An Examination of Biblical Precepts Involved in Issues at Hand |
No Fear of God
Have Pastors Forsaken America
From Prisoner to Chaplain
Baptist Mysticism
Rejected
Is the Bible Sufficient, Or Do We Need New Revelation?
I Forgive You and My Apologies
The "Chickification" of America
Porn & Same-Sex Marriage
Porn at the Super Bowl
To your health, not
Soybean Oil: One of the most harmful ingredients you can eat.
Jude 3
Quote from a Confederate Chaplain
Quote of the day
The Rationally Misinformed Voter
Psalms 36:1 The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes. (Rom. 3:18)
"As we watch America spiraling down into oblivion we have to ask how this happened. How did we let America be turned into a nation of people who demand that government take care of them instead of the nation of hard working, independent and self reliant people that founded this nation?..."
http://newswithviews.com/Anghis/roger246.htm
Have pastors forsaken America? No!! Pastors have forsaken God's laws and commands, and in fulfillment of His many warnings and promises, He has forsaken America.
As we look around at even professed Christians, we wonder why Christianity does not keep "believers" out of the worse sins of the world: murder, theft, fornication, adultery, sodomy, &c. We see even adulterers and sodomites claiming to be good Christian who are growing in the Lord. Obviously, they are serving the god of their own belly, for it is not the God of Scripture.
We should be very distressed over the lack of the fear of God, as many professed Christians ignore what is required of them, and even militate against the laws of holiness as given in the Commandments.
Jude commands that we contend for the faith as it was once delivered to the Old Testament saints. He warns of the ungodly men who creep in unawares, and are determined to undermine the truth; they try to convince us that the law and commandments no longer apply in the "age of grace". But they ignore the fact that the "age of grace" started in the Garden, and will last until time is no more.
Why is there no longer any fear of God, even in those who claim to be God's people?
The answer is found in Exodus 20:18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. 19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. 20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.
The fear expressed in v. 20 did not suddenly appear, as we see from the events leading up to v. 20. We will follow the events starting in Chapter 19.
19:1-6, God promises to make his redeemed people a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation if they "will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant." Though the Commandments were already known, they had not been written down yet.
19:8, the people lightly and glibly said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.
19:9-15, the Lord called Moses up on the mountain, and charged him to warn the people against approaching the mountian. Moses went back to the people, and commanded death to any living thing that might touch the mountain.
19:16-25, Moses went back up on the Mount, and God sent him back again to warn the people not to touch the mountain under penalty of sure death.
V. 23, Moses reminds the Lord that he had already charged the people not to touch the Mount, but the Lord sent him back again to warn them anyway.
Chapter 19 shows us that the people at this point had no fear of God. They knew of His power, for He had destroyed Egypt; now He promises that if they will obey Him, they will be His special people, to which they quickly agree. In other words, they considered themselves special, and had no fear of Him.
In Chapter 20, the commandments are given in the hearing of all the people.
20:18-21, after hearing the commandments and seeing the power of God exhibited, they feared God, and asked for a mediator.
Conclusion:
Vv. 22-26, the people considered God "the man upstairs" who would see them safely through this life to the promised land with little or no problems. They did not fear God until they saw the majesty of God, and heard His commandments. Then they realized they must have a mediator.
It is clear that people today, even God's people, do not fear God. As the fear of God has disappeared from Christianity, it has disappeared from the world. The result is that adultery, fornication, drunkenness, theft, murder (abortion) and all kinds of evil, including self-seeking power, have replaced the fear of God.
When Christians do not see nor understand God's holiness and fear him, can we expect the unsaved to fear God? Can a person be saved without seeing the Holy God, and his own sinfulness which alone shows his need of the One Mediator?
Without the law and Commandments, man cannot grasp sound doctrine nor God's holiness.
Exodus is the central passage of the whole of Scripture. It contains the law without which no man can know the mind nor holiness of God. Paul tells us that without the Commandments, we cannot know the sinfulness of man nor the mercy and forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ. The Commandments reveal God's character. It stops every mouth, and leaves man hopeless without the Mediator.
The mercy, grace and love of God are great doctrines that we love to hear about. But the reasons for these wonderful attributes are based in the holiness of God that is revealed in the law and commandments.
It is the law that shows us our need of God's mercy and grace, and of a Mediator.
I. Exodus 24:12 And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.
We are commanded to teach the law and commandments. Throughout the Old Testament, we are told that our primary responsibility is to teach the law and commandments to the next generation. That next generation is, of course, our children, but it also includes the next generation of Christians. New converts are to be instructed in the holiness of God, and their responsibility to be holy. Have we not been commanded to "Go into all the world and teach..."?
This responsibility falls to the fathers and to the pastor-teachers of God's people. They were not given to hang on the wall and admire. The law and commandments are to be meditated on and their implications developed and implemented.
The whole world is responsible to those commandments, or there would be no necessity of going into all the world and preaching the gospel.
Our lawless situation today is because the law and commandments have not been and are not being taught in the church nor in the home.
II. Romans 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
The law defines sin. It reveals the fallen nature of man. It alone makes the sinner a sinner. The fallen nature seeks to be right with God on human levels, and none of them are according to the law. As it did the people of old at the Mount, the law shows the need of the Mediator.
Without the knowledge of sin and fear of God, there can be no Saviour.
III. Romans 13:9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
The Law and Commandments define the holiness of God, and establishes the standard of holiness for man. (Lev 20:7, 1 Pet 1:15, 16.)
IV. 2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
Man's imagination does not define good and bad, but the law and commandments determine good and bad, for which we will answer to God one day.
V. 11 Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.
The law produces fear of the holy God. Paul said that he knew the terror of the Lord, so he persuaded men not only to salvation in Christ, but to obedience of the faithÐthat is, to be holy even as God in heaven is holy.
The law of the Lord is not all curses and warnings. It has many promises and blessings. Here are just a few:
Psalms 1 is a well known passages of promises, blessings and prosperity, all conditioned upon delighting and walking in the law and the Commandments.
Psalms 19:7-11, tells us that the law of the Lord is necessary for conversion, wisdom, rejoicing, purity, enlightenment, fear of the Lord, wealth, warning of danger and the condition of great reward. But just admitting the validity of the law of the Lord brings no promises. Rather, the promises come by being doers of the word, and not hearers only.
V. 7, The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: Modern "conversions" are without the perfect law of the Lord, when those "conversions" have no change from sin to holiness. Paganism reigns.
Not only is the law of the Lord necessary to convince men of sin, and to show the need of a mediator, it alone defines holiness, so men can fulfill the command to be holy even as the Lord is holy.
Psalms 37:31 The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide. Note the very slippery slope toward destruction when the heart is not set on the law of his God. Multitudes of professed Christians are unknowingly slipping toward destruction, taking what is left of the "Western Christian Society" with them.
Psalms 103:17 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children; 18 To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them. Knowing and keeping His covenant and commandments results in the mercy of the Lord. Our society is seriously lacking the mercies of the Lord, showing our despite of His covenant law.
Psalms 119:1 ALEPH. Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD. Failure to walk in the law of the Lord begs for God to remove His blessings, and to replace them with His curses, v. 21.
Psalms 119:98 Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me, 99 I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. 100 I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts. True wisdom is not found in the world's profane and vain babblings, which are not only unprofitable, but can only increase one in ungodliness. True wisdom comes only from knowing and doing thy commandments. (1 Tim 6:20, 2 Tim. 2:16, Titus 3:9.) The results of Christians allowing their children to be trained in the world's profane and vain babblings are now seen in a wicked, antiChrist culture.
More wisdom and understanding than all my enemies, teachers and my elders comes from knowing and mediating on thy commandments, testimonies and precepts.
Psalms 119:110 The wicked have laid a snare for me: yet I erred not from thy precepts. It is the knowledge of and the practical applications of God's precepts that will keep us and the next generation out of the snares of the wicked one.
Psalms 119:142 Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth. Truth is thy law. Christ said that He is the way, truth and life. Christ was actually the law of righteousness incarnate in the flesh, dwelling among men. He was the perfect picture of the law, commandments and precepts of God in action. Thus, following Christ means following His truth as revealed in the law and commandments.
Psalms 119:163 I hate and abhor lying: but thy law do I love, Errors and half-truths sound good and are appealing. It is by knowing God's law that enables us to separate truth from error. Paul repeats this law of v. 163, as he tells us that knowing The Truth prevents us from following error: Ephesians 4:14. (If one would take the time, he could trace down all of these laws into the "Gospel Age of Grace", though that "Age" started in the Garden.)
Psalms 119:150 They draw nigh that follow after mischief: they are far from thy law. Knowing and doing the law and commandments keeps us and those under our care out of mischief.
Proverbs 4:2 For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law. Good doctrine, including the doctrine of Free Grace, is firmly established in the law, prophets and the psalms. Those who contend for good doctrine and for the faith once delivered to the saints must contend for the law and commandments. How many churchmen contend against the law and commandments by denying its applications for our day?
Proverbs 4:4 He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live. (Pro 7:2.) Knowing and keeping the law and commandments produces life.
Proverbs 6:23 For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life: The law and commandments alone show us how to live and prosper in our fallen world.
Proverbs 10:8 The wise in heart will receive commandments: but a prating fool shall fall. The prating fool is slow to hear and swift to speak. Instead of receiving good instruction from the law and commands, he fights against it. The result is that he shall fall. There are many such fools operating under the name Christian.
Proverbs 13:14 The law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death. The law is the only foundation of life and protection from the snares of the wicked one. Those who reject the law and commandments are subject to captivity by the devil at his will. (2 Tim 2:26.)
Proverbs 28:4 They that forsake the law praise the wicked: but such as keep the law contend with them. They that forsake the law, even unintentionally or through ignorance, prase the wicked, but those who love the law will contend for the truth against the wicked who have forsaken the law.
Proverbs 28:7 Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son: but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father. Wisdom is knowing and keeping the law. The church is overrun with fools (anti-wise) today, from the leadership down.
Proverbs 28:9 He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination. God hates the prayers of those who intentionally ignore the law.
Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. Keeping the law is necessary in order to have a proper vision of God, and to claim His blessings.
Not only are there terrible curses connected with ignorance of and/or ignoring the law, but there are more promises connected with honouring, knowing, teaching and doing the law and the commandments than we can possible develop, so,
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. Ecclesiastes 12:13
* The purpose of the law is to restore God's glorious and good purpose in creation.
* The purpose of the law is to instill the proper fear of God into not only His people, but into the world. (Matt. 28.)
* The purpose of the law is to produce genuine conversion. Without the knowledge or fear of God, can there be genuine conversion.
* The purpose of the law is to produce holiness, as we are required to be ye holy even as He is holy.
* The purpose of the law is to drive home the need of the One Mediator between God and man, and that mediator is not Moses nor the law as given to Moses. It is The Man, Christ Jesus.
Our conscience is clear in all our sin only because of the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, and purged our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (2 Cor 5:21, Heb 9:9, 14, 28,10:2, 22, 1 Pet 2:24, 3:18.)
Psalms 36:1 The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes.
Romans 3:18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Scripture clearly tells us that the lack of fear of the Holy God is a result of not knowing and not teaching the law with its implications and its demand for holiness. God's holiness has been removed from the Gospel, resulting in no gospel at all. If there is no brokenness over sin, why is a Saviour needed?
God's holiness has been removed from Christianity, and what is left is no different than what the pagans have. Turning from the path as revealed in the law and Commandments, Christians have replaced God's law with pagan, humanistic law. They have learned the way of the heathen, allowed their children to be trained in the way of the heathen, followed the way of the heathen, and have turned from the path of Christianity as revealed in the law of the Lord.
Pastors have voided the law and commandments, producing lawless followers, and we are not reaping the terrible rewards promised to the heathen.
Pastor Need
Interesting note: "Fire starter. Tommy Davis [a black man] moved from burning mattresses to setting souls ablze." World, 2/9/13. He was so bad in 1989 as an 18 year old in prison, he spend 23 hours a day in his cell. Through a series of events, Providence called him to salvation. He now works as a chaplain volunteer with two other men in the 2,000 inmate prison where he once lived.
"Sheriff Patrick O'Flynn calls the Good News team a secondary staff. He points out that housing an inmate costs upward of $33,000 per year, somewhat like sending a student to college, so the chaplains "bring a whole system in without taxing taxpayers. It's the one rehab program that works." World, 2/9/13.
The very message that has been forcefully removed from education and society is welcomed in the prisons as "the one rehab program that works." If the gospel message were allowed in the pagan education system, there would be much less need of a prison system. Also observe the $33,000 per year per inmate income to this prison ($66 million per year). Following the money, we find very little incentive to change this fallen system with a Biblical system of restitution and capital punishment.
CATHOLIC MYSTICISM SPREADING AMONG BAPTIST CHURCHES. "The Associated Baptist Press recently reported on the spread of Catholic mysticism among Baptist churches in two reports: Contemplative Worship Fits Baptist Faith' and Silent Worship Not Just For Catholics.' (Sept. 17, 2012). Chad Kerr, a deacon in Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, says this practice has resulted in a shift in the way he understands his relationship with God' compared to his upbringing in Baptist churches in Georgia. It's not about reading the Bible and meditating on Scripture and verbal prayer. It's about seeking an experience' with God beyond the Bible through mystical practices such as silent meditation, chanting, repetition prayer, and use of the imagination. Kerr describes contemplative prayer as just sitting and trying to be silent and feel and listen.' Michael Sciretti, minister of spiritual formation at Freemason Street Baptist Church in Norfolk, Virginia, calls contemplative prayer an unmediated experience of God.'...
"How do you know that you are feeling, touching, and listening to God' when the Bible warns so often of deceiving spirits and false christs? In reality, this is blind mysticism that removes one from the solid foundation of Scripture, and it is a recipe for spiritual delusion. Since it is not solidly based on Scripture, it is very effective at creating grassroots ecumenism.' Richard Foster, one of the most influential men in the contemplative prayer movement, said, I see a Catholic monk from the hills of Kentucky standing alongside a Baptist evangelist from the streets of Los Angeles and together offering up a sacrifice of praise. I see a people." - David Cloud, in O Timothy.
Institutes of Biblical Law
Men invariably find themselves on the wrong side of the great reversals wrought by God. The things men regard highly, He esteems lightly. He uses the simple to confound the wise, and the weak to overcome the strong. The stone the builders reject becomes the chief cornerstone (Ps. 118:22, Matt. 21:42, Mark 12:10, Luke 20:17). While this particular scripture involves the rejection of the Messiah, it nonetheless establishes a general mode of behavior that Christians seem dead set on repeating. Christian leaders building the edifice of evangelical Christianity for the last half-century have been quick to refuse many stones they've deemed to be unsuitable building materials for God's Kingdom.
For good reason did the translators of the King James Version select the term refuse to express the builders' attitude to the stone that God intends for "the head stone of the corner" in Psalm 118:22. God's people treated the Lawgiver the same way they treated His laws. Our contemporary misconceptions concerning His law are legion, so much so that when God asks "How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws," we are certain this was uttered some time after the law was delivered on Sinai. But it was not. God asks this in Exodus 16:28, months prior to the "official" delivery of the law ("official" as determined by the reigning builders leading our churches and seminaries) .1
Small wonder that in an age when the great things of God's law are esteemed a strange thing (Hosea 8:12) we end up traveling across the country with an unsettling message to our fellow Christians: everything you know about the law of God is wrong.
If God's law has fallen on tough times in our antinomian age, it should be no surprise to find that proponents of God's law are refused by the builders as well. When R J. Rushdoony wrote The Institutes of Biblical Law, the book quickly joined the ranks of refused stones. In affirming this, we're not ascribing canonical status to this imperfect work by an imperfect man, nor equating his book with Scripture, nor identifying its author with the Author above all authors. Nonetheless, the importance of this particular work can hardly be overstated.
The cynics among the builders will be quick to impugn our motives here as self-serving: "You're promoting that book because you publish it!" No, we don't publish it. It is published by Presbyterian & Reformed. We draw attention to it because it benefits the Kingdom of God to do so, not because it benefits us financially. Our goal is to expand the reader's awareness of the significance of this book. In a cynical age, this will be an uphill battle, one made more difficult in the face of resistance mounted by today's builders.
Rushdoony's Unforgivable Sins
Why does Rushdoony's Institutes elicit such hostility among the builders? After all, books about the Ten Commandments have been fairly common in Christendom. At the dawn of the Reformation, John Wycliffe expended considerable ink on the government of God and the Ten Commandments in one of his most important works, his Summa Theologiae (not to be confused with the Summa of Thomas Aquinas). The heirs of the Reformation, the Puritans, likewise regarded the law of God as an issue that needed to be engaged, not neglected or ignored. The fact that God's law was generally held in high esteem at the high point of Biblical scholarship in the Western world should not be missed. (I have "The Law Unsealed or, A Practical Exposition on the Ten Commandments..., James Durham. Foreword dated 1765.) In contrast, today's quick-and-dirty, sloganized dismissal of the law of God is worse than embarrassing: it has utterly neutered the people of God.
Modern evangelical Christianity has veered off its moorings into the plush comfort of vague generalities. Today's builders have yet to meet a spiritual clich they won't embrace with enthusiasm. Perhaps those of us influenced by the Puritans have been marginally less than gracious when ascribing "warm, hazy, pious gush and mush," to modern ChurchSpeak, with its unbalanced elevation of feelings over all other considerations. If this dominant mindset hadn't mired so many Christians in a potentially fatal immobility, patience would have been easier to exercise.
The appeal of generalities is that they don't touch us directly, they mediate information by way of abstraction, and abstraction is always a step or more removed from concrete reality. Speaking in generalities permits us to be oblique. When we generalize the Word of God, we dull its sharp edge. The Word of God becomes a two-sided pillow2 rather than a two-edged sword.
This was the first of Rushdoony's sins: he was specific. He didn't spiritualize the Decalogue with high-sounding rhetoric that would actually make void the law of God (Ps. 119:126) or render the commandment of none effect (Matt. 15:6). Recognizing that all of the law and the prophets hang on the two great commandments, Rushdoony mined from God's own commentaries on His law. God was specific, so Rushdoony's exposition followed suit.
This was entirely unacceptable.
Although the builders may concede that the law of God is good if used lawfully (1 Tim. 1:8), that the law is perfect, just, holy, spiritual, and to be delighted in with the inner man (Rom. 7:12, 14, 22), the law must always be presented as a vague generality, an inaccessible goal, or (better yet) both. When presented in this way (stripped of specifics), the builders believe they've realized the ideal of the spirit (a general ethos) that gives life rather than the letter (God's statutes) that kills. They'd surely deny that they've added or taken away from the law: they've simply generalized it. (When pharmacists invented Bufferin to make aspirin easier on the stomach, the notion was valid. Had Bufferin been invented by evangelicals, there'd be no aspirin in itÑjust buffers to soothe the stomach.)
Books about the Ten Commandments that deal in generalities, that play it vague, that rearrange our Christian clichs and slogans with eloquence, don't elicit hostility. They're welcomed because they buffer us from God and the power of His Word.
This was a game that Dr. Rushdoony had seen played out too many times, to ruinous results (especially as a missionary at Owyhee). Muzzling the Word of God was an exacerbation, not the solution, to man's burgeoning problems. The New Covenant, among other crucial things for Christians, did indeed involve the writing of God's laws on our hearts and minds in specifics, inculcating the same spirit motivating David's composition of Psalm 119. The first Psalm was to be taken as written (it extolled the law of God), not as hijacked by the builders (who point to anything but the law of God as the thing to meditate upon day and night).
In other words, one of the stones already rejected by today's builders is Psalm One's reference to the "law of God." That ugly stone has since been replaced by a much better brick, one hewn by the hand of man, leading the reader away from specifics and back into the evangelical fog.
The Puritans were not crippled by such "improved readings" of the Psalms. We today are not merely crippled; we're in a body cast and on life support. We ourselves are the emperors without any clothes.
Then along comes Rushdoony.
Rushdoony: the one who waxed specific about the law. The one who treated the specifics as if God had actually written them. By talking about specifics as if they mattered (and they do), he did something dangerous to the generalizations. He swept them, all of them, aside as thinly veiled attempts to repackage human autonomy within the contours of Christian spiritual terminology.
Rushdoony did this two ways.
First, he painstakingly documented the consequences of neglecting the specifics of God's law. Second, he did the same for the consequences of "observing His commandments, to do them" (Psalm 103:18). Most observers expected a Christian writer to speak to the first point, but not so much to the second. But by dealing with the law's specifics across all domains of human action (cultural, economic, sociological, environmental, scientific), Rushdoony opened up new avenues for seeing the folly of mankind and the wisdom of God. He was unmuzzling the whole counsel of God. And the builders found this to be unacceptable. They preferred to repose true value in God speaking through His Spirit to individual souls, not in His speaking to us through His law. Not merely to assert value, but moral obligation and a ground of blessing, of the law of God (like the Scriptures, in their irksome way, sometimes seemed to do) was beyond the dimensions of our modern cramped orthodoxies.
It is somewhat remarkable that the concept of orthodoxy can even survive in the context of vague outlines and fuzzy generalizations, but that haze is strenuously guarded not for its own sake, but for what hides behind it. The man in Matt. 5:19 who loosens even the least commandments of God and teaches men so is deemed "the least in the kingdom of heaven." By blowing away the fog, the sharp outlines of the antinomian's razor is revealed in stark contrast against the background of Scripture.
But there was more. The loosening of God's commandments creates an ethical vacuum that is always filled by something else. In fact, creating new rules of conduct for Christians is itself one way that God's laws are loosened, not only individually but in the aggregate. Why? Because such attempts at lawmaking undercut the sufficiency of Scripture. The man of God is assuredly not "thoroughly equipped for every good work" with the Old Testament, no matter what 2 Tim. 3:17 reads: met must amend God's law, peel some of it unacceptable or unworkable parts away and using our vague general spirituality as a guide, build a more workable set of rules for Christian conduct for our modern era.
Over the course of its 800-odd pages, Rushdoony's Institutes gives the lie to that misguided Christian conceit. For faithfully recounting the wonderful things in God's law, the book's author was labeled a dangerous extremist (that's when the builders were being nice). In fact, the builders found themselves in agreement with the enemies of Christianity in their assessment of Rushdoony. This is strange company to be in ... or is it? Perhaps their joint commitment to human autonomy (overtly so among the humanists, covertly so among far too many Christians) led these two groups to sing in harmony this one time ... against the evils and horrors supposedly riddling God's law.
The Dislocation of Liberty
Beyond the sin of magnifying all the commandments of God (that is, the sin of dealing with specifics, the fleshing out of God's moral imperatives for man), Rushdoony revealed something else about the law's detractors. These men invariably pose as champions of liberty, but God's law maximizes human liberty while rejection of it puts us under the oppressive power of our fellow man. Isaiah 5:20 refers to those who call good evil and evil good, and this moral reversal is routinely played out over against the debate concerning the place of God's law in our world.
When observing Rushdoony's achievement in documenting the truth of the Psalmist's assertion that he walked at liberty because he sought God's precepts (Ps. 119:45), the builders are quick to contradict the Scripture: pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Avoid the bondage of God's law. Enter into the freedom that comes when those ugly specifics of God's law are set aside.
But just as Psalm 119:45 cannot be broken, neither can Psalm 94:20: the wicked frame mischief using law. When the law is slacked (Hab. 1:4), something else takes up that slack: the precepts of men. Men abhor moral vacuums, and if God isn't Lord over the matter addressed by one of His statutes or precepts, then man slips his feet into God's shoes to legislate in His stead.
Some builders might tolerate the restrictions that God's law might impose on the secular state, but no builders will tolerate the restrictions that God's law would place on the church's most sacred activity: making rules for the congregants to walk by. Ultimately, the implicit defense of autonomy that drives the antipathy toward God's law merely masks an aggregation of power by human authorities in both church and state. The law of God cuts across all these boundaries to liberate men from lawless overreaching by all human institutions. Since these institutions put on airs as the defenders of liberty (rather than its enemies, as is regrettably the case), they must either repent or characterize Rushdoony's position as insane (as some have, for all intents and purposes, already done).
Is it not revealing that we have as hard a time finding an elected official who'll actually follow the U.S. Constitution (setting aside the debate over its Biblical status) as we do a church leader who'll follow the entire Bible (which, unlike the U.S. Constitution, is actually perfect)? In both cases, men seek to cast various cords from them and burst various bonds asunder (Psalm 2:3), no matter how glowingly they paint such rebellions as liberating acts.
Today's builders, then, know full well that God's law encroaches on their power, their authority, their autonomy, their spiritual sinecures, and their plans for the future. They know this as well as the secularists know itÑperhaps even more so. If they were not wedded to these "benefits" of antinomianism, they would bend the knee and acknowledge the glory of God's perfect law of liberty. Instead, they go away very sad, for their possession of legislative power in their spiritual communities is very great and they're unwilling to put that at risk by unleashing liberty among their flocks as God would have them bestow it in their capacity as His mouthpieces.
If liberty is a dangerous thing, perhaps few should have the actual article, and the rest should merely be convinced into thinking they have it. Nothing achieves this goal better than the vague fog of ChurchSpeak, which has taken turns into Orwellian paths that would have been unthinkable a century ago. When the law of God is magnified, men can clearly recognize whether they're abiding under their own vine and fig tree or not, and illusions become impossible to maintain. In a world sustained on empty illusions, a world that effectively "loves death" (Prov. 8:36), the gatekeepers have spoken appropriate words of comfort: "peace, peace" (Jer. 6:14; 8:11)Ñbut they heal the wound of His people slightly.
The Sin of Contemporary Relevance
God makes clear to His people that His words are not distant and inaccessible but "nigh, even in thy mouths" (Deut. 30:11-14). But too many of our builders today will argue that while God's laws may not be distant in terms of miles, it is distant from us in terms of years. If it was delivered thousands of years ago, it was in a form that must only be useful to ancient agrarian societiesÑnot to us.
The builders then assure us that this is their motive for retreating into the haze of vagueness: by so doing, they can glean some spiritual meaning for us today, thus preserving God's law to us in the only form that we could possibly
find benefit in. They find life for an old worn-out shoe by putting a new soul [sic] on it. Their paperback books glory in the hidden treasures of the old shoe (without ever denying, let alone challenging, the "fact" that it's an old shoe). The builders are then back in the driver's seat, now becoming the champions of restoring the contemporary meaning of God's law (as they've discerned it) by teaching it in abstraction.
Rushdoony challenges this line of reasoning, arguing from Scripture that the law of God is timeless and speaks to all men in all societies across all temporal boundaries. His powerful exposition of the details of God's laws so thoroughly establishes their contemporary relevance that it sounds the death knell for those who hold the opposing view (that God's law is a quaint artifact that long ago retired as the Word of God Emeritus). It is here that Rushdoony's encyclopedic knowledge comes to the fore, sweeping forward and backward in time with example after example illustrating the wisdom and perpetual applicability of God's precepts.
Most builders wouldn't have taken offense if Rushdoony had restricted himself to delineating the value of God's law during its supposed earthly run (from Moses to Christ as many poorly-guided Christians currently hold it). Rushdoony does no such thing. He shows that Christians who embrace their calling to "establish the law" (Romans 3:31) have an unlimited runway in front of them. By opening the doors to possibilities the faithful had lost sight of after the Puritan era ended, the work of Rushdoony and like-minded Biblical scholars before and after him has set in motion something extraordinary: Christians who have finally taken up the proper armor to fight in, and the proper tools to build with. If the Word of God has contemporary relevance, and we've neglected to apply it, then the crying need of our era is to fulfill the Great Commission in its fullness while taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cot 10:4-5). Men and women influenced by Institutes and by preaching based on the whole counsel of God know for a fact that the Word of God is sufficient. The liberating power of that one point can change the entire world.
Then, the only task remaining is to extend the reach of God's law, extending the realm of liberty and holiness and Christ's lordship over all things in the process. This follows from the fact that there is no neutrality in God's world (despite what the peddlers of piously fuzzy theology might argue). The Bible asserts that "even the plowing of the wicked is sin" (Prov. 21:4), so that men are to work toward an ever-broadening application of God's law as implied in Psalm 119:96: "I have seen an end to all perfection, but thy commandment is exceeding broad."
In short, if the law is merely for ancient agrarian cultures, we have to dig deep to find something of value in it for us and our world. But if, as Rushdoony shows, the law is addressed directly to us and our world, and our crises are a direct result of our studied neglect of the Scriptures, then we are actually equipped with the tools God has given us to establish His kingship over our persons and our families ... and then beyond.
These are tools that the builders do not believe you should take up or use. They are not for you, they say. These are tools with no contemporary purpose. Stick with the current program, or hunker down, but in any case, do not build anythingÑespecially without our sanction, and especially not with stones we've rejected.
But these are tools that Rousas John Rushdoony put directly into your hands, going around the builders entirely. It is yours to decide whether to slacken your grip and drop them into a dustbin, or to wield them like a man.
Rushdoony's Final Sin
Perchance the builders of modern evangelical Christianity could have forgiven Rushdoony for being specific instead of protecting the status quo ethical haze that hangs like gauze before the eyes of God's people. They might have been able to overlook his proclamation of liberty from man's better-reasoned substitutes for God's laws in both church and state. They might even have been convinced to wink at the vibrant call to action implicit in Rushdoony's treatment of God's Word as a timeless revelation rather than a historically-conditioned temporary ethic for ancient Israel that God terminated after sixteen centuries (which He might reinstitute for yet another ten centuries as held by premillennial believers but which most definitely is not for us today). All of that might have been forgiven.
But R. J. Rushdoony won't be forgiven by these builders.
If you read The Institutes of Biblical Law, you will quickly realize why this is so.
This book is so unremittingly Biblical, upholding such a high regard for God's enscriptured Word, and then carrying the light of that Word in all its manifold details into every imaginable area, it comes across as a virtual road-map for applying our faith in ways that are utterly concrete and ripe with meaning.
Rushdoony illustrates how God has actually positioned the true moral axis of the world: not upon moralism, but upon godliness. These two things, moralism and godliness, are not the same thing, as Rushdoony repeatedly
proves, again contradicting the builders' all-too-humanistic vision of morality and Scripture. But how many Christians know this? How many Christians continue to orbit the wrong moral axis, the one still commended by our builders?
Even less forgivable to the builders is the fact that Rushdoony's book is absolutely formidable in stretching the scope of the Ten Commandments back out to their original total dimensions, thereby revealing the tragic fact that the Word of God has been shriveling and contracting under our watch as we've "limited the Holy One of Israel" (Ps. 78:41) under the urging of our builders. Rushdoony's Institutes reverses the incredible shrinking Bible effect, and comes little (if anything) short of fomenting an explosion of the applied Word of God across all Creation. Every paragraph of this book has the net effect of retaking lost ground. There are few things that can motivate a dedicated Christian more than working to increasing his King's holdings in the world, starting with himself and his own family.
But there is one thing that is an even greater motivation.
For the final sin of Rushdoony is how he turns the tables on all the builders who vaunt love as the great Christian value. Far from being what his enemies depict him as (an ungracious, unloving legalist), anyone reading Institutes in one hand and the Bible in the other will soon realize that it is Rousas John Rushdoony, not our evangelical leaders, who is the true theologian of the heart. The careful reader will soon realize that Rushdoony is propounding nothing new, he's calling for a return to a lost faithfulness on the part of God's people and pointing the way.
There is no stumbling in the darkness when the statutes of God line the path you walk upon. That is the "highway of holiness" that is so easy to see under the light of God's law that "wayfaring men, though fools, will not err therein" (Isa. 35:8). In modern language, we'd say that Isaiah is setting forth The Idiot's Guide to Holiness by using such pointed terms: anybody can understand it, and everybody will know how to walk there. "The redeemed shall walk there," Isaiah informs us (Isa. 35:9).
For the truth of the matter is that Rushdoony's Institutes cannot help but prick hearts. It edifies, but it also indicts, for the Word of God always has two edges, and it is probes deeply into "the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb. 4: 1 2). Moreover, the greatest commandment could not be more clear: we are to love the Lord God with all our heart. If all the law and the prophets hang on this command and its companion verse in Leviticus 19:18 to love our neighbor, then everything in Rushdoony's book is directed to how we love God with all our heart. To do this one ultimate thing, while still addressing every other culture-transforming aspect of the book disclosed above, ranks as the most valuable gift any Christian can give to another.
Releasing such a comprehensive, many-faceted love upon our families, churches, and culture, if pursued with the same heart with which David wrote Psalm 119, will quickly show how comparatively anemic our contemporary builders' notion of love in all its vagueness really is. The specifics of God's laws embody true love, toward God, toward man, and even toward creation itself, as Rushdoony ably documents.
The more ministries and churches and families incorporate Institutes as a source of exposition, of edification, of guidance, the more they find themselves building on the rock of God's total word to man, and the less intimidated they become in handling the whole counsel of God in our modern world. The modern builders' agenda of keeping their fog machine stoked, of refusing the stone of God's law and any books that unleash
it among God's people, will always appeal to escapists, to antinomians, to those content with false liberty, and any who prefer emotional intoxication over a heart bent on fully serving God and man.
If you can't see that our builders have already led us into an incredibly deep ditch,3 you will not recognize that Rushdoony is leading you to maturity, liberty, truth, and a faith that overcomes the world.
But once you read the Institutes, you'll never again see the Ten Commandments as a tired Christian cliche filling dull Sunday school lessons for children. You will know that God's Ten Commandments anchor nothing less than a siege engine that will level every shakable thing and lay them all in the dust so that the unshakable Kingdom alone will remain. And you and your family will act on that certainty with invincible resolve, total conviction, utter humility, and with every single atom of your being.
1. The strident, tendentious efforts to explain away God's references to His Statutes, laws, and commandments in Genesis 26:5 and Exodus 18:16 (and everything in-between) are likewise heavy with the fingerprints of today's "builders."
2. The Monty Python skit concerning the Spanish Inquisition mirrors our modern approach quite effectively, insofar as the most dreaded weapon the fictional authorities use against their targets is "the comfy cushion."
3. As has been well said, the culture is the report card of the church.
(c) 2013 The Chalcedon Foundation. Reprinted with permission. First published in the Jan-Feb 2013 edition of Faith for All of Life.
Editor's note: I have several books on the law in my library. Those books are quite difficult to follow, and the detail given in them can easily lose the reader. However, the Institutes is very easy to follow. Every Bible believing Christian should have a copy, and use it. I have not found an issue it does not address.
Is the Bible Sufficient
Thomas Williamson
One of the unfinished items of business for modern theology is the question of the Sufficiency of Scripture. Is the revelation we have in the 66 canonical books of the Old and New Testaments enough for us to rely on for guidance in matters of faith and practice, or do we need new revelations?
Many popular modern preachers and authors are on record as believing that God still speaks today, on the same level of revelation as He did in Old and New Testament times.
If some of us are not receiving such new revelations, it is because we are not very spiritual; we are just not in touch with the Almighty at all; maybe we are not even saved.
Various authors and teachers have expressed themselves on this subject of continuing revelation from God in various ways. Here are some samples:
Mark Driscoll: "When God spoke to me, I had never experienced anything like that moment. God told me to devote my life to 4 things. He told me to marry Grace, preach the Bible, train men, and plant churches. Since that day in 1990, that's what I have been pursuing by God's grace." - "Real Marriage." (Pastor Morecraft told of a man who told him that God literally speaks to him. Morecraft said that he had never heard God speak, and asked the man what God's voice sounded like. The man said his voice sounded just like his. Morecraft pointed out what the man had just said, and the man's reply was, "I never thought about that". Ed.)
Dallas Willard: [We can live] "the kind of life where hearing God is not an uncommon occurrence, [for] hearing God is but one dimension of a richly interactive relationship and obtaining guidance is but one facet of hearing God." - "Hearing God, Developing a Conversational Relationship With God."
Benny Hinn: "Please, please don't think Orlando Christian Center is here to repeat something you've heard for the last 50 years. If we quit giving you new revelations, we're dead."
Tommy Tenney: "God chasers... are not interested in camping out on some dusty truth known to everyone.
They are after the fresh presence of the Almighty. . . .A true God chaser is not happy with just past truth; he must have present truth. God chasers don't want to just study the moldy pages of what God has done; they are anxious to see what God is doing."
Beth Moore: "Boy, this is the heart of our study. This is the heart of our study. Listen carefully. What God began to say to me about 5 years ago, and I'm telling you it sent me on such a trek with Him, that my head is still whirling over it. He began to say to me, `I'm going to tell you something right now, Beth, and boy you write this one down and you say it as often as I give you utterance to say it.'
"And this came as a direct revelation of the Spirit, because this would never have come to me. I know God spoke this over me as he began turning through a concordance in my mind and I started thinking about one Scripture after another."
James Dobson: [The Lord told him], "You are going to write a book for husbands and fathers, based on the life of your dad. The inspiration will be derived from his values, his dedications, his walk with Me. This is the joint venture of which I spoke two years ago." Dobson's comment: "I experienced one of those quiet moments of awareness when I knew the Lord had spoken." - "Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives."
Charles Stanley: "Many people do not fully believe that God speaks today. If we think we get direction only through Scripture, then we miss out on much of what God has to share, because He will speak so often through His Spirit, circumstances, and other people. We must make absolutely certain that we are fully convinced and persuaded that God does speak to us personally." - "How to Listen to God."
Gail Riplinger: "Each discovery was not the result of effort on my part, but of the direct hand of God - so much so that I hesitated to even put my name on the book [New Age Bible Versions']. Consequently I used G.A. Riplinger, which signifies to me, God and Riplinger - God as author and Riplinger as secretary."
Charles Trumbull, biographer of C.I. Scofield, described the Scofield Reference Bible as "God-planned, God-guided, God-illuminated and God-energized."
Henry Blackaby: "Does God really speak to His people in our day? Will He reveal to you where He is working when He wants to use you? Yes, God has not changed. He still speaks to His people. If you have trouble hearing God speak, you are in trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience. . .
"Only God can give you the kind of specific directions to accomplish His purposes in His ways. After God spoke to Noah about building an ark, Noah knew the size, the type of materials, and how to put it together. When God spoke to Moses about building the tabernacle He was very specific about the details." - "Experiencing God," pp. 36, 75.
David Pytches, on how the Lord spoke to Kansas City Prophet Paul Cain: "The Lord suddenly appeared beside him in the front seat of the car. He told Paul he was jealous of this particular friendship. If you really want the kind of intimate walk with me you profess to want, you must remember that I walked alone,' he said. That was not the whole substance of the conversation that seemed to last quite a little time, but it was the part Paul has felt free to share of this supernatural encounter." - "Some Said It Thundered," pp. 39-40. (God allegedly told Cain that he was never to marry. Years later, charismatic leaders publicly repudiated Cain for having become a practicing homosexual).
President George W. Bush: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam; which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
Richard Foster, in "Celebration of Discipline," p. 24: "To bring people to believe that they can hear God's voice seems so difficult. Members of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC have been experimenting in this area for some time. Their conclusion: We think that we are 20- and 21st-century people; nonetheless, we have hints that one can receive directions as clear as those given Ananias, "Rise and go to the street called straight." Why not? If God is alive and active in the affairs of human beings, why can't his voice be heard and obeyed today? It can be heard and is heard by all who will know him as present Teacher and Prophet."
Statements of Faith That Teach the Sufficiency of Scripture
I am very skeptical as to these claims that God is still speaking today on the same level as He did in Old and New Testament times. Such claims raise questions as to how we can authenticate new revelations and be sure that it is really God who is speaking.
In addition, we need to consider that such claims are contrary to the principle of the sufficiency of Scripture, as it has been expounded in various confessions of faith over the centuries. I am in agreement with the following statements that express that what we already have revealed in the Bible is sufficient guidance for us in matters of faith and practice:
First London Confession of Faith, Baptist, 1644: "In this written Word God hath plainly revealed whatsoever he hath thought needful for us to know, believe and acknowledge, touching the nature and office of Christ, in whom all the promises are Yea and Amen to the praise of God." [No other revelation needed - the Bible is enough].
Westminster Confession of Faith (Presbyterian), 1648: "The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men."
Second London Confession, Baptist, 1677: "The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience." [Here again, the Bible is sufficient - no added revelation needed].
Orthodox Creed, Particular Baptist, 1678: "Neither ought we, since we have the scriptures delivered to us now, to depend upon, hearken to, or regard the pretended immediate inspirations, dreams, or prophetical predictions, by or from any person whatsoever, lest we be deluded by them."
Baptist Bible Union, 1923: "We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men supernaturally inspired; that it has truth without any admixture of error for its matter; and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the age, the only complete and final revelation of the will of God to man."
French Baptist Confession of Faith, 1924: "We believe that the Holy Scriptures reveal to us all that we must know in the spiritual realm. We believe that they need not be modified or completed by any other revelation in the course of the present dispensation."
Free Will Baptist Confession, 1948: "These are the Old and the New Testaments; they were written by holy men, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and are God's revealed word to man. They are a sufficient and infallible rule and guide to salvation and all Christian worship and practice."
General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, 1976: "We believe in the authority and sufficiency of the Holy Bible."
"The Scriptures are God's inerrant revelation, complete in the Old and New Testaments . . . The Scriptures provide the standard for the believer's faith and practice, reveal the principles by which God will judge all, and express the true basis of Christian fellowship." [Notice the statement that the Bible, as God's revelation, is "complete]."
Modern Theologians Who Hold to the Sufficiency of Scripture
I am in general agreement with the following expressions by theologians who hold to the sufficiency of Scripture, thus eliminating the need for new revelations on the level of what is already given in the 66 canonical books of the Bible:
John MacArthur: "The church does not receive new or private revelation, either corporately or individually. Scripture clearly warns against adding to the completed revelation given in the Bible (Revelation 22:18). . . . The only trustworthy source of divine truth, guidance for your own spiritual growth, and instruction for the church is the written Word of God. No emotional urging or mystical experience can trump the concrete, fundamental truth God has given us in Scripture. Does God still speak? Yes, but not in an audible voice. He speaks through the pages of Scripture. . . . If all that's true, why do some believers still look beyond the Bible for a special, personal word from the Lord? At the heart of their desire for fresh revelation is a fundamental lack of faith in the absolute sufficiency of God's Word.."
John Piper: "What does this imply for the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture? That doctrine is based mainly on 2 Timothy 3:15-17 and Jude 1.3 In other words, the Scriptures are sufficient in the sense that they are the only (once for all) inspired and (therefore) inerrant words of God that we need, in order to know the way of salvation (make you wise unto salvation)' and the way of obedience (equipped for every good work). .
"The sufficiency of Scripture means that we don't need any more special revelation. We don't need any more inspired, inerrant words. In the Bible God has given us, we have the perfect standard for judging all other knowledge."
Charles Haddon Spurgeon: "We need nothing more than God has seen fit to reveal. . . . If the revelation of God were not enough for our faith, what could we add to it? Who can answer this question? What would any man propose to add to the sacred Word? Anything more than the Word of God sets before us, for us to believe and to preach as the life of men, seems utterly absurd to us. . . . The Scriptures in their own sphere are like God in the universe - All-sufficient. In them is revealed all the light and power the mind of man can need in spiritual things." - "The Greatest Fight in the World."
David Cloud: "I believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. The Bible contains everything that we need for faith and practice. It is able to make the believer perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.' Obviously, then, nothing else is necessary. I do not have to rely on priests or scholars or tradition or extra biblical sources."
Paul Washer: "If we decide that the Scriptures are infallible and inerrant, we have only fought half the battle. We must then go to the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture: that Scripture is not only infallible, the living word of God, but it is sufficient for every case, for every situation that the Christian is confronted with in this life."
Mark Thompson, Moore College, Sydney, Australia: "To deny the sufficiency of Scripture is to say something quite serious about the character of God. Our God is Lord of all and is both able and willing to provide for His people. In His mercy He does not leave us with a Scripture that is incomplete or incomprehensible. In His wisdom He cannot have been caught by surprise by the cultural and intellectual developments of the late 20th Century. He has spoken and just as in the days of Paul and Timothy, the Word He has given is able to equip us thoroughly for life as His people."
Gary Gilley, Southern View Chapel, Springfield, Illinois: "Despite the fact that the majority of conservative evangelical Christians since the Reformation have held to a cessationist position with regard to divine revelation, true cessationists are rapidly" disappearing. In the articles and books I have written nothing has evoked as much criticism and anger as my position that God is speaking to His people today exclusively through Scripture."
What the Bible Teaches on Sufficiency of Scripture
2 Timothy 3:16-17 teaches that Scripture is sufficient not just to teach us the way of salvation (as expressed in some confessions of faith) but for all matters of faith and practice:
"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."
Jude 3 exhorts us that we "should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." This implies a once-forall revelation of the content of Christian faith, delivered to us in the First Century AD. In theory, if new revelations from God are still coming through today, then the basic content of the faith would change from week to week.
Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32, Proverbs 30:6 and Revelation 22:18 warn against adding to God's words. I suppose these warnings could be construed as only a prohibition to adding specifically to the Law of Moses, the Proverbs and the Book of Revelation. Obviously, God Himself would still have the right to add to His words, if He wished to.
Do we have any solid evidence that God has added to His Word since the close of the New Testament canon? Can anyone supply me with the written transcript of a genuine new revelation from God, and authenticate it, proving that God really spoke it?
In the absence of such evidence, I will continue to hold to the principle of the sufficiency of God's Word. Instead of a subjective, mystical attempt to "sense" how God might be speaking today, we need to concentrate on studying what God has already revealed, and then obey it and put it into practice.
by Andrew Mason
A time of reflection is needed for me as a veteran of the State's war against Iraq considering we can now celebrate the official one year anniversary of American forces "pulling out". Of course, many of you reading this know there is an embassy in Baghdad the size of the Vatican, hundreds of advisors, and thousands more mercenaries to maintain its Mesopotamian outpost. Reflecting on one of the most blatant atrocities in all of history, I have realized I need to forgive those who attempted to kill me and formally apologize to the Iraqi people.
First, let it be said that I now fully understand why they tried to kill us. We patrolled your streets in 68-ton rolling death-creator (M1A1 Tank) looking for those deemed "insurgents" or in reality simply opposed to us doing this sort of thing. We sat and spied on their homes through my main gun's sight while they went about your daily business in fear; hoping we wouldn't pull the trigger. I can also only imagine being on the other side a gargantuan turret traversing, looking for something to murder. Just like the sounds of drone's flying above children in Pakistan cause them to "scream in terror", so did the sounds of our tanks. Our tank tracks ruined their farm and grazing lands simply because of our want to take a short cut to an over watch position. Either as a result of our unwelcome presence and the destruction of life and property that necessarily follows it or the events that I have just described; they placed an improvised explosive device (IED) between our old tank tracks in the middle of the desert.
During late January 2007 my tank and our wing tank left our position where we provided over watch for a supply route that was a hotspot for IED placement. Fearing we would hit yet another IED on this road, we took alternative route through the desert back to return to our command operating post for re-supply. However, we were silly enough to follow our old tracks that we had left a month ago. They were smart enough to know that we'd travel back through this area. The first tank passed through a cut in a line of hills and we followed. The 500-lbs bomb detonated, destroyed my tank, and seriously injured everyone but me. Every marine who witnessed the aftermath the destruction had no idea how we made it out alive. Of course, I was angry with the "Other" for a long time and was ready to re-enlist for the slaughterhouse of Afghanistan. Luckily, I had a change of heart and I now understand why they tried to kill us. I forgive them. If some invading force came into my backyard I, like every other American, would respond in a similar manner.
To the Iraqi People:
I am sorry for helping leave your country in ruins. I am sorry for detaining and violating the privacy of those who did no harm to me or any other American. I apologize to the children who have not grown up with parents. I apologize to the parents who have had children born with birth defects caused by our uraniumlaced ammunition. I apologize for the sectarian violence and the potential wars in the future that followed the destruction of your livelihoods. I apologize for, having to learn of the State's depredations the hard way by being part of the biggest criminal gang in world history. The only thing I can truly offer you and the rest of the world is help. Help by preventing this form of massive aggression from ever taking place by changing the thinking of the American people. Maybe, they can learn something from a recent, tragic event in our own country.
The massacre that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary this past week is that event. Similar acts of terror happen weekly, if not daily, across the Middle East as a direct result of this State's foreign policy. Maybe someday, the mass of Americans will realize everyone comes into this world at their specific geographical location by complete chance. Maybe someday, they will realize that the children in Connecticut are no different than those in the Middle East.
Andrew Mason is a former corporal in the U.S.M.C. He is currently pursuing a degree in Political Science at California State-Bakersfield.
Results of Soy for all?
By Alan Caruba, 1/28/13
Introduction: I am no big fan of sports, which is a modern god, but there is a well made point below. See Smothered by Safety, http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/02/04/lenore-skenazy/smothered-by-safety/]
Rush Limbaugh has predicted the end of the National Football League and sees its demise drawing closer.
Is it really any surprise that Obama is leading the charge to make football "safe", given that it is a sport where there is a lot of physical contact, often resulting in the occasional injury? Americans do not watch football to see players get injured. They watch because it is a version of war. It is fought in stadiums. The field of battle is well defined. And men outfitted like gladiators engaged in a modified version of combat.
The key word here is "men." Nobody wants to watch two teams of women play football.
Obama is a girly man. When you think of Reagan, he is astride a horse at his ranch. When you think of Obama, he is riding a bicycle.
The latest manifestation of an effort that pre-dates Obama, the "chickification" of America, is the decision by the Department of Defense to allow women to engage in battle alongside their male counterparts. There are few ideas more idiotic than this. Forget the usual arguments put forth about upper body strength and such, even the Israeli Defense Force, famous for including women in its ranks, uses them auxiliary functions in order to free up the men to do the actual fighting. [With Godly chaplain forbidden, sexual assault is raising alarmingly. It is the women who are paying the price of wanting combat duty. Ed.]
No civilized nation wants to send women into combat. No military that depends on unit cohesion and morale wants to put the two sexes together in close proximity because the two sexes tend to do what comes naturally in close proximity. They've been holding hearings in Congress about the problems this has created in our military services. We have, however, compounded this idiocy by opening the ranks to openly gay service members. There have always been gays in the military, but in the pre-Don't Ask, Don't Tell days, they kept that to themselves.
In an earlier era, the roles of men and women were well defined. Women, indeed, had fewer choices and, to the degree that they now have more, that is a good thing. To the degree that they are in the workplace it also means that both marriage and children are impacted in ways that the 50% divorce rate and the numbers of single mothers were predictable. [Deut 22:5 forbids women from normal men's occupations, such as the military. Ed.]
It is troubling to me that women in films and on television have been increasingly portrayed in roles where, rather than being the damsel in distress of former times, they are now gun toting, karate smashing characters on a par with men. This undermines traditional values from chivalry to the instinct of men to come to a woman?s aid, to be protective.
I fully understand that culture is always subject to change, but some aspects of culture are worth retaining and this is particularly true in light of the glaring fact that women are different than men. Even women know that!
What bothers me is the creeping effort to turn men into women in terms of their attitudes. Part of the push to permit gay marriage, an element of the Democratic Party agenda, is the constant pressure on heterosexual men to "accept" homosexuality as "normal", when it has never been regarded as normal. Homosexuals are approximately 3.5% of the population. The Obama administration has made it clear it has no intention to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act and now openly advocates gay marriage. It tears at the sinews of a society that knows that marriage is between a man and a woman.
As I was thinking about the changes occurring in our culture, I was reminded of a list of Communist goals that were read into the Congressional Record by Rep. Albert S. Herlong, Jr, (D-Florida) in 1963. There were 45 of them, based on a book by Cleon Skousens, "The Naked Communist."
One was "Present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as normal, natural, and healthy.'" Another was "Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis." And "Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the common man.'"
The Communist goals included taking over the nation's educational system and infiltrating the press as well as gaining control of key positions in radio, television and motion pictures. [Christians have supported the takeover of education. The results are upon us. Ed.]
If these goals, revealed just over fifty years ago, sound familiar it is because they are being accomplished. They represent life in America today.
How football is played may seem insignificant. Encouraging gays in the military and women in combat may seem odd at best and idiotic at worse.
The bigger problem is the way the news and entertainment community, along with the capture of our educational system all conspire to undermine values that worked very well from the days of the U.S. Revolution to around the 1960s when the progressives, the liberals, andÑyes-ÑCommunists began to gain positions of influence and power.
In 2008 and 2012, Americans even elected one.
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-chickification-of-america.html
Study at Indiana University
Paul J. Wright paulwrig@indiana.edu (1/13/13)
Abstract
Many consider same-sex marriage the civil rights issue of our time. Although support is on the rise, there are some Americans who oppose same-sex marriage. Heterosexual males are a demographic group particularly likely to oppose same-sex marriage. Mass media and education are often thought of as important agents of socialization in American culture. Pornography in particular is a platform often discussed in terms of its impact on males' exual attitudes. This study used nationally representative three-wave longitudinal data gathered from adult U.S. males to examine the over-time interplay between pornography consumption, education, and support for same-sex marriage. Support for same-sex marriage did not prospectively predict pornography consumption, but pornography consumption did prospectively predict support for same-sex marriage. Education was also positively associated with support for same-sex marriage. Scientific and social implications of these findings are discussed.
http://crx.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/01/09/0093650212471558.abstract
by Coach Dave Daubenmire
Porn has gone mainstream. Beyonce is an American Idol. The President honors her...his wife would like to be like her. I wonder if the Obamas would want their daughters to expose themselves in such a vile and perverted way as the 31 year old "Christian" stripper. Whatever happened to shame? Whatever happened to modesty? It was disgusting. But we are used to it, aren't we?.......
http://www.newswithviews.com/Daubenmire/dave312.htm
Why should God Bless America seeing as how America is under His curse?
Pornography breaks down the loyalty to the one man-one woman Biblical pattern of the family. The web has brought pornography secretly into the home, and is taking multiplied millions of dollars from the family budget. Pornography leads to supporting same-sex marriages, as does the "public" education system, where kids are taught that "Johnny can have Two Mommies". The above mentioned study shows the acceptance of sodomy lies squarely at the feet pornography and the state's education system. [Obama is taking control of the internet, but we can be assured that control will not control the overwhelming pron content.]
With no binding law of the Lord to establish a firm foundation, who is to say that pornography, or sodomy for that matter, is wrong?
With no fear of God issuing from the pulpits of the land, there is no binding law of the Lord to establish a firm foundation. When God does not say that perverseness is wrong, who can?
Why should or how can God Bless America seeing as how the lawless spirit in the pulpits of America have brought us under his curse?
To your health, not
Dr. Mercola
To speed up flu vaccine production, the US FDA has approved a new insect-based, genetically engineered flu vaccine, as well as vaccines grown in cultures of dog kidney cells rather than eggs.
This year's flu vaccine contains a very good match to the circulating strains, yet the reported efficacy of the vaccine is still only slightly over 60 percent.
In a wholly irresponsible move, some "health experts" are now proclaiming the conventional egg-based flu vaccine safe for those with severe egg allergies, and that the benefit of the flu vaccine (which this year has an official efficacy rating of about 60 percent) outweighs the potential risk of lethal anaphylaxis.
According to a recent review of published research, flu vaccines are ineffective at best, and produce neurological complications at worst, while having no effect at all on hospitalizations or working days lost. For infants, inactivated flu vaccine was found to have the same effectiveness as a placebo.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/01/29/genetically-engineered-flu-vaccine.aspx?e_cid=20130129_DNL_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130129
The two of the most harmful ingredients in processed foods are high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil, whether partially hydrogenated, organic, or made from newer soybean varieties modified in such a way as to not require hydrogenation
Completely unnatural man-made fats created through the partial hydrogenation process cause dysfunction and chaos in your body on a cellular level, and studies have linked trans-fats to health problems ranging from obesity and diabetes to reproductive problems and heart disease
Besides the health hazards related to the trans fats created by the partial hydrogenation process, soybean oil is, in and of itself, NOT a healthy oil.
Add to that the fact that the majority of soybeans grown in the US is genetically engineered, and as a result saturated with dangerous levels of the herbicide glyphosate which may have additional health consequences as there are no long term safety studies.
When taken together, partially hydrogenated GE soybean oil becomes one of the absolute worst types of oils you can consume.
The genetically engineered (GE) variety planted on over 90 percent of US soy acres is Roundup Ready engineered to survive being doused with otherwise lethal amounts of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide (glyphosate). GE soybeans have been found to contain residue levels as high as 17 mg/kg, and malformations in frog and chicken embryos have occurred at just over 2 mg/kg.
Note: Soy is the major ingredient in baby formula. The result is the feminization of men, as well as men wanting to be women. (Sodomy.)
Viral Gene in Genetically Engineered Foods Could Promote Disease
The European Food Safety Authority has discovered a hidden viral gene in 54 of 84 commercially approved genetically engineered crops?a finding that highlights deep flaws in the regulatory process.
Plant pathologists speak out about the potential dangers of the viral gene fragment in GE plants, stating it may confer "significant potential for harm," and call for a total recall of affected crops.
Plants expressing the viral gene fragment exhibit gene expression abnormalities, which indicate that the protein produced by gene functions as a toxin. The known targets of its activity are also found in human cells, so there is potential for this plant toxin to also have toxic effects on humans
At present, the only way to avoid GE foods is to eliminate processed foods from your grocery list, and buy primarily whole foods grown according to organic standards. The need for labeling of GE foods is also becoming more apparent in order to allow for health monitoring
The only safe food is food you grow and prepare yourself, or from sources you personally know. If you are interested in safe, healthy food, and are not on Dr. Mercola's mailing list, you need to be. Mercola.com.
Jude 3
Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
Notice that the faith was not invented as many pagans try to tell us. Rather, it was Divinely Delivered
Biblical faith is not the fruit of the imagination. However, a great many professed Christians are following after the gods of their own imagination, gods which have no Divinely established laws, so their worshipers can do what is right in their own eyes. The message of faith was given to holy men of old who lived it, and wrote it down for the following generations until the end of time. If one will study and practice the holy faith from God's word, he will avoid the lying corruptions of both men and devils. God closed His supernatural instructions to man with a curse against any and all who would seek to change His word, Revelation 22:18, 19.
That holy faith has been entrusted to the church, pastors especially, and the church is responsible to pass it down to the following generations.
1 Timothy 6:20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, ...
Only by the holy faith can we know God, know ourselves, know the cause of our misery and know the means of recovery, which is redemption. The entrance of sin by the first Adam is the cause of our misery, and the answer to that misery is in the last Adam, Christ.
Romans 5:19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
Thinking themselves wise, pagan philosophers over the ages have become fools as they sought then and seek now to answer the cause of man's miseries apart from sin. All they can produce is fables and high sounding follies mixed with some religious phrases. Sadly, it is from the average "Christian" college many of those pagan fables and phrases flow. "The Classics", Plato and Aristotle are a couple of sources of the corrupt water.
Peter describes them as wells without water and clouds with no rain. They promise rain to a dry land, and water to a thirsty man, yet the offer is a lie. Their offer of liberty only brings about bondage to corruption, and everlasting darkness awaits them. 2 Peter 2:17ff.
The faith once delivered to the saints, or the way of salvation through Christ is a mystery that was worked out between the Father and the Son before the creation of the World. That mystery of our faith was preserved for all mankind in public record. As Paul told King Agrippa, this thing was not done in a corner. Acts 26:26.
That great mystery of the faith does not depend upon some mystical insight as might be required in the Masons.
Though men down through the ages have tried to destroy the faith, God has preserved it as it was delivered to the saints. A major way of destroying the faith today is through new, modern translations. Both adults and children should be brough up to the word of God, not the word brought down to them. The Word should be exalted, not depased as is done in modern translations.]
Ancient writings of the pagans have been lost, but the ancient writings of God have survived, and will survive until heaven and earth pass away.
As God moved men to write down His word, God also moves pastors and teachers to open and apply His written word so it will continually be delivered to the saints. As heresies have arisen over the ages, God has raised up faithful men to contend for the true faith against those heresies, and He will today.
The faith has been delivered to us in written form. In it, we have a more sure word of prophecy than even Moses had when he heard the voice of the Lord God in the holy mount. 2 Peter 1:18.
Delivered... implies leaving something in the care of someone, or trusting someone with something of importance. The important thing delivered to or entrusted to the church was and is the word of truth, the doctrines of salvation and the laws of holy living.
Exodus 24:12 And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.
However, God's people were held accountable to the "walk in" the law before the tables of stone were given. Exodus 16:4.
Ephesians 1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,
2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
The church has been entrusted with the word of truth for two reasons: publishing it in the present age and preserving it for the ages to come. "So that to the present age we are witnesses, to the future [we are} trustees, Isa. xliii. 10." (Thomas Manton, [1620-1677] "An Exposition on the Epistle of Jude." Banner of Truth Trust. Second reprint, 1962.)
First, Publish.
"Published" is found 11 times in scripture, and it always means to make something widely known, such as in Acts 13:49, And the word of the Lord was published throughout all the region.
In Esther 1:20, 22, 3:14, 8:13, the king's decree was published throughout all the empire. In Jonah 3:7, the king published his proclamation to repent throughout Nineveh. In Mark 13:10, Luke 8:39, those whom Christ healed published what He did for them. In Acts 19:37, 13:49, the word of the Lord was published throughout all the region.
Psalms 68 opens by proclaiming the power of the Lord over His enemies, and for that power the righteous rejoice and sing praises to him. He is the righteous judge and protector of the helpless; He sets the captives free, controls heaven and earth, and prepares goodness for the poor.
Our interest is,
Psalms 68:11 The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.
Note three points:
V. 11, He gave his word... "Utterance, saying, discourse, matter, promise, plan, purpose, decree, command, and appointment". (Theological Word Book of the Old Testament. TWOT.)
Company... "from 06633; a mass of persons (or figuratively, things), especially reg. organized for war (an army); by implication, a campaign, literally or figuratively (specifically, hardship, worship): Ñ appointed time, (+) army, (+) battle, company, host, service, soldiers, waiting upon, war(-fare). Greek 4519." (Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (English). OLB.)
4519. "Lord of Sabaoth". That is "Lord of the armies of Israel, as those who are under the leadership and protection of Jehovah maintain his cause in war."
Company. An organized army properly equipped and fit for war, which implies a campaign to conquer an enemy. The weapon of victory in this war was provded to the average Christian by Gutenburg.
Publish... basar. "to bear news, bear tidings, publish, preach, show forth", i.e., praching the good news in its entirety.
"In the historical literature, the occurrences of basar cluster around two events: the death of Saul, {1Sa 31:9 2Sa 1:20 2Sa 4:10} and the defeat and death of Absalom {2Sa 18:19} Although David received them differently, both were felt by the messenger to be good news. This concept of the messenger fresh from the field of battle is at the heart of the more theologically pregnant usages in Isaiah and the Psalms, Here it is the Lord who is victorious over his enemies. By virtue of this success, he now comes to deliver the captives (Ps 68:11 [H 12]; Isa 61:1). The watchman waits eagerly for the messenger (Isa 52:7; cf. 2Sa 18:25ff) who will bring this good news. At first, only Zion knows the truth, {Isa 40:9 Isa 41:27} but eventually all nations will tell the story. {Isa 60:6} The reality of this concept is only finally met in Christ. {Lu 4:16-21 1Co 15:54-56 Col 1:5,6 Col 2:13-15}" (TWOT, OLB.)
The Lord uttered, or publically spoke His battle plan against the dark powers of this world. He has revealed the purpose of His war, which is to defeat the powers of darkness, destroy their strongholds, and deliver those who are held captive. He will then lead those former captives of the dark kingdom as His captives into the kingdom of light, and ultimately into His presence.
He has called out a company. That is, He has "drafted" particular individuals, and has organized His victorious army. He has equipped His army to do battle against the dark powers, and has promised them ultimate victory, assuring His army that they are "more than conquerors through him that loved us". Romans 8:37.
He has equipped His army with the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. They are empowered through prayer and supplication in the Spirit. As the Spirit gives them the perseverance to remain in the battle, the ultimate victory over the dark powers will be theirs. (Ephesians 6:16-18.)
"Lord of Sabaoth" As the Captain of the Lord's Host, or army, He has commanded His army to go conquer the world by publishing, preaching, His word, for it alone has the power to prevail against the gates of hell. 1 Corinthians 1:18. In Paul's day, those gates were defended by the Jews and the Greeks. They both fell before the army of God. Romans 1:16. Today, the gates of hell are defended by "Christians" and pagans who reject the rule of King Jesus. ("Lordship Salvation", for He is either Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all, but that is a topic for another time.)
Through publishing the totality of the law-word of God, the binding cords of sin will be loosed as cords of flax that have been burnt with fire. (Judges 15;14.)
Psalms 68:11 The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.
The rest of the Psalm tells of His victory over the powerful kings, the rulers of this world, and continues by praising His name.
Ver. 18. Thou hast led captivity captive. The expression is emphatic. He [Christ, not David] has conquered and triumphed over all the powers which held us in captivity, so that captivity itself is taken captive. The spirit and force of it is destroyed; and his people, when released by him, and walking in his ways, have no more to apprehend from those whose captives they were, than a conqueror has to fear from a prisoner in chains. The energy of the phrase is not unlike that of the apostle: "Death is swallowed up in victory." John Newton. (Spurgeon, Treasury of David.)
Vv. 22-31. Regardless of the strength of the enemies of the Cross, the strong enemies, Bashan, will be conquered, and His people freed from their bondage. V. 23, blood. Though the Lord literally dipped His foot in the blood of His enemies when He destroyed Jerusalem, 70 A.D., the blood since simply speaks of vengeance upon His enemies, vengeance that belongs to the Lord alone. The equipment for war provided for His army to conquer His enemies does not include physical weapons, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God for the pulling down strongholds. 2 Corinthians 10:4, Ephesians 6:16-18.
As Miriam led the women in praises to God after the Lord's victory over Pharaoh in the Red Sea, His people will praise the victory of the "Lord of Sabaoth". (Exodus 15)
The powers of this world will be subdued to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. They will be subdued through the preaching of the word of God, which includes the teaching of the Decalogue as given to Moses on the Mount. The Lord gave His army this command for overcoming the enemy: "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel", and then instruct the converts how to obey His law-word in every area of life and thought: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments". Christ is the one who met Moses in the wilderness. John 14:15, 15:10, 1 John 2:3, 5:2, 3, &c.
Vv. 32-35. The scene moves from below to above, from earth to heaven, and all power and glory is attributed to "the God of Israel", the Lord God Almighty.
The church has been entrusted with the word of truth for two reasons: publishing and preservation.
Second, Preservation:
Jude 1:3, the duty of the church is to preserve the truth, and pass it to the next generation undiluted and unmixed with error. The whole counsel of God's truth was transmitted to particular men of old, who wrote it down as it was given to them. 1 Timothy 1:11. God closes His word to man by pronouncing terrible plagues upon all who ignore, compromise or change His truth as revealed in His commandments. Revelation 22:18. Deuteronomy 12:32 condemns emotional attachments that would cause one to follow those who seek to void Moses. Deuteronomy 13:6ff. The true worship of the true God consists of obedience to His total law-word, for the God who met Moses on the Mount said, "if you love me, keep my commandments"
The Lord identifies any effort to void His commandments as serving other gods, and calls for capital punishment against those who would draw followers away from "his commandments". Deuteronomy 13:4. (Old Testament capital punishment today is church discipline.) God is the one who exalts "prophets"; He provides them with the ability to draw away men from His laws and precepts. He tells us that there must be "prophets" who seek to void Moses or at least compromise the commandments as given through him. 1 Corinthians 11:19, 2 Peter 2:1 with Deuteronomy 13.
Following any will other than God's will as revealed in the law-word of God is service to other gods.
Deuteronomy 13:3 is quoted by our Lord in Matthew 22:37 (Mark 12:30, 33, Luke 10:27). The context of our Lord's quote is Deuteronomy 12:32, and the command to do "what thing soever I command you".
It is the whole counsel of God that is given to make men "perfect, and throughly furnished unto all good works". 2 Timothy 3:17. The responsibility of pastors and teachers, as well as upon all believers, is to see that it is passed on in its true formÑnothing added or omitted. The unadulterated truth is also to be proclaimed publically and in all situations.
The church has gloriously failed to publish and preserve the truth as was once delivered to the saints. The results of 175 years of compromise and denial, even denial of the validity of the Commandments, are now upon us. The results of abandoning the whole counsel of God "which was delivered unto the saints" are upon us, yet even those who profess to be God's people continue to flee from the Biblical faith.
New "conservative" men in public "law making" offices will not solve our problems. Fighting for the ConstitutionÐfourth amendmentÐwill not protect our liberties; only by obeying the truth as once delivered unto the saints will society be set free.
The first page of "The New American", (Jan, 2013) was a full page ad, "Answering Today's Character Crisis, Making Character First". Under a picture of Tom Hill, is this statement, "Tom Hill, founder of Character First, shares practical advice for character-based leadership. A must read for any executive or manager Ð it will change your life."
Character without Christ will only add to God's judgment, as men are convinced by smooth talking false prophets that they can prosper apart from the whole counsel of God. I dealt with Hill's wicked, damnable heresy in 2002. See http://www.biblicalexaminer.org/w200203.html#Character%20First%20Examined
The only hope of stopping the total tyranny that is quickly approaching is for those to whom God's truth has been entrusted fulfill their God-given responsibility to publish, preserve, develop and pass on that truth as it was delivered in the law, the prophets, the gospels and in the epistles. The heretical, compromised pulpits must be reclaimed by the truth of God's entire command-word.
There is abundant hope in the applied whole counsel of God when applied to individuals, societies and nations.
Pastor Need
"This is the first time ... that I have been called to address men whose marching orders are onward to the battle-field, whose motto is victory or death. The probability, nay, the bare possibility, that I may be delivering my last message to some, perhaps to many of you, fills my heart with inexpressible anguish. I feel therefore deeply solicitous to meet the responsibilities of this hour, in a manner becoming a watchman for souls."
Chaplain John Jones, 8th Georgia
Editorial
Fellow Compatriots in the Chaplains' Corps and Friends:
The month of April for a true Southerner brings about reflections of what the War of Northern Aggression and Appomattox Court House were really all about. The heritage of Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, John Witherspoon and others too numerous to name visit the mind. Their descendants who fought for the Confederacy said they were fighting for the same liberty as their fathers who fought in the War for Independence from England. During the South's defense against Northern invasion these descendants said they were asserting their constitutional rights and were fighting for the same values as their forbearers.
In a world filled with misinformation and downright lies one must be a bit skeptical and willing to search out dependable history to find the truth. Political history or revisionist history or politically correct history seems to be the diet of the day which brings me to ask, "Have we been defrauded of our legacy?" American history is today shrouded in the cloak of propaganda; yes, we have history with an attitude but telling the truth does not seem to be an element often considered as mandatory.
The words that God has preserved for us in His sacred Word should be of help. We are reminded, "Truth shall be established for ever" (Prov. 12:19). That is a divine reminder that ultimately whether in time or in the last judgment those who are guilty of misinformation, in whatever form, will stand before the eternal God and be judged. God's truth is eternal as He is! If the truth sets free then lies enslave. The Lord Jesus said, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). Jesus is Himself the personification of Truth and no one comes to His Father in salvation except by Him. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). Life in heaven and life on earth are to be based on the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. May we ask, "What does the Bible say?" Saving truth and living truth are in Christ. However, misinformation takes eternal truth and seeks to redefine it. False propaganda may come from the so called government Ministry of Truth. The citadels of learning have become the greatest disseminators of untruth about God, the Bible, history and life in general.
Dr. R. L. Dabney a Confederate theologian, chaplain and chief-of-staff of Gen. Thomas J. Jackson wrote of those involved in distorting the truth, "... after committing the crime of destroying a sovereign and coequal commonwealth, seek also to bury her memory under a load of ... falsehood. The last and only office that remains to her sons is to leave their testimony for her righteous fame - feeble it may be now, amidst the din of passion and material power, yet inextinguishable as Truth's own torch." The sons of the South [Christians, ed] must be the promoters of truth and not the purveyors of propaganda. We must know whereof we speak! What kind of legacy are we leaving? Are we adding to the load of falsehood or are we uncovering truth? Are we standing for truth? Truth's torch is inextinguishable!
Frank Lawrence Owsley, in the now agrarian classic I'll Take My Stand, eloquently remarked, "After the South had been conquered by war and humiliated and impoverished by peace, there appeared still to remain something which made the South different - something intangible, incomprehensible, in the realm of the spirit. That too must be invaded and destroyed; so there commenced a second war of conquest, the conquest of the Southern mind, calculated to remake every Southern opinion, to impose the Northern way of life and thought upon the South, write error' across the pages of Southern history which were out of keeping with the Northern legend, and set the rising and unborn generations upon stools of everlasting repentance." Our Southern children and grandchildren who have been subjected to government schools have not only been on those stools of everlasting repentance but they have been turned into repudiators of their parents, their churches, their accents, their history and on we could go with the litany of errors. Do we care that our children have been made stooges for the state?
First, we need to return to the Lord and renounce our sins against Him; then we need to educate ourselves in the truth. When we speak of Southern things we must seek to be truthful. As the saying goes, "Truth is error's best antagonist."
(Chaplain's Corps Chronicles of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, April, 2012)
by Old Rebel (Mike Tuggle)
"This, then, remains a country in a Cold Civil War - not far off the geographical contours of the first, but with the inheritors of the Confederacy concentrated in the South and now also with serious pockets of absolutists in the more rural parts of the country as a whole."
Andrew Sullivan, pseudo-conservative Sullivan's right, but not for the reason he imagines. Yes, there IS a "Cold Civil War" roiling the political waters today - and just as in 1861, it's being fought to determine if we are to preserve our traditional culture and liberties, or if an overgrown central government will again sponsor a revolution. If DC wins this time around, we can expect the criminalization of ALL firearms, the confiscation of private retirement accounts, and the Third-Worldization of America.
Alexander Stephens' prediction that the cause of the South would become the cause of all has been vindicated.
[Even with all its errors, Pastor Morecraft identifies the old Confederate Nation as the last Christian nation in history. I must agree with him, as we see the North continue Lincoln's all-out war against Christianity and Christian law, even against self-defense.]
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
In the sub-discipline of economics known as public choice, an important concept is the theory of "rational ignorance." First articulated by political scientist Anthony Downs in the 1950s, and expanded upon by economist Gordon Tullock and others, the theory of rational ignorance holds that it is perfectly rational for individuals to largely ignore politics, or even not to vote. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, and we all spend most of our time doing our jobs, pursuing an education, raising families, paying bills, and planning our private lives. We rationally spend very little time becoming informed about politics and government policy.
From an economic perspective, it is irrational for most people to vote in presidential elections since, in a country as big as the United States, the probability that your vote will "make a difference" is about 1/100,000,000, with the denominator being the number of voters. The main reason people vote, therefore, is similar to the reason why they cheer for their favorite sports team. Or, they have been so bombarded with government propaganda for their entire lives that they believe it is their "patriotic duty" to legitimize the state and all that it does by "voicing their consent" at the voting booth.
One consequence of the rational ignorance effect is that, since the general public is largely ignorant of the machinations of the state, political outcomes are controlled by special-interest groups, the largest of which is the state itself and all of its functionaries. This is true as far as it goes, but it is much worse. The average citizen in a democracy is not only rationally ignorant, but rationally misinformed, thanks to the relentless statist propaganda that is drummed into the heads of nearly everyone beginning in pre-school. The entire educational system in America has become one gigantic, state-funded statist brainwashing operation.
Once Americans have been thoroughly indoctrinated in statism for at least twelve years, that indoctrination is then reinforced by the lapdog media, Hollywood, and the popular culture in general. It is much easier to plunder and exert totalitarian control over a society in which at least half of the adult population is comprised of brain-numbed morons who will believe in almost any lie or superstition as long as it has a governmental imprimatur.
Hence we have millions of people who believe that disarming all the law-abiding citizens so that only dangerous criminals can possess firearms will make us safer. They believe that their children are safer in public schools if there is no one there Ð not a single person Ð who could protect them from a crazed murderer by carrying a firearm and knowing how to use it.
Millions of Americans believe that jobs and prosperity are created when the government takes more money out of their bank accounts and gives the money to government bureaucrats to spend on themselves and their political supporters. They are sermonized about this several times a week by Paul Krugman in the New York Times.
Most Americans believe that they are safer in the world the more involved their government's military is in launching terroristic bombing attacks by air on more and more countries, under whatever pretense announced by D.C. They believe that if the U.S. government murders hundreds of thousands of children in such bombings then, well, it is just a price that WE should be willing to pay for peace in the world. They also believe that such murderous acts will not motivate anyone in those countries to even think about retaliating against Americans.
Millions of Americans believe that "fairness" occurs whenever the government discriminates against hardworking, frugal, far-sighted, self-educated, law-abiding, and economically-successful families and gives that money away to welfare bums and parasites. There are millions of Americans who pay no income taxes at all who believe that the "top two percent" of income earners who pay almost 90 percent of all federal income taxes are "not paying their fair share."
Millions of Americans believe that they are helping to avert a global environmental catastrophe that could end life on earth by lugging bottles and cans and paper bags out to the street every week for the "recycling truck," which may well just throw it all in the dump with all the other garbage.
Millions of Americans believe that treating people according to the content of their character and not the color of their skin means that racial hiring and college admission quotas should be enforced by the state.
When a company like Wal-Mart begins selling groceries 30-40 percent cheaper than unionized grocery stores, it almost goes without saying that they are to be condemned as social outlaws who abuse both their employees and their customers. That's what the labor unions instruct us to do.
Most Americans believe that Abraham Lincoln "saved" the voluntary union of states that was created by the founding fathers, based on the principle that government's just powers are derived from the consent of the governed by micromanaging the waging of total war on Americans who no longer consented to being governed by Washington, D.C., killing hundreds of thousands of them.
Most Americans also think of Lincoln as a racial saint even though he advocated the deportation of all black people all of his adult life, to his dying day. He also opposed inter-racial marriage or allowing black people to vote or serve on juries or even to reside in his home state of Illinois. They think of him as a "great statesman" even though he manipulated his country into the bloodiest war in American history where as many as 850,000 Americans died according to the latest research. This is the kind of thing "great statesmen" do, we are all told in the government schools.
It has been widely reported that the main reason why Barack Obama was reelected was that millions of Americans believed that this particular multi-millionaire "cares more about people like me" than the other multimillionaire who was his rival.
This list of American idiocy could go on forever, and is a testament to the overwhelming success of the American state in not just "dumbing down" the population, as many have claimed, but in creating a society comprised of millions of dunces and robots who can always be counted on to "legitimize" anything and everything the state does at election time. As the nineteenth-century pundit Josh Billings, who was a contemporary of Mark Twain's, once said: "The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so."
Thomas J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe, How Capitalism Saved America, and Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution Ð And What It Means for America Today. His latest book is Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government.
By Stephen Feller
Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, Democrats have made reinstatement of the assault weapons ban a major priority for the 113th Congress despite the fact that relatively few murders are committed with weapons that would be banned. From 2005 through 2011, more people in the U.S. were killed with hammers and clubs, or with hands and fists, than with rifles, which is what the ban likely would have the most effect on, reports Breitbart.
There were 496 murders committed with hammers and clubs in 2011, as compared with 323 deaths connected to a rifle, according to FBI records. In 2006, there were 618 killings committed with a hammer or club, and 438 murders with a rifle. Many years, twice as many people were killed with hands and fists than with rifles.
"While the FBI makes it clear that some of the murder by rifle' numbers could be adjusted up slightly, when you take into account murders with non-categorized types of guns," wrote Awr Hawkins, continuing that "it does not change the fact that their annual reports consistently show more lives are taken each year with these blunt objects
Variouis articles, links and personal information on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ovid.need
Varous:
* Smothered by Safety: Those in a bloated government agencies are seeking job security as they dream up some very strange "guidelines". I guess we could call these "Dream Acts", or maybe "Nightmare Acts."
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/02/04/lenore-skenazy/smothered-by-safety/
*Support your local criminals.
* Father of Newtown Student: From My Cold Dead Hands'
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/04/Father-Of-Newtown-Student-From-My-Cold-Dead-Hands
* Interesting video concerning "Sandy Hook" shooting. Offered without comment. Has over 10.5 million views. Snopes, left wing Obama supporter, says fake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx9GxXYKx_8&feature=player_embedded&bpctr=1359674448
* Big cities are losing control, and they blame the guns for running wild. "Massive numbers of US cities abandon Bible" tells us why chaos reigns. "Public Education" has accomplished its goal.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/massive-number-of-u-s-cities-abandon-bible/?cat_orig=us