Noah....The Film......Where Did The Inspiration Come From..

          It's the biggest assault on God in cinematic history....in my opinion that is. My wife and I went to see Darren Aronofsky's Noah starring Russell Crowe this afternoon. I thought I knew what to expect from the film as reports indicated that liberties were taken with the Bible's account of Noah and the ark but the word "liberties" never entered my mind while watching the film, for it was not liberties taken with the Old Testament but more of an entirely different testament given on screen more akin to pagan writings of antiquity.
          It had been my hope that, liberties or not, the public might at least be reminded that God had once brought judgement upon the world and that His Word tells of another judgement at the time of the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The following is a synopsis of what I saw this afternoon. I'll mention only a few specifics and concentrate on the message.
          God was very mad at mankind for they had destroyed his garden.....the earth. The terrain that Noah and his family lived on resembled what we might think of as an uninhabitable planet, or if we have to apply it to the earth, the devastation left by the asteroid exploding over the Tunguska region of Russia in 1908 would serve; this image we have from the photographs taken at the time. This is the message of the movie....man was destroying the earth and must be destroyed! The film thus limits evil to violence and rape of the earth, with no color, beauty or outward normalcy permitted to be associated with man. Once evil mankind is eliminated, the earth miraculously turns green with beautiful blue seas. Sin, if there is sin, is against a holy earth, not a Holy God.
          Noah never actually speaks with God, rather he channels the thoughts of a "Creator." He looks to the sky and receives a mental impulse, or he has a dream and interprets it himself. He knows that he has to build an ark and will need protection and help. That protection and help comes in the form of the Watchers who were fallen angels cast down to the earth and who God turned into creatures made of giant rocks. They are heroes in the film......fallen angels......who return to God and His good graces at the end! This concept alone took my breath away.....the fallen angels......are the good guys!!! That my friends...is not just taking liberties and should cause us to wonder just who inspired this script, why now and to what intended purpose?
          In Darren Aronofsky's ark there were only six on board of Noah and his family, not eight, and there was another passenger who was a stowaway! I could give a long list of changes to the Bible in the film's script that were not mere additions or alterations to the Bible but direct challenges to the veracity of God's Word itself but the real offense is in the message that millions of Americans will subliminally receive.....the earth is the prize...man is the booby, the Bible was just a script subject to continual rewrite and the future depends on whether the new 'Watchers' can control every impulse of man. A rainbow appears at the end of the film but my impression was it being more of a political logo than a sign of a covenant.
          I found myself praying for the film to end about forty minutes before it did .....enough is enough. I fail to see how a non-believer could see God's judgement for sin in the film for there is no 'sin' here. There is no atonement necessary, only legislation....come hell or high water.... for our 'sin' today comes in the form of the brick and mortar of a coal-fired power plant and not the abstract, debatable and elusive concept of idolatry in rebellion to a "Holy" God.
          But lo, what light from yonder window breaks? There may be a redeeming quality in the production of the film Noah.....'may be'....for its abusive presentation of the Genesis account of Noah may reveal to us a director beyond Darren Aronofsky and the Scriptural imperatives of 1 Peter 5:8 may be clearer to us than it ever has, those words being "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."

"Foil".........The Verb or The Noun

          I have walked out of theaters during the movie on a few occasions, Titanic was the last one. Something about where the film was going just did not sit well with me. I may go and see Russell Crowe in the soon to be released Noah. I know what I would be in for, the producers ignored the Genesis account for their own purposes, but I won't have any idea on how it might affect the general public until I see at least part of it. It's more than interesting that the release of the film coincides with so very many attacks on God and His Word in the world and in our nation, maybe the most egregious being the stamp of approval being given in many states to same-sex marriage, the tentacles of which will reach our children in so many areas of their lives. I'm also reminded of the release of The China Syndrome 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident.
          God controls the destinies of men and of nations. He does not need their approval or cooperation. Noah may foil (verb) its audiences concern about God's judgements on a rebellious nation or it may serve as a foil (noun) and reflect God's judgement and lead them to the truth of God's Word. I suspect and hope for the latter. The following post is from this past January 6th:

Genderless Neutered Society

          It is astounding and it is numbing; yet one little sentence can make multitudes oblivious to it. That sentence might be something like 'Oh, people have always said that it's worse today than it ever was'. Well it is... terrifyingly so. There are tremors on this earth, both of nature and mankind, that should make even the most stouthearted to sweat. It's difficult to put the individual tremors into perspective. I readily admit that. Had they all not be happening at once, we might be able to focus on any particular tremor but as it is we read of them as if we were just reading one apocalyptic movie plot after another. And of course we have our vast array of barbiturates in the form of entertainments that can sedate us. Our society has collapsed. Whole professions have given in to the zeitgeist of the day-narcissism run rampant, journalistic news not the least of them, of which even conservative commentators giggle and twitter (the verb not the social media) as they read cue cards hoping not to mix up the facial expressions for a story on a costume malfunction with a terrorist bombing. The family unit is mocked as mockery itself has become the new family unit. Education has become indoctrination, law enforcement has become militarized as the military is becoming a conduit for a distorted view of diversity, making ugly that which should be beautiful.
          Our government has become as a bloated tyrant with sauces and entrails dripping from its chin as it voraciously devours anything its iron teeth can masticate. We stumble along as a people with no idea where we came from or whom we are indebted to. Our pulpits without the cross of Christ are dry, lifeless, sun-bleached shells good only for shining up to place in a curio cabinet along with other porcelain figurines and relics of our past. We are becoming a genderless neutered society. Laws mean nothing unless the offense is against the genderless neutered society. Words have no origin, no real objective meaning, as images hypnotize and teach us. Logic is used as much as cursive writing and common sense as a curtsy.
          The world itself is reeling, not from man-made global warming which is a by-product of everything written above but from design and implementation of a Creator who will not be mocked. If these are the last...of the last days then those who mock God will have their way....for a very, very short while and the tremors will turn into fissures, and the fissures chasms, and the chasms an abyss. Even so, Come Lord Jesus!

Thankful For Weaknesses!

         The following post is from November of 2012. I repeat it fairly often because I want... often... to share my feelings of thanksgiving to God for His mercies shown and blessings given.
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Thankful For Weaknesses

        Thanksgiving is far and away my favorite day of the year. There's no gift exchanges, blessings though such things are, to divert attention from the day, and no pagan bush to drag into the house to be decorated. There are no myths involved, in fact the historical testimony is so strong that even the revisionists have a hard time trying to distort it. As I write this, today's Wall Street Journal is beside me. Every year since 1961 on this day before Thanksgiving their top editorial has been a reprint of the beginning of a first-hand chronicle of the Plymouth Colony's voyage and arrival in their new land. This is part of the heritage that elements of our society are systematically trying to erase. One particular day has since been set apart for Americans to corporately and individually give thanks to God for blessings bestowed.
          Taking advantage of this opportunity, here are some of the things that I am thankful for: I'm thankful that God took a twelve year old boy from a broken home and planted him in an apartment on a modest street amidst fine and decent fellows who would become new friends. I'm thankful that he permitted me to attend a very good high school, rich in tradition and academics, where I would at least experience, although hardly partake in, a scholarly atmosphere, and also how He somehow provided tuition. I'm thankful that in my immaturity He gave me the wisdom to join the army and had mercy on me even as I abused the needed maturing process. I'm thankful for a college degree even though my interests were far more social than academic, and that while working at the university I would meet my future wife. I'm thankful for her patience, love and being my best friend.
         I'm thankful for thirty-three years of employment from one company and the friends and coworkers there. I'm thankful that God instilled in me, somewhat later in life, an insatiable desire to read, to study and to analyze. I'm thankful that in 1982 He had mercy on the lowest of the low, loved the most unlovable and redeemed the least worthy of it. I'm thankful for the gift of a son who I have watched grow far beyond my own intellectual capabilities and do so without the path of rebellion that I chose. I'm thankful for the perfect match of a wonderful young Christian woman to be his wife.
          I'm thankful for failures.... for they make it impossible for me to think that I am something that I am not. I'm thankful that after I fall down, He gives me strength to get up. I'm thankful for heroes, particularly of the Christian faith but also of our nation, for their lives are blueprints that can be deciphered for at least an attempt to emulate. I'm thankful for faithful pastors and the sweet fellowship of other beneficiaries of God's redemption. I'm thankful for a house and a home for our son as he grew up, with loving family all around. I'm thankful for automobiles and money in the bank to keep them running.
          I'm thankful for vision to see this beautiful world, for taste to enjoy tomorrow's meal (Lord willing,) for the hearing of the preached Word and of music and voices, for feeling....both physical and emotional, and for discerning aromas of both warnings and pleasure. I'm thankful that there is no sixth sense, that our knowledge of the future comes not from ESP but from such as the ESV (English Standard Version of God's written word to us.) I'm thankful for being born an American, for freedom and liberty, but even more so for the opportunity to show gratitude for the efforts of those who sacrificed for those freedoms and liberties and, although in an insignificant way, to pick up the banner they once held aloft.
          I'm thankful for my weaknesses for they give opportunity for God to show His strength. I am thankful most of all that God reached into humanity to adopt a multitude as His family and that He opened my own eyes to see... first myself, and then the cross of Calvary, the empty tomb and the clouds in which Jesus both ascended and will return. I'm thankful for angels all around us. I'm thankful that even though we play no part whatsoever in the salvation of another that we are painted into the picture to the glory of God alone. I'm thankful that, in the same vein, we can pray for the salvation of others and rejoice with them. I'm thankful for many books but especially one, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the last stanza of a song within which reads:

Hobgoblin, nor fowl fiend,
Can daunt his spirit;
He knows, he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.

No Checkered Board......Rather A Book

         I don't know if Vladimir Putin is an avid chess player or not....I can't find any evidence of it, but he is Russian and chess has been a huge part of Russian life. Chess may have begun in Asia and resided in Islam for a long time but it took up permanent residence in Russia and was part of the life of Tsars and peasants, literary giants and murderous Communist tyrants. Castro and Che played chess as did Marx, Lenin and Stalin. So whether or not Putin plays the game, he probably thinks about the world as a chess board.
         I'll recommend a book on this topic.....White King And Red Queen by Daniel Johnson. It was published in 2008 when Vladimir Putin was on his....way out. One of the author's main themes is that chess is one of the areas that the Cold War was fought. Bobby Fischer has a major part in the book as does the "epic seven year's war" of Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, that culminated in, as the author writes, Kasparov turning from "reformer to revolutionary." Kasparov knew what many in the West missed, that the Cold War may have ended but the ideological problem, the brutish tactics and totalitarian goals remained. Near the end of the book, Daniel Johnson gives us this to think about "Eight years after Yeltsin defeated the KGB coup, he was handling over power to Vladimir Putin, a representative of the same sinister fraternity...."
         Kasparov considered 2007 to be the "middle game" for Russia but as for Putin he said "it is the beginning of the end." He was wrong in this. The current situation with Putin and the Ukraine may not be a chess game in progress but it revolves around something that has used chess in an attempt to mold an entire people and thus the world.... communism....which is no game, has no rules, and gives no quarter.        
         God is America's only hope and we are in the midst of relegating His commands to being mere "social issues" to be bartered if necessary. The temporal outlook for America is bleak but it is of eternal consequence where our individual hope rests. We have no checkered board that must be navigated, rather a book to read, and therein is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path!

Golden Paths......Redux

          In order to discern serious problems or legitimate growth in today's evangelical church one should at least have a passable working knowledge of church history, it's doctrine and practices, and have read at least some works of men come before us or references to them. Without this there is nothing with which to compare and one can easily become susceptible to a postmodern mindset that does not need words on a  page.... only thoughts for the grasping . Without this almost anything can be called "preaching Christ," or "preaching the Bible." Without this even the Gospel itself can be paganized or pantheized.  Some are thrilled at the evangelical church of today.... others.....not so much. Ezra may have had something to say about why.

Golden Paths

          There are a couple of verses from the 3rd chapter of Ezra that I would like to relate here and then segue into some thoughts of my own. The Jewish exiles had returned from captivity in Babylon and Ezra recorded the building of the second temple on the foundation of the original which was under the guidance of Zerubbabel. Most of the people were excited, "praising and giving thanks to the Lord" as Ezra wrote, but the feeling was not quite the same with everyone for Ezra continued, "And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of father's houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping..." The ESV Study Bible comments on these verses with "Sadness is mixed with this rejoicing, for some of the very old remembered the former temple and believed that this new one would not match the former temple's glory. The picture of mitigated celebration is a small symbol of the whole event of the return, which was in itself a triumph yet fell far short of the great hopes the people might have had."
          These verses may, in some way, explain why not all Christians rejoice in much of the church growth today. There was no Golden Age of the church in either England or America but there were better and more glorious days as there were, and are now, less glorious days. Certainly we are in a lesser age for the preached Word even though we think that we are very enlightened in this. Our Biblical knowledge, particularly of doctrine, is weak. Unless one is familiar with our church heritage in both England and America one will most likely not weep as others rejoice today. We have become less and less enthralled with reading books written before this modern age. Personal letters of those who came before us are not valued as sources of great value, in fact, who even writes "letters" anymore? We are far too busy today to read the Puritans, let alone John Calvin or even biographies of great missionaries who opened up continents to the Gospel. Alas, we dress to the hilt for a celebration but have no where to go.
          A similar situation exists with the history of our Republic. We no longer realize just how marvelous our Constitution is. Many rejoiced in Hope and Change not realizing that Change was the key word and it was a change for the worse....far, far worse. No, there was no Golden Age in our Anglo-Christian heritage but there were Golden Paths and it would behoove all of us today to heed the words of Jeremiah in:

Thus says the Lord:
Stand by the roads and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.

But Jeremiah added:

But they said, "We will not walk in it."

         Should we seek those ancient paths God may indeed have mercy upon us with a reformation in the church which may even lead to a restoration of our constitutional republic. Surely there is true rejoicing all over today for hearts rended and mercies given but just as surely there is also weeping for knowledge of what once was and how far we are from it!

Tolle Lege.....Take Up And Read

          Our son attended a college where the reading requirements and overall workload were extremely demanding but he was rewarded for it later in law school. Personally, I read an awful lot while in college that was not related to my...studies, and I paid for it rather than was rewarded for it later. Surely there is a medium where one can read for pleasure and learning while still attending to regular studies. If you are in college I highly recommend some additional reading that will not only benefit you later but right now. The first book concerns your eternal soul...Putting Amazing Back Into Grace by Michael Horton. The second book concerns your immediate future here in America.....Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives For A Century by Paul Kengor. You might even be able to find some friends to read and discuss the books together with.
          The following are three posts on Communism. The first is from 2011 and the next two are from this year:

          Communism is a dialectic in the Hegelian sense. It changes outwardly to survive inwardly. It is alive and thriving in our country, the very least representative being the Communist Party USA. It can call itself an American patriot or anything else. It feeds on the uniformed, the malcontent, the miscreant and the self-indulgent. Its only enemy is God.
          I have to remind myself every once in a while that the average American today does not know a whole lot about communism. At times it's almost as if it is seen as nothing but a conspiracy theory, as if it never really existed and as if over a hundred million people were never murdered under it. Communism lies, it kills, it terrorizes, it threatens and carries out those threats. It's godless, it dupes and cons people...whole peoples and when it attains power through coercion and deception it lowers the boom...no more promises for there is no need to give them for it now has total l control and will henceforth dictate everything....to everybody!
          Every facet of our society is unraveling before our very eyes. Emil Mazey, a twentieth century labor leader, is reported to have paraphrased the older proverb known as the duck test when he said the following..."I can't prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck,, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks- I'm certainly going to assume that he is a duck." Are you willing to read the evidence of how Communism has worked, is working, and even as of now...winning, in America? Read the book that is reviewed in the following blog first published on September 15th of 2011 and then try to defend this administration.

September 15, 2011........Communism.....Under New Management

          The relationship between the American Progressive and Communism has always been a dysfunctional one, the Progressive longing for someone to look to as a hero and the Communist not only abusing that adulation but sneering at those so gullible as to think that there is anything compassionate or caring about them. The Communist knew the extraordinary weaknesses of the liberal American mind and had taken advantage of it from the beginning, for a century now! It has a new face today, hiding behind a semi-capitalist veil, for it retreated and reinvented its outward appearance.
          This generation will never be able to say that they were not told, not warned, for the evidence is everywhere if only we would look. I've reported on more than a dozen outstanding books on the deteriorating condition of our nation and its causes in this blog of almost three years but none of secular content more needed than the one I put before you today. I do not believe that any liberal can read this book and not be concerned that they may have been duped. One might very well read a chapter and then throw the book away, or skim it and not accept its message but if one reads this book through they will view our political landscape differently. The title of the book is Dupes, How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives For A Century.
          I'm very familiar with the author for I had read a few of his previous books and I admired him as a Professor of Political Science at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania, one of America's finest colleges. This is a monumentally important work written with clarity, and systematized in such a way to take the reader on a trip through American history and awaken the reader in the process. Professor Kengor filleted the meat of Communist propaganda so expertly as to expose the rotten flesh and release the stench that permeates liberal politics, higher education and the mainstream media. You have to read this book...if you care about America. A blurb from Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute says the same thing: "Face it. You are going to have to read this book." Why...so that you can show your knowledge of Communism in some future conversation? No, rather that you can read it and weep and hopefully sound your own alarm in that future conversation. In another blurb, Fred Barnes wrote that it left him "amazed and a bit frightened." The Weekly Standard's Barnes has been sounding an alarm for decades yet it still made him a bit frightened!
Reading the book was a culmination of research that I had already been doing, that the Communist has reappeared in America in a new guise, and yet I was dumbfounded by the volume of evidence and not a little disappointed in being reminded of my own history of being duped in the late 1970s.
Kengor is going to take you back to September of 1919 in Chicago where Communism first began its assault on the American mind. You will see the essence of class hatred in it from its beginnings and recognize the tactic from the Left today. You will see one celebrity or person of note after another taken in by the lies, many waking up later angry and indignant. Even the most ardent admirer of Franklin Roosevelt will have to reassess that admiration as Roosevelt was taken in by Uncle Joe Stalin thanks to the leftists all around him. Read and weep at how much of our media was not only taken in but even today ridicules those who are not duped. Will they have the character to admit they were wrong, if and when they also awaken, as many of their predecessors did? You will see heroes and you will see buffoons who were, and are, very useful idiots for Communism, and too many who were out-and-out traitors. You will see how Hollywood was used and many of the biggest names duped. Compare this to the stars of today while you read. And you will see Ronald Reagan as a liberal Democrat and head of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947, admittedly himself duped for a time, and recognize his courage and greatness on display even then! No one made this man and he was no late bloomer.
          Communism has a new face but the essence remains the same, for God is still banished and revolutions are still started, as despicably as ever, through hatred and propaganda. Lying is as common as breathing. One class is pitted against another. Educators are still sought for their influence on the youth. Unions are still infiltrated as are the arts. College students are intellectually brutalized and the news media is still wooed with dreams that they might actually be more important than the news they report. The SDS mentality (Students for a Democratic Society) that the Communist so effectively used against our military's efforts in Vietnam is alive in many of its former leaders who have grown up, quite naturally, to become college and university professors, and in the case of Bill Ayers, prepare their comrades, and those they mentor, to run for elective office, even the presidency. Communism is alive but not well because it can only remain beneath the surface for so long until the rains of tyranny expose the caskets of dead ideas, tyrants and false promises. Paul Kengor lays it out very clearly for the reader how lies told about George Bush's intentions is Iraq and how accusations of a warmongering, racist, America that has lured the college student, the idle and the malcontent over the past thirty years, are just reheated deceptions dusted off from older Communist scripts where only the names have changed.
          Who is Frank Marshall Davis and why was the media silent on this Communist mentor to our current President? Why is Jimmy Carter still a dupe? How was Edward Kennedy, who I had volunteered for, one of the biggest dupes of all? One need not be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party to be a Communist as Kengor points out, and one can think of themselves as a patriot and yet be a prize dupe! Kengor says that they will continue to call us scare mongers and McCarthyite fanatics but this is just another tried and true tactic from the bowels of Moscow's Comintern. He concludes his book with these thoughts: "The most mordant irony for the liberals who lend cover is that while they laugh at the anti-Communists, they seem to have no idea that the loudest howls have always emanated from the Communists who take them as dupes: gullible fools to be used to advance the Communist cause."

Professor's Kengor's follow up book is more specific to Barack Obama. Its title is The Communist, Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor.

You Can Trust The Communists.....

         They were nothing fancy. As I remember they were a few pages stapled together under the heading Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, a title I didn't particularly care for, but I read them when they arrived in the mail and they had an effect on me. I didn't really act on what I was learning, but then I didn't have the evidence as clearly before my eyes as I do today. The author of these...pamphlets...was Fred Schwarz. He was a former physician, an Australian and a Christian whose family two generations previous were Jewish. Fred Schwarz was also an ardent anti-communist.
         He filled stadiums with his 'Crusade' and had the admiration of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley. His book You Can Trust The Communists (To Do Exactly As They Say) was an international bestseller, and keep in mind as you read this post that You Can Trust The Communists was written in 1960! Schwarz begins by writing "Once we accept the fact that Communists are Communists, and understand the laws of their thought and conduct, all the mystery disappears and we are confronted with a movement which is frightening in its superb organization, strategic mobility and universal program, but which is perfectly understandable and mathematically predictable." He's saying that Communism is not mysterious. Yet we in America look at it as if it were a myth. Today we are in the midst of a coup by this....myth, a coup designed primarily with Lenin's pen and repeated enough times in history that the stench of it should have been detected by all Americans by now!
Schwarz sums up the situation thusly "Marx taught that the bourgeoisie is the established class in Capitalist society. It created the State as an instrument to oppress and exploit the proletariat. In reaction the proletariat creates the Communist Party to wage war against the State." The key in this statement is in the words "creates the Communist Party to wage war." Throughout the book you see evidence of a monolithic organization that takes no prisoners, whose elites believe that they have been empowered to do whatever they want and kill whomever they want. Below these elites are no one...no one...who has not bought into the lies fed them. The Communist Party is never to be questioned.
         Schwarz writes that Khrushchev, in his condemnation of Stalin, "tells us that Stalin caused to be arrested and shot for treason 70 percent of the Central Committee that elected him to power in 1934.....98 members out of 137. He tells us of entire nationalities that Stalin destroyed." Schwarz then asks "how does he put to death the majority of the military commanders? (of his own military) How does he put to death the majority of the leaders of his own party?" Even as Khrushchev admitted all the crimes, Stalin was still called a "good man," for the Communist Party gave him his power and criticism of Stalin must therefore be tempered. This is the ideology we have to deal with!
According to Schwarz, Communists do not have to reveal themselves. Some may, others may not. Both play a part. Their aim was never the conversion of the masses, rather a small elite group totally disciplined and dedicated that can "scientifically" use "the social forces that move and direct the masses of people so that the Communist Party may come to power over them, and impose forcibly the Communist program." Scientifically? Yes, they have studied cultures and know us better than we know ourselves. This is why much of America has been drawn as if by a Pied Piper into Communist ideology. The Communist utilizes the concept of "fronts" to perfection; a front being organizations that "exploit the self-interest of a given group." The gay rights movement, many unions, some environmental groups, peace movements and immigration amnesty proponents all can be used efficiently to further the aims of the Communist.
         Fred Schwarz lays out the history of the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia and details Communist revolutions throughout the world. One revolution does not have to look like the next. Only the post mortems of the previous governments are the same. We can also see the grid and the strategies placed over our electoral processes and injected into our culture. Peoples are told that the proletariat is in charge in these revolutions but this is only theoretical. In reality the Communist Party is the "executive of the proletariat" and therefore a "dictatorship of the proletariat" arises whose first act is to disarm the people as in China so that there is never a counter-revolution. Anyone who has characteristics of a leader becomes an enemy for they therefore have potential to be troublesome. They are not recruited, they are removed, and obviously a "vast espionage system" is utilized for they have always had to know what everyone is saying...even their....friends. Do these things sound familiar?
         Schwarz had witnessed it first-hand... "intellectual dishonesty." Evidences are everywhere on the failures, the lies and the crimes of Communism but the easy way is to ignore it. The hard way is to confront it. Why do people so easily accept the spurious claims, and that is putting it very gently, of man-made global warming? Why do they ignore the falsified statistics and tortured climate models?  As for the cadres who totally accept the way of communism, Schwarz writes this. "The Communists believe that the mind is simply a complex of conditioned reflexes, and that if they can understand the techniques by which these conditioned reflexes are built up and how they can be broken down, they have acquired mastery over the mind itself,"
         In Schwarz concluding chapter he writes "The Communists are supremely confident of complete victory. They claim that their victory is assured because of the quality of the character in democratic lands........They are convinced that the average citizen of the Free World is so intellectually lazy and dishonest, so greedy and selfish, so intoxicated with entertainment, so consumed with his immediate problems that no matter how clear the evidence of impending doom, that evidence will never be acknowledged, and the organizational steps necessary for survival will never be taken." The author then defended America with, "we categorically reject this claim" and went on to explain why but I have to wonder if he still felt this way before his death in 2009.
The last sentence in the book is this "As free men humbly seek God and present their bodies, minds and hearts to their country and the cause of all mankind, we may well believe that tyranny shall not triumph and freedom shall not perish from the earth." He certainly would never have doubted this!

Heart, Mind and Soul

         Just a few weeks ago, on February 6th, I wrote a post on Fred Schwarz and his book from 1960 You Can Trust The Communists....To Be Communists. Please consider reading that post to go along with this one. Fred Schwarz was a harbinger of sorts, a herald who dedicated his life trying to warn anyone who would listen, of the dangers of incipient Communism in the West. I ordered another one of his writings, a small pamphlet titled The Heart, Mind and Soul of Communism and this is the focus of this post.
         Folks, you are going to hear more of Communism in the coming days and how it has resurrected itself in amongst the Progressive/Liberal American political scene. You can see it in the news from the Ukraine and Venezuela. You might also want to read my book review of Professor Paul Kengor 's book Dupes from February 1st for these three posts go very much hand in hand.
Schwarz begins with a little history of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Vladimir Lenin had a relatively small band of followers as the Czar was overthrown. He renamed the Bolshevik element as the Communist Party of Russia. In ruthless abandon he commandeered the revolution and that ruthless abandon has continued right up to this day. Schwarz then begins to dissect Communism. I'll be giving verbatim quotes from the pamphlet in the rest of this post. Here is the first, and I recognize every description he gives: "One aspect (of Communism) appeals to the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged; the other aspect appeals to the wealthy, the intellectually superior, and the idealistic reformers......To the poor of the earth-and they are legion-the servants of Communism go with this message: 'Follow me, and I will build a new world for you and your children..." Schwarz expands on the second promise given "that is used, not to captivate the poor, but to seduce the rich; not to enlighten the ignorant, but to enlist the educated; not to bribe the cynical, but to ensnare the idealistic."
         How is all this to be done? The answer given is "science." According to the author the Communists plan on transforming human nature just as science transformed the world that we live in. They would remake mankind through the same principles. This concept alone helped enlist intellectuals for they perceive themselves to be so very much smarter than any of us. Schwarz gives "three basic hypotheses for this "scientific program......Atheism, Materialism and Economic Determinism."
         He writes that "Karl Marx was an atheist before he was a Communist" and that "Atheism was his first and last intellectual love." Since God is denied, so are "all absolute criteria such as truth and error" and we can see this very clear today in Benghazi, in the IRS scandal, in the NSA scandal and most recently in the "let's put a government agent in the newsrooms" scandal. There is no heaven, no hell, nor absolute values and consequently no guilt.
         As for the nature of man in Materialism, "Man is an animal and nothing more.." he is simply at the "apex of the evolutionary tree..." with "no special value associated with every individual life."
As for Economic Determinism...capitalism is the problem.... the "root of all evil. When it is gone along with its classes we will have the "perfection of human nature" and the "emergence of Communism."
         Capitalism must be destroyed by "violent revolution" of which Lenin's achievements were merely the "first successes in a campaign for world conquest" and "It is necessary to have a strong and intelligent power to carry out the program. In the progressive quality of its dialectic heart, history has appointed the Communist Party, the self-conscious, enlightened vanguard of the Proletariat for this role. Therefore we must establish an absolute dictatorship for this party. We will call it the ;Dictatorship of the Proletariat'."
         Since man is but an animal, a new breed of stock must be raised and the diseased animals must be eliminated. It may through gulags or through labor camps or mass re-education. Time is to be allowed as a new generation must arise that has not been infected.
         Fred Schwarz penned these thoughts eight years before his well known book You Can Trust The Communists. He fought this battle until he died in 2009. Communism is still very much alive and if it continues to succeed in the West it will one day proudly reclaim its original name, to the astonishment of many, and with a power grab.....well, just read the headlines of today's newspapers, some of them anyway, to get a sneak preview!
      
  

America.....America.....God Mend Thine Every Flaw

          The following post was written in March of 2011 and it referred to a post written in November of 2009. Time goes on and we in America continue to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. God's words through Hosea were prefaced by this They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes but I knew it not, With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. (Hosea 8:4, 7)

America, America......God Mend Thy Every Flaw

          Not since the Civil War has America been imperilled as it is today. The national debt can never be paid down and it went over that edge because of political motivations. We are so globally intertwined that even if we straightened out our own paths, we are handcuffed to others who have no desire to do so. China, no friend to us whatsoever, at least their civilian and military leadership, can bring us down if they want to and if their own current events go south they may implement this option. Israel is surrounded and its enemies, like a pack of wolves or shiver of sharks, need only the smell of blood to unleash another war. Russia would sell our enemies the noose to hang us. Both China and Russia are building their militaries while we are more concerned with what armament contracts can bring in the most votes. Our media, in the main, hates conservative principles, our traditions and heritage, to such an extent that the Marxist, Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky cabal has a veritable free rein in propagandizing a sizable postmodern, politically correct, idol craving culture. Our borders are porous, bureaucrats legislate and George Soros sits on a mountaintop with his minions ready to swoop down on Dorothy and Toto to steal those ruby slippers.

          The events of 9/11 even pale in comparison to the organized effort today on every level to bring us down. Yet with all these dangers, and many more, the President of this besieged nation golfs on weekends, parties at night and has shown today that he is more informed and interested in picking the winners in March Madness then any of the aforementioned problems, and others, any one of which can send this world into a tailspin.

          I wrote in a November 13, 2009 blog titled America...The Beautiful that We know who built this nation. They were in the pulpits, pews and courts, on farms and in the cities, under pilgrim, tricorn and coonskin caps, Civil War kepis, Cavalry hats, helmets and berets. They cooked and sewed and drove rivets when needed. They wore blue and grey, G. I. Brown, navy white, air force blue, jungle and desert camo. Heroes are born in the cauldron of trying times and we are seeing them again today. How about the Christian women who, in their limited free time, would rather read of Ruth and Orpah than watch Ellen and Oprah; Christan fathers whose children see them thanking God before every meal, Faithful pastors who say you can keep the crowds, I'll preach Christ and seek the approval of the crowds of witnesses gone on before; of teachers whose first priority is the children; of conservatives on university campuses who are two bright to be scammed; of every country music singer that sings of God, family and country; of every retiree who did their part and now shares their wisdom; of every union member who says I'll fight for what is right and not for what isn't; of every janitor at a Tea Party who is a giant compared to the executive who would rather be on the golf course, and of our military in every mess hall and PX, behind every desk or 50mm gun-wearing private stripes or brass. These are some of our heroes. This nation may not survive. Why God has not ended this experiment as of now is the real mystery but even if we do, their will be a remnant giving glory to God for past mercies given to us that we might help others.