Vigilance And Moderation....Or The Lack Thereof

         It's 12:30 AM and after waking up from tossing and turning in the heat I came downstairs and what else.....opened up this laptop and started a new post, but what to write about? Well, I'm going to attempt a short post on something that is very remarkable in my own life. Earlier this evening the Pittsburgh Penguins played the first game against the San Jose Sharks in the best-of-seven Stanley Cup finals.....and I don't know if they won or lost! I'll find out in the morning.
         I run the lawnmower, and I have planted flowers, but I'm surprised that I haven't yet mistakenly run the lawnmower over the flowers because my mind is often on the collapse of this once wonderful United States of America.
        The sadness within me is at times overwhelming, exacerbated by the fact that most Americans have not come to terms with what we have become. How is it possible in this information age that we cannot put two and two together and realize that we as a nation are coming apart at the seams?
         I am told quite often not to be concerned, that God has everything under control, but I'm told this by those who are only partially aware of the severity of the situation and of our own culpability in it, but who do know by now who won tonight's Penguin game.      
         I just glanced at the Internet news sites from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and even Fox.  It's really no wonder that we are not alarmed. Oh, I guess that I should amend that statement for we are alarmed. We're alarmed that Hillary Clinton is in trouble or that Donald Trump may be 'B'ushwahcked, or that gas prices might go back up, or that the Dow may come back down. 
          I'm not at all giving a litmus test... for I could very easily have checked out the Penguin score before starting to write a post, and I also follow closely the regular news of the day. The issue is a simple one of vigilance... or the lack thereof... vigilance in knowing that our adversary 'prowls around like a roaring lion.' There is another issue, one of moderation....or the lack thereof.... moderation in everything except the propagation of the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in praises to our God, in the joy of the redeemed, and in the hope of eternal life..."which God, who cannot lie, promised before the ages began."
        
        
         

Rest...Assured...And Yet...Rest Unassured

         I chose the following for a Lord's Day post because today I was once again driving the gently rolling hills of Eastern Ohio while taking in the serenity of its farms and homesteads. The 'rest' and 'assurance' of the redeemed in Christ....the "full assurance of hope until the end"... should not be misconstrued as an inducement to 'rest assured' in the perpetuation of the United States of America. The preface to the post is from last July and the post itself is from May of 2011:

         It's almost an hour past midnight of the 4th of July and before retiring for the night I checked the Internet news one last time. A front page article by Liz Peek, who according to the by-line "contributes frequently to FoxNews.com" caught my attention. The title is "Be Proud, America: Ignore the doom and gloom, ours is a great country." It's a small piece about why she loves America. I've given many of the very same opinions in past posts. She advises towards the end of the article "...let us put aside the gloom and doom and recommit to what has made our country great: belief in ourselves (emphasis mine), concern for our neighbor, and optimism that the best is yet to come." I have different thoughts on this and bring back a post from May of 2011 to express them:

Rest Unassured

          Somewhere in these past posts I've mentioned the following thought for it has been a recurring one to me from time to time, as recently as yesterday as I drove through the beautiful, half residential-half country, roads of eastern Ohio. Away from the radio, the newspapers, books and television, as I might take a drive like this or walk in a park, the serenity and peace of life in America seems every bit the same as when I was in my teens. Automobiles gently traverse the neighborhood streets, stopping dutifully at every stop sign, or they travel on the parkways at higher speeds with today's modern technology quietly taking us to a shopping mall or home from work. Laughter and talk fill the Starbucks and the sidewalks of our towns, mothers push strollers and at home men reach first for the sports pages. The supermarkets may be much larger with every imaginable taste but we fill up the same buggies with the same essential food stuffs as in the old A&Ps. Appearances and particulars of all the above are new and different but the serene concourse of life appears not to have changed nor would I or anyone reading this want it to.
          It's only when we let in the news of the day that this tranquility is threatened and even then the click of the remote, the ring of the cell phone or the sudden remembrance of an errand that needs done erases a feeling of urgency that might be settling into our minds. My message throughout these posts is that the serenity of a country drive or a stroll through town, beautiful and enjoyable as they are, are part of a shadow world where the intensity of the sun, that would bake us if we bask in it, is hidden. The blast of heat troubles us only when the clouds break for a minute or two, here or there. This has been my message that was so much more eloquently stated in the old Puritan prayer of my last post...O my forgetful soul, awaken from thy wandering dream.
          Some can audaciously say as Timothy McVeigh did in quoting the Victorian poem Invictus on that gurney before being injected with the serum that would take him to his maker...I am the master of my fate: the captain of my soul, but I would plead with them to consider that as they might recite this ode to autonomy that their children stand alongside them. What they pay attention to, or fail to pay attention to, affects them as well. As with a pregnant mother, what you take in feeds more than yourself.
          Our national security is being compromised for political gain. Even the extraordinary abilities of our military cannot overcome an administration that glues together a mosaic of chaos not order. Our financial stability is gone. The creed that once united us as Americans has faded as the In God We Trust on a well-worn 1909 penny. The very gospel of Jesus Christ has been so watered-down that it often bears no taste of salvation or aroma of wisdom and discernment.
          If we could see beyond what we so often laugh at on the television or in the theater, as to its effects on our discernment, we would be convulsed with sobs. If we could grasp the true belief system our children will inherit with the course that we are on, all of our hope would collapse as those towers on 9/11. If we could fully realize how the mission of many whose responsibility is to protect America has morphed into defending the sensitivities of some who have come to America only to plant a flag of Sharia Law, we might then awaken.
          In reality, the tranquility has not been there for a long time, for it takes decades for a glacier to cover over all forms of life and it has taken decades for us to rid our minds of discernment, logic and common sense. We have one, and only one, offensive weapon not tainted by man for it was not formed by him, and that is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17).
          God dispels the clouds of ignorance through our subsequent prayers, not that we might cover our eyes from a blazing sun, but that we might gaze in adoration at the Son, our only hope. There will indeed be a day when the Jesus Christ returns amidst the clouds and men will then hide. Whether this is near or far no one knows for we do not know what a day brings but... rest unassured... for we, as a nation, are indeed asleep and we will either awaken or perish in that sleep.

Big 'C' (Communism) Little 'o' (Obama)

           The following post is only a few days old but after reading through Barack Obama's Hiroshima speech four times I'm moving the post to the front. Japan was an evil aggressor nation in World War II and through the grace of God was utterly defeated. The Japanese people humbled themselves in the awareness of what they had done. Here is where forgiveness and reconciliation resulted in the most honorable nation of Japan that we have been allied and friends with since shortly after the world war, and herein is part of the difference between Japan and Communist Vietnam.
         Please Google and read the speech of this frightfully deceptive and horribly disruptive elected president of the United States. Read between the lines of the fodder that he laces with words like peace and truth and innocents and sorrow. You just might see what is really there, unadulterated communist misinformation and balderdash that he himself laughs at in pursuit of subjugating the clueless masses to an ideology that is the antithesis of every honorable word that he uttered.
         If the United States were to be attacked with this "terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past" by an enemy of similar strength would Obama respond by defending America? He would more likely hand us over to the enemy because they are not his enemy.....we are his enemy. He uses the words 'species'  and 'religion' as a communist would define the words.
         It is truly sad that this trip which included the announcement to sell military arms to Communist Vietnam and a hidden but very real apology for Western freedom and liberty to a friend who can only become confused, that this trip is occurring so near to Memorial Day where we honor those had fallen on battlefields protecting us from the totalitarian ideologies that the tactics and methodologies of Barack Obama so closely exemplify.

         It's page one, front and center on one of Pittsburgh's morning newspapers today. Barack Obama is shaking hands with Vietnam's Communist President in front of a larger than life bust of Ho Chi Minh. The gold star over red backdrop drowns out the two American flags hemmed in by Communist Vietnam's flags.
         Obama has that same smile in the photo that he always does when he completes another page in his manuscript Fundamentally Transforming The United States Of America. We are now going to sell arms and military equipment to Vietnam. Barack Obama isn't attempting to strengthen a friend being bullied by the bad Chinese Communist government.  He's attempting to strengthen a Communist government....period....as he is attempting to do so in Communist Cuba.
         His televised speech was inane, filled with false sentiments such as in speaking of Communist China... "Big nations should not bully smaller ones." Not to be outdone, John Kerry said...."I think that clearly we will never fail to honor the sacrifice of those who fought here and what their dreams were for this country, but I think one can say genuinely, definitively without a failing to honor past service, that we have reached a very new point in our relationship now." Friends, this is gibberish....words laid down in a semi-intelligible order for the purpose of addressing a topic with no intent of saying anything that can be scrutinized.
         North Vietnamese regulars, Viet Minh and the Viet Cong bludgeoned and murdered other Vietnamese over the course of two Indochina wars. Fifty-eight thousand of our fellow Americans died, countless numbers received serious wounds and families were devastated. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese lost their loves, and tens upon tens of thousands more trying to escape from the communist butchers after the war!       

         Friends, this is not a 'the war has been over for 40 years...let it go' type of thing. Communism is still the issue....still an enemy of America. The following are two previous posts on Communism that I chose to accompany today's post:

On Communism

           Communism is not just a political and socioeconomic system. It's a cancerous cell inflicted upon the human race for a purpose. Is this an outrageous statement made without warrant? Are100 million lives and counting not enough to warrant such a statement? Communism instigates hate and violence for the sole purpose of societal upheaval so that it can take power. It works tirelessly and patiently to perpetuate ignorance upon which it thrives. It leads decent people into committing crimes. It plays upon the weaknesses of societies, not too help them but to subjugate them. It lures the poor and the rich alike. It sets first the focus of its attack on whole professions.....professions that in turn can protect it through naivete' and vainglory (journalism) prevent it from having to deal with a God-fearing people (higher education) and propagandize and tranquilize the rest (entertainments industries) while it only has to send a relatively small contingent, in comparison to the entire population, of trained and professional operatives to help set up a shadow government ready to take power when all government and law collapses.
          It's been written that the Devil loves it when people laugh at the very thought of a Devil. In like manner Communism flourishes in its mission precisely when people consider it a toothless old bogeyman. They, the Communists, are more than thrilled knowing that the great American circus of electing a president has started as this endgame progresses. The last thing they want is for they themselves to become the focus of attention. Slowly but surely that is just what is happening!

Evil Days.....October 2015

        Paul Kengor is on a mission for he is exposing Communism and Marxism in America more than anyone else on the national scene. I previously his reviewed his book Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives For A Century. Well, he's done it again in his latest Takedown: From Communists To Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage. What words can I use to encourage you to read this? I was glad to see that it came out in paper rather than hardcover for as a book purchaser myself I know that when you buy so many it's a lot easier to grab that paperback and head to the checkout counter.
         The cover has a wedding cake on it that is cut in two and separated with the groom on one piece and the bride on the other; the implication of course that marriage is being destroyed. The knife  that cut that cake is in the shape of the communist symbol of the sickle! The same-sex marriage agenda is indeed the topic within but time and again the author had to remind his readers of it for Communism and Progressivism are dissected throughout....for these lead up to the literal upheaval in the thinking of Americans on this issue that has taken place in little more than a decade.
         This post will be short. It's not a book review for that will not suffice. You need to read read this entire book, for we have a tendency to read but a little on this or that and somehow satisfy the angst within us on a decaying culture. Friends... this is not politics, nor is this the future, for we are already undone as a nation!
         Paul Kengor points out on a number of occasions that Communism has evolved on this issue whereas it formally opposed the homosexual life style but now, as he writes ...."Marx's and Engels's economic-based communism (has been redirected) to cultural adaptations, from income/class equality to sexual adaptations." He places the Democrat Party right there in the same metamorphosis .... "The entire Democratic Party and both Bill and Hillary Clinton were on board for the Defense of Marriage Act just a decade or two ago." He delves once again into Barack Obama's mentor Frank Marshall Davis. We visit the SDS community of the 60s, Margaret Mead, Margaret Sanger, Herbert Marcuse and many more who were the rage of the college campus back then.
         Kengor's writing is explicit when it has to be. You will put the book down at times to catch your breath. You may very well even stop to utter the prayer.....'God help us.' These are not merely 'difficult times' that we live in, nor are they ...'the times that try men's souls' as Thomas Paine, an atheist, penned. They are 'evil days' as the Apostle Paul wrote about in the book of Ephesians. We are living in....tribulation....and may even be entering what the Bible calls....'the' Tribulation.
         The book is 206 pages and fully footnoted. If you are a Christian anywhere near my age (65) you may very well remember Christian books that came out in early 1980s on Secular Humanism. If so it would surprise me if reading them did not focus the direction of your thinking and motivate you at the time. This book by Paul Kengor will do the same. It will leave no reader in doubt as to what has happened to us and what we are up against....the effort to, as the back cover describes... "take down the natural, traditional biblical family and attack religion in the process."

In All Of These Things Combined

        I felt that a preface was needed to the post that follows this because of one sentence within it. I may have a half dozen posts on Donald Trump and they were mostly favorable as to what his candidacy had signified. I wrote somewhere that in Donald Trump at least we would have someone that we could pray for, and I intend to do just that. The sentence I'm referring to is..."When a Donald Trump has become your best hope... you have been accursed."
        My statement was referring to the utter ruin of the entire American political process. I'd like to know the last ten books that Mr. Trump has read...skip that, they're probably all business leadership bestsellers. I've read where he has recommended Machiavelli's The Prince and The Art Of War...Sun Tzu. Strange picks...this is not encouraging! He is quoted as saying..."People like to give me Bibles, which I love." Donald Trump needs to know that the reason Christians give him Bibles is because if there is anyone on this earth that needs to open that book it is him!
        Newt Gingrich as VP could help, for he has everything that Donald Trump lacks. Trump may not listen to him but you would think that he would least have Trump's ear. That we have no unbiased mainstream media to speak of ('when Fox News is your best hope....you are accursed' also would have worked), that our two major political parties are both corrupt and in cahoots, that Ted Cruz and Ben Carson were ridiculed out of contention, and that in a country of over 300 million people we are left with a best hope of a casino operator, television showboat personality and business leadership guru to face off against this coming monster of a maelstrom....in all of these combined...we indeed can be considered accursed.

Inherit The Wind

March 2016

         America has many enemies. When you have a history and a heritage like ours right up into the late 1980s...you make enemies. These are days of great celebration within the minds of these enemies for it is a certainty.....America has very little time left. They know it and pant with anticipation. They know us much better than we know ourselves. They know that we are now defenseless.
         Nothing short of treachery has befallen us, our government and our society. When a Donald Trump has become your best hope...you have been accursed. When a Hillary Clinton is a major party nominee for president....you have outlived your usefulness as a nation. When a Megyn Kelly is the best your media can offer....you have chosen entertainment over information and will inherit the wind. When a Barack Obama has become your president....you have already been overrun. When a Mark Zuckerberg presides as moderator of your social committee...you are to be pitied. When you have come to believe that Thomas Jefferson was a racist....you have been duped. When teacher unions rule your children's education....you have no hope. When a Joel Osteen is the 'most popular preacher on the planet'....you have no faith. When elite liberal universities determine your future....you have no future. When Wall Street has become your security.... you have no wisdom. When the greatest defender of the Constitution suddenly dies and you do not even have the sense to at least ask for an autopsy.....you are undone. When your Marxist president travels to Cuba and you are not in the least bit concerned about Communism.....you are the world's biggest patsy. When a Stephen Hawking warns that artificial intelligence can potentially become more dangerous than nuclear weapons....and you ignore it.... you deserve what you will get. When the warnings of a Billy Graham are ignored.... even by Christians....you have become blind.  When a nation forgets God....it has become utterly defenseless and has very little time left.
    

Pleasant Valley Sunday

         I turned on the television just before dinner this past Saturday and lo and behold there was one of my favorite films...Cromwell...with Richard Harris as Oliver Cromwell and Alec Guinness as England's King Charles I. I have the film on DVD and had watched it a month or so ago... but it was on and I was going to watch it again.
         To be very...very succinct here....Cromwell led the Puritans in the English Civil War against King Charles I and the result was the beheading of the king on charges of treason...and the ensuing Commonwealth and parliamentary government ruling as a republic. England flourished under Cromwell's rule but he died of natural causes only five years into his Protectorate. With this powerful man gone and not even a near-equal to replace him, Charles Stuart's son victoriously returned to London and in 1660 became King Charles II in what was called the Restoration. Oh, there was a parliament at this time also... it was sometimes called the Pensioner Parliament because generous pensions were handed out to those who helped Charles II become king.
          The great plague of London followed in 1665 and the great fire of London the year after that. England then lost a naval battle to the Dutch.  The people were divided between the strictly religious of the Cromwell era and the sporting minded Loyalists in power. Is this beginning to sound strangely familiar to you?
          The following is a book review of mine from March of 2009...slightly modified.

"The Peculiar Life of Sundays"

          I had already read a few books on the history of Sundays in Western culture, they were good but the information was becoming redundant. I finally got around to a Christmas present, The Peculiar Life Of Sundays (Harvard Press) by Stephen Miller, and was more than pleasantly surprised. Miller gives us the history of Sundays in England and America through the eyes of literary figures using their own writings and correspondence.
         Their chief complaint against the Sabbath when 'Sabbatarians' were in power was the "gloominess" of the day.   There was a correlation in that those that either rejected Christianity, doubted its legitimacy or were outright pagans desired to experience the wonders of nature and the joys of recreation rather than observe the Christian Sabbath. A second correlation was that there was a general health of the nation when that nation observed the Lord's Day, and disarray and general decline when it rejected God's commandment. In both cases, the church itself declined along with the nation.
         According to Miller, William Wilberforce had two goals in life, to rid England of slavery and to see the improvement of manners which Miller said included a return to honoring the Lord's Day. Time and time again over the years the issue would come to a head in England. Miller describes the situation in 1858; "Twice in June and July 1858 more than 150,000 people demonstrated in London against a bill that would curtail Sunday trade and further restrict the hours that pubs could be open on Sunday. Karl Marx, who was present at the first demonstration, was ecstatic. The 'English Revolution' had begun, he said."
         In 1932, one year before Hitler came to power in Germany, the English were finally given the right to play soccer on Sunday. In America our NFL football moved to Sunday games in 1933. The curriculums during my high schools years, as in most secondary schooling in that day, glorified accomplished American writers who discredited Christianity in their works, and who were opposed to the Christian concept of observing the Lord's Day. Ralph Waldo Emerson, speaking to Harvard divinity students, told them "On Sundays, it seems wicked to go to church" and advised them to "dare to love God without mediator or veil." Walt Whitman was a pantheist that read scripture. He admitted that he was not Christian but applied it when he thought it would sooth others. Henry David Thoreau, of Walden Pond fame, was a pantheist and a pagan. Quoting Stephen Miller on Thoreau "Christianity, he says, turns people into neurotic souls who worry that an angry God will punish them for being idle, and for not observing the Sabbath." Writing in his typical satire and flair, Mark Twain, in Extracts From Adam's Diary, has Adam write "I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give me time to rest from the weariness of Sunday."
         Today the church has found the perfect agenda of worship in the morning, sports in the afternoon and a good television special in the evening. God laid out His design and we have applied our revisions to it. Unfortunately, not only are Sundays gloomy to many unbelievers, they are gloomy to many Christians also.
         My personal experience has been this.... when Christ is preached on the Lord's Day in all His glory and majesty, I am rejuvenated, and consequently the day prepares me for the following week. When Christ is not preached, I also can see it as gloomy; not that the scriptural application coming from the pulpit is not good and needed, nor that meeting in worship with other believers is not what we should do, but rather that the glory and majesty of Christ was bypassed, taken for granted, and deemed not necessary to be dwelled upon every week.

Warm-up Act

         Give Bernie Sanders an A+ for persistence. He never gave up. He was born on the Roman Catholic Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Sept. 8th) in 1941...only a few months before Pearl Harbor. I feel like I somewhat understand Bernie Sanders. I wear a chain around my neck with two words etched in the silver....'press on.' Sanders had his hero as a young man...Eugene V. Debs... who ran for president five times on the Socialist Party of America ticket. I had my hero...Robert Kennedy....who ran for president once.   His reading material in college was much the same as mine....Freud, Fromm and Wilhelm Reich (don't bother looking Reich up!), but he was more than enamored with Marx (not Groucho) Lenin (not John) and Trotsky. He was heavily into what was called free love, even writing a "2,000 word manifesto" on it in a student newspaper, whereas I was more into free daydreams. The photo at the top is me reading Why Bernie Sanders Matters by Harry Jaffe.
          Sanders was raised in the Jewish section of Brooklyn. He was a good athlete (track) and a good student who matriculated to the University of Chicago (he didn't quite get into Harvard). He seemed to be born to protest. He was a-religious even though schooled with his Hebrew lessons and somewhat knowledgeable of the Bible.  It seem that he never had a regular job until he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont at the age of 41! Up until than he did a little of this and a little of that. I didn't settle into a permanent job until I was almost 30.
          Sanders gravitated to the simple living of Vermont after "barely" graduating from college, a hippie of the utopian variety. He travelled to Israel and lived on a kibbutz. He married and then divorced.....cohabited....had a son...split up and then helped raise the son.....and married again to a campaign supporter who is his wife today. It seems that most everyone today describes him as one of the most honest members of Congress. I don't quite see it that way. I think that they see an open and persistent socialist passion which he rarely wavers from and they count that as honesty. I see utter confusion. He has the socialist mantras down pat but cannot hear the stomping sound of the Soviet goose step that approaches from behind. I also do not see it as honesty to intentionally close one's eyes to the horrors of Communism in order to cling to its handmaiden of Socialism.
          Sanders used to say, in his strong Brooklyn accent...."I am a radical!" I'm not so sure. What radical says...."I am a radical"? Oh yes, he's a radical in the sense of Barbra Streisand's character of Katie Morosky in The Way We Were......A Marxist Jew who lived for social causes, but he doesn't appear to be a radical in the mode of Bill Ayers or Abbie Hoffman. Bernie Sander's whole adult life has been a crusade against issues revolving around income inequality and war that morphed into running for office, any office, on a small obscure party ticket or as an independent.
          Bernie ran for a seat in the United States Senate (Vermont) in 1971 and lost with 2.2% of the vote. Quoting Harry Jaffe from his book..."Sanders loved campaigning for Senator. One could say he had found his life's purpose: to campaign, to educate, to preach." Sanders then ran for Governor and barely got 1% of the vote. In 1974 he ran again for the Senate but only improved to 4% of the vote. He ran again for governor in 1976 and this time received 6.1% of the vote. He lowered his sights and in 1980 ran for mayor of Burlington on a theme of taking power away from the millionaires. The result was different this time and he won by ten votes out of eight thousand cast.....Mayor Bernie Sanders! It was the first of his four terms as Mayor of Burlington. He ran once again for governor in 1986 and this time he had a third place finish and 15% of the vote in a state wide race. In 1988 he ran again for a seat in the House of Representatives and improved to 37.5% of the vote...but lost again!
         Sanders was then 47 years old but the times were a-changing in Vermont. Harry Jaffe writes "It's safe to assume that Sanders has rarely if ever used a firearm" but with the backing of the NRA in this rural state Bernie Sanders finally became Congressman Bernie Sanders. He would lose no more races and today, as a Senator from Vermont, he is pushing you know who to the limit.
         The type of 'radical' that Bernie Sanders is thrives on protest. He protests in the Senate. He has no answers....no answers are required of him....only more protests. This is not the featured act.....it's not meant to be the featured act. It's only a warm-up for that which takes no prisoners and shows no mercy.

           

     

No Other Conclusion

         I write a post such as the following every once in a while to condense my opinions written often in these posts on the day and age that we live in.
       
         I have become convinced by both Scripture and what is going on in the world that the Second Coming of our King Jesus Christ is near, but more importantly, I desire it to be near. Where this world is heading is not a place that one should want to live. We think that technology is taking us to a new frontier of the super human but it is rather a subhuman world just beyond our gaze.
         There are some key points that brought me to this conclusion. In retrospect it seems that God has been warning us very specifically for anywhere from 40 to 70 years. This seems normal to me as to how God had dealt in Scripture with the rebellious Hebrews. I am 34 years into this study and cannot explain away the miraculous birth of Israel or the Jewish hold on Jerusalem since 1967 other than to say that they are indeed end-time indicators.
         The geopolitical turmoil today is begging for a nuclear conclusion. The geological rumblings are too frequent and too threatening not to consider in an end-times sense. The cosmic possibilities that we are becoming more and more aware of cannot be ignored either. The rejection of God, by  our government, the single most blessed nation in history other than faithful Israel, fits the descriptions from Old Testament prophets of an Israel and Judah that were about to be judged. Laodicean churches dot the landscape. We are no longer capable of outrage at the level of violence in our society.  In fact what would not make sense, and would not be spiritually observant, would be to come to any other conclusion.
         If you do not want to come to these conclusions for yourself then do not read the Bible beyond a few chapters a night, and by all means do not read the Old Testament prophets other than fulfilling your 'read the Bible in a year' commitment. Stay away From Matthew chapter 24 or its corresponding chapters in Mark and Luke. Skip the first few chapters of Revelation and go straight to the really confusing stuff. And under no circumstances should you read the Psalms as if they actually pertain to us today! Do these things, avoid these things, and you will be all right.
          Should Jesus tarry for ten or twenty years or even beyond, I will have been eternally thankful that I came to the point of desiring His return and not just assenting to its eventual occurrence. I will have been thankful to be able to give warnings that I know are God's very truth no matter what age one lives in; but should the Lord indeed be mounted at this moment along with His holy angels, may His warnings increase and become so clear as to wake all of the redeemed up and bring us together in anticipation, preparation, soberness, extreme humility and worshipful praise that is due our calling....."For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things! To Him be the glory forever. Amen."
         
Belshazzar's Feast

The White House Correspondents Association has held an annual dinner for almost a century now. It often takes the form of a 'roast' of the current president. Criticism of it of late has been that it has gone Hollywood. I never pay much attention to it but usually a joke or two makes the news. The Drudge Report had it as it's top story along with a video of the event's main performer.....Larry Wilmore....sorry, never heard of him until last night. 
        I watched the video. At one point a journalist who was the butt of a joke extended his middle finger to the dais. As the camera panned the audience of White House journalists, news executives, celebrities of all sorts, and even Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden....and as I looked into the faces of the crowd as they laughed, at times hysterically, at the jokes about race and foreign policy, possible riots in Cleveland, and Obama's continuous golfing while in office....a thought came to mind of another party held long ago in ancient Babylon and recorded in the 5th chapter of the Book of Daniel. 
         Known as Belshazzar's Feast, the king, a successor to Nebuchadnezzar, holds a feast for those who served him in official capacities. He demanded that the vessels taken from the Temple in Jerusalem be brought from which to drink! A hand suddenly appeared and wrote these words on the wall.....Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. The terrified king called for his magicians to come and interpret the words which they could not do. The Queen advised that a Hebrew be called to interpret, Daniel, for he had done so for Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel reminded Belshazzar of how Nebuchadnezzar saw the works of the Most High God and had humbled his heart, and added..."but you...Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, although you knew all this." Daniel then interpreted the words. Belshazzar had been weighed in the balances and found wanting....his kingdom was finished.....to be divided and given to the Medes and Persians.       
        The handwriting is on the wall for America. We know very well of our Christian past and how at times our leaders had humbled themselves before the Most High God, but today we are as Belshazzar...unrepentant, arrogant, festive and proud.
         

Solzhenitsyn Was Right

           
           Communism is evident in many of America's internal struggles but it is evident only to those who know what Communism is. The following post is from the last year:

Solzhenitsyn Was Right
    
          As best as I can recall, Alexandr 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 the doctor 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."
      
     

The Spring Of Our Demise

           I've attempted this topic before, always inadequately I'm sure, but I'll try again because it is a topic for the moment, and for the day that we live in. Today was a beautiful day in Western Pennsylvania. The Dogwoods are in bloom as are the Daffodils. A t-shirt and shorts would have been fine. Our Pittsburgh Penguins are in the playoffs and the Pirates are just beginning their season that will last at least until late September by which time the Steelers will be well into their season. We will have by then experienced the summer Olympics (Lord willing on all of this of course), three more major golf tournaments (one, the U.S. Open just down the road at Oakmont), all four of the tennis majors and numerous other weekends of sports, entertainments, picnics and other events that hold our interest for a day or so. All of this as our country totters on the brink and our culture staggers with fists clenched as a belligerent drunk.
          How can this be? Are we just uniformed as to what is going on around the world, or do we acknowledge the dangerous chaos but ignore it? I suspect that both scenarios are true. If one only has their local newspaper and the nightly national news, they would have little reason for concern, for our mainstream media refuses to inform us of the full dangers to our republic or acknowledge that we are in danger as a nation because that would lead to two things. The people might very well return to their God.....and the Democrats and Republican elites would be booted out of Washington, forcing the media to abandon their role as public relations for the ruling class and actually try their hand at journalism
          The second scenario is also true....we in essence plug our ears and cover our eyes to the nation's foundation cracking and pillars falling all around us. We have bought into the misconception that although politicians in our capitol may be corrupt, they will at least keep the country afloat. Our educational system, from elementary to university, has not prepared generations beginning as early as the Baby Boomers to love our nation's heritage or to fiercely remain vigilant as to who our enemies are or what they are capable of doing. We are a somnambulist nation....soundly asleep but going through the motions of everyday life.
         Alfred Lord Tennyson's famous passage in Locksley Hall, and indeed the entire poem, somewhat speaks to us today....In the Spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love. We in America are in the Spring of our demise. We have carefully laid our plans of wonder before us and we rush to fulfill them but will soon find out that we have been rejected, for it is not love or honor or fairness or equality that will be wed to the future but greed, deception and tyranny. Will we be bitter at what is ahead or will we be humbled. Jesus spoke these words...."I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Will we look to this Light.....or curse the darkness?

So....You Want To Be A Lawyer

       OK, you have a high school junior and he (she) says he wants to be a lawyer? Now, young people often make statements like this. I remember a meeting with a guidance counselor in high school where I told him that I wanted to be a writer. His response was that writers were a dime a dozen. To be fair to him, he may have had my grades in front of him. Maybe you are thinking...'that was good advice Special Dog." Either way, I've never been one to discourage a young person's enthusiasm.
        So challenge this budding young lawyer in your house! There is a new book out that may help him find out if he really wants to study law. It's Our Republican Constitution, Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We The People by Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett. Get him the book, or if your junior had been so unfortunate as to have been taught to read by the 20th century Progressive's sight vocabulary and whole language methods (but that's a topic for another post), get him the book on CD to help him out. I wouldn't recommend an ordinary book and this book isn't ordinary.
        Sixteen years ago, as a 50 year old going through the curriculum of a Master's Degree program in Higher Education.....I got all A's save for one B+.....my old guidance counselor in high school might have been surprised.....anyway, I stood up for emphasis during a particular discussion, and as seriously as I could I warned this younger group of students that there was a division coming to America like nothing we could then imagine. I was right. We are two distinct peoples today.
        Professor Barnett describes two different constitutions in his book...one the Republican Constitution and the other the Democratic Constitution. Adherents of both point to that three word phrase....We The People....as key to their understanding of the Constitution, but the latter sees we the people as a collectivist group in which the majority makes the decisions including what the constitution means. The former, myself included and hopefully you, sees we the people as sovereign individuals.  The latter, as a collective, sees the Constitution as a living document where the group determines where the Constitution should be adhered to and where it should be ignored. The latter says that the law is written, past tense, and that the original intent of what was written is what should be followed. This is from the book... "...(in) a Democratic Constitution, first comes government and then come rights."......in a "Republican Constitution.....first comes rights and then comes government."
        You see the difference here surely! Maybe you can see a little more clearly why Americans seem to speak two different languages? This is but one morsel in the book, and as you can see it's easy to digest. Give this book to your budding lawyers. If it feeds this supposed passion for the law then encourage them every step of the way. If they think that it is boring....(it isn't)....ask them what their second choice for a profession would be.
        Interestingly the introduction to the book is by George Will (we're not too happy with him today) but the first blurb is by Mark Levin! The next blurb is by William Kristol (we're not too happy with him either) but the last is by Utah Senator Mike Lee! So at least we can have unity on exactly what our Constitution is!  Read it yourself for clarification.....the explanation of Chief Justice John Robert's sad vote okaying Obamacare is alone worth the price of the book!

Bittersweet

         I had retired for the evening at 9:00, heard a text come in from our son concerning Ted Cruz dropping out of the race, and thought that I would get up and write my initial impressions in this post.
         Despite his billions, Donald Trump thinks like an everyday American (traditional American) on many matters. He may be very smart in business but that intellectual acumen seems restricted to making money. He happened to be the only candidate who repeated the concerns of millions of Americans who had watched America collapse around the world and within what used to be our borders. Republicans then rallied to the clarion call he was shouting out at the top of his lungs.
         Donald Trump needs prayer for wisdom for he has practically none. Discerning our border situation and bad deals with other nations does not constitute wisdom, it is simple common sense. Mr. Trump needs some semblance of statesmanship of which he also has none.
         I am not thinking of politics, for neither Senator Ted Cruz or Donald Trump could undue the collapse that we have already sustained as a nation and society. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Ted Cruz would at least have given us a Christian president in what may be our most difficult hour, but completing the thought of what I had also written earlier, I'm glad that he will not be subject to the taunts and insults of this terribly flawed American public when these things occur, for he would have had no part in causing it.
        God's judgments upon America which have already begun and are rapidly increasing include an almost total lack of discernment by Americans on both the imminence of catastrophe and the reasons for it. If this were not he case we would not be wasting our time on the trivialities of life, a pastime which we have made an art form of.
        Barack Obama has less than a year left in office and it would be more than highly unlikely, almost inconceivable, that the many enemies of this nation would not act within that time period. Should that happen we will have Barack Obama and John Kerry and Joe Biden and Valerie Jarrett and Susan Rice and Samantha Power and Ashton Carter and the rest of the cast of Barack Obama, International Man of Mystery making decisions....or not.

        Should God give our nation more time even though it is very obvious that we are seeking answers from anywhere and anyone but Him, and should Donald Trump become our 45th president, he will have ample opportunity to fall to his knees in prayer for guidance as our 1st president had done so many times. Whether he would do so or not would remain to be seen. He has shown from his many statements on religion that he knows not the power nor the holiness of God. We need to resolve to offer fervent and continual prayer that this man comes to realize that the art of the deal is temporal and fleeting but "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (Proverbs 9:10)

"Trust God?....I Tried That In High School.....Didn't Work"

       The following post is less than a month old but I have been writing so much that it seems longer since I posted it. The killing of Christians in Pakistan is old news by now. This was exactly my point! I often hear these or similar words....."Don't be so concerned. Just trust God." Just trust God? I tried that in high school.....didn't work.....I found that you also had to pay attention and study. Friends, this is a hyperbolic comment. Of course I know that we must trust God! His faithfulness is the greatest surety that we have!!! I also trust in the verity of these words to the Apostle John in Revelation..."And to the angel of the church in Sardis write......I know all your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you."

No Threat....No Reasoning...No Evidence......3/28/16

         If you read the news with any kind of regularity you know about the bombing massacre in Pakistan of over 60 people, most women and children, most Christian. I am long past being dumbfounded that we remain steadfast in just living life as normal while nonchalantly repeating....'God is in control,' as if those words are a talisman to ward off frivolous fears and not a truth to calm justifiable fears? What makes us think that we are immune from the inattentiveness that the rest of the world has to God's judgments?
         This is not a time of normal violence. These are not normal days and years. The violence throughout this world and in our own cities today is as if all the powers of hell have gathered for one last battle yet we act as if we are in denial; "No"... we say....."we will not change or even alter our lifestyle....we will not even admit that we may have been asleep." Our shepherds meanwhile are supremely confident that they are taking care of the sheep. They believe that they couldn't possibly have been deceived.
         Terrorism has already come to America but each time it does we are concerned for a week or so and then it's back to normal. No threat will awaken us, no reasoning will disturb us, no evidence will convince us that America could actually fall, but our bravado does not impress God nor intimidate our enemies.
         God provides pleasant arbors on our pilgrimage "for the refreshing of weary travellers" and America has often been just such an arbor, but we have fallen asleep in one. If only John Bunyan's scriptural words from Pilgrim's Progress would ring out effectively to us as they had for many centuries to others....."Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise."