An Examination of Biblical Precepts Involved in Issues at Hand |
Romans 1:19ff
A Third Wave of Argument
Chinese Children
Statin Warning
400th Anniversary for the KJV
Time for Islamic State in America
New Kind of Christianity?
The War Against Boys
Desiring Rick Warren
The Afghan Quarterback
Don't Go There
Encouragement, Zechariah 2
US forcing outsourcing
I realize Romans 1 has been "preached to death",
but maybe we can give a little additional insight into it. Reviewing
it for my series of messages in Romans, there were some important
points that came to my attention. (Messages posted at biblicalexaminer.org
and on Sermonaudio.com/providence.)
We are surrounded on every side, media, church, both "Christian"
and non-Christian education facilities, with assurances of the
greatness of man; that is, he is basically good and moral, and
is getting better. We particularly like to think this of our children
and grandchildren. But Paul shows us that those who say and believe
such things are deceived by the enemy of all righteousness, and
have been taken in his snare.
Man has no strength in himself for good and salvation. God's purpose
is not to strengthen the sinner so he can be good enough. Rather,
his purpose is to provide his righteousness through faith in Christ,
which is a major theme of Romans.
The Lord, through the Apostle, is very blunt as Paul honestly
describes how deep into wickedness man has fallen.
Three times in this chapter we read that God gave them up... 1)
v. 24, to uncleanness..., 2) v. 26, to vile affections..., 3)
v. 28, to a reprobate mind...
When a man turns his back on God, God turns his back on man, and
he falls deeper and deeper into his evil thoughts and actions.
1:17. Paul builds upon one of the key passages of the Old Testament:
Habakkuk 2: 4 Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright
in him: but the just shall live by his faith.
Parentheses: Observe how many times Paul quotes from the law and
the prophets in Romans (example: it is written is used 14 times,
and v. 21 below is not introduced by it is written).
3:21, God has provided righteousness without the law, witnessed
by the law and prophets...
Law: Genesis 15:6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted
it to him for righteousness
Prophets: Isaiah 45:24 Surely, shall one say, in the LORD have
I righteousness and strength: even to him shall men come; and
all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed. 25 In the
LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory.
Redemption, forgiveness of sin and justification comes by faith,
not by works. Paul tells us that the law of faith that he is developing
was already established in the law and the prophets. He presented
nothing new, for if he had, even the Christians of his day would
have rejected him.
Note: Those who say the law is no longer valid since Christ must
also dismiss the law of faith which was delivered through Moses.
Moreover, they must dismiss the book of Romans, for Paul built
on the already established law and prophets. Without the law and
prophets, Paul has no message from God.
Faith: The basic root idea is firmness or certainty. (Theological
Wordbook of the Old Testament.) Thus, stability and firm faithfulness
to what is revealed in the Word of God. The apposite of living
by faith is living in unrighteousness.
V. 18, wrath from God upon all unrighteousness, which includes
against both saved and unsaved. Unrighteous... Wrath from heaven
is seen today in the turmoil of natureweather, earthquakes,
volcanos, &c. World wide, man is at war against God, so God's
nature is at war against man, as promised in Deuteronomy 28.
Example: Drudge, 1/27. "Commute from hell in DC: 12 hours
to get home from work..."
Then Paul starts his list of unrighteous actions.
V. 19 gives the justification for God's wrath against all unrighteousness.
Paul will tell us in 2:13-15, that at creation, God wrote his
law in the hearts of all men, and no matter how hard man tries,
he cannot erase it. That is, man was made in the image of God,
and he has a built in basic understanding of God, and his requirements
upon men.
But the natural man willfully suppress the knowledge of God. Some
are more successful at suppressing that knowledge than others.
Only the Spirit can remove that suppression.
V. 20, not only is the knowledge of God written in the heart from
Creation, but God's glory is seen in all his creation.
from the creation. At creation, I believe God took Adam out and
showed him the heavens and explained the gospel to Adam from the
star, Psalms 19.
Some years ago, I went through a series of messages on this very
thing. Romans 10:18 (But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily,
their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the
ends of the world.), as well as Psalms 19:1-14, and many other
scriptures speak of the gospel written in the heavens. Many names
of stars still survive to this day that point to Christ and the
gospel.
The constellation ORION (name means, "He who cometh forth
as light, the brilliant one"), has one of the brightest stars
in the heavens in it. This star is Betelgeuse and has been a major
navigation star. The name mean, "The branch coming."
There are still hundreds of names surviving on all star navigation
maps that point to God the Creator and his Son Jesus Christ.
See The Witness of The Stars, E. W. Bullinger, D.D. 1893. Kregal
reprint, 1974.
V. 20, those who want to understand about the God they see in
creation, will be made to understand. Paul is clear, so they are
without excuse. How will they be made to understand? Ask Paul.
But fallen man does not know about the God of creation because
he does not want to know. He has blanked God out. He works at
suppressed the knowledge of God. Fallen man does not want a God
to whom he must answer. Man wants to be his own god, and he does
not want competition in his godhood.
V. 21, Because when they knew God they glorified him not as God.
Every person since Adam, whether saved or unsaved, knew God, for
that knowledge is "built in". Though fallen man may
happily profess he knows God, he certainly does not what to know
the Biblical God who requires obedience to his laws. Though he
knows God, he suppresses that knowledge, and refuses to glorify
God. Paul presents a sure promise based upon glorifying God:
2:9 Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth
evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; 10 But glory,
honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew
first, and also to the Gentile: 11 For there is no respect of
persons with God.
Many Christians consider salvation not much more than a vaccination
against the results of their sins, as listed in v. 29. Salvation
is presented and understood many times as little more than a fire
escape, which will leave many surprised in that day.
Vv. 18-32 applies to ALL UNGODLINESS AND UNRIGHTEOUSNESS that
remains outside of Proverbs 28:13, 14, I Peter 1:17-19.
Redemption freed us from having to obey our lusts. (Romans 6:11-14)
Redemption frees the believer from the cause not from the results
of sin.
God's wrath is revealed against all ungodliness, and we are seeing
that wrath falling from the heavens in illnesses of all kinds,
as well as natural disasters world wide, as the whole world has
gone after the lusts of the flesh,
Romans 6:12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that
ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
Of course, not all illnesses can be traced directly to sin in
the individual, but all will reap the results of sin.
The physical result of sin is no respecter of person (2:11) as
God renders to every man according to his deeds (2:6) sooner or
later. In Christ, the believer escapes the wrath to come (Romans
5:9), but he is not immune to the results of sin here in this
life.
There are many examples in Scripture of the results of sin, even
in the best of men who allowed their children do as they pleased,
such as Jacob and David.
Vv. 19, 20, no one will be able to plead ignorance in that day
when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, 2:16.
Throughout Scripture, God argues from the saved to the unsaved.
That is, he points out the judgment that awaits his people for
their indifference and paganism, and then he points out how much
worse it will be for those outside of his people. We will not
look, but Hebrews 12 and Psalms 73 are good examples.
V. 21. Even Christians who know better many times fail to glorify
God as God, and be thankful.
History has shown that a society is never destroyed for the wickedness
of the heathen; it is always destroyed because of the worldliness
of God's people. God's people refusing, and failing to glorify
Him as God in every thought, word and deed. Maybe they are not
taught to glorify God; however, there is no excuse, vv. 19, 20.
V. 21, God turns the lawless mind over to its desires, which results
in a completely lawless body. Sodomy reverses the very basic of
God's established order:
Obama gets out of way of gay marriage
By Valerie Richardson
The Washington Times, Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it had withdrawn its legal support for the federal Defense of Marriage Act, stating that the law is unconstitutional and therefore the administration is under no obligation to defend it.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement released Wednesday that President Obama has decided that his administration will cease its defense of DOMA's Section 3, which defines marriage for federal purposes as a legal union between one man and one woman....
Instead of glorifying God as God, man sees himself as god able
to decide for himself apart from God's word. The end result is
that God simply allows man's vain thought to control him. God
withdraws his restraint and man rushes headlong to destruction.
1 Corinthians 5
We see throughout Scripture that God does not give up on man until
man gives up on God.
V. 25, the truth of God has been subtlety changed into a lie for
many reasons. It has taken place so slowly that the change has
been accepted by the vast majority of Christians. The illustration
that we have heard so many times is the frog in the water that
is slowly brought to a boil.
If anyone should know about glorifying God as God and the judgment
of God against all unrighteousness, we should. It is God's people
who must get back to glorifying him as God before we can expect
any kind of return of society to godliness.
The fallen nature is shown in Abraham's call out of pagnism. He
was born only 292 years after the flood. Noah and Abraham were
alive together for 58 years, Shem lived for 502 years after the
flood. The destruction of Sodom happened 400 years after the flood
or 102 years before Shem died. (Speaking to those who professed
to be his people, Christ said, But I say unto you, that it shall
be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city. Luke
10:12 )
In fact, Shem lived for 150 years after Abraham was born and for
30 years after Jacob was given Rebekah for a wife.
All of that to say this. Shem lived through the wrath of God revealed
from heaven in the flood. Though he was still alive as a living
testimony, men still became completely wicked to the point where
God had to call Abraham to walk by faith, and that Sodom had to
be destroyed.
Romans 1:21-28though men know God, they refuse to glorify
him as God, and the result is all manner of wickedness and uncleanness
to where everything they do is against nature, v. 28.
Man wants a God who:
* will allow him to sail to heaven on a bed of ease and a smooth
sea, going with whichever wind blows the hardest.
* will allow him to go to heaven without no real commitment on
his part.
* who does not demand a clean holy life of them.
* who will allow man to live as he feels he should.
Truth into a lie. Anything that is not what it pretends to be
is a lie.
V. 26, for this cause. Man willingly changes the truth of God
into a lie. The result is that God removes the restraints, and
lets man destroy himself. The wicked have no excuse, nor anyone
to blame except themselves:
1.) For even their women... The first sign is that women turn
their backs on men.
I will have to admit that the real men are few and far between
today.
The women are the last to be affected by moral decay, so when
we see corruption among the women, we know that virtue is lost.
I am not that old, but I am shocked to see the downward slide
of women just in my few days on earth.
It seems that man's commitment to sin has caused God to remove
his restraints against sin.
First, from the entertainment industry:
The new MTV series, SKINS, has been the cause of major
protests. From what I have read, it uses 15 year olds to depict
drunkenness, drugs, sodomy, sex and all kinds of debauchery.
The young female star, who portrays a lesbian, justifies the show:
"It's what teens are doing. It's the way teenagers believe, I think, especially you know in certain situations when you come from home lives where your parents don't really support you or really listen to you. That's what most of these kids are going through. And so, um, the drugs and the sex, they're vices, and that's what teenagers have." (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/skins-star-defends-shows-racy-74455)
Obviously, this "star" knows the wrong teens. There
is now great consternation over the fact that homeschooled children
are not following the all too typical debauchery scene, and something
must be done to get them into that environment. See The Third
Wave of homeschool persecution below.
Under parental pressure, Toco Bell, GM, and others are pulling
their adds from the show.
In the mean time, VIACOM, who owns MTV, is raking in a lot of
money, and has increased their CEO's compensation to $84.5 million.
The Parents Television Council is calling for congress to investigate
the show for its child pornography because of its use of 15 year
olds.
But the problem is the parents who pay for MTV to be brought
into their homes, so their children can watch it. The problem
is the pastors who will not preach against that wickedness.
However, there are actually good movies coming out of Hollywood.
Secretariat has just been released on DVD, and is available through
NetFlix. It is an excellent and clean move. If you like horses,
you will enjoy the movie. Sea Biscuit was another excellent movie.
There are other good movies that have come out also, and should
be supported by Christians, eg., Pixar movies. Money talks, and
it calls for more good movies to come forth.
Second, God's restraints have been removed from the education
establishment.
Just under the Drudge headlines about SKINS, was another headline:
"[Female] Teach suspended after 2nd graders Sex Acts
In Class...'"
The article states:
"I think everyone is taken aback over this shocking incident,"
Troy Flint, the spokesman for the Oakland Unified School District,
told CBS 5. "Of course, it is hard to understand how that
could have occurred."
(http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/01/21/oakland-2nd-graders-reportedly-engage-in-sex-acts-teacher-suspended/)
Hard to understand !!!Of course, it is hard for those who have
consistently rejected the God of Scripture and believe that man
is basically good to understand what is taking place. Their faith
in their god is failing them.
WorldNetDaily periodically publishes a lengthily list of female
public school teachers who have seduce their male students. The
list is lengthy and amazing, but is kept hidden from public view
by the media that supports "public education". The "punishment"
given those female teachers is very lax compared to "punishment"
given to males who seduce their female students. Moreover, there
are less male teachers who seduce their female students.
The Drudge report at times has news of what is taking place on
college campuses. I am always shocked to see beautiful young women
given over to complete abandonment to evil of all kinds. Romans
1:28.
Hard to understand... The "sex educated" generation
went to college, and participated in what they were taught, and
now they are the teachers of a new generation, passing on to second
graders what they were taught.
With Christian support, the public schools have continually refused
to retain God in their knowledge, and then they and the parents
stand amazed that things like this take place in their domains.
Parents, even professed Christian parents, and school officials
have become so perverted in their thinking, that they cannot understand
what is causing the evil.
Women used to take pride in their modesty. Now its just the opposite.
They take pride in their nakedness as they reveal as much skin
as possible, and still keep vital parts covered. And that includes
professed Christian women. We like the old B&W movies we can
get through NetFlix. They clearly show the change in the public
dress "code" over the years.
2.) The next step down is men with men. Women are concerned with
women. Men are concerned with men. Women lusting after women.
Men lusting after men. HOW WICKED is this total revolt against
God's order.
V. 27 receiving in themselves---
These who God has allowed to go into the lust that they wanted
to now receive in themselves the recompense of their error. The
payment comes due: Distress, sickness, terrible disease.
Sin is punished by more sin. The reward of good is good; the reward
of evil is more evil. Sin follows sin as the avenger of sin, chapter
2.
Our natural tenancy is to blame God for the results of our sins.
But Paul shows that it is the mercy of God holds back the results
of sin, giving the chance to repent and change. In the end, however,
if man remains hardened in his sin, the natural results will come
to pass, as defined in 24-28. (Jeremiah 4.)
I believe that in our day we can even include the corruption of
our food supply, as men seek to play god over our food supply:
GMO, manufactured food, and many other things. The payment comes
due in the name of hugely expensive medical costs.
Amazingly, the medical profession is beginning to finally sound
the alarm over fluoride
It is now being admitted that vaccines can cause more problems
than they prevent, even death. Many have warned against the deadly
results of vaccines since their introduction. Many of the illnesses
for which vaccines were developed were simply the result of unsanitary
conditions, including, as I understand, polio, which I had as
a very young child.
60 Lab Studies Now Confirm Cancer Link to a Vaccine You Probably
Had as a Child 60 Lab Studies Now Confirm Cancer Link to a Vaccine
You Probably Had as a Child. If you were under 18 between 1953
and 1999, chances are good you were given this live vaccine. Now
60 lab studies confirm its link to lung, brain, bone and lymphatic
cancer (up to 1/2 the 55,000 annual cases of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma).
What will they discover about today's vaccines 40 years later?
(Mercola e-mail news letter, 2/17/11. Subscribe if you do not.)
"It was made at Merk." A video interview of Dr. Maurice
Hilleman, "the developer of Merk's vaccine program. He developed
over three dozen vaccines, mor than any other scientist in history..."
In this video, he admits that the polio vaccine contained cancer
and AIDS viruses, among other viruses. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/18/leading-vaccine-doctor-states-cancer-linked-to-polio-vaccine.aspx
Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2011
"WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Tuesday shielded the nation's vaccine makers from being sued by parents who say their children suffered severe side effects from the drugs."
By David G. Savage
"By a 6-2 vote, the court upheld a federal law that offers compensation to these victims but closes the courthouse door to lawsuits.
"Justice Antonin Scalia said the high court majority agreed with Congress that these side effects were "unavoidable" when a vaccine is given to millions of children. If the drug makers could be sued and forced to pay huge claims for devastating injuries, the vaccine industry could be wiped out, he said...."http://www.latimes.com/health/sc-dc-0223-court-vaccines-20110223,0,2497178.story?track=rss
In addition, there is a downloadable PDF file put out by the
International Medical Council on Vaccination, signed by a great
number of doctors, nurses and scientists identifying some of the
diseases that have documented associations with vaccines, including
Arthritis, Asthma, Autism, Cancer, SIDS, &c, &c. Follow
the money, and you will understand the tremendous pressure to
have your child vaccinated, and to hold the makers unaccountable
for their poisons. See: http://www.naturalnews.com/SpecialReports/VaccinesFullStory/v1/VaccineReport-EN.pdf
V. 28 is the third time they push God aside. Then God gave them
over to a reprobate mind, or debased mind, or to their perverted
way of thinking, which leads to v. 29-31. V. 28 perfectly describes
the "public education system" that has worked hard to
push the Christian God out of the education system. As a result,
even the best humanist trained educators find it hard to understand
what is going on.
V. 28, reprobate that is, "that which does not prove
itself such as it ought." The word is also translated as
castaway, rejected by God.
Reprobate refers to anyone in a school room or in life who cannot
pass the test. It means a failure. Reprobate goes as far to pass
itself off as a success, or good. The result of their war against
God is a debased, perverted mind that cannot even put two and
two together and get a logical answer.
Their faith will not permit them to even consider that the debauchery
in society, religion, politics and the family, is the logical
result of their removal of the Christian God from society.
Not only is the education establishment a good example the perverted
mind, but so are the sodomites, both female and male. They reject
the truth of God that is built into them, yet now consider what
they are doing simply another accepted "live style".
They demand that everyone else also accept them as proper, loving
couples.
Men, both saved and unsaved and for whatever reason, desert God
in order to be their own god, able to determine for themselves
what is right and wrong. We should say, they desert God for the
god of this world, money. God then deserts them, leaving them
to reap what they have sown.
However, we know that there is still mercy available:
Isaiah 9:17 Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young
men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows:
for every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth
speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but
his hand is stretched out still. (Isaiah 5:25, &c.)
In other words, up until the time when there is no breath left
in the sinner, the Lord's mercy is available, if the sinner will
turn to the Lord. Proverbs 28:13, 14.
If the Christians' actions do not stand up to the Christian test
as defined in God's law-word, they are also considered reprobate
(or castaway. 1 Corinthians 9:27), Titus 1:16.
They profess Christ, but their actions fail the test. In other
words, God can give up even his people to a reprobate mind if
they insist on worshiping the creature rather than the Creator.
Lawlessness has the same results whether in the saved or unsaved.
Let me quickly sum up this section:
Vv. 23, 24, people abandon the glory of the incorruptible God,
and replace him with a god more like himself, one who will all
them to pursue their own lusts. Even Christians have changed the
Lord God Almighty into an image made like to himself. Psalms 50:16-23
(V. 21, These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I
will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.)
The results of every man serving his own god fills the news reports,
and are seen all around us even in our small community.
V. 29-31 gives a list of where man goes when he serves his own
god. These things are prevalent even here in our own small, out
of the way community.
Many things are excused under "alternative lifestyle",
and we are told over and over that even Christians are to accept
these evil lifestyles. "We must not be judgmental, for these
people are only doing what is best in their own eyes."
However, God is certainly judgmental, and God does not condone
any kind of alternate lifestyle other than the one he laid out
in his word. He is not such an one as we. The wicked are receiving
or will receive their just reward in themselves.
Israel could not blame God for allowing, even sending, Nebuchadnezzar
to come against her, as he destroyed Jerusalem, and carried captive
those he did not kill:
Jeremiah 2:17 Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that
thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, when he led thee by the way?
19 Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings
shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil
thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and
that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
Hosea 13:9 O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is
thine help.
There is no one to blame today for the terrible mess we are in.
No one except My people which are called by my name who have turned
from God.
There is a news story out of PA of an abortion practitioner who
killed one lady patient, and 7 babies who were born alive. His
excuse was that he wanted to help those whom he grew up among.
He has absolutely no conscience nor remorse.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110123/ap_on_re_us/us_abortion_clinic_investigation_8)
The same can be said of those in vv. 29-31. They know the judgment
of God against those things, because the basic knowledge of God
is built into every man. Though knowing his judgment, they continue
on in their evil.
V. 32 goes further. Those who have turned from God not only do
things worthy of death, but they fail to condemn those who are
doing those things.
This is a very serious incitement against Christian parents who
send their children to the government education system.
V. 19 clearly tells us that those who do these things, including
sending their children to government schools, know that God condemns
these things, but they do not care. Rather, they live their lives
as they please, and find others who will agree with them, and
who live the same way.
Those who honor and serve the creature more than the Creator receive
in themselves the just rewards of their error.
Conclusion
Ecclesiastes 12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
God made man to serve him, with their lives, bodies and children.
When man serves God as is required by God's word, he experiences
joy and happiness. But when man, including Christians, refuses
to serve God and keep his commandments, he wars against the image
of God in himself. God then gives him a troubled spirit, and finally
gives him over to vile affections to do those things that are
against nature itself.
The truth of God is being changed into a lie, even in "Christian"
pulpits and in supposed western Christian countries. And then
those who speak out or stand against the unnatural things that
are taking place in the "religious" community and in
society, face persecution or even prosecution.
There is a pastor in California who stood publically against the
sodomites, and they burned his house down, and law enforcement
offered very little support for him.
V. 28. The unthankful, vain and foolish continue to push God aside.
Many of us were like the ones described in vv. 29-31, but then
Christ changed all of that, 1 Corinthians 6:11.
At the time, there may have been a certain amount of pleasure
in these activities, but then the Spirit of God revealed differently.
Though God gave them up and removed his restraint, man will be
held responsible:
Genesis 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive
with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an
hundred and twenty years.
Christ took our eternal death, not our physical death. He suffered
and died to free us from the present power of sin over us, not
from the present result so we could go on in our own sinful ways.
[Editor's note: This article clearly tells us that the goal of statist education is to break down "intolerance for diverse views and values"; that is, Christian values. It is from a HSLDA fund raising letter.]
A THIRD WAVE OF ARGUMENT that seeks to curtail or crush the
homeschooling movementspecifically, the Christian homeschooling
movementis coming. You need to know about it. You need to
get ready to fight it.
Unlike the first two waves, it is based on an essentially true
factual premise, whereas the first two waves were based on faulty
factual assertions.
The first wave of attack on homeschooling was based on the argument
that homeschooling simply could not deliver a proper program of
academic instruction. This assertion has been decisively proven
false and is no longer believed by any credible person on any
side of the homeschooling debate.
The second wave of attack was based on the all-too-familiar whine,
"What about socialization?" But, because the first generation
of homeschoolers has participated in a huge number of community
activities while being home educated and is now entering the world
of college and the workforce, tens of millions of people now know
people who have been homeschooled. And the vast majority of people
who know a child who has been homeschooled for a number of years
would simply laugh at the idea that there are socialization problems
from this approach to education.
There is a bit of work left to completely eradicate this second
false assertion, but another decade of homeschoolers entering
the workforce and the world of adulthood should pretty much take
care of the need we have for societal acceptance of the truth:
homeschoolers get along well with otherseven those who radically
differ from them.
But there is a third wave coming. And I doubt that many of you
have any idea of the intensity and breadth of the elitist movement
that is taking dead aim at our movement. This time, they are armed
with an argument that is essentially true.
Now when you read their material, they exaggerate the facts, they
invent hypothetical examples that are so far-fetched as to be
laughable; but when you dig down and look honestly at their charges,
they are essentially correct.
Here is their assertion. Christian homeschooling parents are effectively
transmitting values to their children that the elitists believe
are dangerous to the well-being of both these very children and
society as a whole.
What are those values? Homosexuality is a sin. Men should be the
leaders of their families. Jesus is the only way to God. All other
religions are false.
I could go on. But what the elitists really mean is the set of
religious beliefs that they label as fundamentalist Christianity.
The march of a new orthodoxy
Kimberly A. Yuracko, a professor from the prestigious Northwestern
University School of Law, wrote an article for the California
Law Review claiming that there are legal and constitutional limits
on the ability of homeschooling parents "to teach their children
idiosyncratic and illiberal beliefs and values." She contends
that there must be new legal approaches to mandate government
control of the educational choices for those children whose "parents
want to teach against the enlightenment."1 In the May 2010
edition of the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Catherine
Ross, a law professor from George Washington Law School, published
a broadside aimed at the hundreds of thousands of families homeschooling
represents. Her article was entitled "Fundamentalist Challenges
to Core Democratic Values: Exit and Homeschooling."
Listen to how she begins:
This Essay explores the choice many traditionalist Christian parents
(both fundamentalist and evangelical) make to leave public schools
in order to teach their children at home, thus in most instances
escaping meaningful oversight. I am not primarily concerned here
with the quality of academic achievement in the core curricular
areas among homeschoolers, which has been the subject of much
heated debate. Instead, my comments focus on civic education in
the broadest sense, which I define primarily as exposure to the
constitutional norm of tolerance. I shall argue that the growing
reliance on home-schooling comes into direct conflict with assuring
that children are exposed to such constitutional values.2
Listen to her again, later in the same article:
Many liberal political theorists argue, however, that there are
limits to tolerance. In order for the norm of tolerance to survive
across generations, society need not and should not tolerate the
inculcation of absolutist views that undermine toleration of difference.
Respect for difference should not be confused with approval for
approaches that would splinter us into countless warring groups.
Hence an argument that tolerance for diverse views and values
is a foundational principle does not conflict with the notion
that the state can and should limit the ability of intolerant
homeschoolers to inculcate hostility to difference in their childrenat
least during the portion of the day they claim to devote to satisfying
the compulsory schooling requirement.3
Again, Professor Ross continues:
If a parent subscribes to an absolutist belief system premised
on the notion that it was handed down by a creator, that it (like
the Ten Commandments) is etched in stone and that all other systems
are wrong, the essential lessons of a civic education (i.e., tolerance
and mutual respect) often seem deeply challenging and suspect.
If the core principle in a parent's belief system is that there
is only one immutable truth that cannot be questioned, many educational
topics will be off limits. Such "private truths" have
no place in the public arena, including the public schools.4
And, finally, Professor Ross tells us what she thinks should be
done about us, in addition to imposing testing requirements and
all manner of academic regulation
I propose that we add to the civics education goals of the state,
including lessons on mutual respect for diverse populations and
viewpoints as a mandatory curricular requirement. As I observed
above, some homeschoolers doubtless are committed to diversity,
and this requirement would not conflict with their educational
agenda, but this is not the group that concerns me. Imposing curricular
requirements about respect for diverse viewpoints will be seen
as undermining the most authoritarian conservative homeschoolersthose
who believe in an absolute truth which forms the basis of the
education they provide their children. Unfortunately, the unavoidable
counterpart of a belief in absolute truth is that other belief
systems are mistaken at best, and at worst, evil.5
Professors Yuracko and Ross are far from alone in urging these
positions. Professor Martha Albertson Fineman, from the Emory
University School of Law, wrote in 2009 of her fear of parents
with "oppressive, hierarchical belief systems."6 She
says,
Indeed, the long-term consequences for the child being home schooled
or sent to a private school cannot be overstated. The total absence
of regulation over what and how children are taught leaves the
child vulnerable to gaining a sub-par or non-existent education
from which they may never recover. Moreover, the risk that parents
or private schools unfairly impose hierarchical or oppressive
beliefs on their children is magnified by the absence of state
oversight or the application of any particular educational standards.7
So what does she recommend should be done about all of us? Private
education should be banned. All of it. Private schools, religious
schools, homeschools.
. . . [T]he more appropriate suggestion for our current educational
dilemma is that public education should be mandatory and universal.
Parental expressive interest could supplement but never supplant
the public institutions where the basic and fundamental lesson
[not in the "three Rs"] would be taught and experienced
by all American children: we must struggle together to define
ourselves both as a collective and as individuals.8
Fineman's comments come from a book entitled What Is Right for
Children? The Competing Paradigms of Religion and Human Rights.
The closer I get to my LLM (master of laws) degree in public international
law from the University of London, where I have focused on human
rights law, the more I agree with the subtitle of Fineman's bookwith
one small caveat.
But first, one needs to know how internationalists define human
rights. To the United Nations crowd, human rights contain five
categories of rights: economic, social, cultural, political, and
civil rights. The civil and political rights are closely parallel
to the American Bill of Rights. But economic, social, and cultural
rights mandate global socialism and religious syncretism.
Thus, when one pulls open the cover and really looks at the worldview
of UN theories of human rights, it is beyond debate that it is
incompatible with faithful, biblical Christianity.
My University of London textbook cited Religious Liberty and International
Law in Europe by Malcolm Evans in regard to the idea of adopting
an international convention on religious liberty. Evans describes
a very strange notion of liberty:
"If this means anything, it means that the freedom of religion
does not include the right to adhere to a religion which is intolerant
of the beliefs of others. On this view, Human Rights' has
itself become a `religion or belief' which is itself as intolerant
of other forms of value systems which may stand in opposition
to its own central tenets as any of those it seeks to address."9
Make no mistake about it. This is the march of a new orthodoxy.
It is a competing religion. You are one of its adherents if you
say that all roads lead to God. If you refuse to subscribe to
this article of faith, your rights won't be protected; you will
be persecuted.
Mandatory tolerance
Article 29 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child (CRC) affirmatively mandates certain things that must be
taught to all children. This mandate applies to public schools,
private schools, homeschools, Sunday schools, parents who are
just talking to their kids at dinner, and even the content of
television programs.
Here is one clause from Article 29: "The preparation of the
child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of
understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship
among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons
of indigenous origin . . . ."10
Now you understand what they mean to accomplish with mandatory
teaching of tolerance. They aim to stop you from teaching your
own children that Jesus is the only way to God.
The American Bar Association (ABA) recognized all of this years
ago in a book it published promoting the ratification of the Convention
on the Rights of the Child. According to the ABA, a church school
that taught that other worldviews are unacceptable and that Jesus
is the only way to God would be teaching lessons that "fly
in the face" of Article 29 of the CRC.11
The human rights movement promotes the notion that a child's right
to an educationspecifically a tolerant education of the
sort we see outlined in Article 29 and explained by professors
Evans, Yuracko, Ross, and Finemandeclares that the child's
interests flow from the state. Thus, the state stands superior
to the parent.
Here is what Yuracko says on this very point:
This argument about the constitutionally mandated minimum education
that states must require of homeschools is critically important
for two reasons. Conceptually, it rejects the dominant HSLDA view
that parents possess absolute control over their children's education.
It highlights the legal distinctness of parents and children and
emphasizes that parental control over children's basic education
flows from the state (rather than vice versa). States delegate
power over children's basic education to parents, and the delegation
itself is necessarily subject to constitutional constraints.12
Let me quote that again. "States delegate power over children
to parentsnot vice versa."
The motive is to stop Christianity. The theory that advances their
motive is that the state comes first in a child's life. And I
am proud that at least one of these professors recognizes that
HSLDA is their chief opponent.
These advocates of children's rights love to wrap themselves in
the mantle of international human rights. But do their radical
theories about parents, children, and education comport with the
recognized principles of human rights?
A prior right
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted in 1948
by the UN General Assembly, is considered the grand foundation
of all international human rights documents. Its adoption was
not an act of international law, but an aspirational document
pointing nations to public policy positions that were believed
to protect human rights. Article 26 contains this provision:
"Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education
that shall be given to their children."13
It is an article of faith among international human rights advocates
that the launch of the human rights movement was a global response
to the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Hitler claimed a prior right
to choose the education and philosophy for children of his Reich.
The UDHR repudiates this Nazi position and solidly places the
choice of education first with the parent. Our rights are prior
to any government claims over our children.
This philosophy was repeated in a document that is considered
a component of the International Bill of Human Rightsthe
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
It says in Article 13:
The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect
for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians
to choose for their children schools, other than those established
by the public authorities, which conform to such minimum educational
standards as may be laid down or approved by the State and to
ensure the religious and moral education of their children in
conformity with their own convictions.14
Parents get to choose the religious and moral education of their
children in conformity with their own convictions. Even fundamentalist
Christians are included in this declaration.
Crushing dissent
Listen to what one sensible international law professor says about
the theories of these radicals of human rights. Professor Cole
Durham describes various state approaches to religious liberty.
Going from one extreme to the other, he lists:
Absolute theocracies (for example, stereotypical Islamic
fundamentalist regimes)
States with established churches (Great Britain is one
example: "maintains an established church, but guarantees
equal treatment for all other religious beliefs"15)
States with endorsed churches (countries where a particular
church is recognized as holding a special place in the culture
and history, such as Spain)
Cooperationist regimes (Germany today, where the government
cooperates with and even funds religious institutions, but does
not single any out for special recognition)
Accommodationist states (some in U.S. theory; maintain
"a posture of benevolent neutrality toward religion"16)
Separationist states ("rigid separation of church
and state"17 for instance, Stalinist regimes)
"As state influence becomes more pervasive and regulatory
burdens expand, refusal to exempt or accommodate shades into hostility,"
notes Durham.18 Of the separationist states, the author says:
More extreme forms of separationism make stronger attempts to
cordon off religion from public life. One form this can take is
through tightening the state monopoly on certain forms of educational
or social services. In the educational realm, the state can ban
home schooling altogether, can proscribe private schools, or can
submit either of the foregoing to such extensive accreditation
requirements that it is virtually impossible for independent religious
education to function.19
The "more extreme forms" of the separationist (or Stalinist)
approach to religious freedom want to ban or heavily regulate
home-schooling and private religious schools. We have American
law professorslots of themadvocating for the extreme
forms of Stalinist-style separationism as it is applied to private
and home education.
These people do not embrace a true theory of human rights any
more than the Soviet Union and Communist China. Both regimes ratify
human rights treaties and then behave as they please, crushing
those whose dissent they cannot tolerate.
Professors Ross, Yuracko, and Fineman may think that our views
fly in the face of the requirements of Article 29 of the CRC.
But their views fly in the face of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, and the Constitution of the United States of America.
It will not be surprising to any of you to learn that the CRC
is the first international human rights document dealing with
parents and children that fails to embrace the prior right of
parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children.
The "It takes a village to raise a child" crowd believe
that all children are children of the village. Any parental decision-making
authority regarding education is a mere delegation of a core power
from the government, and all prior claims over the development
of the hearts and minds of children reside with the village and
not with the family.
Have I gotten your attention?
We should not think this is without consequence, that it is just
a bunch of crazy feminist law professors running amuck.
Twenty years ago, the legal elites started chanting for the recognition
of same-sex marriage. They are using the legal system to accomplish
this and today they are winning, and proponents of traditional
marriage are deeply on the defensive.
If we do not take these threats seriously, it means we have neither
common sense nor spiritual perception.
In September, HSLDA sponsored its annual conference for state
homeschooling leaders. We invited a number of special speakersbut
we didn't give them a topic and we didn't have an announced theme
for the conference. But there was a themeit was just not
arranged by us.
Erwin Lutzer felt compelled by God to warn us that trouble is
coming if we name the name of Christ. Phil Tuttle warned us: Trouble
is coming if we name the name of Christ. Mike Smith related to
us a warning he heard in a message by John MacArthur: America
is headed for troubleespecially for those who name the name
of Christ.
And then I delivered the speech on which this article is based.
The other people were prompted by God to give a warning that trouble
was coming for Christians and for homeschoolers in particular.
But I gave the audience the names of some of the wannabe persecutors,
cited their articles, revealed their plans, explained their theories,
and read some of their arguments.
You now know a great deal about those who intend to bring trouble
to the homeschooling movement because many of us love Jesus and
teach our children that He is the only way to God. If we do not
take them seriously, we are fools.
But please let me be clear, all homeschoolersregardless
of their religious affiliationwill be impacted by the theories
of Fineman et al. They have taken dead aim at the broad concept
of parental rights, although their foremost objection is to the
philosophical content of Christian education.
The preparation
So, what do we do? There are three points I would like to suggest
in response to these incredibly dangerous threats.
Fortify The Team
First, we must fortify the team and structures that won the initial
battles for homeschooling freedom.
The law review articles I have quoted from describe homeschooling's
success as a political miracle. And it is! We took on the biggest
educational lobbying group in the United Statesthe National
Education Associationand we won. Now I give God all the
glory for this, but it behooves me to mention what strategies
won the battle. We need to recognize the methods and instrumentalities
that were used by God to bring about our initial victory.
This is not the time to be abandoning state homeschooling organizations.
We all know that God used and blessed state organizations, especially
through their annual conventions, to build, inform, motivate,
and turn out the team to win battles in state after state. Local
support groups that pass along critical information about legal
and political threats are also absolutely essential to our future
defense, as they were in the past.
This is not a time to be fat and happy. It is the time to get
fit and ready for battle. Strong state and local organizations
are absolutely essential to the fight that is coming from the
village people like Ross, Fineman, Yuracko, Evans, Clinton, Boxer,
and Obama.
HSLDA will continue to play a key role in this battle as well.
We have been litigating and lobbying at all levels since 1983.
Home School Legal Defense Association is mentioned by name in
108 law review articles. These law review articles reflect the
begrudging respect that our philosophical opponents give to our
efforts.
And we need you to be a part of the teamwith HSLDA, state
organizations, and local groups. Our team needs to get fit and
ready to inform, encourage, motivate, and lead our people into
the political and legal battle to defend our freedom to communicate
our faith to our children.
The victory will depend on our faithfulness to God. "If my
people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and
pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will
I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their
land" (II Chronicles 7:14, New International Version).
Pass the Parental Rights Amendment
The second response to the academic elitism that threatens homeschooling
is this: We must defeat the CRC and pass the Parental Rights Amendment.
I saw a comment on Facebook recently: "Those who say that
something can't be done should not interrupt those who are doing
it."
I agree with what Pastor Lutzer said at our recent conference.
His sense is that there is some time remaining before the full
impact of the judgment. And as God did so often in the Old Testament,
when one generation responded correctly, He delayed the impending
judgment.
We need to stand up for a permanent protection for parental rights.
In another 20 years, it will be too late.
Never Give Up
Finally, God is our protector and we must never, ever, ever give
up. Let me share with you my favorite passage about those who
must face injustice.
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they
should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain
town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about
men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him
with the plea, Grant me justice against my adversary.' For
some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, Even
though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow
keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that
she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'"
And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says.
And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who
cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? tell
you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However,
when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
(Luke 18:1-8, NIV)
When should we pray? Always! When should we give up? Never.
This is one spot in which I may disagree with some of those who
share my view that persecution is coming. They say we have already
lost the culture war. I think I know what is meant and I agree
to a point. But, there is a deeper truth and it is a truth that
homeschoolers have livedespecially those of you who have
been at this a while.
Homeschoolers have suffered direct persecution before in this
country. We have been prosecuted. We have been threatened. We
have been ostracized. We have been criticized by our families.
We have as much as or more experience with direct persecution
than any other segment of the American Christian population.
Homeschoolers need to show the Body of Christ how to respond to
the days that are coming.
Persecution is on its way. It is in the law reviews today. It
will be in the courtrooms tomorrow. They are going to try to win.
They are going to throw everything at us they can.
The attitude we need is like that displayed by Gandalf in a memorable
scene in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Facing his mortal enemy
who is the very embodiment of evil, Gandalf shouts with unbending
resolution, "You shall not pass!"
Truth is on our side. Freedom is on our side. The American Constitution
is on our side. And all of that matters, so long as we remain
faithfully on God's side. Stand up for Jesus, and He will never
leave us or forsake us.
The persistent widow got justice. We have seen this parable proven
true in our lives alreadyhomeschooling went from the shadows
to clear legal protection. Our enemies say that this was a political
miracle and they are right. And it is a miracle that God can work
again! We can lead the rest of the believers in America not in
a path of mere resistance, but in a confident march to victory,
not because we are huge in numbers or mighty in our own strength.
We are assured of victory because "greater is he that is
in [us], than he that is in the world" (I John 4:4, King
James Version).
Endnotes
1 Kimberly A. Yuracko, "Education Off the Grid: Constitutional
Constraints on Homeschooling," California Law Review 96 (February
2008): 183.
2 Catherine Ross, "Fundamentalist Challenges to Core Democratic
Values: Exit and Homeschooling," William and Mary Bill of
Rights Journal 18 (May 2010): 991.
3 Ibid., 1005.
4 Ibid., 1006.
5 Ibid., 1008.
6 Martha Albertson Fineman, "Taking Children's Interests
Seriously," in What is Right for Children? The Competing
Paradigms of Religion and Human Rights, ed. Martha Albertson Fineman
and Karen Worthington, 229-37 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing
Company, 2009), 233.
7 Ibid., 235.
8 Ibid., 237.
9 Malcolm D. Evans, Religious Liberty and International taw in
Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 260.
10 UN General Assembly, Convention on the Rights of the Child,
1989, http://www2 .ohchrorg/english/law/crc.htm.
/ / Susan H. Bitensky, "Educating the Child for a Productive
Life: Articles 28 and 29," in Children's Rights in America:
U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child Compared with United
States Law, ed. Cynthia Price Cohen and Howard A. Davidson, 167-96
(NP: American Bar Association, 1990), 182.
12 Yuracko, "Education Off the Grid," 132.
/.3 UN General Assembly, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
1948, http://www.un.org/ en/documents/udhr/.
14 UN General Assembly, Inter-
national Covenant on Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights, 1966, http://www2.ohchr.org/englishl
law/cescr.htm.
15 Cole Durham, "Perspectives on Religious Liberty: A Comparative
Framework," in International Human Rights in Context: Law,
Politics, Morals, ed. Henry J. Steiner, Philip Alston, and Ryan
Goodman, 3rd ed., 570--74 ((New York: Oxford University Press,
2008), 572.
16 Ibid., 573.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
I came across the following article at the Wall Street Journal
online the other day:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html
Lots and lots of things in this article that, as parents ourselves,
we definitely do not agree with or condone, much of which has
to do with some serious differences between Asian and Western
culture, and some of which doesn't. That being said, there are
some serious nuggets of wisdom and truth in this article. I think,
in a nutshell, the article is saying "Don't coddle your children.
Demand excellence from them and they will respond and be better
for it." If more parents would raise their children from
a position of "strength" and not "fragility",
America most likely wouldn't be such the "victim" society
that it is today. A lot of shrinks would also probably be out
of business:) I think the below paragraph is the most important
one in the whole article, although the whole article is definitely
worth reading.
"First, I've noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious
about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their
children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly
try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding
a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words,
Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches.
Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and
as a result they behave very differently."
Joshua Flournoy (ashridgecabins@yahoo.com. Joshua is our son-in-law,
with 8 children, all being homeschooled. Katie, their 12 year
old second child, has been making all their girls' clothes for
the lase couple of years. Parents, it will be worth your time
to read the article.)
Cholesterol-lowering pills taken by millions of Britons may
cause memory loss and depression, researchers warn.
They say not enough is known about the level of harm posed by
statins, prescribed to prevent heart disease and strokes.
Leading doctors say that the drugs should only be taken by patients
for whom the benefits of the drug outweigh any potential risks.
They warn statins should only be prescribed to those with heart
disease, or who have suffered the condition in the past. Researchers
warn that unless a patient is at high risk of suffering a heart
attack or stroke, statins may cause more harm than good.
The study, published in the Cochrane Library, which reviews drug
trials, also points out that the vast majority of trials have
been carried out by drugs companies who may play-down any possible
risks. Some patients taking statins have suffered from short-term
memory loss, depression and mood swings.
Previous studies have also linked the medication to a greater
risk of liver dysfunction, acute kidney failure, cataracts and
muscle damage known as myopathy. [Ed note: My wife suffered myopathy
from statins.]
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1348435/Statins-cause-loss-memory-depression.html#ixzz1Bo1QiX8N
We recognize this important milestone with a new booklet: English
Bible Translations: By What Standard? by Pastor William 0. Einwechter.
Write us for the free quarterly offer using the coupon on the
free offer page.
The year 2011 marks the 400th anniversary of one of the most important
events in the history of the English-speaking church. In 1611,
the King James Version (or more properly, the Authorized Version)
of the English Bible was first published. No other version of
the Bible in English, nor all the versions combined, has ever
equaledor even approachedthe influence, acceptance,
and authority of the King James Version (KJV) among English-speaking
peoples. The overall impact of the KJV during its 350-year reign
as the standard English Bible is incalculable. As an accurate,
authoritative translation of the original Hebrew and Greek texts
of the Word of God, it has guided English churches into God's
truth, taught us the whole counsel of God, and stood as a bulwark
against false teachers and their heresies. As a magnificent work
of English prose, its majestic language has shaped the way we
worship God in our confessions of faith, our prayers, our psalms
and hymns, our observance of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and
our preaching. As a non-sectarian version, it established itself
as the English Bible of all branches of the church in England
and America. The KJV's unique place in the history of the English-speaking
church makes the 400th anniversary of its publication a time of
reflection on the excellencies of this English Bible and for giving
thanks to God for His providence in guiding the men who produced
this beloved English version of Holy Scripture.
The history behind the KJV displays the providence of God. William
Tyndale was the first to translate the New Testament into English
directly from the original Greek, and it was printed in 1525.
Before his martyrdom, Tyndale made careful revisions to his translation
of the New Testament and translated large portions of the Old
Testament as well: the Five Books of Moses, Joshua to 2 Chronicles,
and the book of Jonah. The quality of Tyndale's translation was
simply astonishing, and his work left an indelible mark on the
English Bible. Some estimate that over eighty percent of Tyndale's
translation was carried over into the text of the KJV. Through
William Tyndale, God laid the foundation of the English Bible,
and the men who produced the KJV were wise enough to see this.
Taking up where Tyndale left off, Miles Coverdale published the
first complete English Bible in 1535. John Rodgers, to whom Tyndale
turned over his unpublished portions of the Old Testament, completed
Tyndale's translation of the Old Testament. Using Tyndale's final
revision of the New Testament (1535), Rogers published this edition
of Tyndale's work under the name of "Thomas Matthew"
in 1535. In 1560, the refugees from Bloody Mary who had gone to
Calvin's Geneva produced the celebrated "Geneva Bible."
This version was unique in that it contained extensive marginal
notes that sought to explain the meaning of the Biblical text
for its readers. This version, particularly the New Testament,
closely followed Tyndale's translation, except where the translators
sought to improve the rendering of the original Greek or Hebrew.
This was an excellent version and quickly became the most popular
English Bible. In 1568, in response to the popularity of this
version and its Calvinistic explanatory notes, the bishops of
the Church of England revised the Great Bible (1539) in an attempt
to displace the Geneva Bible. However, the quality of the translation
of the "Bishops' Bible" and the style of its language
was such that it did not challenge the popularity of the Geneva
Bible, even though it was the official Bible of the Church of
England. Therefore, at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
there were two English Bibles in use: the Bishops' Bible of the
Anglicans and the Geneva Bible of the Puritans.
Because of the poor quality of the Bishops' Bible (considered
by the Puritans to be "a most corrupted translation"),
and the steadfast opposition of King James I and many of the bishops
to the Geneva Bible, John Reynolds suggested to the king, at a
conference meeting at Hampton Court in January 1604, that a new
translation be prepared under royal sanction that would serve
as the common standard of the English church. In the providence
of God, King James wholly embraced the idea and gave his full
support to the project. Within six months, a general plan for
the project and a list of 54 translators had been drawn up. The
men chosen were among the most "learned men" in England,
known for their scholarship, piety, and Christian faith. These
men were divided into six groups; each group was assigned a specific
portion of Scripture. To guide their labors and bring harmony
to their work, fifteen specific rules were established. After
the work of each group was completed, six members of the translation
team were appointed to make a final revision of the text. The
new version came from the press of R. Barker in 1611. This new
English Bible became known as the "Authorised Version,"
although there is no record of its official authorization by King
James or the bishops of the Church of England.
In the course of time, this "Authorised Version" displaced
all other English versions because of its own intrinsic merits.
It incorporated the best of the English versions that preceded
itparticularly the translation work of William Tyndale and
the Geneva Bible. It was a faithful formal equivalent translation
of the providentially preserved original Hebrew and Greek texts
of Scripture. It was orthodox yet devoid of interpretive notes
(and thus of no one theological perspective). Its language was
at once direct, memorable, beautiful, lyrical, and powerful. There
has never been an English Bible like the "Authorised Version."
Even today, four hundred years after its publication, it justly
can claim to be the standard Bible of the English-speaking people.
On its 400th anniversary, let us thank God for giving to us His
Holy Word in such a remarkable and faithful translation. (From
Ministries Update - Spring, February 2011.)
Note: Pastor Einwechter's booklet is the easiest to read and most
scholarly defenses of the KJV that we have encountered. Contact
Chapel Library for a free copy of his 52 page booklet. Chapel@mountzion.org,
www.mountzion.org. If you are not on Mt. Zion's mailing list,
you need to be: Contact Chapel Library, 2603 W. Wright St, Pensacola,
FL 32505. 850.438.6666.
Newsmax
February 20, 2011
An extremist Muslim cleric is planning a March rally at the White
House in hopes of sparking a revolution that would turn the United
States into an Islamic state. According to the Daily Mail newspaper,
Anjem Choudary told a reporter that "The event is a rally,
a call for the Sharia, a call for the Muslims to rise up and -establish
the Islamic state in America."
Sharia is Islamic law, and Choudary says he expects the March
3 rally to draw thousands of supporters. The event will be sponsored
by the New York-based extremist group Islamic Thinkers.
Choudary is a British cleric who said insisted that one day "the
flag of Islam will fly over the White House" and that Americans
"are the biggest criminals in the world today."
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Anjem-Choudary-muslim-rally/2011/02/20/id/386783?s=al&promo_code=BB63-1
Radicals bringing campaign for Shariah to White House
Islam is the solution and
the perfect system that
needs to be implemented'
WorldNetDaily February 25, 2011
WASHINGTON Three British Islamic activists are planning
a pro-Shariah law rally in front of the White House next week,
arguing that it is the solution for all of America's problems.
The March called Shariah-4-America will call on American Muslims
to advocate Shariah law, and for Americans to run the country's
business by Shariah.
The Muslim clerics are Anjem Choudary, Abu Izzadeen and Sayful
Islam, all of whom have been associated with Sheikh Omar Bakri
Muhammad's group al-Muhajidoun.
Sayful Islam says the message is clear: The American dream is
a farce...
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=267785
Note that Detroit is already a Muslim city, supporting Shariah
law.
Editor's note: Based upon their corrupted and false idea of the
future, the followers of Christ have REFUSED to work to make the
United States a Christian nation, but the followers of Muhammad
are investing all they have to do what Christians are commanded
to domake disciples of all nations, including the US. Accordingly,
God could easily turn this anti-Christian nation into a Islamic
State. Christians wake up. Christians have allowed their children
to be trained up as followers of Muhammad in the "public"
schools, so they cannot complain about this "Extremist Cleric"
calling for a Islamic State in America. Christians are supporting
an Islamic state through the education system.
By Thomas Williamson
The Emergent Church is one of the most significant theological
trends and movements in modern day America, and Brian McLaren
is the leading spokesman and theologian for this movement.
Time Magazine has identified McLaren as one of the America's top
25 evangelicals. He is a prolific author of many books. His latest
book, "A New Kind of Christianity - 10 Questions That Are
Transforming the Faith" was just published this yeat (2010).
This book calls for a housecleaning of Christian traditions and
a re-interpretation of the Christian faith, on a level with the
massive improvements over medieval Catholicism accomplished by
Martin Luther during the Reformation of the 16th Century.
McLaren is a brilliant and innovative thinker who has succeeded
in restating and recasting the Christian message in a manner that
many will find more appealing than the traditional fundamentalist
orthodoxy of today. He has prepared a stew of savory meat, such
as modern folk love. But there is "death in the pot,"
and this will be shown by quoting McLaren's own words.
Reliance on Liberal Theologians
On page 46 McLaren gives a long list of Catholic and Protestant
theologians from which he has learned his different approach to
the Bible. I do not recognize some of the names, but those that
I do recognize are hardly reassuring. Gustavo Gutierrez is a Roman
Catholic Marxist "Liberation theologian" on the faculty
of Notre Dame University.
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan are associated with the infamous
"Jesus Seminar" which claims to have determined that
most of the recorded sayings of Jesus in the Gospels are not authentic.
Crossan is especially notorious for saying that the dead body
of Jesus may have been torn to pieces by wild dogs.
James Cone, spiritual mentor to President Obama's former pastor
Jeremiah Wright, has written, "Black theology refuses to
accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the
black community. If God is not for us and against white people.
then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of
black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black
community."
Elsewhere in the book, McLaren refers favorably to Hans Kung,
a liberal Catholic theologian who rejects the basic fundamentals
of the faith as defined by Protestants and Catholics. Can reliance
on such questionable sources produce sound, scriptural theology?
Book of Genesis is Myth, Not to be Taken Literally
McLaren rejects the Biblical teaching concerning the Fall of Man
and original sin. To McLaren, the story of the Fall is merely
a metaphor for the transition of primitive man from hunter-gatherers
to a society of farmers.
On page 48, McLaren in his discussion of Genesis says, "It
is patently obvious to me that these stories aren't intended to
be taken literally, although it didn't used to be so obvious,
and I know it won't be so now for some of my readers. It is also
powerfully clear to me that these nonliteral stories are still
to be taken seriously and mined for their rich meaning, because
they distill time-tested, multilayered for their rich meaning,
because they distill time-tested, multilayered wisdom - through
deep mythic language - about how our world came to be what it
has become." It is not clear to this reviewer whether McLaren
here is rejecting the literal truth of Genesis 1-11, or the entire
book of Genesis, or perhaps also the Exodus account.
It is clear, however, that McLaren believes in evolution. On page
47, describing the creation, he says, "Gradually, plant life
emerges, then animal life, then human life. And none of it is
perfect in the Greco-Roman sense. Instead, all of it is good and
wonderful, constantly evolving into something even better and
more wouderful."
On page 267 he says, "Evolution fits beautifully in the good
world of Elohim," and on page 273 he affirms that "If
we believe that the same God who created an evolving universe
is revealed in an evolving Bible, we can derive some fascinating
insights from contemporary studies of genetics. Today's chickens,
it turns out, still have the genetic information in their DNA
that was used to produce long tails, scales, and teeth in their
ancestors the dinosaurs. During embryonic development, some of
these primitive dinosaur characteristics still manifest themselves
in chickens. (Human embryos similarly have stages where they sport
gills and tails, so it is said that our ontogeny recapitulates
our phylogeny)." (It is the understanding of this reviewer
that this unscientific principle of "ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny" is based on falsified drawings of human embryos
by an evolutionist named Haeckel).
Historicity of Noah's Flood Rejected
McLaren is concerned by the possibility that the account of Noah's
Flood, which describes God's judgment of the human race, might
be used by fundamentalists to justify genocide today (although
he does not document any such use of the Noah account by anyone).
Just in case anyone should ever misuse the Noah story at any point
in the future, McLaren, seeking to be on the safe side, rejects
the story as non-historical:
"A god who mandates an intentional supernatural disaster
leading to unparalleled genocide is hardly worthy of belief, much
less worship. How can you ask your children - or nonchurch colleagues
or neighbors - to honor a deity so uncreative, overreactive, and
utterly capricious regarding life? To make matters worse, the
global holocaust strategy didn't even work. Soon the `good guy'
Noah gets drunk, and soon after that his sons are up to no good,
and soon after that we're right back to antediluvian violence
and crime levels. Genocide, it turns out, doesn't really solve
anything in Genesis, even if a character named `God' does it."
(Page 109)
McLaren makes no attempt to harmonize his rejection of the Noah
account with Jesus' acceptance of the historicity of that account
(Luke 17:27).
Historicity of Book of Job Rejected
McLaren states that we should not use the Bible as a divinely
inspired constitution, but as a library that presents various,
differing views about God. In defense of this proposition, he
states, correctly, that the book of Job is a dialogue of different
thinkers who present varying and contradictory views about the
basic nature of God.
According to McLaren, we should read the entire Bible the way
we read the book of Job. Like any public library today, the Bible
contains different and contrary views about what God is like.
All these views cannot he correct, so it is up to us to sort it
all out and figure out which portions of the Bible have represented
God correctly.
McLaren is wrong about this. Job 42:7-8 gives us the key for understanding
the book of Job. We are told here that Job has represented God
faithfully and correctly, while the other speakers (Eliphaz, Bildad,
Zophar and Elihu) are a bunch of knuckleheads who are guilty of
making God look bad by the way they have misrepresented Him.
There is no such principle of interpretation given for the Bible
as a whole. Everything in the Bible (with the exception of accurately-recorded
speeches by bad guys like the Devil, Pharaoh, Goliath, etc.) is
represented to be the word of the Lord and is to be taken as such.
After proposing the book of Job as the authority that will inform
our revolutionary new understanding of the entire Bible, McLaren
weakens his own case on pages 94-95 by rejecting the authority
and historicity of the book of Job: "We've mentioned the
many human voices in the text of Job. One more question needs
to be asked. What about God's voice, which we encounter in the
introduction, striking rather strange bargains with the Satan,
and at the end, flinging questions as a machine gun spits out
shells? Can we trust God's voice to be God's voice? Or is even
God' a character in the story too, not the actual God necessarily,
but the imagined God, the author's best sense of God, the fictional
character playing God for the sake of this dramatic work of art?
This is a powerful and perhaps terrifying question....
"The real Job (if there was one - my sense is that the Job
story is a kind of archetypal theological opera and has no intention
of portraying what we would call a historical event) is represented
in the text by a word, a name - that's not the real Job."
Book of Revelation Does Not Predict the Future
McLaren sees the book of Revelation as presenting Jesus not as
a vengeful conqueror, but as a messenger of peace, forgiveness
and reconciliation. Here again, McLaren (p. 123) calls into the
question the divine authority of Revelation, stating that it has
no predictive value about the future (contrary to John's statement
in Revelation 1:1 that this book is about things -which must shortly
come to pass. )
"Clearly, this is a book of Jewish apocalyptic literature,
which in turn is part of a larger genre known as the literature
of the oppressed. These kinds of literature worked in the First
Century in ways similar to the way some science fiction works
for us today. For example, when we read or watch `Planet of the
Apes,' Star Trek,' `The Matrix,' or `Wall-E,' we don't think the
writers and filmmakers are trying to predict the future. No, we
understand they are really talking about the present, and they
are doing so in hopes of changing the future."
What difference does it make whether or not McLaren's understanding
of the message of Revelation is correct, when he has demoted that
book to the level of a "Star Trek" episode, as far as
its divine authority is concerned?
We and God Create the Future Together
As it turns out, God cannot predict the future because He does
not yet know how things will turn out, according to McLaren: "We
could borrow from Hans Kung and call it an improvisational
theology.' We could also call it participatory. In a participatory
eschatology, when we ask, What does the future hold?' the
answer begins, That depends. It depends on you and me. God
holds out to us at every moment a brighter future; the issue is
whether we are willing to receive it and work with God to help
create it. We are participating in the creation of what the future
will be.'" (p. 196)
Other Religions Included in the Kingdom of God
McLaren is a really inclusive guy, and he cringes at the thought
that anyone would be excluded from the Kingdom of God. Carefully
avoiding mention of the many New Testament references to unbelievers
being cast into outer darkness or tossed out of a wedding feast,
McLaren generously proposes that all religionists, of every brand,
be included in the Kingdom.
"Evangelism would cease to be a matter of saving souls from
a bad ending . . . It would cease to be a proclamation of the
superiority of the Christian religion. . . . It would mean recruiting
people to defect from destructive ways and join God in the missio
dei (`mission of God'), a decentralized, grassroots, spiritual-social
movement dedicated to plotting goodness and saving the world from
human evil - both personal and systemic. It would invite people
into lifelong spiritual formation as disciples of Jesus, in a
community dedicated (as we've seen) to teaching the most excellent
way of love, whatever the new disciple's religious affiliation
or lack thereof.
"This kind of evangelism would celebrate the good in the
Christian religion and lament the bad, just as it would in every
other religion, calling people to a way of life in a kingdom (or
beautiful whole) that transcends and includes all religions.
...
"But what of `No one comes to the Father except through me?'
Clearly, taken in context, these words are not intended as an
insult to followers of Mohammed, the Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Enlightenment
rationalism, or anybody or anything else. Rather, the `no one'
here refers to Jesus' own disciples." (Pages 216,
On page 255 McLaren states, "I don't believe Jesus came to
start a new religion, nor do I believe Christianity (or any religion)
is the answer in itself. Of course, I believe it can be part of
the answer, but only if it doesn't see itself as the answer."
Homosexuals Should Be Accepted
McLaren condemns -homophobia," calling for acceptance of
homosexuals in God's Kingdom: "From this vantage point, homosexuals
and heterosexuals stand equally in need of liberation. Both groups
look to God as their creator. And both groups are called to repentance
and reconciliation with God and one another in God's kingdom.
The question is complexified from Is homosexuality right
or wrong?' to `How should gay and straight people understand and
treat one another in God's kingdom?" (p. 180)
McLaren's main theological justification for acceptance of homosexuality
is the example of how the Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8, who, being
different sexually, was accepted into the Christian church. This
muddled reasoning, by which acceptance of a man for whom no deviant
sexual conduct is recorded is used to urge the acceptance of sexually
deviant conduct, is typical of the illogical and unscriptural
reasoning that pervades McLaren's entire book.
For instance, he dwells on the acceptance of slavery in the 19'
Century American South as an example of the baleful effects of
traditional fundamentalist-style orthodoxy, which he derides as
"Platonic" and "Greco-Roman."
McLaren's noble desire is to prevent and forestall such perversions
of the Christian faith in our own time. His proposed solution
is to overthrow the entire system of orthodox Christian belief,
including Creation, the Fall, original sin, Christ's substitutionary
atonement, Christ's literal Second Coming, future bliss in heaven
and future torment in hell. All of this is to he junked.
What will McLaren replace it with? He doesn't know yet - he invites
us to join him in an ongoing dialogue as to the shape of things
to come in his nifty new kind of Christianity.
McLaren ignores the fact that the evil system of American slavery
was completely overthrown, without overthrowing or repudiating
the fundamentalist system of Christian belief that he blames for
slavery (and for almost every other evil in the world today, including
global warming, meat-eating and use of internal-combustion engines).
McLaren does not seem to admit that slavery was abolished, in
part, due to the dedicated campaigning and lobbying of deeply
religious Christians who believed in the old-style Christianity
that McLaren rejects.
Among the modern evils that McLaren wants to stamp out, are the
fundamentalist obsessions on supporting torture, pre-emptive war
and Israeli persecution of the Palestinians. There are many proponents
of the old-time religion that McLaren hates so much, including
this reviewer, who actually agree with McLaren on these issues
and who have spoken out against these abuses, without in any way
rejecting the basic fundamentals of the faith that McLaren wants
us to reject, as a prerequisite for his world-saving crusade.
This fact alone disproves McLaren's thesis that it is necessary
to trash the authority of the Bible and completely rewrite the
basic principles of Christianity according to McLaren's trendy
vision, before we can correct our blind spots and have a more
positive impact on our society.
"A New Kind of Christianity" is a bad book, and the
Emergent Church movement that this book promotes must be rejected
as totally outside the bounds of even the most "generous"
definition of orthodoxy (to borrow an expression from the title
of another of McLaren's books).
We need to be aware of this new and dangerous teaching, and we
need to warn our people not to be taken in by the lure of the
Emergent churches and its theologians such as Brian McLaren, Rob
Bell and Donald Miller.
What Other Reviewers Say About "A New Kind of Christianity"
Scot McKnight, Professor of Religion, North Park University, Chicago,
in Christianity Today, March, 2010: "In particular, [McLaren's}
evolutionary theory of God contains another fatal flaw.
The flow of the Bible is not neat. It doesn't fit into an evolutionary
scheme. There are as many mercy passages in the Old Testament
as there are grace-and-love passages in the New. What's more,
passages about God's grace stand side-by-side with passages about
God's wrath (e.g., Hosea 1-3, Matthew 23-25). The evolutionary
approach doesn't work because that's not how Scripture's narration
works. There is wrath in Revelation and there is covenant love
in Genesis. And Jesus talks more about Abba and hell than does
the rest of the Bible combined.. .
"A New Kind of Christianity' shows us that Brian, though
he is now thinking more systematically, has fallen for an old
school of thought. I read this book carefully, and I found nothing
new. It may be new for Brian, but it's a rehash of ideas that
grew into fruition with Adolf von Harnack and now find iterations
in folks like Harvey Cox and Marcus Borg. For me, Brian's new
kind of Christianity is quite old. And the problem is that it's
not old enough."
Pastor Gary Gilley, Southern View Chapel, Springfield, Illinois:
"This book is filled with McLaren's trademarks, extreme and
bizarre straw men, distorting Scripture beyond recognition, advancing
a liberal social/political agenda, proclaiming that the kingdom
of God is the gospel and justification by faith is a misunderstanding
of Scripture, stating that Scripture is not the final authority
but a springboard to conversation and a higher ethic in the future,
accepting homosexuality, setting forth an eschatology that denies
the Second Coming and places the future in our hands, redefining
inclusivism so that it borders on universalism, and recommending
missional living that amounts to saving the planet."
Pastor Kevin DeYoung, University Reformed Church, East Lansing,
Michigan, on "The Gospel Coalition" web site: "He
[McLaren] thinks the Bible is very special and has a unique role.
But he does not think it is internally consistent nor the word
of God. It is inspired in the sense that it inspires..
"There are a lot of details McLaren misses. He argues that
Revelation 21-22 gives a beautiful picture of God's openness.
There's no condemnation, he says, because the doors to the city
are still open and the Spirit and the bride say Come.' Has
McLaren not read Revelation 21:8 where the wicked are assigned
their portion in the lake that burns with fire?
"Homosexuality provides another example of McLaren's canon
within a canon. [He argues] that homosexuality is acceptable because
the Ethiopian eunuch, the sexually other,' was baptized
- a strange argument that presumes homoerotic behavior is not
more a choice than physical castration.. ..
"Similarly, who doesn't think Jesus is Lord over Paul? But
that's not the issue. The gospels do not matter more than other
books. All of Scripture is breathed out by God, 2 Timothy 3:16.
More to the point, if McLaren wants to pit the apostolic teaching
against the life of Jesus, he won't have anything left in the
second column. Virtually everything we know about Jesus comes
from the inspired apostolic testimony about him. Besides, the
promise of John 16:12-15 is that the Holy Spirit' will come and
lead the disciples into all truth. Jesus doesn't promise new kinds
of Christianities 2000 years later. He promises that the Spirit
will speak only what he hears and reveal the fullness of who Jesus
was and what he accomplished. .. .
"McLaren rejects a linear view of history. He does not believe
in a single fixed-end point. He does not hold to a soul-sort'
theology where some people go to heaven and some people go to
hell. He does not believe eternal life' refers to life that
is eternal. He does not believe in future condemnation."
Kevin Swanson
You may have seen a recent news headline: "New Scientific
Research Indicates Boys are Different from Girls." That assertion
should be laughably obvious to us, but what is laughably obvious
happens also to be a serious flaw in the predominant worldview
operational today.
We give girls and boys the same education, the same toys, the
same teachers, the same expectations, and the same goals in life,
and then we wonder why they are frustrated, angry, aberrent, and
purposeless at 25, 30, or 40 years of age.
Dr. Christine Hoff Somers is the author of a new book, The War
Against Boys. While interviewing her on my weekly radio program,
Generations, she told the listening audience that the modern school
is dangerous for boys. It is producing boys that are feminized,
awkward, rebellious, or otherwise ill-prepared for life. Only
43% of students attending college today are boys, and that number
continues to drop. Schools are increasingly designed for girls.
Meanwhile, boys are disenfranchised and disinterested. Removing
a boy's unique purpose and preparation in life, setting him in
a girl's world, and then putting him in competition with girls
will only produce devastating consequences for our social and
economic systems. Actually, it's already happening. The number
of children born without fathers, where the father is nowhere
to be found, has risen from 5% to 35% just in the last 30 years.
This problem is not limited to conventional schools. It's happening
in homeschools too. We woke up to this reality when my wife and
I hit a crisis point with our son. We had read somewhere that
boys in the homeschool easily give way to docility, laziness,
and sometimes rebellion, and it was plain that these issues were
already hitting close to home. While it is important to hold a
young man responsible for his own sin, we wanted to hold ourselves
accountable for the proper raising of our son. As I listened to
dozens of other stories, I came to discover that this problem
is rampant throughout the homeschooling movement. The reality
crashed in on us like a ton of bricks. We had inadvertently bought
into an egalitarian viewpoint on education, and it was hurting
our son. What my son needed was a man in his life. And God was
pointing at me.
First, we should resolve the matter that differences in natural
abilities and designed purposes do not contribute to an essential
difference in value. A man can not birth a baby, and therefore
has a different function. It would be futile to complain about
it. He should just accept the fact. But the fact that a man cannot
birth a baby and a woman can, does not mean that a woman is essentially
better than a man. The same can be said for any other distinctive
purposes God has instituted for men and women.
Goals: What We're Shooting For
When I trained my son to shoot a gun I would tell him, "If
you can't see the target, it's doubtful you'll ever hit it."
The same thing applies to raising children. Unless you have a
clear and correct target in your mind's eye for those children,
the arrows may very well fly far off course. You need to have
a goal in mind, because the goal will shape the preparation of
a child for life and eternity. I would recommend that every family
start with the Bible if they want a clear vision for the raising
of children. It is far more important to review the Creator's
Operations Manual before launching out to do anything as important
as raising children. So what's the vision? What's the goal?
In some ways, we are raising our children for the same purpose.
We want every one of our children to glorify God and enjoy him
forever. We want them to pursue His Kingdom's interests.
But it's pretty obvious from the Bible that from the beginning
there was always a difference between the girls and boys in nature,
function and goals. Of course, man has perverted these differences
and the end result is feminism, abuse of women, feminization of
men, and so forth. Today we sit in a "gender blender."
For parents with visionparents who take the raising of their
children seriouslywe must go back to the Owner's Manual
and define a vision for raising our sons and daughters.
The woman was created to be a "helper" for the man (Genesis
2:18). This is the broad target or goal we have in mind. A more
narrow target subsumed in the function of "helper" is
"home manager" (Titus 2:5). While the term is translated
in some Bible versions as "keepers at home," it is better
rendered "home manager." Part of the woman's capacity
of "helper" is to be a "home manager."
Some will jump to the conclusion that this means a girl is limited
to classes on changing diapers and wearing aprons. That conclusion
limits the vision to the Titus 2:5 role while, in fact, her role
is far more comprehensive than that. She is a "helper"
which, according to Proverbs 31, includes buying fields, taking
care of the poor, and a lot of other things. Of course, central
to her God-given duties is the managing of the home. But her broad
purpose is to be a "helper" to her husband. Sometime
in her future she may help her husband in missionary medical work
because she has learned medicine in an RN or MD program. Therefore,
the preparation of a young lady must keep these two goals in mind.
One day she will be a helper and a home manager. If her preparation
ignores these important goals, or if her homeschooling and college
work trains her NOT to be a good helper and a good home manager,
it will be a defective preparation.
These being the broad goals for our young ladies, what then are
the goals God has laid out for our young men? Briefly, here is
a list:
~Dominion - Gen. 1:26. (Dominion is effectively ruling the world
about us. We take rocks and oil and turn them into cars and computers.
We make wise use of the animals, property, environment, family,
church, and state, by applying the absolute principles of truth
and right found in the Bible.)
Responsible for Material Sustenance for his Family (Exodus
21:10, 1 Timothy 5:7,8)
Fighters (Deuteronomy 20:1-5, Nehemiah 4:14, Psalm 144:1)
Heads: Leaders (Ephesians 5:23)
Sacrificial Lovers (Ephesians 5:25-28)
Resident Theologians (1 Corinthians 14:34-35) If our boys
are raised without a vision for dominion, without a sense of responsibility
for taking care of a family, without a sense of protecting the
family even by force if necessary, without leadership experience
and training, without learning how to let his sister go first
in the food line (in the quintessential act of boyhood sacrifice),
or without being able to explain the doctrines of the Bible, then
he has not been trained to be the man that God wants him to be.
His preparation will be defective and he will not be trained to
be a man.
Turning a Boy Into a Man
If the goals of a girl and a boy are different, then the obvious
question that follows is whether it would make sense that their
preparation would be different. There are several practical ways
in which the training of a boy differs from the training of a
girl:
1. When a boy is young he will spend more time with his mother,
but as he gets older, he will need a man to properly mentor him
into manhood. If a boy is to grow into a man, the best mentor
that can show him how to be a man will always be a man. Ideally,
this will be his own father. If, for some reason, it is not possible
for a father to invest concerted time into his boy's life, his
parent(s) should seek out an internship, an apprenticeship, or
something like it under the tutelage of a Godly, dependable man
in the church or in the homeschooling community that can serve
as a mentor.
2. A boy should learn to treat girls differently than how he treats
boys. As the sacrificial lover, he must learn to treat girls with
a tender respect, "as the weaker vessel" (1 Peter 3:7).
Several weeks ago, we took care of a couple of young boys whose
parents needed a little extra help. From the outset I told the
boys that they could wrestle with my son and punch him around
a little. They could even sit on him if the situation called for
it. "But," I told them, "That doesn't go for my
daughters. I don't want you hitting these girls."
The same rule goes for debate. We can teach girls to fight like
boys in debate or we can teach boys to hurt girls by not allowing
for differences. Both young men and young women should learn to
debate. But if we don't allow for the differences, debate will
be thoroughly feminized, which doesn't do boys any good. Or it
will be thoroughly masculinized, in which case women are left
out, forced into an unnatural masculine mold, or mistreated. The
way a boy debates a girl will differ from how he debates with
a boy.
3. The environment of learning for a boy may be a mixture of home,
classroom, or business. He should be trained for the environment
in which one day he will find himselfnamely the business
and home. While classrooms may have an occasional use (such as
for training in rhetoric), the principle of life-integration is
often lost in that environment. As a home educated boy gets older,
he should spend more time outside of the home. He should learn
what it takes to take dominion and provide a sustenance for his
own.
4. Boys are fighters. He turns a doll into a gun, and runs around
the house shooting the bad guys. (Meanwhile, his sister takes
the toy guns and turns them into play dolls.) I have encountered
both liberals and conservatives alike that want to suppress this
God-given ability in their sons. The problem, however, is not
with the boy's inclination to fight. Like everything else in our
children, this inclination needs to be shaped and honed according
to the standards of God's laws.
Boys need to be taught two things about fighting-what to fight
and how to fight. They should learn to fight their own sin, bad
worldviews in the realm of ideas, and real enemies. While there
is a place for self defense and real warfare, our boys need to
know that the hottest war of all is the war of ideas. The greatest
fighters of all time were stalwarts like Ambrose, Augustine, Patrick,
Boni-face, Martin Luther, John Knox, William Wilberforce, and
missionaries like William Carey and John Paton. Over the centuries
of the Christian church, courageous men of faith have brought
down strongholds of satan's kingdom and bastions of man-centered
power-bases by holding up the Word of truth, and casting down
imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself above the
knowledge of God. These should be the real role models for our
boys. I highly recommend biographies such as the "Leaders
in Action" series as a terrific way to transfer this vision
to our boys.
Conclusion
Our worldview does make a difference. If we build our children's
education on the egalitarian (gender-neutral) worldview that most
of us have been taught by our university training and the 6:00
newsif we ignore the Maker's Instructionswe will pay.
Our children will pay.
When rains come and floods rise, the house that was built on the
sandthat house that was not built on the words of Jesus
in the Biblewill come tumbling down. It may not be ten years
now. It may be forty years from now. But the house will come down.
Let us build our house and our children's future on the Rock.
To order Kevin Swanson's book, UPGRADE, turn to our easy order
form on the last page of this magazine or visit: www.WisdomsGate.org.
Home School Digest, Volume 19, Number 4. (Wisdomgate.org)
Despite the countless and detailed warnings that have gone
out over the last decade about Rick Warren and his distortion
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, John Piper prepares to deliver
his followers to the platform at Saddleback Church in an act of
ultimate spiritual betrayal on April 29 and 30, 2011.
John Piper, perhaps more than anyone else who has been seduced
by Dr. Warren through the years, is without excuse. Could there
be a teacher more aware of what the Gospel actually is according
to Scripture? Someone with a more thorough knowledge of the whole
Counsel of God? Someone with more access to the best commentaries,
the best theological instruction, the most devout and rigorous
Bible teaching colleagues in the land? Yet he falls, and with
him, takes innumerable sheep who will trust him to their own destruction.
Just weeks ago, Rick Warren introduced an unholy trinity of pagan
teachers on the same platform at Saddleback as he unveiled his
Daniel Plan. To an audience of physically and spiritually needy
people he presented Dr. Oz, Dr. Amen, and Dr. Hyman, three men
who are actively promoting things like Transcendental Meditation,
and Sa Ta Na Ma meditation taken from Kundalini Yoga. These teachers
have videos all over the Internet that instruct viewers on how
to become healthy through New Age methods, like Dr. Oz, for example,
who promotes men like Deepak Chopra on his TV show. In the linked
video he shows viewers how to lose weight through occult meditation
practices. He brought this spiritual program to Saddleback at
the request of Rick Warren. It is the tip of the iceberg.
Rick Warren's involvement with the pluralistic and religious unity
goals of the Tony Blair foundation are well documented. Tony Blair
is a pro-abortion Roman Catholic convert who is also a proponent
of a developing world spirituality. He asked Rick Warren to join
him in the uniting of world religions through his foundation and
Rick Warren signed on. Warren is welcoming Mr. Blair to the same
Platform where John Piper's Desiring God Conference will be held
in April. Warren is awarding Mr. Blair, a biblical apostate and
enemy of the cross of Jesus Christ, with a prize for his efforts
for world peace. This is not a plot device in some low budget
end-times movie. This is reality, and John Piper is now fully
on board Warren's train.
There is no need to recount the assaults on Scripture that Mr.
Warren has engaged in over the course of his Purpose-Driven career.
Entire books have been written on the subject. What is abundantly
clear is that those who willfully join arms with him in his spiritual
agenda for the world are equally guilty. Those pastors and teachers
who knowingly deliver their sheep to the spiritual slaughterhouse
at Saddleback are Judas goats. It does not matter what accomplishments
such pastors and teachers have achieved in their ministries of
the past. What matters is what they have done with their part
of the ministry entrusted to them now.
Judas also had a part in Christ's ministry for three years, and
he betrayed Christ at the last. (See Acts 1:16-19 for the summary.)
He sold out for 30 pieces of silver. John Piper has sold out the
true Gospel for the embrace of the world's leading evangelical
name. He desired Rick Warren more than he desired God, and he
is now helping Warren usher in the ultimate global spiritual rebellion.
The seduction of John Piper is a cautionary story for all of us.
None of us are too biblically sound, too studied, to ready with
an answer to have immunity to the spiritual seduction that has
been unleashed on the planet. If John Piper can fall, we can also
fall. The spiritual battle being waged on those who are faithful
to Jesus Christ is growing worse by the day. Ask anyone in ministry
about that. We need the full armor of God, and we need to be in
unceasing prayer that God would keep us steadfast in the faith.
Our Captain will be here soon. Let's be ready.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places.
~Ephesians 6:12
http://www.crosstalkblog.com/2011/02/john-piper-desiring-rick-warren/
The coach had put together the perfect team for the Cleveland
Browns. The only thing that was missing was a good quarterback.
He had scouted all the colleges and even the Canadian and European
Leagues, but he couldn't find a ringer who could ensure a Super
Bowl win.
Then one night while watching CNN he saw a war-zone scene in Afghanistan
. In one corner of the background, he spotted a young Afghan Muslim
soldier with a truly incredible arm. He threw a hand-grenade straight
into a 15th story window 100 yards away. KABOOM!
He threw another hand-grenade 75 yards away, right into a chimney.
KA-BLOOEY!
Then he threw another at a passing car going 90 mph.BULLS-EYE!
"I've got to get this guy!" Coach said to himself. "He
has the perfect arm!" So, he brings him to the States and
teaches him the great game of football. And the Browns go on to
win the Super Bowl.
The young Afghan is hailed as the great hero of football, and
when the coach asks him what he wants, all the young man wants
is to call his mother.
"Mom," he says into the phone, "I just won the
Super Bowl!"
"I don't want to talk to you, the old Muslim woman says,."You
are not my son!"
"I don't think you understand, Mother," the young man
pleads. "I've won the greatest sporting event in the world.
I'm here among thousands of my adoring fans."
"No! Let me tell you!" his mother retorts. "At
this very moment, there are gunshots all around us. The neighborhood
is a pile of rubble. Your two brothers were beaten within an inch
of their lives last week, and I have to keep your sister in the
house so she doesn't get attacked!" The old lady pauses,
and then tearfully says,
"I will never forgive you for making us move to Cleveland!"
By Pastor Hector Crespo, 1639 N. Monticello Ave. Chicago, Illinois 60647 (Pastor of Tabernáculo Bautista Metropolitano, Melrose Park, Illinois)
In October, 2010, I visited Mexico for 3 weeks, and preached
in 2 Baptist churches, one of which was Iglesia Bautista El Mesias
in Mexico City, affiliated with the BMA.
El Mesias has a congregation of almost 200. The pastor is Fernando
Favian. This church is in need of our prayers because the pastor
has been sick. He has been inviting various preachers to help
fill the pulpit.
It was a blessing to visit this church because this is the church
where I was saved and baptized almost 40 years ago. I remember
missionary Buddy Johnson coming for the first time to this church
where I met him, and he was an encouragement in my spiritual life.
One of my friends before I was saved was in prison, and Bro. Johnson
accepted my invitation to go and visit this prisoner with me and
witness to him. This helped me in my Christian growth.
The other church I visited on my recent trip was in Patzcuaro,
Michoacan State, where my mother is a member. The pastor there
asked me to preach twice. Also this brother informed me about
the peril of a new movement in Mexico called G-12. He said that
they will approach people and tell them, "you are not saved,
you need to be saved," and they will brainwash them and teach
doctrines contrary to the Word of God. He mentioned levitation
and manifestations of the spirit, and that they would have everybody
lie down and be covered with a blanket and then preach to them,
making them feel miserable.
I did not know that this was going on in the churches, and so
my messages on this visit were on the subject of the Beatitudes,
but next time I plan to present messages on the subject of "Beware
of false prophets."
I was given this same warning about the G-12 movement by a Pentecostal
pastor in Mexico State, near Mexico City, that I spoke to, and
also by the people of Primera Iglesia Bautista in Morelia, Michoacan.
I was told by them and the pastor in Patzcuaro that the purpose
of G-12 is to divide, destroy and deceive the evangelical churches,
even among true Baptists. The purpose of this letter is to tell
you how this group works, what they teach and where they do it.
Let me start with how this group works. My sister, who is a member
of Primera Iglesia Bautista in Morelia, told me what she saw:
A man came to the church, became friendly with the pastor, and
bought him suits, shoes, etc. with money that he had collected
from the members of the church, giving the pastor the impression
that these presents were actually purchased by him. He did this
in order to gain the pastor's trust.
The second step was that, having gained the pastor's trust, he
taught the pastor doctrines contrary to the Word of God, among
which was levitation, which is a pagan demonic practice.
Having taught the pastor these new doctrines, they would then
brainwash him, telling him that he was not saved. Then they used
such tactics as having him to write down on a piece of paper all
his sins, and every ugly thing that is a secret, that he never
told anyone before. They force one to do this by starvation, fasting,
and sleep deprivation. This is how they got power over the pastor
in Morelia.
At the end of this brainwashing, one becomes a different person.
This is the testimony of the other members of the church I visited
in Michoacan. They know of someone who went through this process
and say that he became a different person.
Where does the G-12 do all this diabolical work? My sister and
her husband told me that after they won the trust of this pastor
with the many gifts, he was invited to a "spiritual retreat"
in Quintano Roo State, in eastern Mexico far from Morelia. This
place is like a campground and there he stayed for one week going
through a brainwashing process, as I previously mentioned.
It is my understanding that there were many at this campground,
including the pastor, lay people and young people, for the purpose
of destroying their faith, dividing the churches, and presenting
diabolical teachings such as levitation.
This pastor went to this "spiritual retreat" and he
took a large group of young people to this retreat, Afterwards
he came to tell the church that there were going to be some changes,
such as "We need the power of the Holy Spirit."
My sister and many other members did not agree with these changes.
The next Sunday after this, during the service, the pastor stood
up and said that various members should stand up, and he went
on and on after that and said "We are all leaving this church
because you don't agree with us."
The pastor divided the church, and divided families, causing young
people to rebel against their parents. My sister said many of
the adults (parents of the young men, ages 15-18) were crying
as a result, and didn't know what to do.
The church, much reduced in size because of this church split,
has a new pastor who is sound in doctrine, but he is still having
problems dealing with those who have been influenced by this false
teaching.
The conclusion is that this is happening not just in one church
but in many churches in Mexico. I was told the same story by the
Pentecostal pastor. Pastors who go to this "spiritual retreat"
are leaving their churches and starting their own movements with
all these false teachings.
The Apostle Peter tells us to -13c.' sober, he vigilant; because
your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking
whom he may devour.- (1 Peter 5:8). And 1 tell you he is doing
that in Mexico, and I believe he is doing it also here in America.
But that is another story.
[Editor's note: I was not aware of the G-12 movement until receiving
this report from Pastor Crespo. 1 checked the Internet for more
information, and found that G12, a movement founded in Colombia,
is now found not just in Mexico but is worldwide.
The movement is Protestant, ecumenical and charismatic in character.
It is associated with the Prosperity Gospel and with "Word-Faith"
preachers such as Paul Yonggi Cho. It is known for conducting
retreats or "Encounters." There have been complaints
about how this movement misuses the cell-group concept to gain
abusive control over its participants.
I did not find any references to teaching on levitation in G-12.
Perhaps this is a localized problem in Mexico, and not characteristic
of the movement as a whole.
(The Roman Catholic Church claims that some of its saints, including
Teresa of Avila (15151582) and Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663),
had this gift of levitation. It is said that Joseph would sometimes
get stuck in a tree while levitating, and the other priests would
have to use ladders to get him back down to the ground).
All of us should beware of any unfamiliar religious movements
that we do not have complete information on. Do not get involved
in anything until it has been thoroughly checked out.
The tactics mentioned here, including luring people away to a
"retreat" in an isolated setting where they will be
vulnerable to brainwashing and psychological pressure methods,
are used by various groups, including Roman Catholics, false cults
and abusive groups that claim to be evangelical. Unless you are
familiar with the organization that is running the retreat, then
"don't go there" and don't send your people there! Williamson's
note.]
This is the start of Zechariah's third vision. It is short
and simple, yet it covers a tremendous amount of ground. The previous
vision was a warning to those who were following the Lord for
their personal profit. Their hearts were not in their service.
The next vision was given to the Godly workmen, and covered the
promised defeat and destruction of the pagan world powers which
were standing against the kingdom of God.
Now this vision in chapter three reveals the unlimited, world-wide
expansion of the kingdom of God. In this vision, Zechariah saw
the man with a measuring line in his hand; it is very similar
to Ezekiel's vision of chapter 40. In studying this vision, we
must remember that the end time Gospel Church is called mount
Sion. See Hebrews 12:22-29.
Zechariah sees a man with a measuring line in his hand. He is
not the angel who is talking to Zechariah. Zechariah speaks up,
and asks what is going on. The response back is that Jerusalem
is being measured.
Zechariah's interpreter then goes to enquire of the angel who
is doing the measuring to find out what he is doing. As the interpreter
goes toward the one measuring to find out the meaning of the measuring,
another angel comes out to meet the interpreter.
He tells Zechariah's angel to go back and tell Zechariah (v. 4,
this young man. Zechariah was a young man at this time), "Jerusalem
shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of
men and cattle therein: For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her
a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst
of her." The measuring angel is the angel of the Lord (Hengstenberg,
Keil). He has sent the explanation to the interpreting angel to
give to Zechariah.
Vv. 1-5 What does the message mean?
1) v. 2, the city is being measured. This vision of Jerusalem
being measured presupposes that the city is already in existence;
but it was not at that time. The vision is being given to Zechariah
as encouragement for those doing the work of rebuilding the city
that had been destroyed by sin.
But the message does not stop with simply rebuilding the city
under Ezra and Nehemiah. It looks forward to a future city, the
city of Sion, which will far exceed Jerusalem's boundaries. Remember,
the angel is speaking to Zechariah, who is surrounded by the ruins
of the city. Zechariah will be speaking to those who are living
in the midst of the city's ruins. What Zechariah is being told
goes just the opposite of what appears in the surrounding ruins.
Thus Zechariah is being told that Jerusalem will prosper, and
will be enlarged beyond anything they can even hope or dream about
in the midst of their present rubble. In fact, the city's enlargement
will not include walls for protection from her enemies. Rather,
the Lord Himself will be her protection; the Lord will be unto
her a wall of fire round about. See Revelation 3:12, 21:2.
V. 4 And said to him, Run, speak to this {b} young man, saying,
{c} Jerusalem shall be inhabited [as] towns without walls for
the multitude of men and cattle in it: (b) Meaning himself, Zechariah.
(c) Signifying the spiritual Jerusalem and Church under Christ,
which would be extended by the Gospel through all the world, and
would need no material walls, nor trust in any worldly strength,
but would be safely preserved and dwell in peace among all their
enemies.
V. 4 Furthermore, not only will he be a wall of fire round about
the city, but He will be the glory in the midst of the city. This
corresponds with Eze 38:11.
(Zechariah 2:4) "The thought is therefore the following:
Jerusalem is in future to resemble an open country covered with
unwalled cities and villages; it will no longer be a city closely
encircled with walls; hence it will be extra ordinarily enlarged,
on account of the multitude of men and cattle with which it will
be blessed, (cf. Isa. 49:19, 20; Ez 38:11).
Moreover, (2) Jerusalem will then have no protecting wall surrounding
it, because it will enjoy a superior protection. Jehovah will
be to it a wall of fire round about, that is to say, a defense
of fire which will consume everyone who ventures to attack it,
(cf. Isa. 4:5; Deut. 4:24). Jehovah will also be the glory in
the midst of Jerusalem, that is to say, will fill the city with
His glory, (cf. Isa. 60:19). (Keil)"
There can be no mistaking: Zechariah is speaking of the church
and its glories under its King as we see throughout this chapter.
Again, this prophecy is being given to a handful of people who
are faced with heaps upon heaps of rubble from the old city. They
are faced with a seemingly impossible task of raising up a thing
of beauty out of the ashes of war and fire.
In the midst of the ruins, Zechariah tells of the future greater
glory which awaits the city of the living God, the capital of
the nation of the covenant people.
V. 5 For I, saith the LORD, will be to her a wall of {d} fire
on every side, and will {e} be the glory in the midst of her.
(d) To defend my Church, to strike fear in the enemies, and to
destroy them if they approach near. (e) In me they will have their
full felicity and glory.
No doubt those who heard and read Zechariah totally expected his
prophecy to be literally fulfilled at a future date under the
Messiah. But v. 5 clearly shows us that Zechariah cannot be referring
to a literal, physical fulfillment as we would think of a city
or nation in the natural realm. V. 5 clearly tells us that the
city of the great King will be the church under the care of her
King as well as indwelt by His glory.
It is the Lord who will protect His church with His fiery vengeance
against her enemies.
The New Testament passages for these two points, (1.) protector
of the church and (2.) indwelling in the midst of the church are
well known.
Heb 13:6 So that we may boldly say, The Lord [is] my helper, and
I will not fear what man shall do unto me. 1 Pe 3:13 And who [is]
he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?
1 Cor 6:19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are
not your own? 20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify
God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.
Society is crumbling around us. The true Gospel Church is being
attacked from every side by all the forces the enemy can muster
together. It is His church that is the apple of his eye, and those
who touch her shall face the wrath of her King, vv. 6-13.
Habakkuk 2:1 I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower,
and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall
answer when I am reproved. 2 And the LORD answered me, and said,
Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run
that readeth it. 3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time,
but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait
for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. 4 Behold,
his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just
shall live by his faith.
Let us not allow the surrounding distressing circumstances shake
our faith that all things are working for His glory and for the
advancement of His Kingdom, the Gospel Church.
US high-tech companies are being forced to outsource more jobs
overseas because of outdated restrictions on immigration, Microsoft
chairman Bill Gates told Congress Wednesday.
Gates, echoing a longstanding complaint from the technology sector,
told a congressional panel that the US immigration system "makes
attracting and retaining high-skilled immigrants exceptionally
challenging for US firms."
"Congress's failure to pass high-skilled immigration reform
has exacerbated an already grave situation," Gates said in
remarks prepared for delivery to a hearing of the House of Representatives
Science and Technology Committee.
"As a result, many US firms, including Microsoft, have been
forced to locate staff in countries that welcome skilled foreign
workers to do work that could otherwise have been done in the
United States, if it were not for our counterproductive immigration
policies."
Gates said the limits on so-called H-1B visas aimed at highly
skilled professionals are far too low for the rapidly growing
tech sector.
He said the current cap of 65,000 H-1B visas "is arbitrarily
set and bears no relation to the US economy's demand for skilled
professionals."
The Microsoft founder noted that all the 65,000 visas for the
current fiscal year were snapped up in one day last April and
that employers are now waiting to apply for visas for fiscal 2009,
starting in October.
"Last year, for example, Microsoft was unable to obtain H-1B
visas for one-third of the highly qualified foreign-born job candidates
that we wanted to hire," Gates said.
"If we increase the number of H-1B visas that are available
to US companies, employment of US nationals would likely grow
as well. For instance, Microsoft has found that for every H-1B
hire we make, we add on average four additional employees to support
them in various capacities."
Gates also said the United States needs to improve science and
math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing
a move away from these fields.
"If we don't reverse these trends, our competitive advantage
will continue to erode. Our ability to create new high-paying
jobs will suffer," Gates said.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080312143412.qjper5cy&show_article=1