Read......And Maybe Weep

          The following proclamation, taken from abrahamlincolnonline.org, was written by our Senate in 1863, and placed on the desk of President Lincoln to sign. Please make the effort to read it in its entirety.  Ted Cruz and maybe three or four other Senators might be able to pen such a proclamation today but it would evoke hoots and howls of derision if placed on our president's desk, the media would unmercifully castigate its authors, and if reviewed at all, the 'national sins' mentioned would be politicized and 'humility' required only of those committing them.

Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day

Washington, D.C.
March 30, 1863 Senator James Harlan of Iowa, whose daughter later married President Lincoln's son Robert, introduced this Resolution in the Senate on March 2, 1863. The Resolution asked President Lincoln to proclaim a national day of prayer and fasting. The Resolution was adopted on March 3, and signed by Lincoln on March 30, one month before the fast day was observed.

By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation. Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation. And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion. All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh. By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward, Secretary of State.

Dupes

   

Communism....Under New Management

         Are you willing to read the evidence of how Communism has worked, is working, and even as of now...winning, in America? Please consider reading the book that is reviewed in the following post first published on September 15th of 2011 and then try to defend this administration. The next four posts are on a topic that few want to be reminded of and most laugh off but I implore you to consider this warning in these days of....not jeopardy....not mere instability....but extreme and imminent peril to America....to the world....and to you!

September 15, 2011

         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 (over five) 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.

Acronym

          I returned to work today after a few days off to find a small pamphlet tucked in front of the Bible that always hangs in a basket on the side of my locker, kept there for anyone to read  on their breaks as I work in a 24/7 environment. The copyright is 1999 and it's written by Hank Hanegraaff, better known as the Bible Answer Man on Christian radio, who has authored a number of good books on Christian apologetics over the years. This particular pamphlet is a defense of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and Mr. Hanegraaff utilized an acronym, which he often does, as a tool to help the reader remember the key points. This little episode gave me the idea of trying an acronym of my own in one of these posts. The acronym that I'm going to us is DICTATOR. I suspect that's easy enough to remember on the topic of Communism.

D.........Communism must be understood as a dialectic, more particularly the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In short.....time brings changes and the evolution of thought would eventually wind up at the doorstep of Marx and Engels, for their thought, in their own minds, was of a higher form of thought than that of everyone else. For the purposes of this acronym, Communism did not die with the collapse of the Soviet Union....it retreated....transmogrified....and returned with a multicolored halo.

I.........Communism must incite. It is not going to win with provable concepts for there are none. It must therefore incite hatred of one class for another; it must divide and it must stir up chaos and anarchy. America today is a Petri dish with communist cells cultivated into riots, uncontaminated by reason.

C.........Communism rides on the coattails of other reform movements. No one is going to get excited over Communism in and of itself. The passions being stirred up are usually shared by many groups and often with very legitimate complaints. Communism stays on the periphery, pretending to be just one of the outraged people groups. Fidel Castro worked this perfectly in Cuba. Although there were communists all around him he promised democracy and free elections. It was shortly after the successful revolution that he announced that he was actually a Socialist and then later also a Communist. So much for democracy and elections!

T.........Communism then takes absolute power. This is what Lenin and the Bolsheviks did and this is what Castro did. Fellow reformers and revolutionaries lacked a murderous instinct and were easily disposed of in a power grab once the ruling powers had been overthrown..

A.........Communism then appropriates control of everyone and everything they possess. The State has become their new god. It will teach their children. It will own all property and dispense with it according to its purposes. It accepts no challenges for all questions of power and purpose have been settled.
.
T.........Communism then begins to teach (forcibly) everyone... young, old, comrades and opponents in reeducation camps similar to our Higher Education system. It begins to transform the entire society and culture.We see this in America today as marriage is attacked, the Congress is simply ignored as is our Constitution, lies are but chips to be used on the gaming board of Let's Make A Deal, borders are bigotry and history is hatred. Tolerance is used as a rod and then discarded.

O.........Barack Obama was nurtured in Communism. His mentor, who he wrote so much about in his memoir.... Frank Marshall Davis, has a whole book written about him titled The Communist, The Untold Story Of Barack Obama's Mentor by Paul Kengor. Whether they be full-fledged communists, or communists with a small 'c' or just 'fellow travellers' as they are called, they have always been around him.... even to this day. Cuba waited us out until a friend of Communism became our president. The head of Vietnam just visited the Oval Office a week ago, not the President of Vietnam but the real leader of Vietnam.... the Communist Party General Secretary. I gave this quote in a previous post..."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." One doesn't have to 'assume' with Barack Obama. His policies are Marxist and his methods are textbook Communism.

R..........America needs to repent. I need to repent and I assume that you might also, for what we have wrought over the years. The dye has been cast.... and it is red! There is one thing and one thing only that can neutralize Communism..... the Gospel of Jesus Christ! As I wrote previously... "Class warfare is impotent against the Gospel of Jesus Christ for when a man first sees himself in rebellion against a Holy God he seeks mercy instead of justice and dispenses fairness and equality instead of demanding it." 
         

         

The Only Plausible Explanation

         I only heard a few minutes of each but both Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin sounded somewhat unsettled. No, unsettled isn't the word, they were shaken. Limbaugh's words were spoken slowly....with pauses. Levin was emotional. What brought this on was the video, 'purportedly' of an executive of Planned Parenthood who nonchalantly talked about an alleged lucrative business of selling parts of babies who were aborted.
         Jerusalem had rebelled against God.... this instance from Ezekiel is but one of them. It had gone beyond even the sins of Samaria and those of Sodom. Taking on the customs of the pagans, they were sacrificing their children to pagan gods...."offer(ing) them up by causing them to pass through the fire." They killed them and then burned them.
        A man doesn't easily become unsettled by something like this, for he must associate the crime with his own silence, that is if it is true remorse for what has happened. Fox News commentator Todd Starnes wrote words very similar to what I have for quite some time....."We ask God to bless America- a nation that turns a blind eye to the slaughter of unborn children- a nation that provides taxpayer dollars to fund an organization that allegedly sells body parts from dead babies.......God Bless America? Perhaps we should be asking for His Mercy, instead."
        God has permitted a blindness to come upon just about half of the American people. This is the only explanation of there being two peoples in America today. Those such as myself see not only what we have created, we see our own part in it.... our own culpability, and see a Holy God of righteous anger. The other half can see only the bodies without the blood, the lies without the consequences, the smiles without the smirks and a god of their own imagination. This is the only plausible explanation on how Barack Obama can even today, after years of lies and usurpations of our Constitution, stand at a podium in abject arrogance, and not have the press corps shout him down but rather timidly hang on every warning and and direction that he gives.
        Observe for yourself if you detect a solemnity and a great disquietude not seen before. Look in our eyes for the pain when we talk about America today. It would be a beginning... for "The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor." (Proverbs 15:33 ESV)
     

"I Do Solemnly Swear..."

       A few years ago I was a juror in a criminal trial. After the verdict was read, we, the jury, were filing out of the room when a prosecutor came up to me and extended his thanks to the jury for its finding. He then filled us in on some information that was not allowed in the case. I wondered why he came up to me, and I feel that I know the answer. There could not have been a more alert and more attentive juror than I was, for I understand the solemnity of our legal system and of taking an oath. The following is from this past January with excerpts from a post from 2011:

"I Do Solemnly Swear..."

        Our new 114th Congress took their oaths of office yesterday. These were some of the words in that oath... "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same..." What was going through their minds as the oath was read? How many actually concentrated on the words and not the tradition?
         A number of years ago I was confronted with a dilemma. I was to make a profession of faith, with certain vows, to become a member of what is now the church I am a member of. I looked forward to professing aloud my faith in Jesus Christ to the entire congregation, but I more than hesitated in agreeing to the vows, for I was to use the words 'I promise' five times. I can promise many things, things that I am quite certain that I can fulfill, but the promises in these vows required something greater than I perceived myself alone capable of. My membership was delayed for quite some time as we prayerfully sought an answer to my concerns. The result was that it was read to me, and I repeated... "Through God's grace....I promise." The addition of "Through God's grace" satisfied my concerns.
        I do not have a problem with the vows as they stand in our church. The problem was in my supra sensitivity to making a promise in such great matters. Maybe this is so because I had broken so many promises in my life? I may have jury duty soon and if I do, there would be no one in that room taking the oath more seriously than I will. The following few paragraphs are taken from a 2012 post:

        The Declaration of Independence ends with these words, "And for the support of the Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." Have we strayed as a nation from valuing our honor above our lifestyles, our personal security, even our futures? I do not doubt that these fifty-six men meant what they signed onto in this document.
         Christianity itself is grounded on an oath...an oath taken by God alone. He led men of Old Testament times to know the importance of a covenant in order to covenant with them. Today we often witness the repercussions of a broken oath in a courtroom or before Congress, the result being an indictment of perjury, but even here do we look beyond the legal ramifications to what the signers of the Declaration of Independence referred to as... sacred honor?
            God knows us more than we know ourselves. Therein is the key. To the politician, to the lawyer, to the juror or witness....whether it be an oath or just a statement to another person, we should know that God records our words. Herein would be but one step in America's recovery, that our elected and appointed leaders take that oath very seriously, and also in the vein that it was meant, for how can one consider the Constitution to be a 'living document,'  its meaning subject to change through time and personal preferences, and then take that oath? For the intent of the writers thereof is not subject to the readers interpretation.  

Mad Scientists

         Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, Americans are going to take Communism seriously, understand what it is, and regret not having heeded the warnings earlier! It has no head, not even a titular head, in fact those that still claim the moniker tend to be the less important, those being 'Communist Parties' in various countries, even our own. The exception to this of course is the five remaining countries that are in fact officially Communist, those being China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos, but even they are hangers-on, albeit well-established and dangerous hangers-on, and not the impetus for revolutions they once were.
         No, Communism is more than a political, economic or societal ideology. It is an organism....more of a bacterium actually. It is parasitic. It is pathologic. It has been in human nature since the fall of man. It does express itself though in economics, in societies and mostly in government in the form of utter tyranny.
         Karl Marx did not start this although he codified a lot of what it has become. Lenin nurtured it in the lab in its first incubation. Stalin and Mao were famines that resulted from this incubation and Barack Obama is the mad scientist bringing this plague back to life. Now I'm not a bacteriologist or microbiologist, I'm not even slightly conversant in these fields and I'm sure that any critiques you might have on my few words so far are correct. I use the terms only to convey the idea that Communism is a disease of the human condition.
           Communists have no real concern nor compassion concerning those they attach themselves to as a leech on a leg. They use minorities, the poor and illegal immigrants to further their own goals. They don't just conquer their enemies...they crush them. They have no God, no conscience and no ethics to hamper their style. Their strategies are both sophisticated and brutish. They are patient to the extreme in developing unrest in a targeted nation but strike like a cobra when it is time. They are masters of infiltrating the nerve centers of a culture and a society. They targeted our entertainment industries, our educational system and unions and were highly successful in all three. When Wisconsin Democrat Senator Joe McCarthy, who was correct in his assessments, proved to be fallible as any other person, they destroyed him through their cadres of unwitting dupes and have distorted his legacy into a Soviet hammer and sickle to pound into submission and cut down any attempts to bring up communism for over half a century.
           Man-made global warming is a pantheistic hysteria commandeered by the Left to seriously injure the stronger capitalist societies. Have you heard this news story....probably not, for this type of news rarely makes it past the censors. From The Daily Caller..."In 2008, Dr. Ivar Giaever joined over 70 Nobel Science Laureates in endorsing Barack Obama. At a recent Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting he said "I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem" that Obama's statement "no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change" is "ridiculous." He added..."I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you're wrong. Dead wrong." Professor Giaever questioned the science and policies of climate change and referred to it as a "new religion."  He was thus relegated to the unwashed masses of climate deniers who dare to actually challenge the pantheist celebrants.
         Communism today will continue to play this game of obfuscate and deceive, but this is not their end game, for their end game is attack and destroy. That is why I started this post out with.....'Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, Americans are going to take Communism seriously, understand what it is, and regret not having heeded the warnings earlier!"

Note:  The BBC ran a short bio today on Alexis Tsipras who is the Prime Minister of Greece. Here are some excerpts from that bio....."He was elected prime minister, aged 40, In January 2015-six years after becoming the leader of Syriza, a group of radical left-wing parties..........After his swearing-in-ceremony, Mr. Tsipras broke with tradition by refusing to take a religious oath, saying it was against his atheist principles.......His first gesture as prime minister was a visit to a monument honoring Greek communists executed by Nazi occupation forces in 1944......For a man whose political life began as a communist, the visit was heavy with symbolism.......It was at school that he met....(his wife). They were both active in the Communist Party of Greece's youth wing and shared the same world view." The couple named one son after Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Syriza is an acronym that stands for "Radical Coalition of the Left." Its motto is "We open the way to hope."

Son, I Failed To Try?

         The following post was written in July of 2011, sixteen months before Barack Obama would be reelected, and America has since indeed become increasingly aware of his lawlessness.


Son, I Failed To Try?

          It is my opinion that before this is all over, and by that I mean the Barack Obama era of either a four year or eight year period, he may flee this country. Whether indictments will be part of it or not I don't know but after Americans become aware of the full extent of what this President has done to our nation, to our national and domestic security, of his real intent as opposed to the fictitious constitutional scholar on the covers of Time and Newsweek throughout 2008, and without the media protection that is already starting to crack, he will eventually, more likely seek the approval of those outside this country who, although not totally in sync with his anti-colonial spirit of redistribution of wealth, appreciate his larger vision of a ...smaller America and his strong case for a weak America.
          If the media does not turn its concern towards its own nation and its own families, as opposed to its own liberal reputation in its own mind, then Barack Obama may indeed sneak into another term. He indeed has his strongholds that will continue to give support, those primarily being the special interest groups who have profited well from the liberal entitlement party. There is really no love, either way, between the man and these groups for it is a simple contract where one party promises a remuneration for the other party's support and the second party will essentially sue, by threatening to withhold that support, if the promises are not kept. The motivations are power...and greed. A second support group is more international and involves the many who have great wealth. These elites will support either a Democrat or Republican who permits them to remain the dominant party in setting coarse for the world's economies.
          These two forces alone cannot keep Barack Obama in power nor replace him with another choice without either significant support from mainstream America or a division in traditional America that would essentially destroy the power of their block, and that is where the media comes in. They are a secularist faction that does not necessarily receive any monetary remuneration for their support, nor does it hold passionately to any particular economic or political philosophy. The only threat to the world that they have created on the pages of their print media and screens of broadcast media is religion, and even there it is not Islam, liberal Christianity or Judaism but Biblical Christianity.
          Having said this ...having given these purely personal opinions, I need to reiterate as I have done consistently in this blog that any of our schemes and all of our schemes, whether they be noble or ignoble, sound or unsound, cleverly devised and painstakingly developed or simply mob induced, will indeed either fail or succeed but not without God's staying hand or lifted hand. We cannot go one way or the other apart from His permission which will ultimately lead to His glory and the benefit of those who trust in Him. We do have a cause, that being a future for us and our children in a nation that insures freedom and liberty, and acknowledges that God is not only the source of all blessings but the author of all truth.
          The hard reality is that that may not be what's in store for our children. they may look at us one day and inquire as to what we did in the final days of the constitutional republic of the United States of America. Our answer will have to be either we tried and failed to protect that heritage, or we failed to try. Returning to the first political block in this whole equation, mainstream America, it will either wake up, as there are signs of, or return to a deep sleep, either of which will be as God sees fit to permit, for his ultimate purposes and to His everlasting glory.
       

Fiercely Ineffectual

          Jimmy Carter was quoted in the news today. The title of the CBS article is "Jimmy Carter: Jesus would approve of same-sex marriage." His actual words verified choosing this title. It's not the first time that he showed complete and utter ignorance of his own Christian faith for which he is known.
          Part of my preparations for a vacation, even before a toothbrush and underwear, is books. One of the books for last year's cruise to Bermuda was Redeemer, The Life Of Jimmy Carter by Randall Ballmer. I never wrote a post on it but I'm going to reference it in this post.
          Jimmy Carter was and is a good man. As naive as he had been on foreign policy during and after his presidency, as destructive to our economy as he was as a United States President and as unknowledgeable as he is of the Bible that he teaches, I could at least see a Christian man and respect him in his many errors. Carter, like his political nemesis Jerry Falwell, never backed down on his Christian faith but there is something that we are woefully unaware of today in most of the American Christian church, that being that there is both, apart from the radically liberal church that is Christian in name only, a strong vibrant Christianity, albeit relatively small.... knowledgeable of the truth contained in God's Word, vigilant and ever learning and ever reforming when necessary, and there is a simplistic Christianity, saving but atrophying at the same time, fighting fiercely only to remain in the infancy of the "four spiritual laws" and Daniel and the lion's den.  Our former president is part of the latter and fiercely defends it.
         Carter was raised in this atmosphere and he is even on the lower end of it as to discernment. Throughout the book, which I recommend, you see biblical doctrine pushed aside, distorted and ignored by good works that are elevated, not as evidence of salvation, but as part of 'justification' itself. As far as race relations and bigotry is concerned one would have to look far and wide to find a stronger representative of Christian love than Jimmy Carter. He is a model in this area, but his failures in Christian doctrine are as remarkably bad as his love for fairness and equality is good.
         Why is this important? One reason is that our leaders and members of Congress that watched, and continue to watch, as our Constitution is shredded, our heritage besmirched, our enemies emboldened, our military weakened and dependence upon and reverence for Almighty God cast aside....these men and women come from these churches. The culture has defined the church. Rebuild the church America! Carry the lumber from old books, catechisms and confessions, use the labor of only those that are faithful and pound the nails with the same hammer Luther used at Wittenberg.
         
       

"Unreal"

         The radical Left parties in Greece may not be united into one body but they are equally culpable in the looming collapse of their nation. Communism is rising from the ashes! Some may prefer a nom de guerre over the word 'communist' but the ideology is the same as are the disastrous effects. Marxism is rampant in our government and communism is busting heads once again only this time through the politically correct news media.
          Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is a self-proclaimed Socialist and apparently he packs them in at his campaign stops. Cuba waited for us to collapse and as I write this post, the head of the Communist state of Vietnam, that would be the Communist Party head, is meeting with our Marxist President in the White House! America is on the same train track as Greece. With the leaders that we have and those that the Republican elitists are pushing, we would probably wind up calling for a referendum as Greece did and we would probably vote against any austerity measures as the Greeks did, but we would certainly first bail out any liberal state that goes bankrupt.
         In fact, Marxism is raising its ugly head all over the globe at this time....even in the Vatican. We have gone from Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II to Barack Obama and Pope Francis in 24 years! America....the great tormentor of Marxism and Communism....has fallen. There is no one today to carry on the fight. All have followed the Pied Piper, and as Crispian St. Peters sang over and over again in his 1966 hit tune....follow me...I'm the Pied Piper...and I'll show you where its at. Many of us know of their 'where it's at' but waking others up is a difficult task, for everyone is too busy leaping, hopping and jumping in line down the path to the Wicker Man!
        As I write this post foxnews.com has this as the lead story...'Worst Pres' Ever? Fed official rips Obama over 2014 (illegal immigration) surge.' In the accompanying article, a conservative watchdog group obtained and published emails between "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logistics specialist George Roark and agency public health advisor William Adams" in which Roark writes "Unreal, no country in the world would allow this......this fellow is the worst pres we have ever had. He truly is 'the amatuer' but a Marxist too."
         I'm writing this last paragraph to the younger people out there who may have stumbled across these posts. They tell us that you lack an identity and that you wonder about the meaning of anything, and they'll be happy to implant that identity in you but I'm here to relay to you that....."Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever," and that you have had the misfortune of being born in these last few generations that want their own autonomy and consider the guidance and protective hand of God to be but bondage. Oh, you have your iPhone and your social media but your heritage of liberty and freedom has been sacrificed along the way! They want you bad, and they lie as easily as they breath! Have you noticed how they lie? Have you noticed how few care about lying anymore? I'll give you one more Biblical verse from a man, Joshua, the likes of which we desperately need in America. Moses had died. Where would the people go? "Choose this day whom you will serve.......but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" was Joshua's proclamation. What is yours?
        

Gettysburg

        The following post is from October of 2012. Whatever the merits or lack of them in the controversy over the Confederate battle flag, it did not come about spontaneously but had been quickly fashioned as a strategy in the ongoing war against the American heritage.


 Yea, Though I Walk Through The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death.....

         OK, I just returned from Gettysburg.......again. It seems like I write that a lot for Gettysburg is like a magnet to me. If I’m going to Ocean City, New Jersey or any points east the car seems to veer off to Gettysburg for a rest, but this time my wife and I actually had to go to there for reasons other than the battlefield and it also just happened to be our anniversary. There’s been a lot going on lately so we did things a little bit differently in celebration of it. We decided to pick out our own gift as we walked the town and shopped in the stores. My wife picked out a pair of pearl earrings inside a thin sterling loop. As for me, I came across something that signified man and sin, redemption, true glory and everlasting peace.  
         I’m not really into relics. Maybe this comes from my Protestant Christian faith that shuns relics like the plague for the whole concept of a piece of anything that may have belonged to anyone having any intrinsic value other than intellectual or personal interest is way too close to being an occult fetish. Do I compromise this in my great love of visiting historical sites? I don’t think so for I know that it does not make me anything special nor give me any added powers. Anyway, I found myself walking slowly past locked glass cases of various Civil War relics that were for sale, most of which had been found on the battlefields of Gettysburg and identified as such. I really wouldn't have even considered asking the price of anything but one of these relics stopped me in my tracks.  It was smaller than a quarter and I had to ask for the glass case to be opened to examine it closer. I typically spend about 15 minutes picking out black socks so I was there quite a while just looking at it when the salesperson offered to call the owner of that particular item so I could talk to him. We had a nice conversation and I told him that I wasn’t a collector but was just intrigued by this piece of the Civil War that he owned. He assured me that it was legitimate, as best as one can tell for items like this. So I bought it as my anniversary present.
       It is most likely that on that hot July 3^rd, 1863 as Picket’s Division of the Army of Northern Virginia came out of the tree line of Seminary Ridge, steel bayonets shining so that even the Army of the Potomac troops were momentarily in awe, that one of those men wore this tiny cross around his neck, and then lost it on the uphill charge to the copse of trees and Union lines, and there it remained until locals scoured the fields years later for just such artifacts. 
         Many times have I visited battlefields but I always tempered my admiration for the heroism with the reality that many of these men did not know Christ nor had any hope in eternity. For instance, as much as I admire General George S. Patton I can’t help but focus in on his mistaken belief in reincarnation and his ultimate standing in front of the judgment seat of the One who is no respecter of persons. On the other hand I know that all of the accomplishments of men such as Generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain , thankfully, in no way effected their ultimate salvation for it was in their faith in Jesus Christ...alone... that their redemption was secured. 
         I have written posts on George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, greatly admiring both but hoping in the salvation of only the former. Even today I'm conflicted while listening to Rush Limbaugh; I like him, I respect him and we need him but I can't ignore that there is no evidence that he is remotely  aware of the gospel other than the patently false and destructive facsimile accepted as the gospel in America today. So, if this small cross was indeed dropped or ripped off on that three-quarter mile stretch of land that bore the tread of Picket’s Division in that famous charge.... who might have worn it? 
         The condition and the health of the Christian church in America was stronger in the South at the time of the Civil War although great revivals had broken out in the armies of both sides. Today, the wearing of a cross means little to nothing, even attendance at church on Sundays can be done by the most rebellious against God but that southern farmer or even landed gentry in the antebellum South would only have donned such a religious item to proclaim their faith in their Saviour! The bearer may have been clutching this small cross as he walked into the hail of bullets and canister fire, maybe even ripping it from its chain in the process. It’s certainly not the small piece of flat metal with no marking whatsoever on it that interests me but the location that it was found, that the wearer was most probably a brother in Christ now free of all conflict and praising his Saviour, and also that America today is once again torn apart only much more so than in 1863. 
         The soldier who dropped this cross was a soldier twice over, a pilgrim, doing his best to protect that which he loves but clinging to that which is infinitely more important, to a freedom immensely more valuable and to a King whose victory is already accomplished and eternal and who will someday have every knee bow before Him and separate those who He knows from those who will be surprised that He doesn’t know them!

Airbrushing Our History

          A Breitbart commentator (breitbart.com) hit the nail on the head when he likened the attempts to purge America of Confederate symbols to Stalin airbrushing people out of photographs. If one fell out of favor with Stalin, after that person was eliminated, censors would remove him from photographs where Stalin was present.  I'm looking at one such photograph right now. Stalin is on a ship's deck with two men to his right and one to his left, Nikolai Yezhov, who fell from Stalin's grace and was executed. The accompanying photo has the same smiling Stalin flanked only by two men to his right. The left of him looks perfectly natural with just the ship's rail and the sea! I want to emphasize here that what we are experiencing in America is the same purge mentality. These people are in no way fair, and they are cutthroat and unrelenting in their pursuit of tyranny.
         This is pure...unadulterated... Communism, as it will seek to eliminate even the remembrance of that which poses a risk in any way.  The American public of today, in general, would fare miserably in comparison to both the North and the South during the Civil War. We do not have their thinking or analyzing acumen. Their logic and reasoning was intact whereas ours is practically non-existent as evidenced by the chaos and absurdity with which the 'politically correct' so easily smothered our culture.  Our priorities are inundated with the narcissistic and the trivial. We understand adequately neither the issues that led to the Civil War or the character of its participants on both sides. The attacks on Thomas Jefferson are meant to further erode any ties we have with the founding of our nation. Same-sex marriage attacks the family which Communism tried to destroy and also belief in God whom it despised, while illegal immigration is meant to dilute patriotism and love of country.
         You could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of men in our government today who would not wilt in comparison to a Robert E. Lee or a Stonewall Jackson in honor, integrity, greatness and godliness. We are not worthy of the Lincolns, the Lees, the Jacksons or the Chamberlains and many others from that time period. That is....we as a people.... for our military has indeed carried on that tradition, but it also is being marginalized from the leadership through purges on down to the enlisted personal with cultural engineering.
         It is only a guess, I have no way of knowing for sure, but I would imagine that nine out of ten new visitors to these posts either disagree with my thoughts or have no idea what I'm talking about when I mention Communism. This I expect and this is one of the reasons for these posts.  The news
media will never inform on the similarities of Barack Obama and the Bolshevik mindset, and hopefully they never attempt to educate on Communism, for it would be a biased whitewashing and airbrushing of both.

Eureka!

          I have had my picture in the newspaper once in my life and I sincerely hope that that was the last time. It was April or May of 1997 and I have a copy of it here in front of me. I'm not sure of the exact date because I just cut around the article. Here's the story behind it. My wife and I had just opened up a bookstore in the town that we live in and our local newspaper was kind enough to give the bookstore a little publicity with an news article accompanied by a photo. The photo is great... except for me sitting in the middle of it in a Governor Bradford chair that I remember my mother buying in a little antique store circa 1955 in Buffalo, New York.
          We had all of the book shelves made for the bookstore and today some of them hold my books in the basement and some hold motor oil and bird feed and hedge clippers in the garage. I can identify some of the displayed books in the newspaper photo. They are of church history, biographies, great Puritan literature and some contemporary critiques on today's church, and I'm holding Spurgeon: A New Biography by Arnold Dallimore in my hands. Above me is a print under glass of a well-known oil painting by George Henry Boughton titled Pilgrim's Going To Church. That same picture is six feet away from me right now and hanging on our living room wall. My wife doesn't like either the chair or the painting. The Bradford is in the basement and I only get to hang the painting, a snow scene, up here for the winter. I hope that she doesn't read this post for it's past time to switch to the Paris summer street scene.
          Our bookstore lasted two years. I worked full time and came to the store when not at work, and our pastor's wife was our only employee. It was a joy from the day that our son and his friend, both 12 years old, dressed up in colonial garb and handed out leaflets on the bookstore's opening day to the day that I packed up the books,         
          In a way I like writing personal posts like this but if there wasn't a message in it, then the entire blog of almost seven years would be just a grand waste of time. The word eureka is associated with the discovery of gold in both California and Australia. The message here in this post is that there are gold nuggets....usually about 6" by 9" and weighing a little over a pound each depending on the number of their pages that literally litter the American landscape in bookstores and libraries. They are worth far more than if they were actual gold and will change your life if you will let them. Actually it's the Holy Spirit who does that but he employs words written by mere men and women. Unfortunately you may have to pan as tirelessly as those miners from the California Gold Rush to find them, but the nuggets are indeed there. I'll give you a few recommendations at the end of today's post to get you started.
           The following is from February of 2014 and although it doesn't mention books, it was books that God first used to open my eyes. That's why we opened a bookstore and that's why the short novella that I wrote which you can access at the link on this page revolves around a Christian bookstore.

It Would Not Make Sense.....         

          I cannot remember what it feels like not to know Jesus Christ as my Savior, my Lord and my King. Oh I remember what it is like to trample underfoot the grace that He bestowed upon me, sinner that I am, for I would only have to go back hours if not minutes for that, but I cannot remember how I 'thought' prior to 1982. I know what wasn't in my mind but cannot remember what was there. I can recall my fourth birthday party where my older cousin Buzzy hid behind a door to scare me. I remember putting a full carton of my lunch milk into the milk crate, spilling it all over the kindergarten floor at North Hill Elementary School, and then not owning up to it as Mrs. Martin had us circle the crate until until the guilty party fessed up. It's not for lack of memory powers, it's for lack of something else.
         I remember what it was like to be....religious. I remember sitting in the pew before grade school, holding my daily missal in my hands almost entranced by the Latin words coming from the altar. I remember trying to converse with God on long walks in the rain while in my teens. I remember attending Mass in Vietnam on those Sunday mornings when I didn't have a hangover. I remember walking over to St. Paul's Cathedral for evening Mass after finishing work at Hillman Library at Pitt. I just cannot remember the name of Jesus as anything more than a distant personage who must surely be revered as someone very important but for reasons as distant in understanding as the heavens themselves where Jesus lived.
         Someone won over $400 million dollars in the Powerball yesterday but that experience cannot possibly rival receiving the grace poured out from the cross of Calvary. I have a Bible hanging on the side of my locker at work all of the time. I doubt that it is picked up very often. Here in that Bible is something that should make the $400 million jackpot appear as a worn penny on the street in value but it goes unrecognized. Bibles are everywhere in America but can't even compete with an iPhone in perceived value.
          Arminianism is the most prevalent theology in evangelicalism today. In this doctrine man responds positively to the Gospel and is born again. But this is not what Scripture describes. In the Gospel according to Jesus Christ a dead person (spiritually dead) is made alive!!! He then responds to the Gospel that he truly hears for the first time. For ten years I thought that I made a decision and God responded by pouring His grace out upon me... that I wasn't as dumb as I look! Then I saw what really happened, that for some reason known only to God, he said..."You....the lowest of the low....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" It was He that opened my eyes, that made me see my previous 32 years. I saw the filth and the rebellion, the pride, the hate, the ignorance and the arrogance.....and then I saw a King before me... the King of Kings! My heart stopped beating and a new heart began to beat. My lungs collapsed. I could draw in no air for the majesty I was in the presence of. I yelled as John Bunyan's pilgrim..."Life, life, eternal life!"
         If I sit and meditate and try as hard as I can to remember what it what like before God opened my eyes...I start to tremble. Something wafts through my nostrils...an odious smell...and then it disappears. I perceive that God will not let me return any further then the address where I see the outside of the building but cannot go in. I never want to go into that building but I also never want to forget it for therein is my only remembrance of what life was like without Christ and what I was rescued from, and every time I see it I yell once again...."Life, life, eternal life!'. My desire is that you hear what I heard....the words "You.....the lowest of the low.....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me," for it makes no sense that God would have had mercy on me but that I could tell you of it!

Eureka!
Putting Amazing Back Into Grace by Michael Horton
Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
The Holiness Of God by R. C. Sproul
Scripture Alone by R. C. Sproul

These will help also...
24 hour Internet radio.....refnet.fm
Cumberland Valley Bible Book Store......cvbbs.com

Are You Not Hearing

        I surely don't want to get in the habit of hearing a joke and then putting it in these posts. I think that I've only done that twice throughout the years but I smiled at one today and want to use it to segue into the message of this particular post that is more than serious. It seems that a man went for a checkup to his doctor and while there told him that he was concerned that his wife may be losing her hearing. The doctor suggested that he perform a little experiment to see how much hearing loss she had. He told the man to come to about ten feet of his wife and ask her a question. If she doesn't hear him go a little closer and ask, and if she still doesn't hear him move closer. And if if she still does not hear him, go right up to her and ask the question. The man went home and his wife was standing at the kitchen counter preparing dinner..."Hello honey, what's for dinner?" He moved a little closer and said "Hello honey, I'm home. What's for dinner?" Still nothing. He came closer still..."Hello honey, what's for dinner?" Finally he went right up to her and tapped her on the shoulder..."Hello honey, I'm home. What's for dinner?" She turned around and said "For the fourth time......pot roast."
        God is speaking. Are you not hearing? I'll tell you what I'm hearing, and many many others I might add, one of whom is Billy Graham who has been relaying to us what he hears for decades! God's judgements on our nation have begun and they are increasing in intensity!
        Our financial system is headed for a total collapse over the debt and/or various bubbles we have created by splashing the soapy water used only to whitewash the outside of the tombs we have constructed that are full of, as Jesus said in Matthew 23:27 "....bones of the dead and everything unclean." And this is the least of our problems!. We have torn down every hedge of protection, opened every gate in the wall, accommodated every pagan custom, customized the Gospel of Jesus Christ to fit our desires, set up Ashtoreth poles, sacrificed our children to Moloch and worshipped the golden bull market...excuse me...golden calf. Yet we party on oblivious to the words mene, mene, tekel, upharsin etched into the newly built 'wall of separation between church and state.'
        One cannot hear God's warnings to us amidst the din of applause, the cacophony of the marketplace and the fortissimo of our entertainments. Even in the quiet of of our meditations we run from the sound of His voice. We do not hear because we do not want to hear. We plug our ears at the mention of His holiness and shout down those who would read verbatim from His Word, and just such words would be these from the first chapter of Proverbs:
         " If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you. I will make my words known to you. Because I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded, because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I will also laugh at your calamity......."
       

Irreversible

Irreversible.......April 3, 2015     


         Simply put, there is no undoing the damage to America that we have done to ourselves but most particularly the damage Barack Hussein Obama has inflicted upon us in the last six years. From a purely secular perspective, it is irreversible.
         He has weakened us, torn us apart, aided and motivated our enemies, destroyed that which was good and force fed us that which is evil. He is a man without a country, an emperor with no clothes and a book with no truth not even words or pages, only two covers with a hammer and sickle on one and a star and crescent on the other. And the price of the book?.....your country, your family and your soul!         
         Race and sexual orientation issues are for political expediency and revolutionary impetus and nothing else. He fills out a March Madness bracket, not because of his interest in the tournament but to focus the American public's attention on themselves and not the war being waged upon them.
         God's judgement upon America has begun. How the mighty have become fools! How the powerful have fallen upon their own swords! How our shepherds have failed to protect their flocks!

Jonah Or Nahum

         In the nineteenth chapter of Exodus God gave the the people of Israel specific instructions to prepare for a very special event. He was going to come down to His people at Mount Sinai and He would give Moses the Ten Commandments. In the fourth chapter of Amos God told them once again to prepare. He told them very clearly, through Amos, that He had given them warning after warning in the form of punishments and concluded each time with "Yet you have not returned to me." Then came His ominous proclamation "Prepare to meet your God, O Israel."
         In the book of Jonah, as we all know, God, through Jonah, gave Nineveh forty days to repent. The king and all the people did just that. Over a century later God sent another prophet to Nineveh, Nahum. There was no warning this time, only a proclamation of impending judgement!
         A war is raging in America. You are in the midst of it. Can you not feel the tremors of the battle or hear the thunder of the canon fire? I wrote the following words in a previous post, for much of America despises God and cringes at the mention of His name or any legislation or public policy that even acknowledges His very being: Terror, thy name is Jesus and thy weapon is truth. We will make laws to protect us from you. We will isolate those whom you send to us. We will ban your book. You have disquieted us, your words upset us. We do not recognize your holiness. You are not our king. We will not pay you homage. You are not our God for there is no God. We were your slaves but now we are free. If you desire to live here, you will do our bidding.

          'Prepare to meet your God, O America' would go in one ear and out the other to many in America. For the rest... Lord, send us Jonahs if it be thy will, and give us strength if your message is that of Nahum!