reach its present enormous extent." (Ibid., p. 16.)
Mr. Dean was arrested without charges, imprisoned without trial and suffered serious health injury because he saw and tried to warn of the gigantic fraud and corruption motivating the War.
Control of the money supply allows the bankers to control virtually everything that has to do with finances debt, interest rates, buying and selling elected officials to keep unlimited funds flowing their way. Thus, capital, or the bankers, have become the de facto "invisible government" of the United States, clearly showing us naked greed, the love of money, at work before our very eyes.
Therefore, the most important consequence of the American Civil War was the loss of monetary independence of the United States. And that, as a practical matter, was also loss of political independence behind the facade of "freedom" and "democracy." (Ibid., p. 17.)
As we pointed out in a previous Examiner, the War for Southern Independence could have easily been avoided, but "religious fanaticism, raw greed and corruption", political ambitions, &c., forced the War.
The American Civil War has been justified by a standard line of propaganda as a gallant crusade to save the Union and free the slaves. And so attention has been distracted from the hard reality of taking over banking and currency by debate over whether the Southern States had a constitutional right to secede from the Union, and whether military conquest was a moral necessity to abolish slavery. (Ibid., p. 18)
The right to secede was firmly held by friend and foe alike. The growing public sentiment in the North was to let the Gulf States go. Even Northern newspapers editorialized that the South was well within its constitutional right.
McDowell [a southern abolitionist who spoke strongly against slavery in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1832] later served as Governor of Virginia (1843-1846). He and other abolitionists in the Virginia House of Delegates agreed that slavery ran against natural law, yet was not cruel or oppressive. In the wake of propaganda peddled over more than a century to justify the American Civil War, it has generally been believed that slavery was a harsh system, but in times lies lose their force, and eventually comparisons are made between irresponsible claims and the actual facts. It has now been demonstrated with hard economic data that the slaves of the Old South fared much better than factory workers in the North with respect to health, diet, leisure, longevity, and general well-being. ... Slavery was wrong, not because it was brutal and hard, which it was certainly not, but because it robbed society of vitality and energy. (Ibid., p. 21.)
Most of the Virginia population agreed (1832) with the Southern abolitionists, but could not determine how best to proceed with freeing the slaves. Even Abraham Lincoln said of slavery, "If all earthly power were given to me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution." Nobody "really knew how to make the abolition human, practical, and beneficial." The institution was only tolerated because Southerners knew that a sudden uprooting would cause more problems than it would solve. The War certainly did not have the answer, and left all concerned, except those who formulated the War, much worse off than before the War.
Mr. Graham tells us that,
The Virginia statesman John Randolph of Roanoke left a will freeing his slaves, and established a trust to buy land for them in the free State of Ohio so they could survive and prosper, but the people in the free State of Ohio drove the freedmen from the farms which their Southern champion had procured for them. (Ibid., 22.)
As the Northern armies moved across the Southern States, slaves feared, with good cause, what those troops would do to them and their property, and sought to defend themselves. The Northern "armies of freedom" and the "great emancipator" had devastating effects upon the black race.
Slavery was doomed, not only by geography (the planter way of life was limited to restricted growing areas), but by modernization. In 1860, there was no real possibility that slavery would expand into the Federal territories. In fact, in 1860, in all the Federal Territories, there were only seventeen slaves, with only two in Kansas. With patience, wisdom and prudence, slavery would have been relegated into the mists of history within fifty years. (The old B&W John Wayne move, Dark Command, perpetrated the myth that there were many slaves in Kansas before the war, and that the war was to free those slaves.)
With no moral nor economic justification, slavery was doomed. Though secession was an approved method of dealing with tyranny, it could have easily been avoided.
No more than was the French Revolution a spontaneous event, was the Civil War a spontaneous event. The idea that it was fought for a good cause is the furthest thing from the truth. In order to motivate a war in the US, hatred between the North and the South had to be ignited. In his "House Divided" speech, Lincoln "said that the events of his day were shaped by powerful men with an agenda..." Lincoln admitted something was afoot, but he did not identify the agenda as the great financiers generating a war "that would help them take over banking and currency in the United States."
Mr. Graham details several events that inflamed Northern passions to the point where there was enough hatred against the South to fight a war.
* Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which was simply an extension of the Northwest Ordinance of 1789.
This "Missouri Compromise" or Compromise of 1820 was considered by statesmen of the country as a solemn pact between the North and the South, enabling the two civilizations to coexist within the same Union. (Ibid., p 31.)
[G]eography made it impossible to implant slavery to the south and west of the Nueces River in Texas, or into or beyond Oklahoma, or upon any part of the land acquired from Mexico. (Ibid.)
The passing of time would have relegated slavery to history, but the big banking houses could not have that. Thus, the "inflammatory language of Uncle Tom's Cabin stirred up passions" enough that the Compromises of 1820 and 1850 could not do their work.
* 1852 publishing of Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was pure fiction. Her "corny novel" could not have gained such readership without massive money supporting publishing and marketing.
* Dred Scott.
A slave of John Emerson, MD, Dred Scott and his family had been freed at Mr. Emerson's death, according to established and settled laws of Missouri. However, though quite well up in years and having no money, Mrs. Emerson sought to overturn the Missouri court's ruling that freed Scott.
The case was obviously bankrolled by wealthy interestson both sides by the time the case found its way into Federal courts, for there is no other plausible way to explain what happened. The investors in this cause must have aimed at exciting passions violent enough to ignite a civil war. (Ibid., p. 35)
The money spent on this case was more than enough to secure Scott's freedom. (1852) Two of the three members of the Missouri Supreme court, despite many years of Southern jurisprudence and excellent arguments from the third member tracing freedom from the time of Emperor Justinian, held that Scott and his family were still slaves, reversing the court that had liberated them.
The end result of the Dred Scott case was that the Supreme Court in 1857, on a vote of 7-2, ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. Strangely enough, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, one of the greatest lawyers of his age, ignored the many cases supporting the lower court's freedom ruling.
For there can be no doubt that rich, powerful, and influential men in the United States thought it would be a good thing to get rid of the Missouri Compromise, not only by legislative repeal but also by judicial holding. And it is now known and no longer concealed that, during the deliberations of the court on the fate of Dred Scott and his family, at least two members of the court were actively lobbied by President-Elect James Buchanan. It is no longer the well-kept secret it once was that the President-Elect communicated first with Justice John Catron, and then urged Justice Robert Grier to be sensible in joining with others on the court in finding the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. Others on the court must also have been told what was expected of them. In any event, Taney, Carron, Grier, and others on the court did exactly what such rich, powerful, and influential men wanted them to do. (Ibid., p. 38.)
The ruling overturning Scott's freedom outraged the North, and increased hatred for the South for Scott's enslavement, heightening the urge to kill all in the South. However, ignored is the fact that the South freed Scott and his family, and the North returned Scott to slavery. After the Missouri Compromise was overturned with the Scott case, Scott and his family were set free.
* Transcontinental Railroads.
The banking houses wanted the railroad to go from Chicago through Iowa and west of Missouri, and from San Francisco to be joined in Utah. However, the South wanted a shorter route from New Orleans through Texas to San Diego. Stephen Douglas, Chairman of the Committee on Territories in the US wanted to be President, and was supported in his desire by the big banks behind the Chicago route.
In order to buy off enough Southern votes to get the central route, Douglas secured passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. (Ibid., p. 32.)
This Act also voided the Missouri Compromise, and led to civil war between the Northerners and Southerners who populated the Kansas Territory, 1855, which continued off and on for several years. Though the big banks forced and financed the war in Kansas, the South yielded the Missouri Compromise, allowing Kansas to enter as a "free" state.
In short, thanks to Stephen Douglas, the South gave up its "demands for a transcontinental railroad between New Orleans and San Diego for a worthless opportunity to make Kansas a slave State."
* John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry in 1859.
Otto Scott shows us that John Brown had no support, not even in the North. But he did have big money behind him. (The secret Six: the Fool as Martyr, Foundation of American Education, Columbia, S.C., 1977. Six is a must read for those interested in the truth behind the War.) The supporters knew John Brown's brutality in the Kansas Territory, that he was a con artist, thug and a vicious murderer. They knew his raid would almost certainly fail, he would be hanged for treason, and his actions might well ignite a war "threatening civilized legal order on the continent." However, the great banking houses saw Brown as a stepping stone to gaining control "over the money and credit of the United States."
* Democratic National Convention of 1860.
Douglas' swindle of the South, financed by railroad money, caused the South to split over the Democrat's nomination of an 1860 presidential candidate. The result was so foreseeable that Lincoln remained at home, and never made a single campaign speech.
* Tariffs
The moneyed plotters were respectable men of wealth, men with more monied power than they could use for their own good.
Complaints about unjust tariffs had been a venerable tradition in Southern politics during the antebellum period, nor had the subject worn out as a favorite theme of harangues in the Dixie States even after Buchanan's inauguration. Yet by 1860 there were no longer any objective facts to give thunder to the speeches. Secession was not an economic necessity for the Southern States. On the contrary, the Union was for them an economic blessing. ... (Ibid., p. 44.)
Viewed dispassionately, unjust tariffs were a potential irritant, but they created no pressure contributing significantly to the breakup of the Union in 1560-1861 and the American Civil War. The real stakes in political events then unfolding were far more important. ... (Ibid.)
* Banking
Large banking houses in the United States and Europe were the culprits who paid for Mrs. Stowe's vicious pen, bought the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, stirred up trouble in the Kansas Territory, corrupted the judicial process in the case of Dred Scottt, and laid the foundations for the breakup of the Democratic convention in Charleston. They have since escaped the censure of historians, as they have hid behind a smoke screen of freeing the slaves and saving the Union. (Ibid., pp. 45, 46.)
Charles A. Lindbergh Sr represented Minnesota 6th district in Congress, 1907-1917. He ran for governor in 1918, and after many attempts to smear him, he was finally arrested on trumped-up charges, which were conveniently dropped after he placed second (with 41%) in a 4-way primary. The great banking houses feared him "because he knew his critics better than they would have preferred. He exposed their dirty dealings as he wrote against the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, Banking and Currency and the Money Trust."
Lindbergh showed how the control of currency, gold, silver or even paper, is greater power than the mightiest army, for wars cannot be fought without money. He showed that the events of the 1850s that provoked the War were orchestrated by the big banks. He revealed facts about the "Hazard Circular," which had never been public record. The "Circular" exposed the workings of J.P. Morgan and the house of Rothschild (which largely controlled the Bank of England). It was circulated among wealthy citizens in the North in 1862, wanting them to invest in bonds to pay for the conquest of the South. The "Circular" read in part:
"Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power, and all chattel slavery abolished. This I and my friends are in favor of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led on by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages. The great debt that capitalists will see to it is made out of the war must be used as a means to control the volume of money. To accomplish this, the bonds must be used as a banking basis. We are now waiting for the secretary of the treasury to make this recommendation to Congress. It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that. But we can control the bonds and through the bonds the bank issues."
The financiers' motives in the war were not as glorious as the motives of many fine young men when they marched in ranks mowed down at Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Second Cold Harbor, and other such battles. The true object, for which those boys were uncaringly and needlessly sacrificed, was to transform national debt into private control of banking and currency in the United States. (Ibid., pp 47, 48.)
And thus self-seeking adventurers bought "at bargain prices, the monetary independence of the United States."
At the onset of the War, the South could not imagine that the North would totally ignore and burn the Constitution as the framers had made it, in the flames of a bloody war. The South could not comprehend that the banking houses of the North were fighting a war to confiscate the wealth of the South, and thus the South was completely unprepared to meet the challenge. "They rested their case on constitutional principles which were abolished by force of arms financed by moneylenders." Too late, they learned the truth of the matter, and then justly considered the Yankee mentality as barbarism.
After the war, it was the 14th Amendment, unconstitutionally imposed upon the country, that made "permanent the grip which Morgan, Rothschild, and their affiliates had acquired upon the banking and currency of the United States."
The "beast created by the financing of the American Civil War" now controls all major news media in the US, and no candidate for public office since, especially that of president, has been able to overcome that beast.
Of course, no study of finances can be complete without a mention of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. It "was actually written in 1910 by seven men at a secret meeting on Jekyll Island off the southeastern coast of Georgia at a magnificent hunting lodge provided" for their use by J.P. Morgan Sr. All of the big financial interests were represented. Paul Warburg, representing the Rothschild interests, actually wrote the bill signed by President Woodrow Wilson. Paul's son, James, is reported to have said in 1950, "We shall have world government whether or not we like it. The only question is whether world government will be achieved by conquest or consent."
The financial interests represented by those on Jekyll Island in 1910 are still active today. They are the heirs of those who incited, financed and profited from the American Civil War, the war which prepared the way for the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
The ability to control all finances in the US, the Federal Reserve Board, appointed according to the will of Wall Street, is able to dominate business, economics, education, culture, judicial appointments and decisions, immigration quotas, extent of foreign trade, foreign policy, and politics in general. "It is imprudent to overstate the influence of these interests..."
However, there are wealthy individuals who are well-intentioned with noble goals. "But Lord Acton was right when he observed, The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.'" The problem is the fallen nature of man, which the Constitution, through secrecy, fraud and deceit, failed to hold in check.
Why is Salmon P. Chase on the $10,000 Bill?
Chase did great favors for those who owned the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1918. The details of S.P. Chase are developed in Blood Money.
Mr. Graham points out that the education system training for lawyers only allows admittance to the Bar for those who agree that the Constitution is only what the Supreme Court says it is. Thus, the need for honest education.
Blood Money concludes with a chapter outlining how the monetary system can be reclaimed from private individuals without harming the U.S. economy.
Blood Money is a short, easy read of 75 pages. Pelican Publication. 1 800 843 1724. $12.95, or $10.36 over the web, www.pelicanpub.com
Comments: We Christians should be greatly distressed over the fact that the godly are not dedicated to the future success of the Kingdom of God as are the ungodly dedicated to the future success of the kingdom of darkness.
Many say that Christians should not be involved in the political or financial matters, leaving a vacuum in those areas. Then the ungodly take over and prosper. Then we complain, or say, "We will soon be gone anyway, so why worry?"
Thomas Williamson
William Miller (1782-1849) was a farmer and Baptist layman in Low Hampton, New York. After receiving Christ as his Savior in 1816, he gave himself to avid study of the Bible. As a result, he came to the inescapable conclusion that the Second Coming of Christ would come in or about the year 1843.
Feeling the moral obligation to share this startling and vital information with his fellow men, he began to accept speaking engagements in NE, New York, and adjacent areas of Vermont, but after many years, he had succeeded in getting the Second Advent message out to only a small circle of followers.
Not until Miller met Joshua V. Himes in 1839 did the Millerite movement really take off, becoming the greatest sensation of the age. Himes was a publicist and organizing genius, while Miller was the theologian of the movement.
Millerism was spread through the Northern U.S. by 3 means - by speaking appearances of Millerite lecturers, by camp meetings, and by the mass distribution of millions of newspapers, tracts, books and pamphlets.
Miller's preaching resulted in many unbelievers making professions of faith, and for that reason he was welcomed by some pastors who did not particularly care for his date-setting enthusiasm. But Noah Webster, of dictionary fame, was not so impressed - he told Miller: "Your preaching can be of no use to society but it is a great annoyance. If you expect to frighten men and women into religion, you are probably mistaken. . . If your preaching drives people into despair or insanity, you are responsible for the consequences."
The movement concentrated on the 1843 date for Christ's return, but not all Millerites accepted that date, some of them proposing an 1847 date, with others saying that it was not scripturally possible to set an exact date for Christ's coming.
The movement did not fall precisely into modem categories of millennialism and Christian Zionism. A handbill prepared by Himes in 1840 proclaimed, "No Literal Return of the Carnal Jews as a Nation to Palestine" and "No Millennium Prior to the Resurrection of the Dead."
IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. The glad news of Christ's coming in 1843 was accepted by a cross section of American society, mostly prosperous middle-class people who had no particular reason to feel alienated from or weary of their current earthly circumstances. The movement was strongest in New England and New York, while lecturers spread the word west to Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and other states.
Free blacks in New England flocked to the Millerite camp meetings along with whites, while slaves in Maryland received with great interest the news that their earthly servitude would soon be over, and sang Millerite hymns as they worked in the fields. The Millerites attracted almost no support from white Southerners, who were suspicious because many of the Millerite lecturers had been anti-slavery activists.
Naturally, the teaching that the world would end in 1843 resulted in a storm of opposition and ridicule, from orthodox evangelical Christians as well as infidels. A few trained theologians became Millerites, but most rejected the movement with scorn. The Millerites dismissed their opponents by identifying them with the "scoffers" of 2 Peter 3:3-4. Miller accused those who did not accept his date-setting of not wanting Christ to return at all. His teaching resulted in a tremendous amount of strife, division and infighting among evangelicals.
The movement was ecumenical - historian Everett Dick found that of 174 Millerite lecturers, 44% were Methodist, 27% Baptist, 9% Congregationalist, 8% Campbellite and 7% Presbyterian. Millerite leaders at first advised their followers to stay with their churches, but as derision and persecution increased, there was a call for them to "come out of Babylon."
SIGN, SIGN, EVERYWHERE A SIGN. There were great expectations that Christ would come at that time, based on the "signs of the times" such as the "Dark Day" on May 19, 1780 in which the sun did not shine over New England; also a meteor shower in 1833, a storm in Madeira in 1842, earthquakes and a comet in 1843, the financial "Panic of 1837," increasing lawlessness and violence in the inner cities, riots, hunger, breakdown of morality, etc. Then, as now, every item of news in the daily papers was considered a sign that Christ would return soon.
Many people considered the Millerites to be insane. Sympathetic Seventh Day Adventist historian Everett Dick stated it was not true that the Millerites used white ascension robes - this appears to be a tall tale put out by anti-Millerites. However, Dick admitted that there were some suicides and cases of insanity traceable to "Miller mania" and that some Millerites gathered in cemeteries to await the Second Coming, in hopes of greeting their newly resurrected loved ones.
BRING IT ON. Hostile cartoonists had a field day with the Millerites. One cartoon showed a smug Millerite crouched in a fireproof safe stocked with ice, crackers and brandy, with the caption "A Millerite Preparing for the 23rd of April - Now let it come, I'm ready." Another showed the "Grand Ascension of the Miller Tabernacle," with Millerites clinging precariously to the airborne meetinghouse, while Joshua Himes is held down by the Devil who is saying "Joshua, You Must Stay With Me."
Miller calculated his 1843 date by taking the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14, changing them to 2300 years, and then counting from the decree of Persian king Artaxerxes ordering the rebuilding of Jerusalem in 457 BC, thus yielded the 1843 date.
Comment: With this type of numerical manipulation, one can come up with any date for the Second Coming. Nowhere does the Bible teach that the decree of Artaxerxes in 457 is a starting point for a countdown to the Rapture. The 2300 days of Daniel 8:14 are literal days, or "mornings and evenings,' relating to events of the Maccabean revolt against Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes in the 2nd Century BC, and should never have been changed to years, which is a non-literal interpretation.
To bolster his case, Miller took the 1260 days of Revelation 12:6, changed them to years, then counted 1260 years from the alleged beginning of the Pope's civil power in 538 AD, which brought him to 1798, when Napoleon supposedly dealt a deadly blow to the papacy. Also he dated the fall of Rome at 508 AD, added the 1290 days of Daniel 12:11 (you guessed it, he changed them to 1290 years), once again coming up with 1798, truly a year of destiny. To that date he added 45 years, thus coming up with 1843.
Comment: It may seem hard to believe that anyone would take this date-setting mish-mash seriously, yet in our supposedly more enlightened age, there are people who take seriously the date setting delusions of such false prophets as Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, Edgar Whisenant, Charles Taylor, Harold Camping, etc.
There is no scriptural basis for adding 45 years to some notable year in history to set a date for Christ's coming, any more than there is for those who add 40 years to the founding of Israel in 1948, the conquest of the Wailing Wall in 1967, etc.
Historians usually date the fall of Rome at 476 AD, not 508, although the actual fall of Rome was a gradual process over a period of centuries. Nothing notable with regard to the papacy happened in 538, nor does anyone interpret the military events in 1798 as a significant weakening in the power of the Roman Catholic Church, which at last notice was still going quite strong.
(In fairness to Miller, it should be observed that he was not alone in making the mathematical calculations connecting the decree of Artaxerxes with Christ's return in the 1840's a number of commentators and theologians agreed with him that something big was to happen in that decade. A liberal theologian named George Bush wrote to Miller, agreeing with his chronology and citing such luminaries as Sir Isaac Newton to support it. But Bush believed that Christ's coming would be spiritual and symbolical, not literal).
TURKISH FANTASY. An early test of Miller's predictive prowess came when he proclaimed that the Ottoman Empire would fall on August 11, 1840. In those days before the telegraph, it took several months for ships to bring the latest news from the Middle East, but by November it had become embarrassingly evident that the Ottoman Empire had not fallen. This should have given early warning that the Millerite prophecies were a bunch of malarky. But Millerite theologians twisted certain events in Egypt as an evidence that the Ottoman Empire had begun to fall, and therefore the prophecy had been fulfilled after all.
Comment: All historians today date the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. As late as 1915, the Ottoman Empire was sufficiently alive and kicking to be able to defeat a massive army of British, Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli.
As the fateful 1843 date approached, and expectations rose to a fever pitch, Miller was pressured to be a little more specific about when Christ would show up. He confidently stated that Christ would return between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. This was not specific enough for some of his followers, who set a succession of exact dates, all of which passed by uneventfully.
A full year passed, and by the spring of 1844, Christ had not returned, creating some disappointment. The Millerite prophets did not miss a beat, proclaiming that the world had entered the "tarrying time" of Matthew 25:5 and Habakkuk 2:3. Miller expressed his apologies for being imprecise in his calculations, and encouraged his followers to maintain a high state of readiness for Christ's Second Coming which must by now be very close. He declined to set any more exact dates.
SNOW JOB. This was not good enough for his enthusiastic followers, who were tired of the suspense and craved certainty. Elder Samuel Snow came up with an October 22, 1844 date for Christ's coming which was avidly spread through the circuit of camp meetings which continued to operate at full blast during that last fateful summer in the history of mankind. Miller and Himes finally, reluctantly concluded that Christ would definitely return sometime in October, but Miller refused to set an exact date, although at one point Miller stated that only one more Sabbath would pass before Christ came to judge sinners. (As late as October 21, Miller told friends that he did not think Christ would come on the following day).
In preparation for Christ's eagerly awaited return, Millerites closed their shops, left their crops unharvested, and gave away all their money and earthly goods which would soon no longer be of any use to them.
A tailor in Philadelphia put out a sign reading "This shop is closed in honor of the King of Kings, who will appear about the 22nd of October. Get ready, friends, to crown Him Lord of all."
The great day came, but Christ did not return. The Millerites called this day the "Great Disappointment." As the sun dawned on the 23rd, they were "Left Behind" to endure the ridicule, persecution and occasional violence of anti-Millerite mobs.
Hiram Edson wrote, "We wept, and wept, til the day dawn. . . . If this had proved a failure, what was the rest of my Christian experience worth? Has the Bible proved a failure? Is there no God - no heaven - no golden home city - no paradise? Is all this but a cunningly devised fable? Is there no reality to our fondest hopes and expectation of these things?" Thus, in all ages, has true Christian faith been weakened and exposed to vilification because of the date-setters and false prophets.
WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP IT'S BEEN. Everett Dick documented, as a result of the disillusionment of the Millerites, a drastic decline in Methodist church membership in the North after 1844, and a slight decline in northern Baptist church membership after 1844. Methodist church membership continued to grow in the South where Millerism was almost unknown. At the height of the Millerite excitement, many churches were split and some disbanded as a result of the heated prophetic wrangling.
Millerites reacted to the Great Disappointment in various ways; some returned to their old churches and denominations in repentant embarrassment, while others lost all interest in religion. Some joined weird mystical sects like the Shakers, who believed that Christ had already returned in the person of Mother Ann Lee in 1770.
Hiram Edson and Ellen G. White decided that what really happened in 1844 is that Christ cleaned out the heavenly sanctuary as a prelude to His coming to earth - this, plus observance of the Saturday Sabbath, became the foundation of the successful Seventh Day Adventist denomination, which has spread worldwide and still looks back to Miller for inspiration.
Miller and his loyal sidekick Himes were good and sincere men, who do not appear to have been motivated by desire for fame or financial enrichment. They felt compelled by duty to spread their Adventist message, but they were sincerely wrong. Let us maintain our faith in Christ's future literal return, but let us not disgrace and discredit that message by setting dates. Christ knew what He was talking about when He told the Apostles, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power." - Acts 1:7.
"Left Behind" Author Says We May Have 1000 Years To Go Until the Second Coming
"I think one of God's major personality characteristics is mercy. And I think that's the reason it [the Second Coming] hasn't happened in 2000 years. And if He waits one more day, in His economy of time that's a thousand of our years. We could be a thousand years from the second coming. Now, to rabid pre-tribbers and rapture watchers, that's heresy. How could the person who wrote Left Behind say it could be a thousand years? Because it's been 2000 years." - Jerry Jenkins, on LeftBehind.com.
I have been doing a study in the Ten Commandments. The following is a short section of the study on the First Commandment.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3.)
Here are some ways we break the First Commandment:
1) by detracting from God what is due him.
That is, when we act as though God were not omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, &c. When we deny his providence, even in regeneration. The belief that man controls his own destiny in his salvation or in history is against the first commandment. Thus, Arminianism, which makes man sovereign over his own destiny, is a violation of this very first commandment. It makes man his own god.
2) by attributing to God what is not consistent with his attributes of absolute perfection, holiness, purity, immutability, &c.
That is, we believe he does not keep his promises; he changes from the Old to the New Testament; he does not wisely guide the world; he has any bodily shape; or that he may be comprehended or understood by human understanding.
When we try to reduce the secret things of God to human understanding, such as election and free-will, we have made an idol. (Deuteronomy 29:29.)
There are many areas where we must say with the author of Hebrews:
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. (Hebrews 11:3.)
3) by attributing what is due to God alone to other creatures, such as love, hope, faith.
When we give these things to other men, saints, angels, ordinances (the sacraments), stars, herbs, gold, doctors.
How many churches have replaced preaching with liturgy and sacraments, making these things idols. I heard of a gathering that only sang, had some liturgy, then the sacraments, and went home. It was not until someone reminded them that the purpose of gathering was to preach the word that they started telling a bible story. (We will discuss the difference between ordinance and sacrament at another time.)
There was a church in Crawfordsville that lost their pastor. They reduced the services to just singing "worship songs" and personal testimonies. The result was that they grew so much they decided they did not need a pastor. These groups loved everything except the preaching and teaching of the word of God.
Certainly, there are many things due to God that may also legitimately be given to men, but they must be given in subordination to God out of obedience to him. Are we ready to quit, even hate, these things for Christ? (Luke 14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.) Where does our confidence lie?
Certainly, we must have confidence in things like skillful doctors and medical technology, but that confidence must be subordinate to God's sovereign care for us. He alone must be relied upon, and he many times uses the medical profession.
4) by believing or teaching untrue and dishonoring things about God - false doctrine. (Matthew 5:33-38)
5) by opinions or judgments which are contrary to God's word, though not expressed by the mouth.
The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God... (Psalms 14:1.)
6) by unbecoming thoughts of God, or ideas about God that do not do him justice. (Acts 17:29, Psalms 50:21.)
We cannot reduce God's thoughts to the level of our understanding. (Isaiah 55:9.)
7) by failing to fulfill our duties before God.
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. (James 1:22.)
Examples:
Counterfeit humility, insincere prayers, presumption rather than faith, exchange curiosity for honest search for knowledge, counterfeit his service serve as men pleasers rather than God pleasers.
How many curious seekers of God have we met? How many search Scripture or attend Bible Conferences in hope of finding out what the future holds, or what God owes them, or how to get God to prosper them with material things. They desire to make God their servant, and study Scripture to that end.
8) by failing to walk worthy of God:
That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; (Colossians 1:10.)
When we fail to: Submit to him; take direction from him as revealed in his Word; properly fear him; properly consider his justice.
We abuse his kindness, and fail to properly reverence him as the Creator, in whom we have our being. (Acts 17:28.) He is our husband, yet we go whoring from him, and prove unfaithful in our ties to him. Though he is our Redeemer, Lord and Master, we fail to love and serve him properly.
We fail to properly keep the covenant we made with him with our baptism, raised to walk in newness of life. Romans 6. And in the Lord's supperdo we do it in remembrance of him? (1 Corinthians 11:24ff.)
Do we avoid the things that draw us away from him? Everything that takes our hearts away from the Lord violates the first commandment, e.g., evil companions, unchaste books, movies, pictures, &c. Proverbs 7.
Furthermore, this commandment REQUIRES that we KNOW GOD.
Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Corinthians 2:8 .)
Thus, ignorance of him is sin. Certainly, we cannot know God totally, and there are many things of God that are forbidden to us, not revealed or that can only be known in the future. But we can know him according to his word. Thus, failure to seek the knowledge we can have about God from his word is sin.
There is a willful ignorance, where we have the means of knowing God but do not take advantage of those means.
There is a lazy ignorance, where we simply do not discipline ourselves to know him, and neglect our study.
There is a natural ignorance of things we have not had the means to learn. (Luke 12:47.)
It is a great duty called for in this commandment, that we may know him, know his will, and do it:
They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. (Titus 1:16.)
9) by speaking in unknown tongues, for it lacks the faithful proclamation of the Word of God, nor does it educate God's people in terms God's word. 1 Corinthians 14.
10) by failing to proclaim all the counsel of God. (Acts 20:20, 27, 2 Timothy 3:16, 17, 4:2.)
11) by failure to educate the covenant people (AND OUR CHILDREN) in the requirements of the covenant. Deuteronomy 6. (Christ is the covenant, and those in him are God's covenant people. Isaiah 42:6, 49:8.)
12) by questioning God: Is the Lord among us or not. (Exodus 17:7.)
Verse 2-6. As there was no water to drink in Rephidim, the people murmured against Moses, for having brought them out of Egypt to perish with thirst in the wilderness. This murmuring Moses called "tempting God," i.e., unbelieving doubt in the gracious presence of the Lord to help them (v. 7). (Keil-Delitzsch.)
When he does not remove our distress as we would like for him to do, do we question him? We are not to test him with doubt and unbelief. Example: we cannot expect God to care for us without work. 2 Thessalonians 3:10. Is he going to let me starve?
Years ago, Bill Gothard made this statement: Hunger is God's cure for slothfulness. And there is not a truer statement.
The welfare state clearly breaks the first commandment, as it presents itself as the all providing god, offering womb to the tomb security.
I turned 65 in August. I received the Medicare card from the Government saying I was enrolled unless I wrote back and told them I did not want it, which I did. And the mail box has filled with all kinds of offers that take advantage of the Medicare offer. They sent a card anyway.
The state offers itself as god, and the offer is hard to ignore.
Doubting God's goodness and supply fits here:
Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? (Psalms 78:19.)
13) by making covenants, agreements, marriage, business partnerships, treaties with the unsaved. (2 Corinthians 6:14.)
Fathers must check closely the young man that is interested in their daughters. The young man can be anything he needs to be to win the young woman he is interested in, but after the marriage, it can be a terrible situation.
We stayed with a family one night in California. Their hearts were broken over what happened to one of their daughters after she married. The young man was just what they wanted for their daughter, until they married. At that point, everything changed. They moved to her husband's "family compound", and almost all contact was cut off with her family. She was not even allowed to call her parents except on very special occasions.
We must not live in terms of what God might do, but in terms of His Word.
14) by adding to, taking away from or changing in any way the word of God, for it makes another word from another god. (Deuteronomy 4:2.) How many of the modern "translations" offer another god to the reader?
15) by ideas of evolution, even "Theistic Evolution."
Evolution rejects the God of creation as revealed in his word. Evolution, therefore, must be defended at all costs by the ungodly. If it is abandoned even for "Inelegant Design", it must be admitted that someone other than man has absolute power.
God is a jealous God. As God's people observe the material prosperity of the wicked, they are tempted to serve the gods of the wicked to have the same material prosperity. Moreover, when we see others get away with sin, we are tempted to try to do the same, and serve their gods of this world.
Example: God is not like impersonal electricity with immediate cause and effect.
When installing pneumatic controls for Honeywell, I mistakenly plugged a 110 volt drill into a 240 volt plug on the construction site. Standing on top step of a 10 foot wooden step ladder, I reached up to brace myself by grabbing an iron bar. I was holding the plug in one hand with the drill to keep it from coming unplugged. The electricity immediately shorted through me to the iron bar. It was an immediate result of my error, and a very close call.
God, however, is merciful, as well as just. He may even give the wicked plenty of opportunity to repent, and he may hold off their judgment until after death. Psalms 37, 73. But his commandments cannot be ignored with impunity. Romans 2:1-11, 1 Corinthians 6:9, Galatians 6:7.
All of the commandments for the Christian life are built upon this First Commandment. How do we fare?
We are too superficial these days in our dealings with religious inquirers. Altar services are often rushed through in noisy haste, with a little sniffle on the part of the seeker being accepted as proof that a work of God has been done. We are so pitifully eager to get people "through" that we encourage them to "believe" and "praise" when as yet they are still in darkness.
I believe we owe it to the souls of men to check on our work sometimes to see whether or not our labors have been in vain. Some would shrink from this as being irreverent and unbelieving. Is, then, the work of God in salvation such a fragile thing that it withers before the glance of a clear eye? I think not. When Christ raised Lazarus the man himself was there as a visible proof of the miracle.
We dare not be satisfied with any evangelism, however well organized and widely publicized, till it begins to produce results we can "handle" a week or a year later.
Lives permanently transformedthese are the final proofs of a work, whether it be of God or not. Whatever will not meet this acid test of permanence is a delusion, nothing less.
The same tragic shallowness is found in a certain type of personal evangelism where the stress is laid upon the mere act of "accepting" Christ as the only requirement for salvation. No mention is made of the rights which the Lord claims in the life of the individual following his supposed act of faith, as repentance, obedience, separation, cross-bearing.
This quasi-Christianity was preached to millions of our servicemen during the late war, with what sad effects only God can know. Thousands of frightened and heartsick boys were fed this emasculated gospel; and because they gave verbal assent to it they were assured that everything was well with their souls, even though they were in reality totally blind to the whole will of God and to all the claims of Christ.
Some of us are going to answer for these betrayed souls in that day when the Lord comes to judge the secrets of all men's hearts.
A.W. Tozer
By R.L. Dabney
The other thing, which alone would have been betterto lead his country on from triumph to triumph to final deliverance, hang up his sword in the sanctuary, and to sit down a freeman amidst the people he had savedthat we would not permit God to effect; and that we were not fit to have such deliverance wrought for us, even by a Jackson, this God would demonstrate before he took him away; for the true great man is a gift from heaven, informed with a portion of its own life and fire. Some small critics have argued that great men are born in their times; that they are mere impersonations of the moral forces common to their contemporaries. This, be assured, may be true of that species of little great men, of whom Shakespeare writes, that "they have greatness thrust on them." The true hero is not made by his times, but makes them, if indeed material of greatness be in them. They wait for him, in sore need, perhaps, of his kindling touch, groping in perilous darkness towards destruction, for want of his true light: they produce him not. God sends him. There be three missions for such a true great man among men. If "the iniquity of the Amorites is already full," the Great Power, the wicked great man, Caesar or Napoleon, is sent among them to seduce them to their ruin. If they be worthy of greatness, and have in them any true substance to be kindled by the heroic fire, the good hero, your Moses or Washington, shall be sent unto them for deliverance. If it be not yet manifest to men whether the times be the one or the other, Amoritish, utterly reprobate, and fit only for anarchy or slavery, or else with seed of nobleness in them, and capable of true glory (though to Him who commissions the hero there be no mystery nor contingency which is not manifest), then will he send one, or peradventure several, who shall be touchstones to that people, to "try them so as by fire," whether there be worth in them or no. And then shall this God-sent man show forth an exemplar to his people, which shall be unto them a test, whether they, having eyes, see, or see not the true glory and right, and whether they have hearts to understand and love it. And then shall he bring nigh deliverances unto them, full of promise and hope, yet mutable, which are God's overtures saying unto them: "Come now and let us reason together. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." Will ye, or will ye not? Thus was Jackson God's interrogatory to this people, saying to them: "Will ye be like him, and be saved? Lo, there! What would a nation of Jacksons be? That may ye be! How righteousness exalteth a people! Shall this judgment and righteousness `be the stability of thy times, O Confederate, and strength of thy salvation?'" And these mighty deliverances at Manassas, Winchester, Port Republic, Chickahominy, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, were they not manifest overtures to us to have the God of Jackson and Lee for our God, and he saved? "Here is the path; walk ye in it."
And what said our people? Many honestly answered, "Yea, Lord, we will"; of whom the larger part walked whither Jackson did, and now lie with him in glory. But another part answered, "Nay," and they live, on such terms as we see, even such as they elected. To them, also, it was plain that Jackson's truth and justice and devotion to duty were the things that made him great and unconquerable. Even the wicked avouched this. Therefore a nation of such like men must needs be unconquerable and free. But they would not be free on such terms. Nay; they preferred rather to walk after their own vanities. Verily they have their reward! Let the contrast appear in two points. Jackson writes thus to his wife:
"You had better not sell your coupons from the" (Confederate) "bonds, as I understand they are paid in gold; but let the Confederacy keep the gold. Citizens should not receive a cent of gold from the government when it is so scarce."
Set over against this the spectacle of almost the many, except the soldiers, gone mad at the enhancement of prices with speculation and extortion, greedy to rake together paper money, mere rags and trash, while such as Jackson were pouring out money and blood in the death grapple for them. Take another: He writes to his wife, Christmas, 1862, in answer to the inquiry whether he could not visit her, and see the child upon which he had never looked, while the army was in winter-quarters:
"It appears to me that it is better for me to remain with my command so long as the war continues, if our ever-gracious Heavenly Father permits. The army suffers immensely by absentees. If all our troops, officers and men, were at their posts, we might, through God's blessing, expect a more speedy termination of the war. The temporal affairs of some are so deranged as to make a strong plea for their returning home for a short time; but our God has greatly blessed me and mine during my absence; and whilst it would be a great comfort to see you, and my darling little daughter, and others in whom I take special interest, yet duty appears to require me to remain with my command. It is most important that those at headquarters set an example by remaining at the post of duty."
Look now from this picture of steadfastness in duty to the multitudes of absentees and of stalwart young men shirking the army by every slippery expedient. So these answered back to God's overture: "Mammon is dearer than manhood, and inglorious ease than liberty." The disclosure was now made that this people could not righteously be free, was not fit for it, and that God was just. [And thus Jackson was removed, and the cause lost. Ed.] Jackson could now go home to his rest. He in the haven, the ebb-tide might begin; he safely housed, the storm of adversity might burst.
The thing to be most painfully pondered then, by this people, is: Whether the fate of Jackson, and such like, is not proof that we have been weighed in the balances and found wanting? How readeth the handwriting on the wall? Not hopefully, in verity of truth, if Truth, which heroes worship, be indeed eternal, and be destined to assert herself ever. Jackson, alas, lies low, under the little hillock in Lexington graveyard, and Lee frets out his great heart-strings at this world-wide vision of falsehood and vile lucre, cruel as sordid, triumphant, unwhipped of justice; while the men who ride prosperously are they who sell themselves to work iniquity, and who say "Evil, be thou my good." Yea, these are the men whom the people delighteth to honor; to whom the churches and ministers of God in this land bow down, proclaiming: "Verily success is divine; and Might it maketh right; and the Power of this world, it shall be God unto us." And while the grave of heroic Truth and virtue has no other memento than the humble stone placed there by a feeble woman's hand, pompous monuments of successful wrong affront the skies with their altitude, "calling evil good and good evil, and putting darkness for light and light for darkness." We fear that when Truth shall re-assert herself it will go ill with this generation.
R.L. Dabney, Discussions, vol. IV, Secular. Stonewall Jackson, pp. 172-175. Sprinkle Publications, 1994 reprint from 1897.
May God see fit to raise up some Stonewall Jacksons today.