Can You Hear Me Now.......Can You Hear Me Now?

      I'm at a point where I'm bringing back old blogs more than writing new ones. Why is this? Most of the viewers to this blog come through clicking on the NEXT BLOG link at the top of this page. It's a first time visit and most of the time it's a one time visit. America is disintegrating. We are two peoples today. Rush Limbaugh describes the one as a low information voter. I don't get to listen to him often and I'm not sure of his definition of this person but I might describe him/her as the postmodern American. Postmodernism, in my opinion, in it's cultural context, destroyed discernment. We lost, many of us, the desire to seek truth, or to defend it, or to even recognize it. We are now under a full scale assault after decades of being dumbed-down in preparation for it. The Christian church, long ago, became disassociated with its own fundamental truths, wherein by the way is it's power to influence a culture. Patriotism became a fools game to many and thus our vigilance decayed to the extent that a Marxist/Communist cohort was able to secure the presidency and then, in true communist fashion, use it as a weapon against  its own people. If our news media were only lax we might have spotted what was coming but they actually fell in line with what they believed to be something good. But it was the antithesis of what is good. Our youth, overall, fail to see the dangers that surround our nation and directly impact their own futures. Our motto has become, as I wrote in a previous blog, Red Solo Cup, let's have a party. And then we will surely write of that party on our Facebook page. God will have the final say in the future, if there is to be one, of this nation. My hope is that those who have at least read these thoughts once will remember them and recognize that only God can heal us and protect us and that all of our blessing had come from Him because we were one nation under God.

This from 2011:

       I sit here and just wonder what percentage of Americans are becoming unnerved as the days wear on and chaos seemingly develops in so many areas of our society. Surely even the most skeptical can see that we are in much more than just another economic downturn, that we are dealing with catastrophe and not just difficulties in our foreign policy, that we on the verge of anarchy followed by tyranny rather than just political division, that we are becoming not only increasingly violent but suicidal, that we are almost breathless at times at what transpires on our news and in what is supposed be the Executive Branch of the United States of America... a Constitutional Republic. I have to believe that whatever the percentage is, it is increasing but I don't want to get too excited because I've felt this way before. I thought that surely the American public would overwhelmingly reject the Clintons but it didn't happen. I hoped that 9/11 would unite America...but it didn't. I thought that the economic collapse might convince Americans that Wall Street was not going to be the answer to our problems...it didn't happen, and I thought that the vast majority of Americans would be outraged that its Constitution was being dismantled article by article but as of yet, it hasn't happened. We have all probably seen a rope that was supporting something begin to look dangerously taut only to unravel and break before our very eyes. We are beyond a weakened rope holding up America and are in the unravelling process. This great empire is in its last days. My prayer has consistently been for God to allow 40 more years...one more period where we would be a source of stability in the world, one more generation added to a storied past of spreading freedom and liberty, one more testimony to the rest of the world that God upholds nations who trust in Him. I hope only for 40 years because of human nature. A couple decades of trusting solely in Jesus Christ and we surely would begin to fall away again. Pessimism, you say? I look at it as the opposite for it is only God's mercy and grace that permitted the world to reach this stage and God is as real today as when He, time and again, humbled and blessed repentant Israel.... as when He sent His church throughout the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.... as when the Reformation of the 16th century exploded in the hearts and minds of peoples and nations.... as when he guided the Mayflower to Plymouth Rock and as when He crushed the occult Nazi Third Reich. We will turn to Him as a nation...should He will it. And if we do not then that is also His will, also glorious as it would be His plan and maybe...maybe...a precursor to His Second Coming in power and glory, the fulfillment of all of history and the final triumph of good over evil. As bleak as the future of our nation is it is within one word of restoration and that word would be spoken within the Godhead. If you are not overly concerned right now, any words that I write would surely seem ridiculous. If you are, then we are two of hopefully many who are petitioning God for one more manifestation of His power in mercy and blessings upon our nation...and therefore the world.

Boiled Spaghetti

     The following post is from November 20th of 2009. Those who live in gated communities and frolic on their yachts in their free time do not bother me. It does bother the budding communist dupe though for if they cannot live in that style of luxury they don't think that anyone should. The communist mind is not built upon care for their fellow man but rather jealousy for those with great wealth.  Communism is indeed a great equalizer, not a perfect equalizer for its tyrants still procure what wealth there is for themselves, but it does make everyone else less prosperous! It redistributes the poverty so that most, except those tyrants, can share in it. As our culture is today we will never be a peaceful and content people. We have permitted ourselves to become convinced that we must have everything new that technology offers to us, partake in every facet of entertainment available to us and become exactly what the television commercial tells us is beautiful and successful, or we are....the oppressed! No legislation can fix this anomaly in the concept of happiness and total distortion of the concept of joy for happiness and joy cannot be purchased nor are they by-products of things purchased. Contentment is a choice. Music can enhance it and it can destroy it and is the subject of this post from November of 2009. The highlighted song is about a real man, real love, and contentment that is not built on riches and therefore cannot rust away or be stolen.

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     I think that everyone realizes that music can have a powerful effect in a person's life. I am more of a Jack-of-all-trades when it comes to music. I know a little bit about many types but I'm not even near an expert in any of them. I know that Richard Wagner's compositions are stirring in a militaristic sort of way. The scene from Apocalypse Now where the helicopter gunship advances on a Viet Cong village, blaring Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries from speakers, is chilling. When I listen to Ralph (Raif) Vaughan Williams I can picture myself sailing through the whitecaps on a tall ship. Individual songs can immediately transport me to a specific time and place. When I listen to the Fifth Dimension's Wedding Bell Blues, I am laying in my bunk in basic training at Fort Dix with Tom's transistor playing loudly in the next bunk. I am in an EM Club in Vietnam when I hear Roberta Flack singing Killing Me Softly With His Song. I'm sure you experience the same type of moments. I heard it said that Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin wrote the number one rock song of all time Stairway To Heaven while in a trance-like state and I believe that Handel described a similar writing method with parts of his Messiah. It was a song I heard today that reduced me to boiled spaghetti, as it always does, that brought me to this topic. The Winstons were a soul, funk group from the 60s and they went gold with Color Him Father the lyrics start out this way:

There's a man at our house, he's so big and so strong
He goes to work each day, stays all day long
He comes home each night looking tired and beat
He sits down at the dinner table and has a bite to eat
Never a frown, always a smile
When he says to me "How's my child"
I've been studying hard all day in school
Tryin' to understand the golden rule
Think I'll color this man father
I think I'll color the man love, yes I will

One theme that has appeared in this blog from time to time is my thought that the answers to our society's reeling out of control are not welfare, diversity or toys in abundance. They are God, family, respect for your neighbor and responsibility. This song Color Him Father, is about a man who marries a widow and becomes a father to her seven children. We are entitled to tell the God who we do not believe in that we will be the master of our own fate but no adult should make that choice for a child! Johann Sebastian Bach added the initials SDG after his name on his cantatas, his message being that his work was to reflect Soli Deo Gloria, which is Latin for To God alone be glory! I was an inquirer in 1982 when I saw the film Chariots of Fire (Academy Award winner for Best Picture and Best Original Score.) The strength of conviction in the man (Eric Liddell) effected me greatly. Country music is not my first choice in music but I hear a lot of it because it is the first choice of my wife. Maybe it is my imagination but it seems that I hear more and more themes that are reverential to God. The Arts, in general, both reflect where the culture is and influence it. It would be a worthy topic of prayer to plead God's mercy upon us by moving in hearts and minds of those who have such gifts!

Mutiny...From...The Bounty

      Merriam-Webster defines maelstrom this way: a powerful often violent whirlpool sucking in objects within a given radius. Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe had written of maelstroms as had Homer (not Simpson) in his Odyssey. The Bible has references to a whirlwind, a different type of vortex, and Merriam-Webster defines it as a violent or destructive force or agency. We are living in a vortex of our own making, a maelstrom brought on by our dismissal of God as irrelevant. Life in America has become as that old carnival ride the Rotor where all we can see is the person on the other side of the spinning drum as the bottom drops out and we are held motionless be the centrifugal force. The spinning drum is the delirium of our amusements and the person on the other side is our own reflection on Facebook. The following post was written a little over a year ago and hardly does justice to the chaos we are living in:

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It was only a few blogs ago that I gave my thoughts on the single-most discernible reason that America is collapsing, and it is indeed collapsing. America is divided along the lines of the most basic division of mankind. Roughly one-half either demands self-autonomy-void of a god, or is agnostic to the extent of ignoring even the possibility of the existence of God, or accepts a false god that they themselves have constructed. The other half either directly looks to Almighty God for sustenance in every area of life, albeit imperfectly, or at least believes in God enough to recognize when His protective hand is departing.  This is what is happening in America today. Twenty years ago seems like a hundred years to me on this issue. There were separation of church and state issues that could become more than contentious but today the disparity has evolved into two distinct peoples living within one nation. When the former becomes the predominant opinion and when the government joins in, then man has achieved what he wanted, his autonomy, and God will stand aside for us to reap what we sow. Every area of our society, of our government and of our national security has always been, is, and will always be, dependent upon the mercies of Him who gave us our beginning. Therefore every one of those areas is in extreme jeopardy right now. These things I believe to be so. What I do not know is whether or not we, as a people, will see that we are lost on our own and humble ourselves before Him, and seek His protective hand upon us once again. We have mutinied and set our own course only to find that even the stars to navigate by proclaim the glory of God.

From One American To Another

      I would be very surprised if this blog was not, at the very least, given the once over by some intelligence agency; not because there is anything special about Special Dog but because that is how communism works. Let me explain; I don't mean to imply that the analysts from the various agencies are communists for they most certainly are not. I know a little bit about this for when I was in the army, from 1969 to 1972, I was part of a rank and file that did work for the National Security Agency. I know what it's like to get a top secret clearance and take every order given to me very seriously. I expect that the analysts of today are very patriotic, that that is what directed them to work for the government to begin with. No....it is communism that seeks to secure the top position (the President) and have that person appoint as many insecure, self-serving individuals if not out and out fellow believers, below him. Having done this, the rank and file (you) will have to follow orders even if they (you) do not agree, or even despise what they (you) are told to do. Communism seeks to replace the patriot with the Marxist, the strong military leader with the weaker military leader, the ethical administrator with the ladder climbing administer.
      This has to be why we heard stories recently about soldiers being ordered not to read certain books or not to express their religious faith. This is why the second and third level IRS administrators gave unconstitutional directives that were followed. This is why Muslims are given a free pass and Christians are overly scrutinized. This is why the Americans were not rescued in Benghazi. This is why so many Czars were appointed. This is why we hear stories every single day that defy common sense. Communism needed a Manchurian President, or at the very least a dupe!  Without him, what has happened, could not have happened.
       This post is to that analyst in the field. Thank you for service to our country! Many of you have been put in a very difficult position. Hold the line as well as you can. Remember your youth where you loved your heritage, a heritage under attack today, particularly if you are in the latter part of your career. Don't let the sterilized atmosphere, sterilized of God and country, discourage you if you are so unfortunate to be in such a situation. Do what you must but remember that there is a line, and that all the professional advancement possible will make you a hollow person if you abandon your conscience.
     Work, strive and sacrifice if necessary to give your children the same future of freedom and liberty that you were blessed with. If you have not bowed before your creator, if you haven't seen first hand the glory the majesty and the power of He whom our forefathers acknowledged, reverenced and even worshipped, please at least give your children the possibility of knowing Him, as our forefathers did, for that freedom, the most precious of all, is also under attack!

Coated Pill....Easier To Swallow

       Many Christian prophesy teachers have for decades pointed to a revival of the Holy Roman Empire in the Last Days. Primarily using Daniel's vision of a statue with ten toes, part clay and part iron, and also the ten horns on the Dragon in Revelation 12:3. They expect ten nations in Europe to come together during the Tribulation period and we have indeed seen a larger European Union form along with the euro zone and its euro.
      Today's (June 10, 2013) New York Times' Op-ed pages had a half page article titled The Ghosts Of Europe Past written by Cambridge University history professor Brendan Simms. And here is my summation of that article:
     This European Union resembles that Holy Roman Empire in that it is nations coming together to "deliberate matters of mutual concern." The problem is that the Holy Roman Empire collapsed and for the EU to succeed it will have to understand why the empire collapsed in order to avoid a similar demise. That problem was, in part, that there was no authoritative structure in place to deal with the rivalries between the different states.
     Professor Simms then segues to the American Revolution. The Articles of Confederation were too weak to keep the union together so the Founding Fathers merged their debts, governments and efforts. Quoting Professor Simms. "The resulting American constitution created a powerful executive presidency and a representative legislature and made possible the creation of a national debt, a national bank and eventually a strong military..." In other words they "reformed" whereas the "modern" Holy Roman Empire "failed to reform and disintegrated after it was defeated by Napoleonic France  in 1806." There's another problem in "the old empire" in that it "became preoccupied with legality and procedure..." The law got in the way! Professor Simms writes that Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote about these problems of the old empire and that those same problems are being "echoed today in Washington."
     He's now ready to give the solution, from history, to the problems that the European Union is experiencing: "Fortunately there is a solution from history. The euro zone faces the same choice as the Holy Roman Empire and American patriots of old: how to overcome discredited forms of confederation. Rather than digging themselves into a deeper recession and democratic deficit through austerity measures, the states in the common currency need to form a full and mighty union on Anglo-American lines. They must create a strong executive presidency elected by popular vote across the euro zone, a truly empowered house of citizens elected according to population and a senate representing the regions. The existing sovereign debts should be federalized through a 'union bond' with a strict subsequent debt ceiling for the member state governments. There will have to be a single European military and one language of government and politics: English."
     I have to wonder how many "regions" that they might decide on? Ten is a nice round number. You can easily Google this article and form your own opinion. What I see recommended is strength through strictness and a powerful executive office where "legality and procedure" are ignored if they get in the way.....sounds like the Obama Administration. Does Professor Simms know that our branches of government are supposed to be able to check one another? Does he know that we are currently experiencing crisis, in part because of those nasty pests of "legality and procedure?" He tries to align the wrong people of today with our patriots of old and might want to consider more founders than just Hamilton and Madison.  Most of all he should expand his reasons for our strengths and might want to consider de Tocqueville comments, "I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and ample rivers, and it was not there, in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power." The feeling that I got in reading this article was that it was coded...a coated pill easier to swallow.... because there are indeed normal people who read the New York Times and they (we-hopefully) do not want to hear of a state that survives primarily due to its authoritarian prowess and I sincerely hope that he is not thinking about us in some "reformed" world governmental structure.... for the Atlantic Ocean is just about the right distance between America and the European globalist aspirations of a New World Order.

All Is Lost...Or Is It?

  The following post is from November 8th of last year:

       It was heroic at times and trying at times but always set apart by a common creed.…life as an American in these United States of America. God blessed this endeavor from the beginning as pilgrims left their homelands where tyranny had enveloped even the church and they saw this new land of America as a new beginning for them and an extension of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the new world. The long distance from the heavy hand of the King of England encouraged them to see beyond being merely a colony or an extension of England to being a nation unto themselves. Liberty is a powerful force and freedom empowers one to reach beyond what would otherwise be available. In the mid-eighteenth century, after the First Great Awakening, the Gospel began to wane while great political minds filled the void and a secular government…that nonetheless proclaimed its dependence upon God…. came forth. Economic growth followed as the frontier was conquered but we faced an enormous stumbling block, the separation of two peoples in two different geographic areas over the issues of state’s rights and slavery. God’s heavy hand of judgment came upon a nation that had forgotten who had bestowed upon it its blessings. We turned to Him momentarily but a brand new frontier of industrial growth drew us away again only this time our educational institutions followed. A weakened church was at that time under full scale attack from European theological liberalism. God’s judgments now began to come upon the entire world in wars and economic collapse. We retained the sense of being Americans, of being free and of having liberty and defending the liberties of others while the Gospel went throughout the world... and then we hit our peak. We were the most powerful nation on this earth both economically and militarily. We had a creed that bound us together as Americans. We had heroes and causes and confidence. There’s a scene in the classic Marlon Brando film The Wild One where a girl asks the young Brando what he is rebelling against. His answer was “What do you got?” This became the hidden mantra of the 60s generation…my generation. Everything was available to us and little of it was good. America found itself in smaller wars, trying to do what it had done before but the mantle was gone. We were then a lost generation when a former“B” actor in Hollywood revived the memory of that which was good in us but the rebellious generation of the 60s had produced our college professors and they in turn trained our media, the source of most information and news. Our creed that once bound us together was being hacked away at. We were now not only ignoring our heritage, we were attacking it, ashamed of it. Old heroes are old news. Heroes today are created for a purpose irrespective of what they might have done…good or bad. We were no longer “one” as a people but groups, each one out only for themselves. God had watched all of this. The Billy Graham evangelical became the Ralph Reed evangelical which ultimately became the Karl Rove evangelical. Our pulpits, no longer capable of preaching Christ, preached whatever they thought would bring people in. The Democratic Party fell first, taken over by Progressives and then Communists. The Republican Party fell next, taken over by political machinery without a soul. Our country essentially lies in ruins, the demolition notice just hasn’t been served. Yet most of the people party on but that's not unusual, for history is replete with empires that fell while it’s people were oblivious to its nearing demise. All is lost! Or is it? From the vantage point of observation and reality it is. Common sense and truth are utterly impotent in the postmodern mind. The blessing of capitalism became the God of capitalism and then a scourge of profiteering. We pray to it but it does not answer. Our culture is in shambles. We have disasters ahead and we may as well know it beforehand. Fill in the blanks on what they might be. God’s hand had departed from us long before we even heard the name Barack Hussein Obama. If His will is to awaken us one more time it will not be within a political party but over all the land and upon all those who suddenly see what we have done...and who we have become....a people who have forsaken their God. Should God open our eyes and revive us there is no power on earth that can stop it. Those on the outside will utterly abhor what they see happening. This is our hope. It always has been our hope. Apparently we have to reach bottom to see this and we are not there yet. May God have mercy upon us once again and do so entirely for His glory alone.

....in God's good time....

       I look back and wonder.....how did we come to this? What happened to the American people? How did a Marxist, if not an out and out Communist, become our President and then bring a crew of political hacks into leadership and administrative positions as our enemies licked their lips while planning our demise. I wonder... even though I know the answer. We are nothing...we never were anything...except that God used us for His purpose...to His glory. We once not only acknowledged His sovereignty, we bowed before Him and He responded by having mercy upon us in spite of our wanderings. He made us a great nation whose people were brave and courageous. And then we decided that we do not need Him. We were even ashamed of Him. We stood by as higher education ridiculed God. We turned our children over to the ideologues in charge of our educational system. We were seduced by television and more recently by the computer. God looks down upon us as we worship idols, the greatest of which may be our own Facebook image.
      We are down three games to none in a four game series. Our backs are against the wall. When you are down three games to none as we are you cannot think about yesterday's game, nor can you look to game five, nor do you have the luxury of resting. Every minute has to be accounted for! Every minute on the ice has to be focused. The only bright spot is that Barack Obama's team has started game four stumbling all over the place. Their scams are coming to light like decomposed bodies rising to the surface from shallow graves after a heavy rain. The momentum is changing and it would do us well to remember Winston Churchill's words to his country in their time of despair, June 4th, 1940. I'd like to use some of those words and paraphrase others and add a few of my own:      
  
 
     We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in the courts, we shall fight in the Congress, we shall fight on the airwaves, with growing confidence and growing strength in our schools and universities,  we shall defend our Constitution and should God first induce us to seek his mercy and forgiveness, and then endue us with fortitude and wisdom, then empower us to do his bidding and to rebuild His church, and should he will it to withhold His judgment, only then might we pass liberty and freedom on to our children, only then...in God's good time... might we be used once again.....for His purpose....and to His glory!

Have They Already Begun?

     John MacArthur called it a "self-deluding slogan." R. C. Sproul made mention that the phrase, repeated three times, certainly should call our attention to its importance. The slogan or the phrase is in Jeremiah 7:4, "the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." The full verse in the English Standard Version is "Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord'." God is giving Jeremiah the words to warn the people of Judah, for they thought, as MacArthur put it,  that "the Lord would never bring calamity on his own temple." Have we in America deluded ourselves with just such an exemption?

The following blog entry is from 2011:

     How would we respond if we were asked what we thought God's opinion was of us and our nation, and what would we rate the possibility of there being impending terrible judgments upon us? It's a difficult question for the average American to even contemplate for we as a people are generally certain of only one thing in that area, that being that America will indeed continue to plug on either in good times or possibly bad times but far removed from utter devastation that other countries and empires of old had experienced. It's not a trait peculiar only to Americans for every empire has felt itself somewhat invincible for a long time after its influence and power had peaked. We are enjoying the fruit of our productivity and liberty while oblivious to predators of that productivity and liberty.
      I worry about our youth. It's often said that every generation worries about its youth but I lived in those infamous 60s and even with the ascendancy of the drug and rock culture the temptations were tame compared to the diversions that our youth of today have thrown at them. I had a Radio Shack Flavor Radio, a black and white television, a few balls of various shapes and sizes and a 110 pound set of weights to occupy my time. Television is far worse today, far more enticing with many more channels and an accompanying philosophy of life, society and politics that does anything but convey the belief systems that originally encouraged productivity and liberty. Even so, television is not the biggest culprit in our decaying society for the Internet dumbs us down to such a degree that we can ingest but not digest, and we can take in vast amounts of information but cannot analyze it or even categorize it for future use. Throw Facebook into the mix and we now have more than one generation among us involved who are emulating Narcissus of Greek mythology who looked at his reflection in a pool until he died. We continually update and gaze at our own reflection on our Facebook page as that day of judgment nears for it is unlikely to us that judgment, should it actually materialize, would be anything more than an economic decline or the results of political bickering that divides and occasional prolongs far off wars.
     We accepted Darwin's flawed concept of the origin of man but this was not enough for God's mercy upon us to end. We forbade our public schools to offer simple prayers to God in 1962 but that was not enough either unless one takes into consideration the half century of chaos and violence our society has endured since then. We legalized the taking of life in the womb in 1973 which is estimated now to be 50 million lives but we still exist as a nation. Our latest offense may be our last in that in our haste to accommodate the gay agenda through same-sex marriage we would be, in effect, offering up the minds of our children in just about every area of their lives to what God very clearly calls an abomination. Personal opinion here, it is one thing to permit others in a free society to make choices that effects only themselves but an entirely different matter to validate those choices in impressionable minds to whom God gave express warnings not to lead astray.
     Having said this, it is not the gay agenda, or the liberal agenda or even the radical Progressive/Marxist agenda that should be our primary concern for all of those only emanate from the consensus of a people. It is our own individual failures that led to such a consensus that we need to deal with. We should indeed question whether we even have any right at all to speak against America's profane dealings with God for we ourselves have added to that. But that is not an excuse not to stand for what is right. The reality is that we indeed are a sinful people...dealing with our own individual sin as we struggle to lessen the temptations all around us that exacerbate that sin in ourselves and add to the decay of our culture. All the while we plead for and expect God's mercy but are we aware that we may have presumed upon that mercy for too long. The violence and imminent collapse of our own nation and the entire world is evident yet we continue to call what is good evil and what is evil good. As I have written often in this blog, no political or military solutions will cure us. They need to be addressed but only a sincere, individual and corporate, humbling before our Creator can give us hope for renewed mercy, and we are without excuse... for the evidence is all around us, if only we would look, that God's judgments have already begun.

Tim Tebow Goes To The Defense???

    I've written about Tim Tebow four or five times, first in November of 2009 when he was in college and later in professional football while they were kicking him around like a soccer ball. I advised him to leave football and run for Congress. There are news reports today that he may not latch on with another team after the fiasco in New York. My advice....move to defense! No, I'm not talking about football. Tim, they do not like the overt Christian message that you give but they really wouldn't like it in Congress. Our Constitution has been under attack for some time and needs defenders in that Congress. You do not seem to be the type that compromises. Remain humble...prepare yourself....and put God's gifts to you to use where it really matters!