Given Over To The Plunderers

       
     "So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. (Judges 2:14 ESV)  After the death of Joshua the Israelites were ruled by judges. Time after time they openly rebelled against God and then found themselves being plundered by enemies. What followed that was the people crying out to the Lord for help and often God responding by providing them with a strong judge to lead them....for a time....until they rebelled again.

 

     When I read this verse today I thought about Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. We had been given over to the Clintons who plundered America and later sold to Barack Obama to complete the pillaging. The plunder came in the form of destroying our values, obscuring our heritage and devaluing our traditions. The ideology of the Progressive had no use for terms such as duty, honor and country, and later a dumbed-down culture responded favorably to the prepared and cultured Manchurian Candidate Barack Obama. The Marxists entered through our gates and we feasted with them oblivious to their intentions. It's not that the Clintons and Barack Obama are alone responsible for our collapse for they are only the worst. I bear the responsibility of ten men for our condition, for it is those such as myself, an idol factory...self-serving and asleep in my entertainment induced trance, who caused God to give us over to plunderers and it is also I who wants to be among those pleading for God's mercy, for his name's sake and his glory....alone!

      It is difficult, on the one hand, to witness what our military has done with such honor and great skill and then turn around and view the society it defends, a society that ridicules the need for vigilance as it admires the diversity of those who seek to bring us down.  General Douglas MacArthur, in his farewell speech to West Point in 1962, spoke these words to the cadets. "The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country." No, the long gray line has not failed America but we may fail it and those who came before us if we do not cry out to the Lord for help.

       The following post was written over four years ago, before watertight compartment after watertight compartment of our ship of state had been breached. The second post is more recent. In our foundering condition, the only thing that could get us to a safe harbor would be God's mercy.

April 15, 2009

       America The Beautiful expresses the wondrous bounty God had bestowed upon this country. Spacious skies, amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties surely describe this land. I appreciate the beauty of this land and also the liberty that it was built upon, but I love this country for other reasons. When I talk about America, I'm talking about it from its beginning when small ships carried whole communities across the ocean. I love it for its diversity. We have problems but we have overcome bigger ones. We have new challenges that almost seem insurmountable but its not the first time. We have been bonded together through a concept that demanded diversity of background but became unity as Americans. I love America because of the hope and stability it has given the world. I can write my opinion and speak it. I can pass out books without fear of intimidation. I can oppose iniquity and protest tendencies that are too close to tyranny for comfort. I love America most because God has used it to spread the gospel to every corner of the world. Everywhere I go, in the workplace, in the recreation and shopping arenas, vacation spots and at preserved historical landmarks there are Christians. I can empathize with them, enjoy their fellowship, share my needs and pray for theirs. My son will find them at college, my wife and I will work with them, and many of our representatives will govern with Christ as their head. God has raised this nation and used it mightily, this is why I love it so. I write this blog because these things are in danger. The bond is disappearing. European immigration is occurring again but this time it is an immigration of philosophy. Illegal immigration, sponsored by politicians for political reasons does a great disservice to the legal immigrants who continue to bolster and favor us as they become one with us. Our corporations are becoming more international than American. Our activist courts look to international law, for American law will not suffice the paradigm change they envision. Our media is failing its calling and most importantly, the faithfulness of our churches to the gospel is at low ebb. Previous to revisionist history, we were taught that Americans were a special people who could do almost anything. The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville thought this people special enough to travel here just to observe. He wrote, "Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power..." Ignoring these problems and the historical tendency of many nations to collapse from within, is not love.

January 14, 2012

     Dawn breaks and pull by pull the flag rises until its stars and stripes blend into the red sky. The 21st century America cold front collides with the warm heritage of American liberty. Dark clouds form above the eagle perched atop the pole and the flag snaps as the winds begin another day of adding to the tatters and waiting for the rain that month by month fades the blue and red hues that Americans have savored as the taste of freedom for so long. A icy chill settles in the bones of the one raising the flag for he knows that its stars and stripes will be indiscernible before long. He looks down to see if the cracks in the foundation supporting the pole have widened from the tremors that increasingly shake America...they have. He steps back, standing as erect as he can under the burden of seeing his nation collapse, and salutes; a tear forming as he knows that he may be the last to perform this duty. His mind wanders from, first... the drum and piper escorting the newly created flag, to the inspiration for Francis Scott Key's poem, to the charging Union soldier picking up the banner dropped by a fallen comrade in arms, to the lifting of the flagpole on Mt. Suribachi, to the camo flag on the fatigues of the grunt in Vietnam, to the brilliant contrast of red, white and blue with the gray mountain of fallen steel, brick and mortar of the World Trade Center, to the lone flag now raised in the Green Zone of Baghdad. In only a few hours cheers and shouts will be heard off in the distance, not for returning heroes, not as a President passes by, not as a war ends in victory but for the beginning of a football game. The Star Spangled Banner will play and be sung by the latest celebrity seeking a national spotlight but not a word of its lyrics will resonate with the power it had since Fort McHenry. We are not as the Roman Empire falling, we are as the Roman Empire beginning whose gods are numerous, whose Caesars consolidate powers given by a populace that only wants another day at the Colosseum. God's hand is being lifted and the exhilaration of choosing our own destiny emboldens us to stare into the eyes of Caesar and say not, "Give me liberty or give me death" but "Give me liberty to choose my own death." All the while the remaining Christians gather in their catacombs wondering if God's mercies on America are over; imploring of Him one more time for America to be a beacon to the nations, a people that not only openly proclaim Jesus Christ as the Savior of mankind but evidence the beneficence, mercy, majesty, power and glory of Him who created the universe and without whom not one molecule would continue to exist. It was a marvel and a wonder while it existed in its original form....these United States of America, but now they are afflicted for lack of a shepherd (Zech 10:2.) They are a people once different as night and day in their habits and their speech that bonded together as a new entity...Americans, freed from the tyranny of kings, freed from serfdom and most importantly freed from the lie that man is the master of his fate, the captain of his soul, but that freedom, once defended, is now merely petted in the lap of luxury, "Free" as the famous rocker penned..."Free Fallin'." The American Creed, never spoken but always evident, is now but a liberal screed against God, against tradition, and against history itself. The sun, obscured throughout the day by clouds, sets in the West. The rain that would normally give life to the fields, runs off of the frozen, barren and lifeless ground. The flag is lowered and gently folded into the shape of a tri-cornered hat, one of the last vestiges that remain of the fight for independence. No Taps is heard, only the music of the night coming from wherever the revellers gather after the game. The winds die down, no longer needed, for the flag has been taken down, while angels sent by God prepare to blow their trumpets.

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

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

This from 2011:

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

Boiled Spaghetti

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

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

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

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

Mutiny...From...The Bounty

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

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

From One American To Another

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

Coated Pill....Easier To Swallow

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

All Is Lost...Or Is It?

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

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

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

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

Have They Already Begun?

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

The following blog entry is from 2011:

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

Tim Tebow Goes To The Defense???

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

Handle With Care

  



         At my first holy communion in the second grade, the custom was to receive a Bible. It was my uncle who provided me with one and I remember being somewhat disappointed for it was pocket size and very unreadable. I cannot remember why it was that I wanted a regular Bible but it was a genuine desire that I can recall today. In grades three through six we would attend Mass every morning before school and I did have a missal that was a prized possession. I liked its smell, the thin delicate pages, the red and black printing and particularly the Latin that was recited from the altar and responded to by us in the pews. In high school we were given two paperback textbooks, one the Old Testament and the other the New Testament and we studied them for their literary content. I still had no concept of the Gospel and no personal Bible of my own. Scan ahead to about 23 years of age where I had come out of the army and started at Pitt. My habit was to stop in the National Record Mart on Forbes Avenue in Oakland and browse their books before catching the bus home, often coming out with a purchase and one day it was a modern language paperback paraphrase of the New Testament titled Reach out, The Living New Testament. I have this paperback in my hand now and can remember the feeling then of holding something special but not really knowing what that was. My first Bible was a Christmas present from my wife and I also have that Bible in front of me now.
          I related this story before of how in 1982 my wife and I were on a Caribbean cruise and while rounding the western end of Cuba we were in a storm that rocked the ship such that we driven back to our rooms. With nothing else to do, I opened the drawer in the table next to the bed and there was that ubiquitous motel room Gideons Bible. I opened it up and began reading where my finger found itself resting. Glasses were sliding across the table from the ship rocking in the waves and I read this from the 93rd Psalm:

The floods have lifted up, O Lord,
The floods have lifted up their voice;
The floods lift up their waves.
The Lord on high is mightier
Than the noise of many waters,
Than the mighty waves of the sea.

       As a new Christian, God was gracious to give me this glimpse of His Word through an unorthodox method, a method that I would not presume upon today for I now know that the Bible is God's Word to us...God breathed words. Without the movement of God's Spirit in us, they will seem to be just words, but under the power of His Spirit their meaning not only begins to become clear but they reverberate every atom of our being and every neuron involved in our thinking. Consider these words from Hebrews 4:12 For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
       If one wishes to remain in rebellion to God, one would do well to not pick up His Word for, should God will it, it would make very clear the folly and repercussions of holding on to our own autonomy and it will convict the conscience. On the other hand, if one desires to see just what is in this perceived time capsule it will be an illumination that is easy on the eyes, sweet to the pallet, exhilarating to the touch, soothing to the ears and of a pure aroma of cleanliness. It is powerful and will remain powerful even into old age. It is provision for all that we will need on this journey. It is nourishment. It is radiation to kill cancer cells and minerals to build bones. It is exercise, laughter and fulfillment. It is knowledge and understanding, precision and order, intellect and emotion, humility and motivation. It is oxygen to the Christian life but it is kryptonite to Nietzsche's uberman. It will not only cause you to love but define love itself. It will bring division in the world but discerning that division will show unity of redemption to all who are under the shed blood of Christ. So, the next time that you pick up a Bible, please know that if you are not careful, an ax may be laid at the root of your paradigm of life.

Is This Still America?

      Texas Congressman Kevin Brady made headlines today in asking the former IRS head this question: "Is this still America?" and then described a government that appeared "drunk on power," a government that would hurt its own people. Is this still America? Yes it is but only by the grace of God. We wouldn't have a Congressman asking that question if it wasn't but we may be nearing the end of that grace. The following blog entry were first published on March 24th of last year.


The Forty Year Petition

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

WWPD...(What Will Putin Do?)

      The phenomenon of Barack Hussein Obama reached its high-water mark shortly after his second inauguration but the revelations of the stand down and then cover-up mentalities during and after the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead may be the catalyst for the downfall of this administration. The aura of hope and change dissipated over the years and beneath it was the permanent odor of workers of the world, unite! What many of us have known all along, many others are just now finding out, that being that Barack Obama does not have America's best interests at heart.
       I am in no way saying that Obama's agenda has been foiled. If he knows that his free ride is over, and he probably does, he may choose to throw all pretense to the wind as to defending a constitutional republic and devise schemes more treacherous than we have imagined up till now. My concern is also in what Putin and Ahmadinejad, to name only two of our enemies, might do. Communism and Radical Islamic Fundamentalism both have had a friend, or at the very least...a dupe, in the White House, and they now know that they may lose that advantage. It would be very natural for Conservatives to openly rejoice over the misfortune of our Manchurian President but our only rejoicing should be Biblical rejoicing as in Philippians 4:4-7 (ESV):

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.
The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Cinco De Mayo

The following was first published on May 5th of 2010:


In 1862, a large French military force was defeated in the town of Puebla by a smaller Mexican army. It was the beginning of the French defeat in which, although the United States was involved in its own Civil War, it did apply what pressure it could in support of Mexico. Today, the 5th of May is a day of celebration, to one degree or another, across America, moreso even than in Mexico. The American of Spanish heritage is an integral part of American society. They are not cousins, they are us. They are part of the fabric of this nation, productive, a blessing in their joining with us in citizenship and a key to our future. The heritage they bring is as wonderful as any other nation's contributions to our country. Immigration of Latinos needs be expedited for our benefit as well as theirs. Illegal immigration, if not halted, would play no small part in the collapse of our nation. We cannot afford incorporating a mass exodus. The entitlements would cripple us, the precedent of an amnesty would do a great disservice to those who have come to join us legally, it would be a personal and economic assault on Americans in most affected states, it would leave our Constitution in tatters. the only benefit, and that temporarily, would be for those politicians in office who live to pad their positions of prestige, a prestige that is now as admirable as a governor in Vichy France. Amnesty would not be an addition of people who respect, admire, even love America and its heritage, it would be an invasion of people who wants the benefits regardless of who it harms. This should be a strong litmus test for any Republican running for office. We have a lot of official holidays in this nation, but if we were to have another, I would opt for a celebration of all those who, patiently but determinately, legally, and not only for their benefit but in hopes of strengthening us, come and join us. Mark Levin's book Liberty And Tyranny is a short read but powerful and profound. Please make the effort to read this, or listen to it on CDs. In his chapter on immigration he quotes from George Washington's Farewell Address in this: Citizens, either by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has the right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. This does not describe an amnesty, but does point favorably to those who have respected our laws and come to be part of us and help defend those laws.

Last Train To Smyrna

     I am inclined to believe that should God will it to have mercy upon America that it will begin on a Sunday....on The Lord's Day, and it will begin in his pulpits through his shepherds. My hope is that a pall enters the sanctuaries, a soberness at what our nation has become, at who we have become as a people, at who our leaders are; but we have become acclimated, capable only of voicing displeasure, feigning outrage, unsure of what to do. Our discernment skills are are at low ebb and only God's Word, either read or primarily preached, can awaken us. So once again I'll listen intently in the coming week for comments from brothers and sisters in Christ that something strange happened in their worship services.... not a frivolous invented miracle that only titillates but a power that causes us to cry out as Peter did in "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.". I'll look in the mirror more intently to see if I have changed. And my prayer, as always, will be Lord give us one more move of your Spirit, one more generation where the Gospel dispels the zeitgeist that bewitches us and scatters your enemies. Give us leaders Lord who know that only you can protect us and that only you can fulfill us. We have let down our guard Lord, our children's futures have been mortgaged, our wisdom has dried up but you are able to restore us and to use us.....do this O Lord, if it be thy will and only if it be to thy glory! 

February 12, 2013

     The third verse in the Book of Revelation reads "Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of this prophesy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near." (ESV) A fair amount of my reading in the Bible is in this book along with the Old Testament prophets. These books have been for every believer in every age since they were written but one would be especially unwise to ignore them today. The second and third chapters of Revelation are seven letters written to seven churches. They were real churches that existed. Some Christians believe that these churches describe seven church ages. I have never been convinced of that theory. Other Christians believe that those seven churches exist today according to the descriptions given. I do ascribe to this theory. There is an Ephesus church today, and a Smyrna church, and a Pergamum church, and a Thyatira church, and a Sardis church, and a Philadelphia church and a Laodicea church. I'm not talking about denominations or even continents where these churches might be located, rather a mindset for each church that could be located anywhere. I really don't go any further with this other than to say that it would behoove all Christians to meditate on the warnings given to see where our churches and we as individuals might fit in. It seems to me that this is the purpose of this part of Scripture. I can see myself described in all of these churches excluding only Smyrna and Philadelphia and stand in dire need to hear these warnings. Yesterday I just happened across a church website of a fairly large church in a very large denomination. There must have been thirty or forty pages listing every ministry imaginable and their calender was filled with activities that involved the community. Although I didn't listen to any of the sermons, the topics were generic and non-offensive. Most troubling of all was the mission statement and beliefs links which were far less words in total than I have written so far in this particular blog entry. This type of church is in every city of America, maybe in every community of America and we are what we are today in no small part because of it. No...Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of this prophesy..!. The warnings given in these words of Revelation are never far from my mind and from my own self-examination. Although all seven of these churches are probably within America somewhere, we seem to be mostly Laodicean. This last statement would probably upset many pew sitters, ministry leaders and pastors but such is to be expected. I, for one, take these warnings very seriously and encourage any readers to this blog to do the same thing....for the time is near!

It Doesn't Look Like America Anymore

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


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

The New York School Prayer

It was a little over fifty years ago that Regents of the educational system of New York put in place this short prayer to be read in classrooms: Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our teachers and our country. Some objected to this and the ensuing case went to the Supreme Court in Engel vs. Vitale where a six to one decision was rendered in favor of the plaintiff. Potter Stewart was the only Justice in dissent. This was a landmark decision that led to other court decisions that evicted Almighty God from the classroom. We have utterly collapsed as a nation since then as we have had assassinations, a war that was lost from within as was a war on drugs, a recently politicized, politically correct national defense, economic suicide through the bailout and stimulus, rampant narcissism culminating in the monstrosity of a Facebook culture, tens of millions of legal abortions and whole professions that have utterly failed their callings; plus we have a Manchurian President put in office by others who hate America, its traditions, its belief in God and its individualism and finally marriage between a man and a woman may be co-opted by those raised in an educational system that has officially ignored if not ridiculed... God. Would it be a good idea for Christians to resurrect that prayer, to start our day with it, to close our eyes at night with it on our lips, to recite it as we read of the latest horror story in the news and to meditate upon it each and every time that we see our flag flying in front of those schools, those court houses and post offices. I think that it would, only I would add we beg thy forgiveness and mercy to blessings.

Currency Trading And The Bible

The following blog was written on November 28th of last year. Angus T. Jones of the television show Two And A Half Men was in the news. He had become "religious" and regretted his role on the bawdy sitcom.  I remember when that show first came on the air. It struck me that a ten year old was part of the cast. It seemed clear, to me anyway, that leading a child into rebellion against God or using a child to profit is such a way was about as serious as it gets in offending God. It did not surprise me therefore when Charlie Sheen self-destructed. I met and had a conversation today with a gentleman who is a currency trader and I was fascinated in learning how risky a profession it is and how quickly the values of the currencies can change. That conversation came to mind as I was reading over this blog that I'm am about to republish. God's Word, the Bible, is the most valuable resource on earth and can never lose its value. If you are a new Christian reading this blog or an inquirer, you will need help, just as I would in the world of currency trading. Please consider the three ministries that I had mentioned at the end of the following blog.

November 28, 2012

     It was four years ago yesterday that I started this blog...or journal....or whatever it is. If this were only about politics it would be a grand waste of time. The politics and the humor are only here in the hope that the reader stays around long enough to read on the Gospel or on Christianity. It has been my hope that someone, somewhere, has picked up a Bible because of this blog for there is no object on this earth as valuable, no jewel as beautiful, no gold as pure, no metal as strong and no wisdom as sure. There's a lottery being held tonight with a jackpot of over 500 million dollars but something infinitely more precious is within the reach of most everyone reading this. This is how God speaks to us, through the Written Word along with the Preached Word. He has chosen this way and it is good. Men have dedicated their lives in trying to destroy the Bible and nations have existed solely to burn it but in this country it is everywhere. One cannot hardly travel without having it a few feet away in a desk drawer and nearly every bookstore sells it. Men have tried to belittle it and when that didn't work they tried to change it and now they simply try to apply it to a postmodern grid in an attempt to nullify its power. All these efforts have failed and will continue to fail. It is utterly and absolutely impossible to get enough of the Word of God. One could be one hundred years old and read it as freshly as the first time it was picked up. It has more power than the greatest solar flare and more drawing power than the darkest black hole and, once again, there is probably one within twenty feet of every reader to this blog. Its contents do have to be mined but not with pick and shovel. Veils simply have to be taken off of the eyes and this begins when a soul is regenerated... ripped out of the hands of death....born again....born anew....born from above. Without the veils removed it it simply a literary masterpiece. One can understand many many things in it without the help of a teacher but without being taught one remains an infant, therefore teachers have to be sought out. Young Angus T. Jones of the television show Two And A Half Men found teachers but they were not sound. My hope, and prayer, is that he hasn't burned any bridges for he was on the right railroad he just took the wrong track. Kirk Cameron is an example of a celebrity who found a better teacher and stayed on track. I have mentioned only three ministries in this blog but have full confidence in each one of them. If you go to their websites and never return here I would be very happy! They are www.ligonier.org www.gty.org and www.whitehorseinn.org. Finding a sound church is difficult. Once again...be patient and don't burn bridges. And thank-you for reading this blog!

Pretext

     There were instances in the writings of the Old Testament prophets where God pronounced judgment on the people and the reason was because they had become, among other things, a violent people....yet there were no guns at the time. The precursor to the violence was the denying of the God who had rescued them from Egypt and then guided them and delivered to them a land of milk an honey. The people had tired of God and therefore He had left them to themselves, and they became a violent people. So what is the analogy to today.....just about everything except the guns. We too are a violent culture that has rejected the God who had rescued us from tyranny and delivered to us a land of  milk and honey and liberty and freedom. If a pre-born baby is fortunate enough to escape abortion, and fortunate enough to be born into a loving Christian family with both mother and father, they will still have to navigate a culture that evicted its creator, its protector and sustainer. We are a violent culture because we have no place for God. Many citizens turn to guns to protect themselves  in this violent culture and are now faced with the possibility of being denied guns by those whose rejection of God invited the violence to begin with. We had a nation of laws that kept order but those same people who want no part of God, want no part of the constitutional republic that gave them their liberties and freedoms. So we don't want God or the order and precision that He enabled us to write into our Constitution. These people just want to be able to do their thing....free of God and His Word...and if they run out of money they will want your money, and they want your guns so that you don't get any ideas of protecting your money or your liberties. And they use the violence that has overtaken our nation as a pretext to limit our guns and our liberties. They claim to be doing this for the children but had sat back and said nothing as the children were offered up on the altars of feminism, greed, narcissism and self-autonomy. There is little wisdom anywhere in America and little discernment. Evil is called good and good is called evil. We are indeed defenseless but there is One who is able to thwart the rebel and open the eyes of the prodigal. Should God will it we as a people will turn to Him. Should He not will to do so we will simply become one more nation on the ash heap of history.

Tolle Lege...Then Plant a Tree

 

The following blog entry was written over two years ago. We in America were warned to be vigilant but not enough of us responded. We were told to prepare but instead we began to disarm, and now when we need the Bible more than we ever have we have chosen to resurrect the pejorative Bible Thumper. We might want to ponder anew the words of Jesus in the 24th chapter of Matthew concerning his Second Coming....."For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark."

 

Egypt, February 13, 2011  

 

MSNBC, newspapers and other news sources are headlining the Egyptian shouts of We are free! We know that the crowds in the square believe this, but how does the rest of the population feel? Many are more worried today than they have been in decades. Just how free are the people? At one moment they were fairly free from outside influences, sources that would turn them into an Islamic state and then turn their aim towards Israel. That freedom is considerably lessened. There was some freedom for other faiths to worship but that may erode quickly. They were free to struggle along with the rest of the world during this economic upheaval but they may eventually wish they could turn back the hands of the clock and their young men may wind up dying on battlefields. Freedom comes at a price and the crowds demanded freedom right then without even looking at the price tag. As for our involvement, we abandoned yet another ally and endangered a second and what did we get for it... favorable headlines, the holy grail of the political animal. The Muslim Brotherhood will play Egypt like they played our White House and are now in a better position to win, for they are patient and brutal. The Russian Revolution of February, 1917 had similarities to today's Egypt. Wages were down and food prices were rising. Mass demonstrations erupted. The Tsar, Nicholas II, abdicated in March. The provisional government was moderate in many ways but Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia in April and the minority Bolsheviks rallied. The Bolshevik Revolution would follow. The headlines of the New York Times on November 9, 1917 were Revolutionists seize Petrograd; Kerensky flees. A pledge was given by the Bolsheviks to seek an immediate democratic peace with Germany in the then current world war. The Bolsheviks were unpopular and as the New York Times reported from those fleeing Russia, they were "not 1%, of the total population in Moscow, and all Russia outside of Petrograd, would stand together (against the Bolsheviks.)" Another quote from the same paper described the fleeing provisional leader this way "the excellence of Kerensky's motives and ideals is recognized, but he is too gentle a man...it has been shown that the policy of mildness with the Bolsheviks does not pay." In my blog of March 3, 2009 I related how I happened to be in Paraguay one week after a revolution occurred there and that the following year (1989) was one of one revolution and reform movement after another, some for good and some not. I wrote that "people's emotions spread like the wave at a sports stadium." The blog was a critique of the Obama's administration and its refusal to consider consequences or look beyond political implications. There is euphoria in our media today... and Lady Gaga showed up at the Grammy's in an egg, presumably to hatch before the show.....life is good. Biblical end-times prophesy took off like a rocket in the early 70s with Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth and continued into this century with Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series. Events in Israel were so astounding, particularly the capture of Jerusalem in 1967, that this was bound to happen, and the church became inundated with date-setters and detailed military logistics of what was just ahead. Much of the church reacted to this by treating biblical prophesy as leprous but I suspect that today, many see what is happening around the world, in the push for a one-world government needing only a crisis for fulfillment, the proliferation of nuclear weapons to volatile states run by madmen, in the new paradigm of truths being relative and in ominous power of the Internet on the passions of man, not to mention what science reveals to us about our changing earth and of cosmic influences, and find themselves meditating deeply, more and more, upon biblical prophesy and at least wonder ...what if. Maybe this is the way that it should be. That Jesus would be at the very doorstep of His return, and believers would be oblivious to what was ahead is untenable from what the Bible says. That we would have an advance itinerary and a time frame is also untenable. An extreme soberness is what is called for today, in fact at all times, for we know not what a day will bring. Martin Luther said that he would plant a tree if he knew for certain that Jesus was returning the next day. My tree is a hope that God would commission His Holy Spirit to move across the American landscape one more time, for no ideology, no scientific evidence to refute His existence, no madman or postmodern paradigm of intellectual chaos can, should God will to constrain it, deny a people returning to Him. Last days prophesy is not leprous, in fact it is a blessing as Revelation 1:3 states "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophesy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near." but it is toxic if abused. If not abused it is a shining ray of glory into God's majesty, a source of strength, and it overflows with hope, for God truly is in control! There is not a day that passes where newspapers do not relate the pain and suffering undergone by people all over this world, and these stories pain those readers who also know that all suffering will end only after Christ returns in judgement to a violent world. His Second Coming should be our hope along with confidence that it will be, sooner or later, in His perfect timing. True freedom comes when one has been ripped, not out of the clutches of a dictator, but of Satan's, and but for the embattled Christian in Egypt who may be looking for Christ's coming more than we do, there may be more freedom as the world sees it, but far less security.

A Rapidly Expanding Unravelling

I keep bringing this blog back and each time I do America has unravelled more. We are seeing epochal historic events almost every day and may indeed be witnessing, first hand, the fall of the United States of America.

March of 2012

Have you noticed the unravelling? This is no joke and I'm not trying to be cute. Have you noticed the rapidly expanding unravelling of our country, our government and our society over even the last few months? I'm not talking about the unravelling circa 2011 rather acute dystopia 2012. Our spiraling downward cannot go on much longer without impact. How we will handle that impact is the more pertinent question for today. The following blog is from this past January.

America Unravelling, December of 2011

Charles Spurgeon wrote these words over a century ago, The yoke of affliction, disappointment, and excessive labor is by no means to be sought; but when the Lord lays it upon us in our youth it frequently develops a character which glorifies God and blesses the church. Come, my soul, bow thy neck; take up thy cross. It was good for thee when young, it will not harm thee now. America is heading at breakneck speed in acquiring such a yoke. We are but a shell of what we were. Where the aroma of our freedom and liberty once wafted throughout the world it is now the stench of our culture that permeates much of the globe. There should be no surprise here for when a civilization becomes so prosperous that its economy is totally dependent on what its malls can sell, its influence for good becomes depleted in proportion to the disgust that is generated. We have become a seller to the world of that which makes it vomit. Given time, all these nations would have generated their own pollution, we just accelerated the situation. It's the nature of man without God. They don't hate us because we are good, they hate us, many of them, because we once gave the appearance of it and have since, in their eyes, let them down. Where did it begin? Hugh Hefner is as good a guess as any but what difference does it make? Our television screens rage against God! Our streets are violent and we as a people have become desensitized to it. Our pulpits preach peace when there is no peace; thinking they are building faith in God, they are concealing His righteous anger. Gone almost, is the statesman, replaced by the pure politician. Government runs our lives, obsessed and drunken with power. I see no way that God will have mercy upon us as we exist today without a radical reformation. It would be ludicrous as evidenced from many examples in Scripture, that God would give us, as a nation, more time to sell our wares while profaning His name, refusing to let our children come to Him (those that we do not abort,) destroying His creation of the family and demanding that we are masters of our own fate. It doesn't matter what I, or anyone so inclined as I, might say. For they are just words. God has blinded us to a world hastening to destruction. We read the news as much as to say "Things are dangerous....over there!" We have become insulated by our entertainments. Our motto has become Red Solo Cup...Let's Have A Party. We cannot see a day past the Super Bowl and when that is over everything will be put on hold until the end of March Madness, and so on. We are to be pitied, but pitied only by those who do not know the majesty of God and His omnipotent power, for His mercy is as abundant as His judgments are strict, but only in response to repentance! There may very well be a yoke of affliction coming upon us for we have made it abundantly clear that only such a yoke can awaken us and even then, will our response be one of rending our garments and seeking God's mercy, to grow once again as a nation and church, or will we then blame God and those who did warn us? Do we really want to hear peace and safety when we are at the edge of the abyss? The same Scripture that recorded God's judgments upon nations recorded his mercies. It would behoove all of us in America to look into that Word to be informed of our creator, our benefactor, our sustainer up until now, our shepherd and the ruler of all the nations.

Tough Love

One of our United States Senators, who previously had been a defender of marriage being between one man and one woman, had recently and publicly changed his mind. The reason given was that his son informed him that he was gay. Most families in America have at least one family member in amongst aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins who proclaims themselves to be gay. The response of many in these families is what they consider 'compassion' emanating from 'love' that leads to a change of opinion on the issue of gay marriage. Going back to that United States Senator, what should have happened was this....the Senator should have been so angry at a culture whose tentacles reached within his own immediate family to take a son away from God that he doubled his efforts in defense of marriage being between one man and one woman and became even more vigilant in anything else that came between God and the people that He had blessed since their beginnings for His own reasons and to His own glory. This was not love that the Senator displayed towards his son but disdain for God. It wasn't compassion being expressed, it was arrogance. God is longsufferring towards each and every one of us but it is not to be presumed upon and He will not be mocked. The Supreme Court can issue a decision either way or in between on the gay marriage issues. God is not waiting with baited breath for our answer rather it should be us waiting to see His answers to our hesitation.

The Christian And Politics

     There are certain issues that are non-negotiable to many conservatives. Most pertain to religion and Biblical truth but some revolve around our Constitution.  Is it unreasonable to hold to non-negotiable opinions.... opinions that do not change with the fickle fleeting passions and desires of modern man? It's our belief that the God who brought this universe into being out of nothing also brought this nation into being out of an assortment of diverse and imperfect men, and that should we deny this and reject God, that this nation would then proceed on its own....and proceed into oblivion. Our beliefs will not be changed by opinion polls and we place no hope in military might without God's favor, for as the mouse can frighten the elephant so we could be routed by the seemingly most insignificant of enemies if we deny Him who has sustained us up till now. We also know that no enemy is too great, no mountain too high and no valley too deep should God will us to succeed. We would choose to lose in the political arena before we would we deny Him.....and there's the rub...we are willing to lose in this life while others are only willing to lose in the next. The following blog was written a few weeks after the 2008 general election.
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November 30, 2008

I agonized for a long time over how the Christian is to deal with politics. I read books on the subject and certainly went to Scripture. I've been on both sides of the issue. Edmund Burke wrote "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Burke was not a Christian, and I am not "good," but the concept and the logic still hold weight. Our nation is crumbling fast and most of us are the proverbial frog in the kettle. The local news from the metropolitan city that I live near started their telecast last night with three different killings among young black people. Yesterday's paper had a picture of two beautiful young children joined at the head while the surgeons were dismayed that nothing could be done for them. Every day the sufferings of people are there to remind us of the fallen condition of this world. We say that we yearn for Jesus to come back but do we? Martin Luther once said when asked what he would do if he knew that the Lord was coming back the next day, "I would plant a tree." In the final analysis, we cannot quit on this nation. If people's sufferings are to be alleviated, if we are to return to at least being a "God-fearing" nation we have to seek God's mercy and try our best to be good and responsible citizens. This blog title has the word "conservative" in it to get the attention of who it is meant for but conservatism itself will save no one! Our hope is not in princes or their military power. Christians, who have been relegated to being part of the "religious right," must remind themselves of this every day. This does not mean that we do not support a political party or ardently work for its success but it does mean that we never alter our ethical beliefs or compromises that which is our only hope, the gospel of grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We lost our moorings in this long before we lost this last election. Our churches are social gatherings with political causes meant to assuage our guilt of not knowing who we really are in Christ. Our pulpits mention Jesus every week but rarely preach His cross for they have lost faith in the power of preaching Christ and prefer to give biblical advice on how to live. I stumble into church every week to hear the atoning power of the blood of Christ and of what He has done for me and how He will keep this poor wretched sinner despite my gravitation to dally with the world. More than anything, we need to pray that ministers enter their pulpits, look over the congregation and set forth to lay out the glories and majesties of Jesus Christ present in every book of the Bible. Only having done that can they begin to exegete the passages on how we are to live.

They Missed Home Base

They Missed Home Base

Last June, when the following blog was written, Barack Obama's hitting streak turned into a major slump. The Republican primaries provided what our news media never does, that being a critique of this administration. The Republican base was motivated but the Republican elites played us like a fiddle and then beat us like a drum. Fast forward to November 7th and instead of searching for errors they may have made, they blamed home base they missed on their home run trot, and they continue to do so today.

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June 12, 2012

It wasn't supposed to go like this. Not only was the deck stacked but there were aces up sleeves and no rules to follow. How could it miss, for Barack Obama would appoint cabinet members and they in turn would rule, often beyond the limits of their authority, with strict adherence to Obama's wishes... and the Czars...twenty to thirty new cabinet level operatives, many of whom had no accountability to the United States Congress... and two Supreme Court seats filled through a political culture that was partying in the afterglow of a coronation? Surely the media would stay on board and the indoctrination centers (a.k.a. universities) would permit more than enough frolicking to discourage any real examination leading to legitimate protest. This President gig was to be easy! Golf a little, party a little, sign an executive order, golf some more. No, it wasn't supposed to collapse as a house of cards...but it is! It's now become apparent to many that one has to actually know something about something in order to be President of the United States. Even the Obama Girl recognizes that the emperor has no clothes. Our allies now know what they are dealing with but more importantly our enemies are fully aware that one must strike while the iron is hot. Folks, it is every bit as bad as this....and more! But Lo! What light through yonder window breaks? It's an old fashioned revival as Brother Rove's Travelling Salvation Show is offering Mitt Romney's Magical Elixir brought in by Conestoga wagon. It removes taxes, grows hair (look at Mitt's for proof,) cures the gout, builds muscles and balances bodily humors (Tea Party Bile, Social Conservative Phlegm and Choleric Libertarian Paranoia.) He guarantees that this cure-all tonic, if imbibed today, will last at least until November 6th! That's all that's needed folks for then it is back to business as usual! Take this tonic and you'll get a job! Mix it in with a liter of soda pop and you will feel free as a bird. Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies on this coming hot August night in Tampa.
God seems to have left us to our own devices for that is what we wanted...no... demanded. I used to cringe when our Pittsburgh Penguin play-by-play announcer shouted "Hallelujah Hollywood" after a goal and I do the same with Neil Diamond's lyrics in Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show for that hallowed word means praise Yahweh. Therein is our only hope and we trifle with it, ignore it, and seek our own salvation on our own terms. Guest preachers fill the Sunday morning pulpits of Meet The Press and Face The Nation. Wisdom has abandoned us, replaced by Rasmussen polls. How bleak is our future! How rudderless we have become even as a tempest of Biblical proportions builds in the East.

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The Filibuster

The following blog was written a few days after this past election. The recent filibuster in the United States Senate demonstrated the battle that is ahead in the Republican Party. Senator Rand Paul's filibuster provided the first bit of good news on the political front since three Senate Conservatives Fund supported candidates were elected to the 'upper house' this past November. Two years before that the SCF helped elect, among others, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Mike Lee who were part of the filibuster which challenged Barack Obama and actually accomplished something. Our problems cannot be solved through politics but the leaders that we choose are evidence of where we are in the area that can help us, that being a nation that turns its eyes towards God seeking mercy through repentance. The Old Guard has guarded precious little yet will fight to remain in power. Jim DeMint has left the Senate Conservatives Fund for the Heritage Foundation and these two organizations deserve our full support and prayers. Please visit them at www.senateconservativesfund.org and www.heritage.org.

November 18, 2012

A letter writer inquired of an expert on how to reduce the productivity of a fruit tree that was bearing bad fruit and causing a stench in his yard. This is from the Chicago-Tribune where Chicago is well known for producing bad fruit. The answer given was that it is very difficult to completely stop a fruit tree from bearing fruit and recommended that the writer tear down the tree and replace it with an ornamental tree that he can take pleasure in by gazing at it. Jesus used the analogy of false prophets and bad fruit trees in the seventh chapter of Matthew: "Ye shall know them by their fruits.....even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit....wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." Our Congress is full of corrupt trees that bear bad fruit. In taking the experts advice we should remove the bad trees and replace them. The Republican Establishment would have us plant ornamental trees that we can gaze at for our satisfaction but they produce no fruit at all. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is an expert on "good trees" in Congress. This past election saw three new senators....good trees....added to the Senate to go along with the five senators added in 2010, this primarily through the work of the Senate Conservatives Fund. Whether it is in the Senate or the House of Representatives we need to plant good trees and hope that we have time to see them produce good fruit. Here is an anecdote about Martin Luther that I have given before: someone once asked him what he would do if he knew for certain that Jesus would return the next day. His answer was that he would plant a tree! His intention was to show that we cannot be idle, that instead Jesus would find us working to the glory of God upon his return. Politically we are trying to get good fruit from bad trees and it is not going to happen. It takes time for a new orchard to mature so let's keep this in the proper perspective, plant the trees, or in other words elect good senators and representatives to our Congress, but not sit back and expect them to provide all the sustenance for our Republic. We have work to do in our culture, in our families, in the church and in our own lives. Support Senator DeMint at www.conservativesfund.org for he, and others, are planting an orchard that will bear good fruit should God have mercy upon us to see it mature but let's pay even more attention to our Creator who provides the soil, the sun and the water for all trees to grow.