It Doesn't Look Like America Anymore.......Redux

         The following post is from last April:

It Doesn't Look Like America Anymore

         I'm in a rather melancholic mood tonight. This once proud and industrious nation is staggering and punch-drunk. It has rejected its Benefactor having defiantly proclaimed the words of the Victorian poem Invictus "I am the master of my fate: the captain of my soul" and forgotten Benjamin Franklin's words to the Constitutional Convention "I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?"
          I compare my own childhood to those texting their way through their formative years and wasting their young adult lives on Facebook, oblivious to their heritage. I was so fortunate. No, we didn't have much money, and there were temptations, but it was not a tsunami whose power tossed us as toothpicks. We had plenty of time to meditate. A few years ago I returned to the neighborhood that I grew up in in Buffalo and last September I wrote down some thoughts on that visit.


          It wasn't a vision and it wasn't a daydream. It was an awakening of sorts for an eleven year old boy. My guess is that it was December for the giant snowflakes would not have moved me so in the middle of a winter that had already seen many snowstorms come in off of Lake Erie. The year was probably 1961. There must not have been any friends available to pal around with for I was walking aimlessly as the snow was falling fast and sticking. The tree could not have been more than twenty feet...more of a big bush than a tree but it still stood above the flat Buffalo landscape. The ground was barely covered by the fresh snow but those large flakes landing on the bare limbs made climbing the tree...bush...inviting, and I did.
         I sat on the highest limb that would support me. To my right was the apartment complex that I had grown up in, three story red brick buildings placed almost as a maze with plenty of grass in between, perfect for young boys to play football on. If there was anyone outside with me that day they are no longer in my memory. Looking to my right, towards the red brick, gave me feelings of security for almost everyone knew their neighbor. Looking to my left was almost as a frontier. It was just a very large, seemingly endless, open field that I had explored often finding and breaking open the most interesting rocks. Directly behind me was the United States Post Office and the Stars and Stripes flew proudly above even the apartment buildings. Often, when the flag was not raised, we would swing like Tarzan from the ropes until the local police cruiser pulled in and then we ran.
          I pondered the beauty of the snowflakes that day. It was as if I never experienced anything majestic before. I remember gazing off over the open field as if I were in the crows nest of the Mayflower looking off to see if I could spot the new world. I revisited that spot and that tree not too many years ago, almost wanting to climb it again. Instead I stood at its base and tried to put myself back into 1961. I looked to my right and it seemed as if not a single thing had changed, for the red brick buildings looked exactly as they always had. No new buildings had been added nor any taken down. Only one change was immediately obvious, the line of metal trees with clothesline connecting them was gone. I looked off to my left and there was no field whatsoever, only an eight lane highway dug into the ground so that if you looked straight out you saw houses in the distance but if you walked a little bit closer it was if another world existed beneath the surface of my boyhood. The frontier was domesticated, its treasures pillaged.
         Oh there was one more change. Looking behind me, the Post Office was gone along with the flagpole and Stars and Stripes. I had the feeling that the people living in these same red brick buildings did not know each other anymore....just a feeling. Had I climbed that tree I would have had to look down into that abyss of vehicles as hundreds of people came into my life and vanished just as quickly without my even getting to see what they looked like. I didn't feel secure anymore as strangers were to my right with the faceless to my left. There was no flag representing America towering over me, no eagle ready to attack a lurking enemy. Nor could I run home and watch Gunsmoke where the good guy always won. I wasn't lost for I knew where I was. It was America that was lost, buried under the soil that provided the ditch for the highway that took everyone somewhere but no one really anywhere that looked like America anymore.

The Gideons

         The International Space Station (ISS) was in the news this past 'Easter Sunday' as the private company owned SpaceX Dragon freighter successfully docked with it carrying nearly 5000 pounds of experiments and supplies for the international crew. The following blog entry is from May 31st of 2010:

The Gideons

         The Apollo 8 mission of 1968 saw, for the first time, man leave the gravitational pull of the earth and come under the same force of another heavenly body. Frank Borman commanded the mission that included James Lovell and William Anders. On Christmas Eve, on the ninth orbit of the Moon, with the world watching on television, Commander Borman read the first ten verses from the book of Genesis:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth
The earth was without form, and void; darkness was on the face of the waters.
Then God said, "Let there be light", and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
Then God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.
Then God said; "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good. (NKJV)

         There was a Japanese correspondent watching this on television from his hotel and called NASA for a copy of the script that the astronaut was reading. He was asked where he was calling from and told to look in the desk drawer and he would see it in the first ten verses of the first book, Genesis, of the Gideons Bible that would be there. The correspondent was impressed that NASA Public Relations would leave him an advance copy of the script! (I believe this story appeared in a Parade Magazine)

         In 1982, as a new Christian, my wife and I were on our first and only cruise. (We have had another since then) As we rounded the western end of Cuba there was a storm that rocked the boat so much that the passengers could do nothing but sit in their cabins. Too new of a believer to even bring a Bible with me, I opened the desk drawer and there was the Gideon Bible. I opened it and read the first verses that my eyes came upon. It was the 93rd Psalm. As the boat rocked, I read:

The LORD reigns, He is clothed with majesty;

The LORD is clothed,

He has girded Himself with strength.

Surely the world is established,

so that it cannot be moved.

Your throne is established from of old;

You are from everlasting.

The floods have lifted up, O LORD,

The floods have lifted up their voice;

The floods lift up their waves.

The LORD on high is mightier

Than the noise of many waters,

Than the mighty waves of the sea. (this as items were sliding off our table)

Your testimonies are very sure;
Holiness adorns Your house,
O LORD, forever. (NKJV)

         I'm writing this blog from a motel room and the ever present Gideons Bible is in the drawer. They have distributed over 1.5billion Bibles since 1908 and I am reminded of Romans 10:15b:
How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. (NIV)

Note: The figure today (2014) is 1.8 billion!

Solzhenitzen Was Right.........Redux

The following post was written on October 18th, 2010, exactly 3 1/2 years ago:

Solzhenitsyn Was Right!

         It's hard to assess what people might think upon stumbling upon this blog. My only source of advertising is the magnetic bumper stickers that I transfer from one car to another as I drive them. Well actually there's another, the cards that I leave when travelling. The message is very pessimistic as far as the world and our nation is concerned. The coming election is only a tourniquet and there may be far too much blood lost already. It is difficult to write this way and even harder to face the reality of what I believe. I want to be mistaken and that is not a very pleasant situation to be in.
          Shakespeare wrote uneasy lies the head that wears the crown but uneasy also lies the head that sees madmen take advantage of the gullible. Churchill probably had more peace when he wore the crown during war than when he was ridiculed for the warnings he gave on Hitler's intentions. I am unabashedly a firm believer in God's providence and that He often uses even the most unlikely sources and undeserving people in his plans. As best as I can recall, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells this story of his conversion. He was a prisoner in the gulag system that he would eventually expose. He became ill and a doctor, a fellow prisoner, worked on him throughout the night. That doctor openly talked about his Christian faith while he worked on the future Nobel Prize winner in Literature. A guard came by and warned him to stop. When Solzhenitsyn awoke in the morning he asked for the doctor but was told that he was dead, killed for his testimonies of Jesus Christ. This was the beginning of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's gift of literature to the world from the eyes of a Christian. He later wrote the following on the condition of his country...Russia......
          Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat : "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.
          Our national debt is the result of bailouts and stimulus packages applied with no wisdom. There are economies around the world that might survive the conditions but the world is so intertwined that unless most of them succeed they all will fail. Economic upheavals bring on revolutions in both governments and societies and there are those in high places who are primed for this chaos to bring about a new world order that they have envisioned for quite some time. Terrorism is directed to societies that follow Robert's Rules of Order while they themselves kill wantonly knowing that they will not have to face anyone as ruthless as they are. Iran will process weapons grade uranium, if they haven't already done so, and the resulting bomb (s) will be used somewhere, sometime. China will not be submissive if their economy collapses. They will use economic blackmail and their ever increasing military power if necessary and Putin's new Russia fooled Solzhenitsyn and many others.
          All of these problems went from the warning stage to the imminent stage since 1992 and the end of the Reagan era. There are signs, some significant, that peoples and governments want to right their ships of state but enemies of these nations also see these changes in attitude and that forces them to act while they have the upper hand. There is only one question in all of this and that is the American people. Was the reputation that we have had as a people...hype...generated from its enormous successes, or was it real? Well, it was real but the further question is whether we still possess those traits. We are probably going to find out. We know one thing for sure. When people of many former nationalities become one people united in the common bond of liberty, and acknowledge God as their creator and benefactor, they can become an enormous force for right.
          Germany's Angela Merkel said yesterday that multiculturalism is a failure. It has failed us also as it tore us apart and sapped our strength. Liberty has become an entitlement rather than a reward for vigilance. We have sat in awe at the feet of those who proudly boast that there is no God. It is hard, if not impossible to judge whether Americans bear the traits of their fathers or whether they have followed other gods. Polls cannot answer this question, only trial can. Speaking for myself, I probably do not have those traits but I have something more sure. I acknowledge that God is the source of our strength. He may, as he has done in the past, make it very evident to us that we cannot sustain ourselves without His guiding and protecting hand upon us, and that He moves within those who acknowledge where the power comes from. All these problems, this perfect storm has come upon us because we have forgotten him. Solzhenitsyn was right on this.

Blood Moons

          There will be a total lunar eclipse tonight. Lunar eclipses are not rare but when four consecutive total eclipses occur they are called a tetrad. Tetrads are relatively rare. The earth has gone hundreds of years without experiencing one yet five occurred in the 20th century. Tonight's will be the first total eclipse of a tetrad. The others will occur this October, next April and next October. What makes it even more interesting is that all four occur on Jewish feast days. North America gets the front row seat in tonight's Blood Moon as NASA has named them. It will not be visible in India or that whole part of the globe.
          There is a lot of speculation from Biblical prophesy teachers on the meaning of this tetrad. My concern with this speculation is that blood moons should not be necessary to warn us of our condition and that lunar eclipses are not the only events that can turn the 'moon to blood.' (Rev. 6:12) Billy Graham is credited with the quote but it was his wife Ruth who uttered it. The quote was "If God doesn't punish America, he'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah." I believe that she must have said this in the mid-1980s. I don't know about the 'apologizing' part of her statement but her intent was correct. America's fall is near complete. Our rebellion against God is so extensive that we can no longer visualize what it was like to be a God-fearing nation.
          We have sacrificed tens of million of babies through legalized abortion. Those who are born into this world in this nation are deliberately herded away from God unless the parents forcefully intervene in the rustling of their children. This alone should be a call for America's demise. Not satisfied with the results of this attack, these powers that be have moved on to attacking marriage...the uniting of one man and one woman. If this tactic is successful all children will be forced to accept and live with, in just about every aspect of their lives, this frontal assault on God himself.
          God has consequently removed His hand of protection from us. He has given us leaders who are either undiscerning, totally incompetent or corrupt on one end or viscerally hateful of America's heritage on the other. Our fascination with....ourselves....has become a tragedy abetted by technology. Our idol craving culture has long since presumed too much of God's longsuffering towards us. We are drunken with our entertainments, staggering from one venue to the next. We no longer can analyze and live on statistics fed to us by universities that have become nothing but 'puppy mills' to a culture that needs only someone to buy its clothes and trinkets.
          Yes, there is a remnant of God-fearing Americans but even much of that remnant has lost discernment in this anti-intellectual abyss we have fallen into. Jesus was asked "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming and the end of the age?" His response can be found in the 24th Chapter of Matthew and includes this "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark....."
          The ark was safety to Noah. He was in the world but he was safe. Our safety is in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, of who he is and what he has accomplished for us, and of whose we are....."but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end." (Hebrews 3:6 NKJV) This verse is followed by "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion...."

Jay Carney.....Poster Boy For What?

          I thought that it had to be a hoax. So I researched it and went to the Washingtonian Magazine to see the article myself. Barack Obama's Press Secretary Jay Carney and his family were featured in an article primarily about Carney's wife, Claire Shipman, and how one balances "managing life at home and life at work." Claire Shipman is an ABC News contributor and the family lives in Washington D.C..
          The article was accompanied by pictures of the family in their home, one of which was in their kitchen area and on the wall behind the frolicking Clair and her two children were two posters. Breitbart.com did the research on the posters. One was a Soviet soldier asking "Have you enlisted" and the other was of a Russian woman factory worker and the caption reads "Women! Learn production, replace workers who went to the front. The stronger the hinterland-the stronger the front'." These posters are easily recognizable at first glance as Soviet propaganda.
         Communism developed a strong albeit mostly concealed foothold in America in the 1920s and 1930s and also within the inner circles of American government in the FDR administration. Why? How? Communism is built upon a lie. It portrays itself as compassionate towards the people which could not be further from the truth. Liberals and Progressives were easily fooled and many of them regretted that later. As for the 'how' please read an older post, a book review of Paul Kengor's Dupes, that follows this post.
          Communism is directly responsible for the deaths of well over one hundred million people around the world and untold suffering as well as documented horrors. Once in power it dominates everything and dictates to everyone. It puts its people in the places of power and they do the dirty work. There is no place for truth or for law and bad times are proclaimed as good times. Sound familiar?
          More and more voices have have used the word 'communism' in describing Barack Obama. It never was in doubt that he was a bona fide socialist but as his administration churns on he looks more and more like a communist. He was caught on an open mic in 2012 telling then Russian President Medvedev, on the topic of European missile defenses and other issues, that he needed some space and would be more flexible after being elected to a second term. Medvedev responded by telling Obama that he would inform incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin. The open mic made news but it should have shook us awake in America. We are waking up now in the middle of a nightmare and it may be too late!
          Carney worked as a Moscow correspondent for Time for three years and has studied Russian culture and history. Well I have an interest in Russian history also....that of a strong people with many great attributes.......a people dehumanized in the post-revolution days and in the gulags....a people kept in darkness by a state media. Does that last part sound familiar? So how can Jay Carney miss what was symbolized on those posters and how could he not know in that photo shoot that these posters would be spotted? These photos can be seen in a very easy Google search of "Jay Carney Posters."

Dupes

          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.

Messages In A Bottle

          This news item caught my attention and then generated this post. A German fisherman found a bottle with a postcard in it and the date May 17, 1913 was legible over the stamps. Researchers were able to identify the author through the address on the postcard. It's believed the bottle was thrown into the Baltic Sea by a 20 year old man on a nature hike and then it floated on the cold waters for 100 years. The message on the postcard reads "Please state where and when this card was found, and then put it in the nearest Post Office. You will be informed in reply where and when it was set adrift. Our object is to find out the direction of the deep currents of the North Sea."
          Romance writer Nicholas Sparks wrote a novel which was turned into a film titled Message In A Bottle where a man who lost his wife writes a letter, places it in a bottle and tosses it into the waters off of North Carolina. The bottle is found shortly afterwards and what follows is the plot of the book and the film.
          We have been vacation people who loved our many trips to the beaches of the East Coast and are hoping to return to the Outer Banks of North Carolina again this year. The photo you see on the left is from a recent trip to Hilton Head. I can't remember how old our son was, I'm guessing maybe eight or ten, when we started a little tradition. You can find them in just about every store on the boardwalk.....little bottles about two inches high half-filled with sand and tiny sea shells. I would buy about a half a dozen of them, pull the cork, and place an evangelistic message of some sort inside and then our son and I would walk the beach and toss the bottles into the waves. Surely after so many years some of them are still floating. Maybe five years ago I started putting a little Christian message card with this blog's URL on it in those bottles. Yes, I still throw them into the sea and if our son is along we do it together, and he's twenty-seven years old now.
          It's been debated for centuries....does God elect us or do we choose him? I believed the latter for the first ten years of my Christian walk but then came to see that it is impossible to choose Christ with a fallen nature and that God, in His infinite mercy, elects some who after regeneration do indeed see their fallen condition and cry out for the Savior. Many just do not realize the chronology of events but all rejoice in the opportunity to tell others of Jesus Christ who redeems the lost, loves the most unlovable and then uses them, in many different ways, to put their own message in a bottle.

          If you are interested, there is a valuable resource on the web at www.refnet.fm. It's 24-hour Internet radio and describes itself this way "...committed to the historic Christian Faith......Preaching, Teaching, News, Music, & Audiobooks."

America Unravelling........Redux

        I bring back this older post because I was on a college campus this past Saturday:


         Tomorrow, Lord willing, I hope to be on another college campus. That would be four campuses in the last month. Some people like visiting aquariums or botanical gardens, and house tours are very popular today. Me....I like college campuses. I pick up the student newspaper, visit the library, analyze the bookstore and generally try my best to look like a returning alumni. So this particular post is meant for any students on that campus tomorrow who may pick up that card that I leave with this blog's 'url' written on it.... and with a pen or a mechanical pencil that I attach to the card as a gift. I'd like to speak to that student, if you would permit me to do so. I spent a few years in college in my early twenties and again, if you could believe it, in my early fifties. The second time was in taking the curriculum in a Higher Education program.
          First I'd like to answer a question that you might be asking...Why am I doing this? Well a good bit of it is selfishness. Our country is about to collapse. Call me old-fashioned but I grew accustomed to the liberties and freedoms.....and security of the United States of America. Even more important to me, our son and his wife will have to live in this coming totalitarian state. And of the ultimate importance, we not only no longer present to the world a nation that proclaims belief in Jesus Christ...we present the opposite...and are reaping the wild wind of that rejection of He who is the reason for our existence, the source of our sustenance up until now and the only hope for our future.
          Second, I'd like to give you some things to think about. Well over a half of a century ago Madison Avenue found out that young people indeed have disposable income and they have been after you ever since. They figured out how to convince you that you wanted what they produced. Then the Progressive wanted in on the action and they figured out how to convince you that what was false was true, what was bad was good and what was anti-American was patriotic! So you have been and are being used and abused.
          Lastly, your generation as a whole is being called upon to defend America, to sacrifice if necessary and I don't know of anybody who believes that you are going to show up. I can't blame them for the assault on your intellectual integrity, primarily through our educational system, (present campus excluded!) has been relentless, and with no journalistic news media to speak of you are on your own to find answers even if you somehow saw a problem and wanted to investigate.
          I keep bringing this blog back and each time I do America has unravelled more. We are seeing epochal historic events almost every day and may indeed be witnessing, first hand, the fall of the United States of America. Have you not noticed the unravelling? This is no joke and I'm not trying to be cute. Have you not noticed the rapidly expanding unravelling of our country, our government and our society over the last few years...months....even days? Our spiraling downward cannot go on much longer without impact. How we will handle that impact is the more pertinent question for today. The following blog is from December of 2011:

America Unravelling

          Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century London preacher of Christ and His Gospel, wrote these words over a century ago, The yoke of affliction, disappointment, and excessive labor is by no means to be sought; but when the Lord lays it upon us in our youth it frequently develops a character which glorifies God and blesses the church. Come, my soul, bow thy neck; take up thy cross. It was good for thee when young, it will not harm thee now.
         America is heading at breakneck speed in acquiring such a yoke. We are but a shell of what we were. Where the aroma of our freedom and liberty once wafted throughout the world it is now the stench of our culture that permeates much of the globe. There should be no surprise here for when a civilization becomes so prosperous that its economy is totally dependent on what its malls can sell, its influence for good becomes depleted in proportion to the disgust that is generated. We have become a seller to the world of that which makes it vomit. Given time, all these nations would have generated their own pollution, we just accelerated the situation. It's the nature of man without God. They don't hate us because we are good, they hate us, many of them, because we once gave the appearance of it and have since, in their eyes, let them down.

          Where did it begin? Hugh Hefner is as good a guess as any but what difference does it make? Our television screens rage against God! Our streets are violent and we as a people have become desensitized to it. Our pulpits preach peace when there is no peace; thinking they are building faith in God, they are concealing His righteous anger. Gone almost, is the statesman, replaced by the pure politician. Government runs our lives, obsessed and drunken with power. I see no way that God will have mercy upon us as we exist today without a radical reformation. It would be ludicrous as evidenced from many examples in Scripture, that God would give us, as a nation, more time to sell our wares while profaning His name, refusing to let our children come to Him (those that we do not abort,) destroying His creation of the family and demanding that we are masters of our own fate.

          It doesn't matter what I, or anyone so inclined as I, might say. For they are just words. God has blinded us to a world hastening to destruction. We read the news as much as to say "Things are dangerous....over there!" We have become insulated by our entertainments. Our motto has become Red Solo Cup...Let's Have A Party. We cannot see a day past the Super Bowl and when that is over everything will be put on hold until the end of March Madness, and so on. We are to be pitied, but pitied only by those who do not know the majesty of God and His omnipotent power, for His mercy is as abundant as His judgments are strict, but only in response to repentance! There may very well be a yoke of affliction coming upon us for we have made it abundantly clear that only such a yoke can awaken us and even then, will our response be one of rending our garments and seeking God's mercy, to grow once again as a nation and church, or will we then blame God and those who did warn us?         
         Do we really want to hear peace and safety when we are at the edge of the abyss? The same Scripture that recorded God's judgments upon nations recorded his mercies. It would behoove all of us in America to look into that Word to be informed of our creator, our benefactor, our sustainer up until now, our shepherd and the ruler of all the nations.
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          I know that if you are a serious student that you have little time for extracurricular reading but I also know that the time can be found if one truly searches for it. I have three very short books that will edify you if you choose to find that time. On our government and politics it would be Liberty And Tyranny by Mark Levin, on Christianity it would be Made In America by Michael Horton, and if you desire to follow up on the problems in Christianity it would be The Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain Murray....all three very readable

"Thy Compass, Which Is God's Word......"

         The following is five vignettes from a book referenced at the end of the following post originally published five years ago. I was in a state prison this morning visiting a friend incarcerated there. The visiting room was packed with inmates, their families and friends and it was a moving experience. On the way home I stopped at a college campus. It also was packed with families of possible future students being shown around the campus. If you have followed my blog for any amount of time you may be tired of this anecdote; Martin Luther was asked what he would do if he knew for certain that the Lord Jesus was to return the very next day. Luther's answer was "I'd plant a tree."  It would be irresponsible to our families not to plan for the future and it would be irresponsible as citizens not to pray for wisdom and discernment...and strength....in at least attempting to elect wise and honorable leaders but there is also reality to face.
         Our nation is collapsing from within. Every pillar is under attack. Please pay particular attention to Hugh Latimer's comment on what England's "well-being" depended, that is if you read that far. It is the height of absurdity for us look to this year's elections or next year's presidential election as if they hold the key to our survival. It's beyond presumption to think that we can stop our fall or even defend ourselves against our enemies without national repentence and God's mercy upon us. But we, as a general consensus anyway, no longer attribute our existence to Him. Difficult days are ahead and that is even with God's mercy. Yes, plant that tree...make those plans.... always adding "should the Lord will it," but be prepared also for God's judgement upon our nation for we have gone beyond tempting Him to punish us....to goading Him and mocking the mere mention of His righteous judgement upon a nation.

Of No Worldly Tyrant Be Thou Dread........2009
        
         John Hooper was a bishop in the Anglican church during the reign of Henry VIII and the glorious reign of Edward VI. He lived through the beginnings of the English Reformation and struggled, preaching often three and four times a day, against the forces that worked against the Gospel. He was burned at the state for his faithfulness in 1555 during the reign of Queen Mary. He is attributed with writing this poetry with a piece of coal on the wall of his jail cell:

Content thyself with patience
With Christ to bear the cross of pain;
Who can or will recompense
a thousand-fold, with joys again.
Let nothing cause thy heart to fail:
Launch out thy boat, hoist up thy sail,
Put from the shore;
And be thou sure thou shall remain
For evermore.........
Do not despair;
Of no worldly tyrant be thou dread;
Thy compass, which is God's Word, shall thee lead,
And the wind is fair.

Rowland Taylor was a pastor during the same period and was called to account as a villain for preaching the Gospel. When friends advised him not to report his response was:
What will ye have me do? I am now old, and have already lived too long, to see these terrible and most wicked days. Fly you, and do as your conscience leadeth you. I am fully determined, with God's grace, to go to the Bishop, and to tell him, to his beard, that he doth naught. God shall hereafter raise up teachers of His people, which shall, with much more diligence and fruit, teach them than I have done. For God will not forsake His church, though now for a time He trieth and correcteth us, and not without just cause. Rowland Taylor was also burned at the stake.

Bishop Hugh Latimer wrote: My wish is, that men may write on their hearts that the well-being of England depends not on commerce, or clever politicians, or steam, or armies, or navies, or gold, or iron, or coal, or corn, but on the maintenance of the principles of the English Reformation. Before being burned at the stake he turned to another martyr and famously said: Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

In 1552 John Bradford wrote of his time period as similar to that of Noah and often forewarned the people of the plagues which would be brought to pass. He also was martyred and wrote: When I consider the cause of my condemnation, I cannot but lament that I do no more rejoice than I do, for it is God's verity and truth.

Nickolas Ridley was a chaplain to Henry VIII and later the Bishop of London and also ran afoul of Queen Mary for preaching the Gospel. In a farewell letter to prisoners he wrote: Farewell, dear brethren, farewell! And let us comfort our hearts in all troubles, and in death, with the Word of God: for heaven and earth shall perish, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.

I write this post, originally posted in 2009, as encouragement to myself as well as anyone else! In order to secure our blessings today we must know what transpired in the past, and we ignore the sacrifices of others to our own peril. How trivial are the entertainments of today when compared to the sacrifices and most of all the faithfulness of those who came before us.


Referenced: Five English Reformers......19th century Anglican Preacher in England J. C. Ryle. Available at www.cvbbs.com

DeMint and West

          We lack leadership today in just about every area of our society. I have followed politics for a long time. Admittedly most of that time I was clueless but there is some discernment to be had if discernment is truly what one desires. So I have formed some strong opinions on who is available today for wise leadership in America and I'll give you two names here. The first I have written about often in these posts. Some very influential Conservatives wanted  him to run for president in this last general election cycle but he chose not to. At the time he was in the United States Senate. Today he is the president of the Heritage Foundation. His name is Jim DeMint. I've written before and will repeat it here, he's not only another Reagan...he's a better than Reagan... and maybe Republicans will become aware of this some day. The second was a one-term Congressman from Florida before every piece of artillery the Democrat Party had was aimed at him in the last election. His name is Allen West. Both men have recently authored books and I highly recommend them to you. Jim DeMint's is titled Falling In Love With America, Again while Allen West's is Guardian Of The Republic. The following post is from earlier this year:

I Will Restore Judges

          Federal judges are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. They wield considerable power not only in the lives of the trial participants but into every area that their decisions effect. There are less than 1000 federal judges in the United States, the top ring of which is our Supreme Court.
          A decision rendered in a U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia is in the news because of its subject matter and more. The Virginia same-sex marriage ban has been struck down in it, and this on Valentine's Day....how quaint, or more accurately....how Barack Obama, for the judge is an Obama appointee, and it was only a few days ago that Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice will expand efforts towards recognition of same-sex marriage in all states. But this is not the news that I'm writing about in this post.
          This federal judge delivered an opinion with an error that is mind-boggling. How did it get by the law clerks? How does a federal judge make such a mistake? Written in the opinion was this "Our Constitution declares that 'all men' are created equal'." How much time has this judge spent reading the Constitution? I can only imagine how a One L would be excoriated by making a mistake such as this. John J. Osborn Jr., author of the 1970 novel The Paper Chase, would have had fun with Professor's Kingsfield's abusing one of his One Ls for such a blunder.
          A federal judge might conceivably speak this error for about a moment, but for it to be written down and pass muster before being added to the Federal Record is another thing. Filling judgeships is just one avenue being used to circumvent our Constitution. That line added to the judge's opinion is from our Declaration of Independence. Marvelous as it is, and as influential as it is, it is not law.
         In one of Abraham Lincoln's earliest speeches (1838) he said this "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
          We have rejected God. The book of Isaiah begins as Judah is likened to Sodom and Gomorrah.... but forgiveness and mercy are offered via repentance... "And I will restore judges as at the first, and your councilors as at the beginning." (1:26)