There will be a total lunar eclipse tonight. Lunar eclipses are not rare but when four consecutive total eclipses occur they are called a tetrad. Tetrads are relatively rare. The earth has gone hundreds of years without experiencing one yet five occurred in the 20th century. Tonight's will be the first total eclipse of a tetrad. The others will occur this October, next April and next October. What makes it even more interesting is that all four occur on Jewish feast days. North America gets the front row seat in tonight's Blood Moon as NASA has named them. It will not be visible in India or that whole part of the globe.
There is a lot of speculation from Biblical prophesy teachers on the meaning of this tetrad. My concern with this speculation is that blood moons should not be necessary to warn us of our condition and that lunar eclipses are not the only events that can turn the 'moon to blood.' (Rev. 6:12) Billy Graham is credited with the quote but it was his wife Ruth who uttered it. The quote was "If God doesn't punish America, he'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah." I believe that she must have said this in the mid-1980s. I don't know about the 'apologizing' part of her statement but her intent was correct. America's fall is near complete. Our rebellion against God is so extensive that we can no longer visualize what it was like to be a God-fearing nation.
We have sacrificed tens of million of babies through legalized abortion. Those who are born into this world in this nation are deliberately herded away from God unless the parents forcefully intervene in the rustling of their children. This alone should be a call for America's demise. Not satisfied with the results of this attack, these powers that be have moved on to attacking marriage...the uniting of one man and one woman. If this tactic is successful all children will be forced to accept and live with, in just about every aspect of their lives, this frontal assault on God himself.
God has consequently removed His hand of protection from us. He has given us leaders who are either undiscerning, totally incompetent or corrupt on one end or viscerally hateful of America's heritage on the other. Our fascination with....ourselves....has become a tragedy abetted by technology. Our idol craving culture has long since presumed too much of God's longsuffering towards us. We are drunken with our entertainments, staggering from one venue to the next. We no longer can analyze and live on statistics fed to us by universities that have become nothing but 'puppy mills' to a culture that needs only someone to buy its clothes and trinkets.
Yes, there is a remnant of God-fearing Americans but even much of that remnant has lost discernment in this anti-intellectual abyss we have fallen into. Jesus was asked "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming and the end of the age?" His response can be found in the 24th Chapter of Matthew and includes this "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark....."
The ark was safety to Noah. He was in the world but he was safe. Our safety is in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, of who he is and what he has accomplished for us, and of whose we are....."but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end." (Hebrews 3:6 NKJV) This verse is followed by "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion...."
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Jay Carney.....Poster Boy For What?
I thought that it had to be a hoax. So I researched it and went to the Washingtonian Magazine to see the article myself. Barack Obama's Press Secretary Jay Carney and his family were featured in an article primarily about Carney's wife, Claire Shipman, and how one balances "managing life at home and life at work." Claire Shipman is an ABC News contributor and the family lives in Washington D.C..
The article was accompanied by pictures of the family in their home, one of which was in their kitchen area and on the wall behind the frolicking Clair and her two children were two posters. Breitbart.com did the research on the posters. One was a Soviet soldier asking "Have you enlisted" and the other was of a Russian woman factory worker and the caption reads "Women! Learn production, replace workers who went to the front. The stronger the hinterland-the stronger the front'." These posters are easily recognizable at first glance as Soviet propaganda.
Communism developed a strong albeit mostly concealed foothold in America in the 1920s and 1930s and also within the inner circles of American government in the FDR administration. Why? How? Communism is built upon a lie. It portrays itself as compassionate towards the people which could not be further from the truth. Liberals and Progressives were easily fooled and many of them regretted that later. As for the 'how' please read an older post, a book review of Paul Kengor's Dupes, that follows this post.
Communism is directly responsible for the deaths of well over one hundred million people around the world and untold suffering as well as documented horrors. Once in power it dominates everything and dictates to everyone. It puts its people in the places of power and they do the dirty work. There is no place for truth or for law and bad times are proclaimed as good times. Sound familiar?
More and more voices have have used the word 'communism' in describing Barack Obama. It never was in doubt that he was a bona fide socialist but as his administration churns on he looks more and more like a communist. He was caught on an open mic in 2012 telling then Russian President Medvedev, on the topic of European missile defenses and other issues, that he needed some space and would be more flexible after being elected to a second term. Medvedev responded by telling Obama that he would inform incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin. The open mic made news but it should have shook us awake in America. We are waking up now in the middle of a nightmare and it may be too late!
Carney worked as a Moscow correspondent for Time for three years and has studied Russian culture and history. Well I have an interest in Russian history also....that of a strong people with many great attributes.......a people dehumanized in the post-revolution days and in the gulags....a people kept in darkness by a state media. Does that last part sound familiar? So how can Jay Carney miss what was symbolized on those posters and how could he not know in that photo shoot that these posters would be spotted? These photos can be seen in a very easy Google search of "Jay Carney Posters."
Dupes
Communism is a dialectic in the Hegelian sense. It changes outwardly to survive inwardly. It is alive and thriving in our country, the very least representative being the Communist Party USA. It can call itself an American patriot or anything else. It feeds on the uniformed, the malcontent, the miscreant and the self-indulgent. Its only enemy is God.
I have to remind myself every once in a while that the average American today does not know a whole lot about communism. At times it's almost as if it is seen as nothing but a conspiracy theory, as if it never really existed and as if over a hundred million people were never murdered under it. Communism lies, it kills, it terrorizes, it threatens and carries out those threats. It's godless, it dupes and cons people...whole peoples and when it attains power through coercion and deception it lowers the boom...no more promises for there is no need to give them for it now has total l control and will henceforth dictate everything....to everybody!
Every facet of our society is unraveling before our very eyes. Emil Mazey, a twentieth century labor leader, is reported to have paraphrased the older proverb known as the duck test when he said the following..."I can't prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck,, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks- I'm certainly going to assume that he is a duck." Are you willing to read the evidence of how Communism has worked, is working, and even as of now...winning, in America? Read the book that is reviewed in the following blog first published on September 15th of 2011 and then try to defend this administration.
September 15, 2011........Communism.....Under New Management
The relationship between the American Progressive and Communism has always been a dysfunctional one, the Progressive longing for someone to look to as a hero and the Communist not only abusing that adulation but sneering at those so gullible as to think that there is anything compassionate or caring about them. The Communist knew the extraordinary weaknesses of the liberal American mind and had taken advantage of it from the beginning, for a century now! It has a new face today, hiding behind a semi-capitalist veil, for it retreated and reinvented its outward appearance.
This generation will never be able to say that they were not told, not warned, for the evidence is everywhere if only we would look. I've reported on more than a dozen outstanding books on the deteriorating condition of our nation and its causes in this blog of almost three years but none of secular content more needed than the one I put before you today. I do not believe that any liberal can read this book and not be concerned that they may have been duped. One might very well read a chapter and then throw the book away, or skim it and not accept its message but if one reads this book through they will view our political landscape differently. The title of the book is Dupes, How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives For A Century.
I'm very familiar with the author for I had read a few of his previous books and I admired him as a Professor of Political Science at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania, one of America's finest colleges. This is a monumentally important work written with clarity, and systematized in such a way to take the reader on a trip through American history and awaken the reader in the process. Professor Kengor filleted the meat of Communist propaganda so expertly as to expose the rotten flesh and release the stench that permeates liberal politics, higher education and the mainstream media. You have to read this book...if you care about America. A blurb from Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute says the same thing: "Face it. You are going to have to read this book." Why...so that you can show your knowledge of Communism in some future conversation? No, rather that you can read it and weep and hopefully sound your own alarm in that future conversation. In another blurb, Fred Barnes wrote that it left him "amazed and a bit frightened." The Weekly Standard's Barnes has been sounding an alarm for decades yet it still made him a bit frightened!
Reading the book was a culmination of research that I had already been doing, that the Communist has reappeared in America in a new guise, and yet I was dumbfounded by the volume of evidence and not a little disappointed in being reminded of my own history of being duped in the late 1970s.
Kengor is going to take you back to September of 1919 in Chicago where Communism first began its assault on the American mind. You will see the essence of class hatred in it from its beginnings and recognize the tactic from the Left today. You will see one celebrity or person of note after another taken in by the lies, many waking up later angry and indignant. Even the most ardent admirer of Franklin Roosevelt will have to reassess that admiration as Roosevelt was taken in by Uncle Joe Stalin thanks to the leftists all around him. Read and weep at how much of our media was not only taken in but even today ridicules those who are not duped. Will they have the character to admit they were wrong, if and when they also awaken, as many of their predecessors did? You will see heroes and you will see buffoons who were, and are, very useful idiots for Communism, and too many who were out-and-out traitors. You will see how Hollywood was used and many of the biggest names duped. Compare this to the stars of today while you read. And you will see Ronald Reagan as a liberal Democrat and head of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947, admittedly himself duped for a time, and recognize his courage and greatness on display even then! No one made this man and he was no late bloomer.
Communism has a new face but the essence remains the same, for God is still banished and revolutions are still started, as despicably as ever, through hatred and propaganda. Lying is as common as breathing. One class is pitted against another. Educators are still sought for their influence on the youth. Unions are still infiltrated as are the arts. College students are intellectually brutalized and the news media is still wooed with dreams that they might actually be more important than the news they report. The SDS mentality (Students for a Democratic Society) that the Communist so effectively used against our military's efforts in Vietnam is alive in many of its former leaders who have grown up, quite naturally, to become college and university professors, and in the case of Bill Ayers, prepare their comrades, and those they mentor, to run for elective office, even the presidency. Communism is alive but not well because it can only remain beneath the surface for so long until the rains of tyranny expose the caskets of dead ideas, tyrants and false promises. Paul Kengor lays it out very clearly for the reader how lies told about George Bush's intentions is Iraq and how accusations of a warmongering, racist, America that has lured the college student, the idle and the malcontent over the past thirty years, are just reheated deceptions dusted off from older Communist scripts where only the names have changed.
Who is Frank Marshall Davis and why was the media silent on this Communist mentor to our current President? Why is Jimmy Carter still a dupe? How was Edward Kennedy, who I had volunteered for, one of the biggest dupes of all? One need not be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party to be a Communist as Kengor points out, and one can think of themselves as a patriot and yet be a prize dupe! Kengor says that they will continue to call us scare mongers and McCarthyite fanatics but this is just another tried and true tactic from the bowels of Moscow's Comintern. He concludes his book with these thoughts: "The most mordant irony for the liberals who lend cover is that while they laugh at the anti-Communists, they seem to have no idea that the loudest howls have always emanated from the Communists who take them as dupes: gullible fools to be used to advance the Communist cause."
Professor's Kengor's follow up book is more specific to Barack Obama. Its title is The Communist, Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor.
The article was accompanied by pictures of the family in their home, one of which was in their kitchen area and on the wall behind the frolicking Clair and her two children were two posters. Breitbart.com did the research on the posters. One was a Soviet soldier asking "Have you enlisted" and the other was of a Russian woman factory worker and the caption reads "Women! Learn production, replace workers who went to the front. The stronger the hinterland-the stronger the front'." These posters are easily recognizable at first glance as Soviet propaganda.
Communism developed a strong albeit mostly concealed foothold in America in the 1920s and 1930s and also within the inner circles of American government in the FDR administration. Why? How? Communism is built upon a lie. It portrays itself as compassionate towards the people which could not be further from the truth. Liberals and Progressives were easily fooled and many of them regretted that later. As for the 'how' please read an older post, a book review of Paul Kengor's Dupes, that follows this post.
Communism is directly responsible for the deaths of well over one hundred million people around the world and untold suffering as well as documented horrors. Once in power it dominates everything and dictates to everyone. It puts its people in the places of power and they do the dirty work. There is no place for truth or for law and bad times are proclaimed as good times. Sound familiar?
More and more voices have have used the word 'communism' in describing Barack Obama. It never was in doubt that he was a bona fide socialist but as his administration churns on he looks more and more like a communist. He was caught on an open mic in 2012 telling then Russian President Medvedev, on the topic of European missile defenses and other issues, that he needed some space and would be more flexible after being elected to a second term. Medvedev responded by telling Obama that he would inform incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin. The open mic made news but it should have shook us awake in America. We are waking up now in the middle of a nightmare and it may be too late!
Carney worked as a Moscow correspondent for Time for three years and has studied Russian culture and history. Well I have an interest in Russian history also....that of a strong people with many great attributes.......a people dehumanized in the post-revolution days and in the gulags....a people kept in darkness by a state media. Does that last part sound familiar? So how can Jay Carney miss what was symbolized on those posters and how could he not know in that photo shoot that these posters would be spotted? These photos can be seen in a very easy Google search of "Jay Carney Posters."
Dupes
Communism is a dialectic in the Hegelian sense. It changes outwardly to survive inwardly. It is alive and thriving in our country, the very least representative being the Communist Party USA. It can call itself an American patriot or anything else. It feeds on the uniformed, the malcontent, the miscreant and the self-indulgent. Its only enemy is God.
I have to remind myself every once in a while that the average American today does not know a whole lot about communism. At times it's almost as if it is seen as nothing but a conspiracy theory, as if it never really existed and as if over a hundred million people were never murdered under it. Communism lies, it kills, it terrorizes, it threatens and carries out those threats. It's godless, it dupes and cons people...whole peoples and when it attains power through coercion and deception it lowers the boom...no more promises for there is no need to give them for it now has total l control and will henceforth dictate everything....to everybody!
Every facet of our society is unraveling before our very eyes. Emil Mazey, a twentieth century labor leader, is reported to have paraphrased the older proverb known as the duck test when he said the following..."I can't prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck,, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks- I'm certainly going to assume that he is a duck." Are you willing to read the evidence of how Communism has worked, is working, and even as of now...winning, in America? Read the book that is reviewed in the following blog first published on September 15th of 2011 and then try to defend this administration.
September 15, 2011........Communism.....Under New Management
The relationship between the American Progressive and Communism has always been a dysfunctional one, the Progressive longing for someone to look to as a hero and the Communist not only abusing that adulation but sneering at those so gullible as to think that there is anything compassionate or caring about them. The Communist knew the extraordinary weaknesses of the liberal American mind and had taken advantage of it from the beginning, for a century now! It has a new face today, hiding behind a semi-capitalist veil, for it retreated and reinvented its outward appearance.
This generation will never be able to say that they were not told, not warned, for the evidence is everywhere if only we would look. I've reported on more than a dozen outstanding books on the deteriorating condition of our nation and its causes in this blog of almost three years but none of secular content more needed than the one I put before you today. I do not believe that any liberal can read this book and not be concerned that they may have been duped. One might very well read a chapter and then throw the book away, or skim it and not accept its message but if one reads this book through they will view our political landscape differently. The title of the book is Dupes, How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives For A Century.
I'm very familiar with the author for I had read a few of his previous books and I admired him as a Professor of Political Science at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania, one of America's finest colleges. This is a monumentally important work written with clarity, and systematized in such a way to take the reader on a trip through American history and awaken the reader in the process. Professor Kengor filleted the meat of Communist propaganda so expertly as to expose the rotten flesh and release the stench that permeates liberal politics, higher education and the mainstream media. You have to read this book...if you care about America. A blurb from Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute says the same thing: "Face it. You are going to have to read this book." Why...so that you can show your knowledge of Communism in some future conversation? No, rather that you can read it and weep and hopefully sound your own alarm in that future conversation. In another blurb, Fred Barnes wrote that it left him "amazed and a bit frightened." The Weekly Standard's Barnes has been sounding an alarm for decades yet it still made him a bit frightened!
Reading the book was a culmination of research that I had already been doing, that the Communist has reappeared in America in a new guise, and yet I was dumbfounded by the volume of evidence and not a little disappointed in being reminded of my own history of being duped in the late 1970s.
Kengor is going to take you back to September of 1919 in Chicago where Communism first began its assault on the American mind. You will see the essence of class hatred in it from its beginnings and recognize the tactic from the Left today. You will see one celebrity or person of note after another taken in by the lies, many waking up later angry and indignant. Even the most ardent admirer of Franklin Roosevelt will have to reassess that admiration as Roosevelt was taken in by Uncle Joe Stalin thanks to the leftists all around him. Read and weep at how much of our media was not only taken in but even today ridicules those who are not duped. Will they have the character to admit they were wrong, if and when they also awaken, as many of their predecessors did? You will see heroes and you will see buffoons who were, and are, very useful idiots for Communism, and too many who were out-and-out traitors. You will see how Hollywood was used and many of the biggest names duped. Compare this to the stars of today while you read. And you will see Ronald Reagan as a liberal Democrat and head of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947, admittedly himself duped for a time, and recognize his courage and greatness on display even then! No one made this man and he was no late bloomer.
Communism has a new face but the essence remains the same, for God is still banished and revolutions are still started, as despicably as ever, through hatred and propaganda. Lying is as common as breathing. One class is pitted against another. Educators are still sought for their influence on the youth. Unions are still infiltrated as are the arts. College students are intellectually brutalized and the news media is still wooed with dreams that they might actually be more important than the news they report. The SDS mentality (Students for a Democratic Society) that the Communist so effectively used against our military's efforts in Vietnam is alive in many of its former leaders who have grown up, quite naturally, to become college and university professors, and in the case of Bill Ayers, prepare their comrades, and those they mentor, to run for elective office, even the presidency. Communism is alive but not well because it can only remain beneath the surface for so long until the rains of tyranny expose the caskets of dead ideas, tyrants and false promises. Paul Kengor lays it out very clearly for the reader how lies told about George Bush's intentions is Iraq and how accusations of a warmongering, racist, America that has lured the college student, the idle and the malcontent over the past thirty years, are just reheated deceptions dusted off from older Communist scripts where only the names have changed.
Who is Frank Marshall Davis and why was the media silent on this Communist mentor to our current President? Why is Jimmy Carter still a dupe? How was Edward Kennedy, who I had volunteered for, one of the biggest dupes of all? One need not be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party to be a Communist as Kengor points out, and one can think of themselves as a patriot and yet be a prize dupe! Kengor says that they will continue to call us scare mongers and McCarthyite fanatics but this is just another tried and true tactic from the bowels of Moscow's Comintern. He concludes his book with these thoughts: "The most mordant irony for the liberals who lend cover is that while they laugh at the anti-Communists, they seem to have no idea that the loudest howls have always emanated from the Communists who take them as dupes: gullible fools to be used to advance the Communist cause."
Professor's Kengor's follow up book is more specific to Barack Obama. Its title is The Communist, Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Messages In A Bottle
This news item caught my attention and then generated this post. A German fisherman found a bottle with a postcard in it and the date May 17, 1913 was legible over the stamps. Researchers were able to identify the author through the address on the postcard. It's believed the bottle was thrown into the Baltic Sea by a 20 year old man on a nature hike and then it floated on the cold waters for 100 years. The message on the postcard reads "Please state where and when this card was found, and then put it in the nearest Post Office. You will be informed in reply where and when it was set adrift. Our object is to find out the direction of the deep currents of the North Sea."
Romance writer Nicholas Sparks wrote a novel which was turned into a film titled Message In A Bottle where a man who lost his wife writes a letter, places it in a bottle and tosses it into the waters off of North Carolina. The bottle is found shortly afterwards and what follows is the plot of the book and the film.
We have been vacation people who loved our many trips to the beaches of the East Coast and are hoping to return to the Outer Banks of North Carolina again this year. The photo you see on the left is from a recent trip to Hilton Head. I can't remember how old our son was, I'm guessing maybe eight or ten, when we started a little tradition. You can find them in just about every store on the boardwalk.....little bottles about two inches high half-filled with sand and tiny sea shells. I would buy about a half a dozen of them, pull the cork, and place an evangelistic message of some sort inside and then our son and I would walk the beach and toss the bottles into the waves. Surely after so many years some of them are still floating. Maybe five years ago I started putting a little Christian message card with this blog's URL on it in those bottles. Yes, I still throw them into the sea and if our son is along we do it together, and he's twenty-seven years old now.
It's been debated for centuries....does God elect us or do we choose him? I believed the latter for the first ten years of my Christian walk but then came to see that it is impossible to choose Christ with a fallen nature and that God, in His infinite mercy, elects some who after regeneration do indeed see their fallen condition and cry out for the Savior. Many just do not realize the chronology of events but all rejoice in the opportunity to tell others of Jesus Christ who redeems the lost, loves the most unlovable and then uses them, in many different ways, to put their own message in a bottle.
If you are interested, there is a valuable resource on the web at www.refnet.fm. It's 24-hour Internet radio and describes itself this way "...committed to the historic Christian Faith......Preaching, Teaching, News, Music, & Audiobooks."
Romance writer Nicholas Sparks wrote a novel which was turned into a film titled Message In A Bottle where a man who lost his wife writes a letter, places it in a bottle and tosses it into the waters off of North Carolina. The bottle is found shortly afterwards and what follows is the plot of the book and the film.
We have been vacation people who loved our many trips to the beaches of the East Coast and are hoping to return to the Outer Banks of North Carolina again this year. The photo you see on the left is from a recent trip to Hilton Head. I can't remember how old our son was, I'm guessing maybe eight or ten, when we started a little tradition. You can find them in just about every store on the boardwalk.....little bottles about two inches high half-filled with sand and tiny sea shells. I would buy about a half a dozen of them, pull the cork, and place an evangelistic message of some sort inside and then our son and I would walk the beach and toss the bottles into the waves. Surely after so many years some of them are still floating. Maybe five years ago I started putting a little Christian message card with this blog's URL on it in those bottles. Yes, I still throw them into the sea and if our son is along we do it together, and he's twenty-seven years old now.
It's been debated for centuries....does God elect us or do we choose him? I believed the latter for the first ten years of my Christian walk but then came to see that it is impossible to choose Christ with a fallen nature and that God, in His infinite mercy, elects some who after regeneration do indeed see their fallen condition and cry out for the Savior. Many just do not realize the chronology of events but all rejoice in the opportunity to tell others of Jesus Christ who redeems the lost, loves the most unlovable and then uses them, in many different ways, to put their own message in a bottle.
If you are interested, there is a valuable resource on the web at www.refnet.fm. It's 24-hour Internet radio and describes itself this way "...committed to the historic Christian Faith......Preaching, Teaching, News, Music, & Audiobooks."
Sunday, April 6, 2014
America Unravelling........Redux
I bring back this older post because I was on a college campus this past Saturday:
Tomorrow, Lord willing, I hope to be on another college campus. That would be four campuses in the last month. Some people like visiting aquariums or botanical gardens, and house tours are very popular today. Me....I like college campuses. I pick up the student newspaper, visit the library, analyze the bookstore and generally try my best to look like a returning alumni. So this particular post is meant for any students on that campus tomorrow who may pick up that card that I leave with this blog's 'url' written on it.... and with a pen or a mechanical pencil that I attach to the card as a gift. I'd like to speak to that student, if you would permit me to do so. I spent a few years in college in my early twenties and again, if you could believe it, in my early fifties. The second time was in taking the curriculum in a Higher Education program.
First I'd like to answer a question that you might be asking...Why am I doing this? Well a good bit of it is selfishness. Our country is about to collapse. Call me old-fashioned but I grew accustomed to the liberties and freedoms.....and security of the United States of America. Even more important to me, our son and his wife will have to live in this coming totalitarian state. And of the ultimate importance, we not only no longer present to the world a nation that proclaims belief in Jesus Christ...we present the opposite...and are reaping the wild wind of that rejection of He who is the reason for our existence, the source of our sustenance up until now and the only hope for our future.
Second, I'd like to give you some things to think about. Well over a half of a century ago Madison Avenue found out that young people indeed have disposable income and they have been after you ever since. They figured out how to convince you that you wanted what they produced. Then the Progressive wanted in on the action and they figured out how to convince you that what was false was true, what was bad was good and what was anti-American was patriotic! So you have been and are being used and abused.
Lastly, your generation as a whole is being called upon to defend America, to sacrifice if necessary and I don't know of anybody who believes that you are going to show up. I can't blame them for the assault on your intellectual integrity, primarily through our educational system, (present campus excluded!) has been relentless, and with no journalistic news media to speak of you are on your own to find answers even if you somehow saw a problem and wanted to investigate.
I keep bringing this blog back and each time I do America has unravelled more. We are seeing epochal historic events almost every day and may indeed be witnessing, first hand, the fall of the United States of America. Have you not noticed the unravelling? This is no joke and I'm not trying to be cute. Have you not noticed the rapidly expanding unravelling of our country, our government and our society over the last few years...months....even days? Our spiraling downward cannot go on much longer without impact. How we will handle that impact is the more pertinent question for today. The following blog is from December of 2011:
America Unravelling
Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century London preacher of Christ and His Gospel, wrote these words over a century ago, The yoke of affliction, disappointment, and excessive labor is by no means to be sought; but when the Lord lays it upon us in our youth it frequently develops a character which glorifies God and blesses the church. Come, my soul, bow thy neck; take up thy cross. It was good for thee when young, it will not harm thee now.
America is heading at breakneck speed in acquiring such a yoke. We are but a shell of what we were. Where the aroma of our freedom and liberty once wafted throughout the world it is now the stench of our culture that permeates much of the globe. There should be no surprise here for when a civilization becomes so prosperous that its economy is totally dependent on what its malls can sell, its influence for good becomes depleted in proportion to the disgust that is generated. We have become a seller to the world of that which makes it vomit. Given time, all these nations would have generated their own pollution, we just accelerated the situation. It's the nature of man without God. They don't hate us because we are good, they hate us, many of them, because we once gave the appearance of it and have since, in their eyes, let them down.
Tomorrow, Lord willing, I hope to be on another college campus. That would be four campuses in the last month. Some people like visiting aquariums or botanical gardens, and house tours are very popular today. Me....I like college campuses. I pick up the student newspaper, visit the library, analyze the bookstore and generally try my best to look like a returning alumni. So this particular post is meant for any students on that campus tomorrow who may pick up that card that I leave with this blog's 'url' written on it.... and with a pen or a mechanical pencil that I attach to the card as a gift. I'd like to speak to that student, if you would permit me to do so. I spent a few years in college in my early twenties and again, if you could believe it, in my early fifties. The second time was in taking the curriculum in a Higher Education program.
First I'd like to answer a question that you might be asking...Why am I doing this? Well a good bit of it is selfishness. Our country is about to collapse. Call me old-fashioned but I grew accustomed to the liberties and freedoms.....and security of the United States of America. Even more important to me, our son and his wife will have to live in this coming totalitarian state. And of the ultimate importance, we not only no longer present to the world a nation that proclaims belief in Jesus Christ...we present the opposite...and are reaping the wild wind of that rejection of He who is the reason for our existence, the source of our sustenance up until now and the only hope for our future.
Second, I'd like to give you some things to think about. Well over a half of a century ago Madison Avenue found out that young people indeed have disposable income and they have been after you ever since. They figured out how to convince you that you wanted what they produced. Then the Progressive wanted in on the action and they figured out how to convince you that what was false was true, what was bad was good and what was anti-American was patriotic! So you have been and are being used and abused.
Lastly, your generation as a whole is being called upon to defend America, to sacrifice if necessary and I don't know of anybody who believes that you are going to show up. I can't blame them for the assault on your intellectual integrity, primarily through our educational system, (present campus excluded!) has been relentless, and with no journalistic news media to speak of you are on your own to find answers even if you somehow saw a problem and wanted to investigate.
I keep bringing this blog back and each time I do America has unravelled more. We are seeing epochal historic events almost every day and may indeed be witnessing, first hand, the fall of the United States of America. Have you not noticed the unravelling? This is no joke and I'm not trying to be cute. Have you not noticed the rapidly expanding unravelling of our country, our government and our society over the last few years...months....even days? Our spiraling downward cannot go on much longer without impact. How we will handle that impact is the more pertinent question for today. The following blog is from December of 2011:
America Unravelling
Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century London preacher of Christ and His Gospel, wrote these words over a century ago, The yoke of affliction, disappointment, and excessive labor is by no means to be sought; but when the Lord lays it upon us in our youth it frequently develops a character which glorifies God and blesses the church. Come, my soul, bow thy neck; take up thy cross. It was good for thee when young, it will not harm thee now.
America is heading at breakneck speed in acquiring such a yoke. We are but a shell of what we were. Where the aroma of our freedom and liberty once wafted throughout the world it is now the stench of our culture that permeates much of the globe. There should be no surprise here for when a civilization becomes so prosperous that its economy is totally dependent on what its malls can sell, its influence for good becomes depleted in proportion to the disgust that is generated. We have become a seller to the world of that which makes it vomit. Given time, all these nations would have generated their own pollution, we just accelerated the situation. It's the nature of man without God. They don't hate us because we are good, they hate us, many of them, because we once gave the appearance of it and have since, in their eyes, let them down.
Where did it begin? Hugh Hefner is as good a guess as any but what difference does it make? Our television screens rage against God! Our streets are violent and we as a people have become desensitized to it. Our pulpits preach peace when there is no peace; thinking they are building faith in God, they are concealing His righteous anger. Gone almost, is the statesman, replaced by the pure politician. Government runs our lives, obsessed and drunken with power. I see no way that God will have mercy upon us as we exist today without a radical reformation. It would be ludicrous as evidenced from many examples in Scripture, that God would give us, as a nation, more time to sell our wares while profaning His name, refusing to let our children come to Him (those that we do not abort,) destroying His creation of the family and demanding that we are masters of our own fate.
It doesn't matter what I, or anyone so inclined as I, might say. For they are just words. God has blinded us to a world hastening to destruction. We read the news as much as to say "Things are dangerous....over there!" We have become insulated by our entertainments. Our motto has become Red Solo Cup...Let's Have A Party. We cannot see a day past the Super Bowl and when that is over everything will be put on hold until the end of March Madness, and so on. We are to be pitied, but pitied only by those who do not know the majesty of God and His omnipotent power, for His mercy is as abundant as His judgments are strict, but only in response to repentance! There may very well be a yoke of affliction coming upon us for we have made it abundantly clear that only such a yoke can awaken us and even then, will our response be one of rending our garments and seeking God's mercy, to grow once again as a nation and church, or will we then blame God and those who did warn us?
Do we really want to hear peace and safety when we are at the edge of the abyss? The same Scripture that recorded God's judgments upon nations recorded his mercies. It would behoove all of us in America to look into that Word to be informed of our creator, our benefactor, our sustainer up until now, our shepherd and the ruler of all the nations.
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I know that if you are a serious student that you have little time for extracurricular reading but I also know that the time can be found if one truly searches for it. I have three very short books that will edify you if you choose to find that time. On our government and politics it would be Liberty And Tyranny by Mark Levin, on Christianity it would be Made In America by Michael Horton, and if you desire to follow up on the problems in Christianity it would be The Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain Murray....all three very readable
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.
....................................................................................................................................................................
I know that if you are a serious student that you have little time for extracurricular reading but I also know that the time can be found if one truly searches for it. I have three very short books that will edify you if you choose to find that time. On our government and politics it would be Liberty And Tyranny by Mark Levin, on Christianity it would be Made In America by Michael Horton, and if you desire to follow up on the problems in Christianity it would be The Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain Murray....all three very readable
Saturday, April 5, 2014
"Thy Compass, Which Is God's Word......"
The following is five vignettes from a book referenced at the end of the following post originally published five years ago. I was in a state prison this morning visiting a friend incarcerated there. The visiting room was packed with inmates, their families and friends and it was a moving experience. On the way home I stopped at a college campus. It also was packed with families of possible future students being shown around the campus. If you have followed my blog for any amount of time you may be tired of this anecdote; Martin Luther was asked what he would do if he knew for certain that the Lord Jesus was to return the very next day. Luther's answer was "I'd plant a tree." It would be irresponsible to our families not to plan for the future and it would be irresponsible as citizens not to pray for wisdom and discernment...and strength....in at least attempting to elect wise and honorable leaders but there is also reality to face.
Our nation is collapsing from within. Every pillar is under attack. Please pay particular attention to Hugh Latimer's comment on what England's "well-being" depended, that is if you read that far. It is the height of absurdity for us look to this year's elections or next year's presidential election as if they hold the key to our survival. It's beyond presumption to think that we can stop our fall or even defend ourselves against our enemies without national repentence and God's mercy upon us. But we, as a general consensus anyway, no longer attribute our existence to Him. Difficult days are ahead and that is even with God's mercy. Yes, plant that tree...make those plans.... always adding "should the Lord will it," but be prepared also for God's judgement upon our nation for we have gone beyond tempting Him to punish us....to goading Him and mocking the mere mention of His righteous judgement upon a nation.
Of No Worldly Tyrant Be Thou Dread........2009
John Hooper was a bishop in the Anglican church during the reign of Henry VIII and the glorious reign of Edward VI. He lived through the beginnings of the English Reformation and struggled, preaching often three and four times a day, against the forces that worked against the Gospel. He was burned at the state for his faithfulness in 1555 during the reign of Queen Mary. He is attributed with writing this poetry with a piece of coal on the wall of his jail cell:
Content thyself with patience
With Christ to bear the cross of pain;
Who can or will recompense
a thousand-fold, with joys again.
Let nothing cause thy heart to fail:
Launch out thy boat, hoist up thy sail,
Put from the shore;
And be thou sure thou shall remain
For evermore.........
Do not despair;
Of no worldly tyrant be thou dread;
Thy compass, which is God's Word, shall thee lead,
And the wind is fair.
Rowland Taylor was a pastor during the same period and was called to account as a villain for preaching the Gospel. When friends advised him not to report his response was:
What will ye have me do? I am now old, and have already lived too long, to see these terrible and most wicked days. Fly you, and do as your conscience leadeth you. I am fully determined, with God's grace, to go to the Bishop, and to tell him, to his beard, that he doth naught. God shall hereafter raise up teachers of His people, which shall, with much more diligence and fruit, teach them than I have done. For God will not forsake His church, though now for a time He trieth and correcteth us, and not without just cause. Rowland Taylor was also burned at the stake.
Bishop Hugh Latimer wrote: My wish is, that men may write on their hearts that the well-being of England depends not on commerce, or clever politicians, or steam, or armies, or navies, or gold, or iron, or coal, or corn, but on the maintenance of the principles of the English Reformation. Before being burned at the stake he turned to another martyr and famously said: Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.
In 1552 John Bradford wrote of his time period as similar to that of Noah and often forewarned the people of the plagues which would be brought to pass. He also was martyred and wrote: When I consider the cause of my condemnation, I cannot but lament that I do no more rejoice than I do, for it is God's verity and truth.
Nickolas Ridley was a chaplain to Henry VIII and later the Bishop of London and also ran afoul of Queen Mary for preaching the Gospel. In a farewell letter to prisoners he wrote: Farewell, dear brethren, farewell! And let us comfort our hearts in all troubles, and in death, with the Word of God: for heaven and earth shall perish, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.
I write this post, originally posted in 2009, as encouragement to myself as well as anyone else! In order to secure our blessings today we must know what transpired in the past, and we ignore the sacrifices of others to our own peril. How trivial are the entertainments of today when compared to the sacrifices and most of all the faithfulness of those who came before us.
Referenced: Five English Reformers......19th century Anglican Preacher in England J. C. Ryle. Available at www.cvbbs.com
Our nation is collapsing from within. Every pillar is under attack. Please pay particular attention to Hugh Latimer's comment on what England's "well-being" depended, that is if you read that far. It is the height of absurdity for us look to this year's elections or next year's presidential election as if they hold the key to our survival. It's beyond presumption to think that we can stop our fall or even defend ourselves against our enemies without national repentence and God's mercy upon us. But we, as a general consensus anyway, no longer attribute our existence to Him. Difficult days are ahead and that is even with God's mercy. Yes, plant that tree...make those plans.... always adding "should the Lord will it," but be prepared also for God's judgement upon our nation for we have gone beyond tempting Him to punish us....to goading Him and mocking the mere mention of His righteous judgement upon a nation.
Of No Worldly Tyrant Be Thou Dread........2009
John Hooper was a bishop in the Anglican church during the reign of Henry VIII and the glorious reign of Edward VI. He lived through the beginnings of the English Reformation and struggled, preaching often three and four times a day, against the forces that worked against the Gospel. He was burned at the state for his faithfulness in 1555 during the reign of Queen Mary. He is attributed with writing this poetry with a piece of coal on the wall of his jail cell:
Content thyself with patience
With Christ to bear the cross of pain;
Who can or will recompense
a thousand-fold, with joys again.
Let nothing cause thy heart to fail:
Launch out thy boat, hoist up thy sail,
Put from the shore;
And be thou sure thou shall remain
For evermore.........
Do not despair;
Of no worldly tyrant be thou dread;
Thy compass, which is God's Word, shall thee lead,
And the wind is fair.
Rowland Taylor was a pastor during the same period and was called to account as a villain for preaching the Gospel. When friends advised him not to report his response was:
What will ye have me do? I am now old, and have already lived too long, to see these terrible and most wicked days. Fly you, and do as your conscience leadeth you. I am fully determined, with God's grace, to go to the Bishop, and to tell him, to his beard, that he doth naught. God shall hereafter raise up teachers of His people, which shall, with much more diligence and fruit, teach them than I have done. For God will not forsake His church, though now for a time He trieth and correcteth us, and not without just cause. Rowland Taylor was also burned at the stake.
Bishop Hugh Latimer wrote: My wish is, that men may write on their hearts that the well-being of England depends not on commerce, or clever politicians, or steam, or armies, or navies, or gold, or iron, or coal, or corn, but on the maintenance of the principles of the English Reformation. Before being burned at the stake he turned to another martyr and famously said: Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.
In 1552 John Bradford wrote of his time period as similar to that of Noah and often forewarned the people of the plagues which would be brought to pass. He also was martyred and wrote: When I consider the cause of my condemnation, I cannot but lament that I do no more rejoice than I do, for it is God's verity and truth.
Nickolas Ridley was a chaplain to Henry VIII and later the Bishop of London and also ran afoul of Queen Mary for preaching the Gospel. In a farewell letter to prisoners he wrote: Farewell, dear brethren, farewell! And let us comfort our hearts in all troubles, and in death, with the Word of God: for heaven and earth shall perish, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.
I write this post, originally posted in 2009, as encouragement to myself as well as anyone else! In order to secure our blessings today we must know what transpired in the past, and we ignore the sacrifices of others to our own peril. How trivial are the entertainments of today when compared to the sacrifices and most of all the faithfulness of those who came before us.
Referenced: Five English Reformers......19th century Anglican Preacher in England J. C. Ryle. Available at www.cvbbs.com
Thursday, April 3, 2014
DeMint and West
We lack leadership today in just about every area of our society. I have followed politics for a long time. Admittedly most of that time I was clueless but there is some discernment to be had if discernment is truly what one desires. So I have formed some strong opinions on who is available today for wise leadership in America and I'll give you two names here. The first I have written about often in these posts. Some very influential Conservatives wanted him to run for president in this last general election cycle but he chose not to. At the time he was in the United States Senate. Today he is the president of the Heritage Foundation. His name is Jim DeMint. I've written before and will repeat it here, he's not only another Reagan...he's a better than Reagan... and maybe Republicans will become aware of this some day. The second was a one-term Congressman from Florida before every piece of artillery the Democrat Party had was aimed at him in the last election. His name is Allen West. Both men have recently authored books and I highly recommend them to you. Jim DeMint's is titled Falling In Love With America, Again while Allen West's is Guardian Of The Republic. The following post is from earlier this year:
I Will Restore Judges
Federal judges are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. They wield considerable power not only in the lives of the trial participants but into every area that their decisions effect. There are less than 1000 federal judges in the United States, the top ring of which is our Supreme Court.
A decision rendered in a U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia is in the news because of its subject matter and more. The Virginia same-sex marriage ban has been struck down in it, and this on Valentine's Day....how quaint, or more accurately....how Barack Obama, for the judge is an Obama appointee, and it was only a few days ago that Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice will expand efforts towards recognition of same-sex marriage in all states. But this is not the news that I'm writing about in this post.
This federal judge delivered an opinion with an error that is mind-boggling. How did it get by the law clerks? How does a federal judge make such a mistake? Written in the opinion was this "Our Constitution declares that 'all men' are created equal'." How much time has this judge spent reading the Constitution? I can only imagine how a One L would be excoriated by making a mistake such as this. John J. Osborn Jr., author of the 1970 novel The Paper Chase, would have had fun with Professor's Kingsfield's abusing one of his One Ls for such a blunder.
A federal judge might conceivably speak this error for about a moment, but for it to be written down and pass muster before being added to the Federal Record is another thing. Filling judgeships is just one avenue being used to circumvent our Constitution. That line added to the judge's opinion is from our Declaration of Independence. Marvelous as it is, and as influential as it is, it is not law.
In one of Abraham Lincoln's earliest speeches (1838) he said this "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
We have rejected God. The book of Isaiah begins as Judah is likened to Sodom and Gomorrah.... but forgiveness and mercy are offered via repentance... "And I will restore judges as at the first, and your councilors as at the beginning." (1:26)
I Will Restore Judges
Federal judges are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. They wield considerable power not only in the lives of the trial participants but into every area that their decisions effect. There are less than 1000 federal judges in the United States, the top ring of which is our Supreme Court.
A decision rendered in a U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia is in the news because of its subject matter and more. The Virginia same-sex marriage ban has been struck down in it, and this on Valentine's Day....how quaint, or more accurately....how Barack Obama, for the judge is an Obama appointee, and it was only a few days ago that Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice will expand efforts towards recognition of same-sex marriage in all states. But this is not the news that I'm writing about in this post.
This federal judge delivered an opinion with an error that is mind-boggling. How did it get by the law clerks? How does a federal judge make such a mistake? Written in the opinion was this "Our Constitution declares that 'all men' are created equal'." How much time has this judge spent reading the Constitution? I can only imagine how a One L would be excoriated by making a mistake such as this. John J. Osborn Jr., author of the 1970 novel The Paper Chase, would have had fun with Professor's Kingsfield's abusing one of his One Ls for such a blunder.
A federal judge might conceivably speak this error for about a moment, but for it to be written down and pass muster before being added to the Federal Record is another thing. Filling judgeships is just one avenue being used to circumvent our Constitution. That line added to the judge's opinion is from our Declaration of Independence. Marvelous as it is, and as influential as it is, it is not law.
In one of Abraham Lincoln's earliest speeches (1838) he said this "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
We have rejected God. The book of Isaiah begins as Judah is likened to Sodom and Gomorrah.... but forgiveness and mercy are offered via repentance... "And I will restore judges as at the first, and your councilors as at the beginning." (1:26)
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Noah....The Film......Where Did The Inspiration Come From..
It's the biggest assault on God in cinematic history....in my opinion that is. My wife and I went to see Darren Aronofsky's Noah starring Russell Crowe this afternoon. I thought I knew what to expect from the film as reports indicated that liberties were taken with the Bible's account of Noah and the ark but the word "liberties" never entered my mind while watching the film, for it was not liberties taken with the Old Testament but more of an entirely different testament given on screen more akin to pagan writings of antiquity.
It had been my hope that, liberties or not, the public might at least be reminded that God had once brought judgement upon the world and that His Word tells of another judgement at the time of the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The following is a synopsis of what I saw this afternoon. I'll mention only a few specifics and concentrate on the message.
God was very mad at mankind for they had destroyed his garden.....the earth. The terrain that Noah and his family lived on resembled what we might think of as an uninhabitable planet, or if we have to apply it to the earth, the devastation left by the asteroid exploding over the Tunguska region of Russia in 1908 would serve; this image we have from the photographs taken at the time. This is the message of the movie....man was destroying the earth and must be destroyed! The film thus limits evil to violence and rape of the earth, with no color, beauty or outward normalcy permitted to be associated with man. Once evil mankind is eliminated, the earth miraculously turns green with beautiful blue seas. Sin, if there is sin, is against a holy earth, not a Holy God.
Noah never actually speaks with God, rather he channels the thoughts of a "Creator." He looks to the sky and receives a mental impulse, or he has a dream and interprets it himself. He knows that he has to build an ark and will need protection and help. That protection and help comes in the form of the Watchers who were fallen angels cast down to the earth and who God turned into creatures made of giant rocks. They are heroes in the film......fallen angels......who return to God and His good graces at the end! This concept alone took my breath away.....the fallen angels......are the good guys!!! That my friends...is not just taking liberties and should cause us to wonder just who inspired this script, why now and to what intended purpose?
In Darren Aronofsky's ark there were only six on board of Noah and his family, not eight, and there was another passenger who was a stowaway! I could give a long list of changes to the Bible in the film's script that were not mere additions or alterations to the Bible but direct challenges to the veracity of God's Word itself but the real offense is in the message that millions of Americans will subliminally receive.....the earth is the prize...man is the booby, the Bible was just a script subject to continual rewrite and the future depends on whether the new 'Watchers' can control every impulse of man. A rainbow appears at the end of the film but my impression was it being more of a political logo than a sign of a covenant.
I found myself praying for the film to end about forty minutes before it did .....enough is enough. I fail to see how a non-believer could see God's judgement for sin in the film for there is no 'sin' here. There is no atonement necessary, only legislation....come hell or high water.... for our 'sin' today comes in the form of the brick and mortar of a coal-fired power plant and not the abstract, debatable and elusive concept of idolatry in rebellion to a "Holy" God.
But lo, what light from yonder window breaks? There may be a redeeming quality in the production of the film Noah.....'may be'....for its abusive presentation of the Genesis account of Noah may reveal to us a director beyond Darren Aronofsky and the Scriptural imperatives of 1 Peter 5:8 may be clearer to us than it ever has, those words being "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."
It had been my hope that, liberties or not, the public might at least be reminded that God had once brought judgement upon the world and that His Word tells of another judgement at the time of the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The following is a synopsis of what I saw this afternoon. I'll mention only a few specifics and concentrate on the message.
God was very mad at mankind for they had destroyed his garden.....the earth. The terrain that Noah and his family lived on resembled what we might think of as an uninhabitable planet, or if we have to apply it to the earth, the devastation left by the asteroid exploding over the Tunguska region of Russia in 1908 would serve; this image we have from the photographs taken at the time. This is the message of the movie....man was destroying the earth and must be destroyed! The film thus limits evil to violence and rape of the earth, with no color, beauty or outward normalcy permitted to be associated with man. Once evil mankind is eliminated, the earth miraculously turns green with beautiful blue seas. Sin, if there is sin, is against a holy earth, not a Holy God.
Noah never actually speaks with God, rather he channels the thoughts of a "Creator." He looks to the sky and receives a mental impulse, or he has a dream and interprets it himself. He knows that he has to build an ark and will need protection and help. That protection and help comes in the form of the Watchers who were fallen angels cast down to the earth and who God turned into creatures made of giant rocks. They are heroes in the film......fallen angels......who return to God and His good graces at the end! This concept alone took my breath away.....the fallen angels......are the good guys!!! That my friends...is not just taking liberties and should cause us to wonder just who inspired this script, why now and to what intended purpose?
In Darren Aronofsky's ark there were only six on board of Noah and his family, not eight, and there was another passenger who was a stowaway! I could give a long list of changes to the Bible in the film's script that were not mere additions or alterations to the Bible but direct challenges to the veracity of God's Word itself but the real offense is in the message that millions of Americans will subliminally receive.....the earth is the prize...man is the booby, the Bible was just a script subject to continual rewrite and the future depends on whether the new 'Watchers' can control every impulse of man. A rainbow appears at the end of the film but my impression was it being more of a political logo than a sign of a covenant.
I found myself praying for the film to end about forty minutes before it did .....enough is enough. I fail to see how a non-believer could see God's judgement for sin in the film for there is no 'sin' here. There is no atonement necessary, only legislation....come hell or high water.... for our 'sin' today comes in the form of the brick and mortar of a coal-fired power plant and not the abstract, debatable and elusive concept of idolatry in rebellion to a "Holy" God.
But lo, what light from yonder window breaks? There may be a redeeming quality in the production of the film Noah.....'may be'....for its abusive presentation of the Genesis account of Noah may reveal to us a director beyond Darren Aronofsky and the Scriptural imperatives of 1 Peter 5:8 may be clearer to us than it ever has, those words being "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."
Monday, March 24, 2014
"Foil".........The Verb or The Noun
I have walked out of theaters during the movie on a few occasions, Titanic was the last one. Something about where the film was going just did not sit well with me. I may go and see Russell Crowe in the soon to be released Noah. I know what I would be in for, the producers ignored the Genesis account for their own purposes, but I won't have any idea on how it might affect the general public until I see at least part of it. It's more than interesting that the release of the film coincides with so very many attacks on God and His Word in the world and in our nation, maybe the most egregious being the stamp of approval being given in many states to same-sex marriage, the tentacles of which will reach our children in so many areas of their lives. I'm also reminded of the release of The China Syndrome 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident.
God controls the destinies of men and of nations. He does not need their approval or cooperation. Noah may foil (verb) its audiences concern about God's judgements on a rebellious nation or it may serve as a foil (noun) and reflect God's judgement and lead them to the truth of God's Word. I suspect and hope for the latter. The following post is from this past January 6th:
Genderless Neutered Society
It is astounding and it is numbing; yet one little sentence can make multitudes oblivious to it. That sentence might be something like 'Oh, people have always said that it's worse today than it ever was'. Well it is... terrifyingly so. There are tremors on this earth, both of nature and mankind, that should make even the most stouthearted to sweat. It's difficult to put the individual tremors into perspective. I readily admit that. Had they all not be happening at once, we might be able to focus on any particular tremor but as it is we read of them as if we were just reading one apocalyptic movie plot after another. And of course we have our vast array of barbiturates in the form of entertainments that can sedate us. Our society has collapsed. Whole professions have given in to the zeitgeist of the day-narcissism run rampant, journalistic news not the least of them, of which even conservative commentators giggle and twitter (the verb not the social media) as they read cue cards hoping not to mix up the facial expressions for a story on a costume malfunction with a terrorist bombing. The family unit is mocked as mockery itself has become the new family unit. Education has become indoctrination, law enforcement has become militarized as the military is becoming a conduit for a distorted view of diversity, making ugly that which should be beautiful.
Our government has become as a bloated tyrant with sauces and entrails dripping from its chin as it voraciously devours anything its iron teeth can masticate. We stumble along as a people with no idea where we came from or whom we are indebted to. Our pulpits without the cross of Christ are dry, lifeless, sun-bleached shells good only for shining up to place in a curio cabinet along with other porcelain figurines and relics of our past. We are becoming a genderless neutered society. Laws mean nothing unless the offense is against the genderless neutered society. Words have no origin, no real objective meaning, as images hypnotize and teach us. Logic is used as much as cursive writing and common sense as a curtsy.
The world itself is reeling, not from man-made global warming which is a by-product of everything written above but from design and implementation of a Creator who will not be mocked. If these are the last...of the last days then those who mock God will have their way....for a very, very short while and the tremors will turn into fissures, and the fissures chasms, and the chasms an abyss. Even so, Come Lord Jesus!
God controls the destinies of men and of nations. He does not need their approval or cooperation. Noah may foil (verb) its audiences concern about God's judgements on a rebellious nation or it may serve as a foil (noun) and reflect God's judgement and lead them to the truth of God's Word. I suspect and hope for the latter. The following post is from this past January 6th:
Genderless Neutered Society
It is astounding and it is numbing; yet one little sentence can make multitudes oblivious to it. That sentence might be something like 'Oh, people have always said that it's worse today than it ever was'. Well it is... terrifyingly so. There are tremors on this earth, both of nature and mankind, that should make even the most stouthearted to sweat. It's difficult to put the individual tremors into perspective. I readily admit that. Had they all not be happening at once, we might be able to focus on any particular tremor but as it is we read of them as if we were just reading one apocalyptic movie plot after another. And of course we have our vast array of barbiturates in the form of entertainments that can sedate us. Our society has collapsed. Whole professions have given in to the zeitgeist of the day-narcissism run rampant, journalistic news not the least of them, of which even conservative commentators giggle and twitter (the verb not the social media) as they read cue cards hoping not to mix up the facial expressions for a story on a costume malfunction with a terrorist bombing. The family unit is mocked as mockery itself has become the new family unit. Education has become indoctrination, law enforcement has become militarized as the military is becoming a conduit for a distorted view of diversity, making ugly that which should be beautiful.
Our government has become as a bloated tyrant with sauces and entrails dripping from its chin as it voraciously devours anything its iron teeth can masticate. We stumble along as a people with no idea where we came from or whom we are indebted to. Our pulpits without the cross of Christ are dry, lifeless, sun-bleached shells good only for shining up to place in a curio cabinet along with other porcelain figurines and relics of our past. We are becoming a genderless neutered society. Laws mean nothing unless the offense is against the genderless neutered society. Words have no origin, no real objective meaning, as images hypnotize and teach us. Logic is used as much as cursive writing and common sense as a curtsy.
The world itself is reeling, not from man-made global warming which is a by-product of everything written above but from design and implementation of a Creator who will not be mocked. If these are the last...of the last days then those who mock God will have their way....for a very, very short while and the tremors will turn into fissures, and the fissures chasms, and the chasms an abyss. Even so, Come Lord Jesus!
Labels:
Noah,
Russell Crowe
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Thankful For Weaknesses!
The following post is from November of 2012. I repeat it fairly often because I want... often... to share my feelings of thanksgiving to God for His mercies shown and blessings given.
.........................................................................................................................................................
Thankful For Weaknesses
Thanksgiving is far and away my favorite day of the year. There's no gift exchanges, blessings though such things are, to divert attention from the day, and no pagan bush to drag into the house to be decorated. There are no myths involved, in fact the historical testimony is so strong that even the revisionists have a hard time trying to distort it. As I write this, today's Wall Street Journal is beside me. Every year since 1961 on this day before Thanksgiving their top editorial has been a reprint of the beginning of a first-hand chronicle of the Plymouth Colony's voyage and arrival in their new land. This is part of the heritage that elements of our society are systematically trying to erase. One particular day has since been set apart for Americans to corporately and individually give thanks to God for blessings bestowed.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, here are some of the things that I am thankful for: I'm thankful that God took a twelve year old boy from a broken home and planted him in an apartment on a modest street amidst fine and decent fellows who would become new friends. I'm thankful that he permitted me to attend a very good high school, rich in tradition and academics, where I would at least experience, although hardly partake in, a scholarly atmosphere, and also how He somehow provided tuition. I'm thankful that in my immaturity He gave me the wisdom to join the army and had mercy on me even as I abused the needed maturing process. I'm thankful for a college degree even though my interests were far more social than academic, and that while working at the university I would meet my future wife. I'm thankful for her patience, love and being my best friend.
I'm thankful for thirty-three years of employment from one company and the friends and coworkers there. I'm thankful that God instilled in me, somewhat later in life, an insatiable desire to read, to study and to analyze. I'm thankful that in 1982 He had mercy on the lowest of the low, loved the most unlovable and redeemed the least worthy of it. I'm thankful for the gift of a son who I have watched grow far beyond my own intellectual capabilities and do so without the path of rebellion that I chose. I'm thankful for the perfect match of a wonderful young Christian woman to be his wife.
I'm thankful for failures.... for they make it impossible for me to think that I am something that I am not. I'm thankful that after I fall down, He gives me strength to get up. I'm thankful for heroes, particularly of the Christian faith but also of our nation, for their lives are blueprints that can be deciphered for at least an attempt to emulate. I'm thankful for faithful pastors and the sweet fellowship of other beneficiaries of God's redemption. I'm thankful for a house and a home for our son as he grew up, with loving family all around. I'm thankful for automobiles and money in the bank to keep them running.
I'm thankful for vision to see this beautiful world, for taste to enjoy tomorrow's meal (Lord willing,) for the hearing of the preached Word and of music and voices, for feeling....both physical and emotional, and for discerning aromas of both warnings and pleasure. I'm thankful that there is no sixth sense, that our knowledge of the future comes not from ESP but from such as the ESV (English Standard Version of God's written word to us.) I'm thankful for being born an American, for freedom and liberty, but even more so for the opportunity to show gratitude for the efforts of those who sacrificed for those freedoms and liberties and, although in an insignificant way, to pick up the banner they once held aloft.
I'm thankful for my weaknesses for they give opportunity for God to show His strength. I am thankful most of all that God reached into humanity to adopt a multitude as His family and that He opened my own eyes to see... first myself, and then the cross of Calvary, the empty tomb and the clouds in which Jesus both ascended and will return. I'm thankful for angels all around us. I'm thankful that even though we play no part whatsoever in the salvation of another that we are painted into the picture to the glory of God alone. I'm thankful that, in the same vein, we can pray for the salvation of others and rejoice with them. I'm thankful for many books but especially one, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the last stanza of a song within which reads:
Hobgoblin, nor fowl fiend,
Can daunt his spirit;
He knows, he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.
.........................................................................................................................................................
Thankful For Weaknesses
Thanksgiving is far and away my favorite day of the year. There's no gift exchanges, blessings though such things are, to divert attention from the day, and no pagan bush to drag into the house to be decorated. There are no myths involved, in fact the historical testimony is so strong that even the revisionists have a hard time trying to distort it. As I write this, today's Wall Street Journal is beside me. Every year since 1961 on this day before Thanksgiving their top editorial has been a reprint of the beginning of a first-hand chronicle of the Plymouth Colony's voyage and arrival in their new land. This is part of the heritage that elements of our society are systematically trying to erase. One particular day has since been set apart for Americans to corporately and individually give thanks to God for blessings bestowed.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, here are some of the things that I am thankful for: I'm thankful that God took a twelve year old boy from a broken home and planted him in an apartment on a modest street amidst fine and decent fellows who would become new friends. I'm thankful that he permitted me to attend a very good high school, rich in tradition and academics, where I would at least experience, although hardly partake in, a scholarly atmosphere, and also how He somehow provided tuition. I'm thankful that in my immaturity He gave me the wisdom to join the army and had mercy on me even as I abused the needed maturing process. I'm thankful for a college degree even though my interests were far more social than academic, and that while working at the university I would meet my future wife. I'm thankful for her patience, love and being my best friend.
I'm thankful for thirty-three years of employment from one company and the friends and coworkers there. I'm thankful that God instilled in me, somewhat later in life, an insatiable desire to read, to study and to analyze. I'm thankful that in 1982 He had mercy on the lowest of the low, loved the most unlovable and redeemed the least worthy of it. I'm thankful for the gift of a son who I have watched grow far beyond my own intellectual capabilities and do so without the path of rebellion that I chose. I'm thankful for the perfect match of a wonderful young Christian woman to be his wife.
I'm thankful for failures.... for they make it impossible for me to think that I am something that I am not. I'm thankful that after I fall down, He gives me strength to get up. I'm thankful for heroes, particularly of the Christian faith but also of our nation, for their lives are blueprints that can be deciphered for at least an attempt to emulate. I'm thankful for faithful pastors and the sweet fellowship of other beneficiaries of God's redemption. I'm thankful for a house and a home for our son as he grew up, with loving family all around. I'm thankful for automobiles and money in the bank to keep them running.
I'm thankful for vision to see this beautiful world, for taste to enjoy tomorrow's meal (Lord willing,) for the hearing of the preached Word and of music and voices, for feeling....both physical and emotional, and for discerning aromas of both warnings and pleasure. I'm thankful that there is no sixth sense, that our knowledge of the future comes not from ESP but from such as the ESV (English Standard Version of God's written word to us.) I'm thankful for being born an American, for freedom and liberty, but even more so for the opportunity to show gratitude for the efforts of those who sacrificed for those freedoms and liberties and, although in an insignificant way, to pick up the banner they once held aloft.
I'm thankful for my weaknesses for they give opportunity for God to show His strength. I am thankful most of all that God reached into humanity to adopt a multitude as His family and that He opened my own eyes to see... first myself, and then the cross of Calvary, the empty tomb and the clouds in which Jesus both ascended and will return. I'm thankful for angels all around us. I'm thankful that even though we play no part whatsoever in the salvation of another that we are painted into the picture to the glory of God alone. I'm thankful that, in the same vein, we can pray for the salvation of others and rejoice with them. I'm thankful for many books but especially one, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the last stanza of a song within which reads:
Hobgoblin, nor fowl fiend,
Can daunt his spirit;
He knows, he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
No Checkered Board......Rather A Book
I don't know if Vladimir Putin is an avid chess player or not....I can't find any evidence of it, but he is Russian and chess has been a huge part of Russian life. Chess may have begun in Asia and resided in Islam for a long time but it took up permanent residence in Russia and was part of the life of Tsars and peasants, literary giants and murderous Communist tyrants. Castro and Che played chess as did Marx, Lenin and Stalin. So whether or not Putin plays the game, he probably thinks about the world as a chess board.
I'll recommend a book on this topic.....White King And Red Queen by Daniel Johnson. It was published in 2008 when Vladimir Putin was on his....way out. One of the author's main themes is that chess is one of the areas that the Cold War was fought. Bobby Fischer has a major part in the book as does the "epic seven year's war" of Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, that culminated in, as the author writes, Kasparov turning from "reformer to revolutionary." Kasparov knew what many in the West missed, that the Cold War may have ended but the ideological problem, the brutish tactics and totalitarian goals remained. Near the end of the book, Daniel Johnson gives us this to think about "Eight years after Yeltsin defeated the KGB coup, he was handling over power to Vladimir Putin, a representative of the same sinister fraternity...."
Kasparov considered 2007 to be the "middle game" for Russia but as for Putin he said "it is the beginning of the end." He was wrong in this. The current situation with Putin and the Ukraine may not be a chess game in progress but it revolves around something that has used chess in an attempt to mold an entire people and thus the world.... communism....which is no game, has no rules, and gives no quarter.
God is America's only hope and we are in the midst of relegating His commands to being mere "social issues" to be bartered if necessary. The temporal outlook for America is bleak but it is of eternal consequence where our individual hope rests. We have no checkered board that must be navigated, rather a book to read, and therein is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path!
I'll recommend a book on this topic.....White King And Red Queen by Daniel Johnson. It was published in 2008 when Vladimir Putin was on his....way out. One of the author's main themes is that chess is one of the areas that the Cold War was fought. Bobby Fischer has a major part in the book as does the "epic seven year's war" of Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, that culminated in, as the author writes, Kasparov turning from "reformer to revolutionary." Kasparov knew what many in the West missed, that the Cold War may have ended but the ideological problem, the brutish tactics and totalitarian goals remained. Near the end of the book, Daniel Johnson gives us this to think about "Eight years after Yeltsin defeated the KGB coup, he was handling over power to Vladimir Putin, a representative of the same sinister fraternity...."
Kasparov considered 2007 to be the "middle game" for Russia but as for Putin he said "it is the beginning of the end." He was wrong in this. The current situation with Putin and the Ukraine may not be a chess game in progress but it revolves around something that has used chess in an attempt to mold an entire people and thus the world.... communism....which is no game, has no rules, and gives no quarter.
God is America's only hope and we are in the midst of relegating His commands to being mere "social issues" to be bartered if necessary. The temporal outlook for America is bleak but it is of eternal consequence where our individual hope rests. We have no checkered board that must be navigated, rather a book to read, and therein is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path!
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Golden Paths......Redux
In order to discern serious problems or legitimate growth in today's
evangelical church one should at least have a passable working knowledge of
church history, it's doctrine and practices, and have read at least some works
of men come before us or references to them. Without this there is nothing with which to compare and one can easily become susceptible to a postmodern mindset that does not need words on a page.... only thoughts for the grasping . Without this
almost anything can be called "preaching Christ," or "preaching the
Bible." Without this even the Gospel itself can be paganized or pantheized. Some are thrilled at the evangelical church of today.... others.....not
so much. Ezra may have had something to say about why.
Golden Paths
There are a couple of verses from the 3rd chapter of Ezra that I would like to relate here and then segue into some thoughts of my own. The Jewish exiles had returned from captivity in Babylon and Ezra recorded the building of the second temple on the foundation of the original which was under the guidance of Zerubbabel. Most of the people were excited, "praising and giving thanks to the Lord" as Ezra wrote, but the feeling was not quite the same with everyone for Ezra continued, "And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of father's houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping..." The ESV Study Bible comments on these verses with "Sadness is mixed with this rejoicing, for some of the very old remembered the former temple and believed that this new one would not match the former temple's glory. The picture of mitigated celebration is a small symbol of the whole event of the return, which was in itself a triumph yet fell far short of the great hopes the people might have had."
These verses may, in some way, explain why not all Christians rejoice in much of the church growth today. There was no Golden Age of the church in either England or America but there were better and more glorious days as there were, and are now, less glorious days. Certainly we are in a lesser age for the preached Word even though we think that we are very enlightened in this. Our Biblical knowledge, particularly of doctrine, is weak. Unless one is familiar with our church heritage in both England and America one will most likely not weep as others rejoice today. We have become less and less enthralled with reading books written before this modern age. Personal letters of those who came before us are not valued as sources of great value, in fact, who even writes "letters" anymore? We are far too busy today to read the Puritans, let alone John Calvin or even biographies of great missionaries who opened up continents to the Gospel. Alas, we dress to the hilt for a celebration but have no where to go.
A similar situation exists with the history of our Republic. We no longer realize just how marvelous our Constitution is. Many rejoiced in Hope and Change not realizing that Change was the key word and it was a change for the worse....far, far worse. No, there was no Golden Age in our Anglo-Christian heritage but there were Golden Paths and it would behoove all of us today to heed the words of Jeremiah in:
Thus says the Lord:
Stand by the roads and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.
But Jeremiah added:
But they said, "We will not walk in it."
Should we seek those ancient paths God may indeed have mercy upon us with a reformation in the church which may even lead to a restoration of our constitutional republic. Surely there is true rejoicing all over today for hearts rended and mercies given but just as surely there is also weeping for knowledge of what once was and how far we are from it!
Golden Paths
There are a couple of verses from the 3rd chapter of Ezra that I would like to relate here and then segue into some thoughts of my own. The Jewish exiles had returned from captivity in Babylon and Ezra recorded the building of the second temple on the foundation of the original which was under the guidance of Zerubbabel. Most of the people were excited, "praising and giving thanks to the Lord" as Ezra wrote, but the feeling was not quite the same with everyone for Ezra continued, "And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of father's houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping..." The ESV Study Bible comments on these verses with "Sadness is mixed with this rejoicing, for some of the very old remembered the former temple and believed that this new one would not match the former temple's glory. The picture of mitigated celebration is a small symbol of the whole event of the return, which was in itself a triumph yet fell far short of the great hopes the people might have had."
These verses may, in some way, explain why not all Christians rejoice in much of the church growth today. There was no Golden Age of the church in either England or America but there were better and more glorious days as there were, and are now, less glorious days. Certainly we are in a lesser age for the preached Word even though we think that we are very enlightened in this. Our Biblical knowledge, particularly of doctrine, is weak. Unless one is familiar with our church heritage in both England and America one will most likely not weep as others rejoice today. We have become less and less enthralled with reading books written before this modern age. Personal letters of those who came before us are not valued as sources of great value, in fact, who even writes "letters" anymore? We are far too busy today to read the Puritans, let alone John Calvin or even biographies of great missionaries who opened up continents to the Gospel. Alas, we dress to the hilt for a celebration but have no where to go.
A similar situation exists with the history of our Republic. We no longer realize just how marvelous our Constitution is. Many rejoiced in Hope and Change not realizing that Change was the key word and it was a change for the worse....far, far worse. No, there was no Golden Age in our Anglo-Christian heritage but there were Golden Paths and it would behoove all of us today to heed the words of Jeremiah in:
Thus says the Lord:
Stand by the roads and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.
But Jeremiah added:
But they said, "We will not walk in it."
Should we seek those ancient paths God may indeed have mercy upon us with a reformation in the church which may even lead to a restoration of our constitutional republic. Surely there is true rejoicing all over today for hearts rended and mercies given but just as surely there is also weeping for knowledge of what once was and how far we are from it!
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Tolle Lege.....Take Up And Read
Our son attended a college where the reading requirements and overall workload were extremely demanding but he was rewarded for it later in law school. Personally, I read an awful lot while in college that was not related to my...studies, and I paid for it rather than was rewarded for it later. Surely there is a medium where one can read for pleasure and learning while still attending to regular studies. If you are in college I highly recommend some additional reading that will not only benefit you later but right now. The first book concerns your eternal soul...Putting Amazing Back Into Grace by Michael Horton. The second book concerns your immediate future here in America.....Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives For A Century by Paul Kengor. You might even be able to find some friends to read and discuss the books together with.
The following are three posts on Communism. The first is from 2011 and the next two are from this year:
Communism is a dialectic in the Hegelian sense. It changes outwardly to survive inwardly. It is alive and thriving in our country, the very least representative being the Communist Party USA. It can call itself an American patriot or anything else. It feeds on the uniformed, the malcontent, the miscreant and the self-indulgent. Its only enemy is God.
I have to remind myself every once in a while that the average American today does not know a whole lot about communism. At times it's almost as if it is seen as nothing but a conspiracy theory, as if it never really existed and as if over a hundred million people were never murdered under it. Communism lies, it kills, it terrorizes, it threatens and carries out those threats. It's godless, it dupes and cons people...whole peoples and when it attains power through coercion and deception it lowers the boom...no more promises for there is no need to give them for it now has total l control and will henceforth dictate everything....to everybody!
Every facet of our society is unraveling before our very eyes. Emil Mazey, a twentieth century labor leader, is reported to have paraphrased the older proverb known as the duck test when he said the following..."I can't prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck,, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks- I'm certainly going to assume that he is a duck." Are you willing to read the evidence of how Communism has worked, is working, and even as of now...winning, in America? Read the book that is reviewed in the following blog first published on September 15th of 2011 and then try to defend this administration.
September 15, 2011........Communism.....Under New Management
The relationship between the American Progressive and Communism has always been a dysfunctional one, the Progressive longing for someone to look to as a hero and the Communist not only abusing that adulation but sneering at those so gullible as to think that there is anything compassionate or caring about them. The Communist knew the extraordinary weaknesses of the liberal American mind and had taken advantage of it from the beginning, for a century now! It has a new face today, hiding behind a semi-capitalist veil, for it retreated and reinvented its outward appearance.
This generation will never be able to say that they were not told, not warned, for the evidence is everywhere if only we would look. I've reported on more than a dozen outstanding books on the deteriorating condition of our nation and its causes in this blog of almost three years but none of secular content more needed than the one I put before you today. I do not believe that any liberal can read this book and not be concerned that they may have been duped. One might very well read a chapter and then throw the book away, or skim it and not accept its message but if one reads this book through they will view our political landscape differently. The title of the book is Dupes, How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives For A Century.
I'm very familiar with the author for I had read a few of his previous books and I admired him as a Professor of Political Science at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania, one of America's finest colleges. This is a monumentally important work written with clarity, and systematized in such a way to take the reader on a trip through American history and awaken the reader in the process. Professor Kengor filleted the meat of Communist propaganda so expertly as to expose the rotten flesh and release the stench that permeates liberal politics, higher education and the mainstream media. You have to read this book...if you care about America. A blurb from Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute says the same thing: "Face it. You are going to have to read this book." Why...so that you can show your knowledge of Communism in some future conversation? No, rather that you can read it and weep and hopefully sound your own alarm in that future conversation. In another blurb, Fred Barnes wrote that it left him "amazed and a bit frightened." The Weekly Standard's Barnes has been sounding an alarm for decades yet it still made him a bit frightened!
Reading the book was a culmination of research that I had already been doing, that the Communist has reappeared in America in a new guise, and yet I was dumbfounded by the volume of evidence and not a little disappointed in being reminded of my own history of being duped in the late 1970s.
Kengor is going to take you back to September of 1919 in Chicago where Communism first began its assault on the American mind. You will see the essence of class hatred in it from its beginnings and recognize the tactic from the Left today. You will see one celebrity or person of note after another taken in by the lies, many waking up later angry and indignant. Even the most ardent admirer of Franklin Roosevelt will have to reassess that admiration as Roosevelt was taken in by Uncle Joe Stalin thanks to the leftists all around him. Read and weep at how much of our media was not only taken in but even today ridicules those who are not duped. Will they have the character to admit they were wrong, if and when they also awaken, as many of their predecessors did? You will see heroes and you will see buffoons who were, and are, very useful idiots for Communism, and too many who were out-and-out traitors. You will see how Hollywood was used and many of the biggest names duped. Compare this to the stars of today while you read. And you will see Ronald Reagan as a liberal Democrat and head of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947, admittedly himself duped for a time, and recognize his courage and greatness on display even then! No one made this man and he was no late bloomer.
Communism has a new face but the essence remains the same, for God is still banished and revolutions are still started, as despicably as ever, through hatred and propaganda. Lying is as common as breathing. One class is pitted against another. Educators are still sought for their influence on the youth. Unions are still infiltrated as are the arts. College students are intellectually brutalized and the news media is still wooed with dreams that they might actually be more important than the news they report. The SDS mentality (Students for a Democratic Society) that the Communist so effectively used against our military's efforts in Vietnam is alive in many of its former leaders who have grown up, quite naturally, to become college and university professors, and in the case of Bill Ayers, prepare their comrades, and those they mentor, to run for elective office, even the presidency. Communism is alive but not well because it can only remain beneath the surface for so long until the rains of tyranny expose the caskets of dead ideas, tyrants and false promises. Paul Kengor lays it out very clearly for the reader how lies told about George Bush's intentions is Iraq and how accusations of a warmongering, racist, America that has lured the college student, the idle and the malcontent over the past thirty years, are just reheated deceptions dusted off from older Communist scripts where only the names have changed.
Who is Frank Marshall Davis and why was the media silent on this Communist mentor to our current President? Why is Jimmy Carter still a dupe? How was Edward Kennedy, who I had volunteered for, one of the biggest dupes of all? One need not be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party to be a Communist as Kengor points out, and one can think of themselves as a patriot and yet be a prize dupe! Kengor says that they will continue to call us scare mongers and McCarthyite fanatics but this is just another tried and true tactic from the bowels of Moscow's Comintern. He concludes his book with these thoughts: "The most mordant irony for the liberals who lend cover is that while they laugh at the anti-Communists, they seem to have no idea that the loudest howls have always emanated from the Communists who take them as dupes: gullible fools to be used to advance the Communist cause."
Professor's Kengor's follow up book is more specific to Barack Obama. Its title is The Communist, Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor.
You Can Trust The Communists.....
They were nothing fancy. As I remember they were a few pages stapled together under the heading Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, a title I didn't particularly care for, but I read them when they arrived in the mail and they had an effect on me. I didn't really act on what I was learning, but then I didn't have the evidence as clearly before my eyes as I do today. The author of these...pamphlets...was Fred Schwarz. He was a former physician, an Australian and a Christian whose family two generations previous were Jewish. Fred Schwarz was also an ardent anti-communist.
He filled stadiums with his 'Crusade' and had the admiration of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley. His book You Can Trust The Communists (To Do Exactly As They Say) was an international bestseller, and keep in mind as you read this post that You Can Trust The Communists was written in 1960! Schwarz begins by writing "Once we accept the fact that Communists are Communists, and understand the laws of their thought and conduct, all the mystery disappears and we are confronted with a movement which is frightening in its superb organization, strategic mobility and universal program, but which is perfectly understandable and mathematically predictable." He's saying that Communism is not mysterious. Yet we in America look at it as if it were a myth. Today we are in the midst of a coup by this....myth, a coup designed primarily with Lenin's pen and repeated enough times in history that the stench of it should have been detected by all Americans by now!
Schwarz sums up the situation thusly "Marx taught that the bourgeoisie is the established class in Capitalist society. It created the State as an instrument to oppress and exploit the proletariat. In reaction the proletariat creates the Communist Party to wage war against the State." The key in this statement is in the words "creates the Communist Party to wage war." Throughout the book you see evidence of a monolithic organization that takes no prisoners, whose elites believe that they have been empowered to do whatever they want and kill whomever they want. Below these elites are no one...no one...who has not bought into the lies fed them. The Communist Party is never to be questioned.
Schwarz writes that Khrushchev, in his condemnation of Stalin, "tells us that Stalin caused to be arrested and shot for treason 70 percent of the Central Committee that elected him to power in 1934.....98 members out of 137. He tells us of entire nationalities that Stalin destroyed." Schwarz then asks "how does he put to death the majority of the military commanders? (of his own military) How does he put to death the majority of the leaders of his own party?" Even as Khrushchev admitted all the crimes, Stalin was still called a "good man," for the Communist Party gave him his power and criticism of Stalin must therefore be tempered. This is the ideology we have to deal with!
According to Schwarz, Communists do not have to reveal themselves. Some may, others may not. Both play a part. Their aim was never the conversion of the masses, rather a small elite group totally disciplined and dedicated that can "scientifically" use "the social forces that move and direct the masses of people so that the Communist Party may come to power over them, and impose forcibly the Communist program." Scientifically? Yes, they have studied cultures and know us better than we know ourselves. This is why much of America has been drawn as if by a Pied Piper into Communist ideology. The Communist utilizes the concept of "fronts" to perfection; a front being organizations that "exploit the self-interest of a given group." The gay rights movement, many unions, some environmental groups, peace movements and immigration amnesty proponents all can be used efficiently to further the aims of the Communist.
Fred Schwarz lays out the history of the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia and details Communist revolutions throughout the world. One revolution does not have to look like the next. Only the post mortems of the previous governments are the same. We can also see the grid and the strategies placed over our electoral processes and injected into our culture. Peoples are told that the proletariat is in charge in these revolutions but this is only theoretical. In reality the Communist Party is the "executive of the proletariat" and therefore a "dictatorship of the proletariat" arises whose first act is to disarm the people as in China so that there is never a counter-revolution. Anyone who has characteristics of a leader becomes an enemy for they therefore have potential to be troublesome. They are not recruited, they are removed, and obviously a "vast espionage system" is utilized for they have always had to know what everyone is saying...even their....friends. Do these things sound familiar?
Schwarz had witnessed it first-hand... "intellectual dishonesty." Evidences are everywhere on the failures, the lies and the crimes of Communism but the easy way is to ignore it. The hard way is to confront it. Why do people so easily accept the spurious claims, and that is putting it very gently, of man-made global warming? Why do they ignore the falsified statistics and tortured climate models? As for the cadres who totally accept the way of communism, Schwarz writes this. "The Communists believe that the mind is simply a complex of conditioned reflexes, and that if they can understand the techniques by which these conditioned reflexes are built up and how they can be broken down, they have acquired mastery over the mind itself,"
In Schwarz concluding chapter he writes "The Communists are supremely confident of complete victory. They claim that their victory is assured because of the quality of the character in democratic lands........They are convinced that the average citizen of the Free World is so intellectually lazy and dishonest, so greedy and selfish, so intoxicated with entertainment, so consumed with his immediate problems that no matter how clear the evidence of impending doom, that evidence will never be acknowledged, and the organizational steps necessary for survival will never be taken." The author then defended America with, "we categorically reject this claim" and went on to explain why but I have to wonder if he still felt this way before his death in 2009.
The last sentence in the book is this "As free men humbly seek God and present their bodies, minds and hearts to their country and the cause of all mankind, we may well believe that tyranny shall not triumph and freedom shall not perish from the earth." He certainly would never have doubted this!
Heart, Mind and Soul
Just a few weeks ago, on February 6th, I wrote a post on Fred Schwarz and his book from 1960 You Can Trust The Communists....To Be Communists. Please consider reading that post to go along with this one. Fred Schwarz was a harbinger of sorts, a herald who dedicated his life trying to warn anyone who would listen, of the dangers of incipient Communism in the West. I ordered another one of his writings, a small pamphlet titled The Heart, Mind and Soul of Communism and this is the focus of this post.
Folks, you are going to hear more of Communism in the coming days and how it has resurrected itself in amongst the Progressive/Liberal American political scene. You can see it in the news from the Ukraine and Venezuela. You might also want to read my book review of Professor Paul Kengor 's book Dupes from February 1st for these three posts go very much hand in hand.
Schwarz begins with a little history of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Vladimir Lenin had a relatively small band of followers as the Czar was overthrown. He renamed the Bolshevik element as the Communist Party of Russia. In ruthless abandon he commandeered the revolution and that ruthless abandon has continued right up to this day. Schwarz then begins to dissect Communism. I'll be giving verbatim quotes from the pamphlet in the rest of this post. Here is the first, and I recognize every description he gives: "One aspect (of Communism) appeals to the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged; the other aspect appeals to the wealthy, the intellectually superior, and the idealistic reformers......To the poor of the earth-and they are legion-the servants of Communism go with this message: 'Follow me, and I will build a new world for you and your children..." Schwarz expands on the second promise given "that is used, not to captivate the poor, but to seduce the rich; not to enlighten the ignorant, but to enlist the educated; not to bribe the cynical, but to ensnare the idealistic."
How is all this to be done? The answer given is "science." According to the author the Communists plan on transforming human nature just as science transformed the world that we live in. They would remake mankind through the same principles. This concept alone helped enlist intellectuals for they perceive themselves to be so very much smarter than any of us. Schwarz gives "three basic hypotheses for this "scientific program......Atheism, Materialism and Economic Determinism."
He writes that "Karl Marx was an atheist before he was a Communist" and that "Atheism was his first and last intellectual love." Since God is denied, so are "all absolute criteria such as truth and error" and we can see this very clear today in Benghazi, in the IRS scandal, in the NSA scandal and most recently in the "let's put a government agent in the newsrooms" scandal. There is no heaven, no hell, nor absolute values and consequently no guilt.
As for the nature of man in Materialism, "Man is an animal and nothing more.." he is simply at the "apex of the evolutionary tree..." with "no special value associated with every individual life."
As for Economic Determinism...capitalism is the problem.... the "root of all evil. When it is gone along with its classes we will have the "perfection of human nature" and the "emergence of Communism."
Capitalism must be destroyed by "violent revolution" of which Lenin's achievements were merely the "first successes in a campaign for world conquest" and "It is necessary to have a strong and intelligent power to carry out the program. In the progressive quality of its dialectic heart, history has appointed the Communist Party, the self-conscious, enlightened vanguard of the Proletariat for this role. Therefore we must establish an absolute dictatorship for this party. We will call it the ;Dictatorship of the Proletariat'."
Since man is but an animal, a new breed of stock must be raised and the diseased animals must be eliminated. It may through gulags or through labor camps or mass re-education. Time is to be allowed as a new generation must arise that has not been infected.
Fred Schwarz penned these thoughts eight years before his well known book You Can Trust The Communists. He fought this battle until he died in 2009. Communism is still very much alive and if it continues to succeed in the West it will one day proudly reclaim its original name, to the astonishment of many, and with a power grab.....well, just read the headlines of today's newspapers, some of them anyway, to get a sneak preview!
The following are three posts on Communism. The first is from 2011 and the next two are from this year:
Communism is a dialectic in the Hegelian sense. It changes outwardly to survive inwardly. It is alive and thriving in our country, the very least representative being the Communist Party USA. It can call itself an American patriot or anything else. It feeds on the uniformed, the malcontent, the miscreant and the self-indulgent. Its only enemy is God.
I have to remind myself every once in a while that the average American today does not know a whole lot about communism. At times it's almost as if it is seen as nothing but a conspiracy theory, as if it never really existed and as if over a hundred million people were never murdered under it. Communism lies, it kills, it terrorizes, it threatens and carries out those threats. It's godless, it dupes and cons people...whole peoples and when it attains power through coercion and deception it lowers the boom...no more promises for there is no need to give them for it now has total l control and will henceforth dictate everything....to everybody!
Every facet of our society is unraveling before our very eyes. Emil Mazey, a twentieth century labor leader, is reported to have paraphrased the older proverb known as the duck test when he said the following..."I can't prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck,, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks- I'm certainly going to assume that he is a duck." Are you willing to read the evidence of how Communism has worked, is working, and even as of now...winning, in America? Read the book that is reviewed in the following blog first published on September 15th of 2011 and then try to defend this administration.
September 15, 2011........Communism.....Under New Management
The relationship between the American Progressive and Communism has always been a dysfunctional one, the Progressive longing for someone to look to as a hero and the Communist not only abusing that adulation but sneering at those so gullible as to think that there is anything compassionate or caring about them. The Communist knew the extraordinary weaknesses of the liberal American mind and had taken advantage of it from the beginning, for a century now! It has a new face today, hiding behind a semi-capitalist veil, for it retreated and reinvented its outward appearance.
This generation will never be able to say that they were not told, not warned, for the evidence is everywhere if only we would look. I've reported on more than a dozen outstanding books on the deteriorating condition of our nation and its causes in this blog of almost three years but none of secular content more needed than the one I put before you today. I do not believe that any liberal can read this book and not be concerned that they may have been duped. One might very well read a chapter and then throw the book away, or skim it and not accept its message but if one reads this book through they will view our political landscape differently. The title of the book is Dupes, How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives For A Century.
I'm very familiar with the author for I had read a few of his previous books and I admired him as a Professor of Political Science at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania, one of America's finest colleges. This is a monumentally important work written with clarity, and systematized in such a way to take the reader on a trip through American history and awaken the reader in the process. Professor Kengor filleted the meat of Communist propaganda so expertly as to expose the rotten flesh and release the stench that permeates liberal politics, higher education and the mainstream media. You have to read this book...if you care about America. A blurb from Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute says the same thing: "Face it. You are going to have to read this book." Why...so that you can show your knowledge of Communism in some future conversation? No, rather that you can read it and weep and hopefully sound your own alarm in that future conversation. In another blurb, Fred Barnes wrote that it left him "amazed and a bit frightened." The Weekly Standard's Barnes has been sounding an alarm for decades yet it still made him a bit frightened!
Reading the book was a culmination of research that I had already been doing, that the Communist has reappeared in America in a new guise, and yet I was dumbfounded by the volume of evidence and not a little disappointed in being reminded of my own history of being duped in the late 1970s.
Kengor is going to take you back to September of 1919 in Chicago where Communism first began its assault on the American mind. You will see the essence of class hatred in it from its beginnings and recognize the tactic from the Left today. You will see one celebrity or person of note after another taken in by the lies, many waking up later angry and indignant. Even the most ardent admirer of Franklin Roosevelt will have to reassess that admiration as Roosevelt was taken in by Uncle Joe Stalin thanks to the leftists all around him. Read and weep at how much of our media was not only taken in but even today ridicules those who are not duped. Will they have the character to admit they were wrong, if and when they also awaken, as many of their predecessors did? You will see heroes and you will see buffoons who were, and are, very useful idiots for Communism, and too many who were out-and-out traitors. You will see how Hollywood was used and many of the biggest names duped. Compare this to the stars of today while you read. And you will see Ronald Reagan as a liberal Democrat and head of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947, admittedly himself duped for a time, and recognize his courage and greatness on display even then! No one made this man and he was no late bloomer.
Communism has a new face but the essence remains the same, for God is still banished and revolutions are still started, as despicably as ever, through hatred and propaganda. Lying is as common as breathing. One class is pitted against another. Educators are still sought for their influence on the youth. Unions are still infiltrated as are the arts. College students are intellectually brutalized and the news media is still wooed with dreams that they might actually be more important than the news they report. The SDS mentality (Students for a Democratic Society) that the Communist so effectively used against our military's efforts in Vietnam is alive in many of its former leaders who have grown up, quite naturally, to become college and university professors, and in the case of Bill Ayers, prepare their comrades, and those they mentor, to run for elective office, even the presidency. Communism is alive but not well because it can only remain beneath the surface for so long until the rains of tyranny expose the caskets of dead ideas, tyrants and false promises. Paul Kengor lays it out very clearly for the reader how lies told about George Bush's intentions is Iraq and how accusations of a warmongering, racist, America that has lured the college student, the idle and the malcontent over the past thirty years, are just reheated deceptions dusted off from older Communist scripts where only the names have changed.
Who is Frank Marshall Davis and why was the media silent on this Communist mentor to our current President? Why is Jimmy Carter still a dupe? How was Edward Kennedy, who I had volunteered for, one of the biggest dupes of all? One need not be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party to be a Communist as Kengor points out, and one can think of themselves as a patriot and yet be a prize dupe! Kengor says that they will continue to call us scare mongers and McCarthyite fanatics but this is just another tried and true tactic from the bowels of Moscow's Comintern. He concludes his book with these thoughts: "The most mordant irony for the liberals who lend cover is that while they laugh at the anti-Communists, they seem to have no idea that the loudest howls have always emanated from the Communists who take them as dupes: gullible fools to be used to advance the Communist cause."
Professor's Kengor's follow up book is more specific to Barack Obama. Its title is The Communist, Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor.
You Can Trust The Communists.....
They were nothing fancy. As I remember they were a few pages stapled together under the heading Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, a title I didn't particularly care for, but I read them when they arrived in the mail and they had an effect on me. I didn't really act on what I was learning, but then I didn't have the evidence as clearly before my eyes as I do today. The author of these...pamphlets...was Fred Schwarz. He was a former physician, an Australian and a Christian whose family two generations previous were Jewish. Fred Schwarz was also an ardent anti-communist.
He filled stadiums with his 'Crusade' and had the admiration of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley. His book You Can Trust The Communists (To Do Exactly As They Say) was an international bestseller, and keep in mind as you read this post that You Can Trust The Communists was written in 1960! Schwarz begins by writing "Once we accept the fact that Communists are Communists, and understand the laws of their thought and conduct, all the mystery disappears and we are confronted with a movement which is frightening in its superb organization, strategic mobility and universal program, but which is perfectly understandable and mathematically predictable." He's saying that Communism is not mysterious. Yet we in America look at it as if it were a myth. Today we are in the midst of a coup by this....myth, a coup designed primarily with Lenin's pen and repeated enough times in history that the stench of it should have been detected by all Americans by now!
Schwarz sums up the situation thusly "Marx taught that the bourgeoisie is the established class in Capitalist society. It created the State as an instrument to oppress and exploit the proletariat. In reaction the proletariat creates the Communist Party to wage war against the State." The key in this statement is in the words "creates the Communist Party to wage war." Throughout the book you see evidence of a monolithic organization that takes no prisoners, whose elites believe that they have been empowered to do whatever they want and kill whomever they want. Below these elites are no one...no one...who has not bought into the lies fed them. The Communist Party is never to be questioned.
Schwarz writes that Khrushchev, in his condemnation of Stalin, "tells us that Stalin caused to be arrested and shot for treason 70 percent of the Central Committee that elected him to power in 1934.....98 members out of 137. He tells us of entire nationalities that Stalin destroyed." Schwarz then asks "how does he put to death the majority of the military commanders? (of his own military) How does he put to death the majority of the leaders of his own party?" Even as Khrushchev admitted all the crimes, Stalin was still called a "good man," for the Communist Party gave him his power and criticism of Stalin must therefore be tempered. This is the ideology we have to deal with!
According to Schwarz, Communists do not have to reveal themselves. Some may, others may not. Both play a part. Their aim was never the conversion of the masses, rather a small elite group totally disciplined and dedicated that can "scientifically" use "the social forces that move and direct the masses of people so that the Communist Party may come to power over them, and impose forcibly the Communist program." Scientifically? Yes, they have studied cultures and know us better than we know ourselves. This is why much of America has been drawn as if by a Pied Piper into Communist ideology. The Communist utilizes the concept of "fronts" to perfection; a front being organizations that "exploit the self-interest of a given group." The gay rights movement, many unions, some environmental groups, peace movements and immigration amnesty proponents all can be used efficiently to further the aims of the Communist.
Fred Schwarz lays out the history of the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia and details Communist revolutions throughout the world. One revolution does not have to look like the next. Only the post mortems of the previous governments are the same. We can also see the grid and the strategies placed over our electoral processes and injected into our culture. Peoples are told that the proletariat is in charge in these revolutions but this is only theoretical. In reality the Communist Party is the "executive of the proletariat" and therefore a "dictatorship of the proletariat" arises whose first act is to disarm the people as in China so that there is never a counter-revolution. Anyone who has characteristics of a leader becomes an enemy for they therefore have potential to be troublesome. They are not recruited, they are removed, and obviously a "vast espionage system" is utilized for they have always had to know what everyone is saying...even their....friends. Do these things sound familiar?
Schwarz had witnessed it first-hand... "intellectual dishonesty." Evidences are everywhere on the failures, the lies and the crimes of Communism but the easy way is to ignore it. The hard way is to confront it. Why do people so easily accept the spurious claims, and that is putting it very gently, of man-made global warming? Why do they ignore the falsified statistics and tortured climate models? As for the cadres who totally accept the way of communism, Schwarz writes this. "The Communists believe that the mind is simply a complex of conditioned reflexes, and that if they can understand the techniques by which these conditioned reflexes are built up and how they can be broken down, they have acquired mastery over the mind itself,"
In Schwarz concluding chapter he writes "The Communists are supremely confident of complete victory. They claim that their victory is assured because of the quality of the character in democratic lands........They are convinced that the average citizen of the Free World is so intellectually lazy and dishonest, so greedy and selfish, so intoxicated with entertainment, so consumed with his immediate problems that no matter how clear the evidence of impending doom, that evidence will never be acknowledged, and the organizational steps necessary for survival will never be taken." The author then defended America with, "we categorically reject this claim" and went on to explain why but I have to wonder if he still felt this way before his death in 2009.
The last sentence in the book is this "As free men humbly seek God and present their bodies, minds and hearts to their country and the cause of all mankind, we may well believe that tyranny shall not triumph and freedom shall not perish from the earth." He certainly would never have doubted this!
Heart, Mind and Soul
Just a few weeks ago, on February 6th, I wrote a post on Fred Schwarz and his book from 1960 You Can Trust The Communists....To Be Communists. Please consider reading that post to go along with this one. Fred Schwarz was a harbinger of sorts, a herald who dedicated his life trying to warn anyone who would listen, of the dangers of incipient Communism in the West. I ordered another one of his writings, a small pamphlet titled The Heart, Mind and Soul of Communism and this is the focus of this post.
Folks, you are going to hear more of Communism in the coming days and how it has resurrected itself in amongst the Progressive/Liberal American political scene. You can see it in the news from the Ukraine and Venezuela. You might also want to read my book review of Professor Paul Kengor 's book Dupes from February 1st for these three posts go very much hand in hand.
Schwarz begins with a little history of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Vladimir Lenin had a relatively small band of followers as the Czar was overthrown. He renamed the Bolshevik element as the Communist Party of Russia. In ruthless abandon he commandeered the revolution and that ruthless abandon has continued right up to this day. Schwarz then begins to dissect Communism. I'll be giving verbatim quotes from the pamphlet in the rest of this post. Here is the first, and I recognize every description he gives: "One aspect (of Communism) appeals to the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged; the other aspect appeals to the wealthy, the intellectually superior, and the idealistic reformers......To the poor of the earth-and they are legion-the servants of Communism go with this message: 'Follow me, and I will build a new world for you and your children..." Schwarz expands on the second promise given "that is used, not to captivate the poor, but to seduce the rich; not to enlighten the ignorant, but to enlist the educated; not to bribe the cynical, but to ensnare the idealistic."
How is all this to be done? The answer given is "science." According to the author the Communists plan on transforming human nature just as science transformed the world that we live in. They would remake mankind through the same principles. This concept alone helped enlist intellectuals for they perceive themselves to be so very much smarter than any of us. Schwarz gives "three basic hypotheses for this "scientific program......Atheism, Materialism and Economic Determinism."
He writes that "Karl Marx was an atheist before he was a Communist" and that "Atheism was his first and last intellectual love." Since God is denied, so are "all absolute criteria such as truth and error" and we can see this very clear today in Benghazi, in the IRS scandal, in the NSA scandal and most recently in the "let's put a government agent in the newsrooms" scandal. There is no heaven, no hell, nor absolute values and consequently no guilt.
As for the nature of man in Materialism, "Man is an animal and nothing more.." he is simply at the "apex of the evolutionary tree..." with "no special value associated with every individual life."
As for Economic Determinism...capitalism is the problem.... the "root of all evil. When it is gone along with its classes we will have the "perfection of human nature" and the "emergence of Communism."
Capitalism must be destroyed by "violent revolution" of which Lenin's achievements were merely the "first successes in a campaign for world conquest" and "It is necessary to have a strong and intelligent power to carry out the program. In the progressive quality of its dialectic heart, history has appointed the Communist Party, the self-conscious, enlightened vanguard of the Proletariat for this role. Therefore we must establish an absolute dictatorship for this party. We will call it the ;Dictatorship of the Proletariat'."
Since man is but an animal, a new breed of stock must be raised and the diseased animals must be eliminated. It may through gulags or through labor camps or mass re-education. Time is to be allowed as a new generation must arise that has not been infected.
Fred Schwarz penned these thoughts eight years before his well known book You Can Trust The Communists. He fought this battle until he died in 2009. Communism is still very much alive and if it continues to succeed in the West it will one day proudly reclaim its original name, to the astonishment of many, and with a power grab.....well, just read the headlines of today's newspapers, some of them anyway, to get a sneak preview!
Saturday, March 1, 2014
America.....America.....God Mend Thine Every Flaw
The following post was written in March of 2011 and it referred to a post written in November of 2009. Time goes on and we in America continue to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. God's words through Hosea were prefaced by this They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes but I knew it not, With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. (Hosea 8:4, 7)
America, America......God Mend Thy Every Flaw
America, America......God Mend Thy Every Flaw
Not since the Civil War has America been imperilled as it is today. The national debt can never be paid down and it went over that edge because of political motivations. We are so globally intertwined that even if we straightened out our own paths, we are handcuffed to others who have no desire to do so. China, no friend to us whatsoever, at least their civilian and military leadership, can bring us down if they want to and if their own current events go south they may implement this option. Israel is surrounded and its enemies, like a pack of wolves or shiver of sharks, need only the smell of blood to unleash another war. Russia would sell our enemies the noose to hang us. Both China and Russia are building their militaries while we are more concerned with what armament contracts can bring in the most votes. Our media, in the main, hates conservative principles, our traditions and heritage, to such an extent that the Marxist, Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky cabal has a veritable free rein in propagandizing a sizable postmodern, politically correct, idol craving culture. Our borders are porous, bureaucrats legislate and George Soros sits on a mountaintop with his minions ready to swoop down on Dorothy and Toto to steal those ruby slippers.
The events of 9/11 even pale in comparison to the organized effort today on every level to bring us down. Yet with all these dangers, and many more, the President of this besieged nation golfs on weekends, parties at night and has shown today that he is more informed and interested in picking the winners in March Madness then any of the aforementioned problems, and others, any one of which can send this world into a tailspin.
I wrote in a November 13, 2009 blog titled America...The Beautiful that We know who built this nation. They were in the pulpits, pews and courts, on farms and in the cities, under pilgrim, tricorn and coonskin caps, Civil War kepis, Cavalry hats, helmets and berets. They cooked and sewed and drove rivets when needed. They wore blue and grey, G. I. Brown, navy white, air force blue, jungle and desert camo. Heroes are born in the cauldron of trying times and we are seeing them again today. How about the Christian women who, in their limited free time, would rather read of Ruth and Orpah than watch Ellen and Oprah; Christan fathers whose children see them thanking God before every meal, Faithful pastors who say you can keep the crowds, I'll preach Christ and seek the approval of the crowds of witnesses gone on before; of teachers whose first priority is the children; of conservatives on university campuses who are two bright to be scammed; of every country music singer that sings of God, family and country; of every retiree who did their part and now shares their wisdom; of every union member who says I'll fight for what is right and not for what isn't; of every janitor at a Tea Party who is a giant compared to the executive who would rather be on the golf course, and of our military in every mess hall and PX, behind every desk or 50mm gun-wearing private stripes or brass. These are some of our heroes. This nation may not survive. Why God has not ended this experiment as of now is the real mystery but even if we do, their will be a remnant giving glory to God for past mercies given to us that we might help others.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
A Bridge Too Far
The same-sex marriage debate has generated a lot of opinion but I personally have not heard from anyone else that which I'm going to put in this post today.
A student of military history and of war would surely recognize this scenario..... the general of the first army in a battle might set up a defensive front or at most conduct limited offensive operations for a period of time all the while planning a bold and aggressive move in hopes of overwhelming army number two. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson planned something very similar in the battle of Chancellorsville where Jackson's Second Corps flanked the entire left side of the Union army and attacked from the rear... a move so bold that the Union army was taken by surprise and routed.
It became apparent a few years ago that the gay agenda was no longer attempting to grind out a little advancement at a time but was throwing everything that they had, reserves and all, at America, particularly at it's most cherished possession...no not the Constitution... but the Bible and its definition of marriage. This has nothing to do with discrimination for any legal union would have satisfied that. It has nothing to do with fairness for it is the antithesis of fairness in forcing people to deny their beliefs but none of this is of any consequence compared to one overriding factor. If the trend continues we will have completely turned our children over to not only a godless nanny state but an antichrist nanny state.
This is not a social issue, it's not even primarily a political issue. It's a head-on frontal assault on Christianity. One nation and one nation alone stands in the way of a totalitarian one-world government and that is the United States and one fundamental core and one fundamental core alone gives legitimacy to the United States in the eyes of God and that is it's Christian faith... once predominate, then dwindling and now not only dispossessed but suffering from amnesia.
There is a lot of news concerning our rapidly decaying national defense and military readiness but as valuable as this is to our enemies it was never the number one target of theirs. No, they have known from their own inception that unless America renounces its Christian faith, unless its God lifts His hand of protection, unless America is on its own, Americans would never sit back and allow their house to be robbed, their liberties taken away and their families made subservient to a totalitarian state entity. Destroy marriage and brainwash the children in a political correct educational system and America will be taken as easily as Samson after his haircut.
Scripture is very clear in that rebelling against God is one thing but purposely leading children into rebellion is another level. Try this exercise at your leisure of which we in America hold sacrosanct; imagine a society where same-sex marriage has not only been legitimized but forcibly ingrained into the minds of its people. Imagine trying to raise Christian children in such a society. And one more thing to imagine...you can go to just about any book of the prophets from the Old Testament for research.....then imagine God's reaction to a nation that had sacrificed its children on the pagan altars of the day.
If we place this issue anywhere other than the very front burner, if we fail to recognize how this will affect the children, if we continue to ignore God's clear word on this and if we judge to be love that which is enmity towards God and compassion that which is utter irresponsibilty then God's judgement upon us may not reveal itself as that of Jonah's forty day waiting period but rather Nahum's proclamation of swift destruction without so much as an offer to repent.
A student of military history and of war would surely recognize this scenario..... the general of the first army in a battle might set up a defensive front or at most conduct limited offensive operations for a period of time all the while planning a bold and aggressive move in hopes of overwhelming army number two. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson planned something very similar in the battle of Chancellorsville where Jackson's Second Corps flanked the entire left side of the Union army and attacked from the rear... a move so bold that the Union army was taken by surprise and routed.
It became apparent a few years ago that the gay agenda was no longer attempting to grind out a little advancement at a time but was throwing everything that they had, reserves and all, at America, particularly at it's most cherished possession...no not the Constitution... but the Bible and its definition of marriage. This has nothing to do with discrimination for any legal union would have satisfied that. It has nothing to do with fairness for it is the antithesis of fairness in forcing people to deny their beliefs but none of this is of any consequence compared to one overriding factor. If the trend continues we will have completely turned our children over to not only a godless nanny state but an antichrist nanny state.
This is not a social issue, it's not even primarily a political issue. It's a head-on frontal assault on Christianity. One nation and one nation alone stands in the way of a totalitarian one-world government and that is the United States and one fundamental core and one fundamental core alone gives legitimacy to the United States in the eyes of God and that is it's Christian faith... once predominate, then dwindling and now not only dispossessed but suffering from amnesia.
There is a lot of news concerning our rapidly decaying national defense and military readiness but as valuable as this is to our enemies it was never the number one target of theirs. No, they have known from their own inception that unless America renounces its Christian faith, unless its God lifts His hand of protection, unless America is on its own, Americans would never sit back and allow their house to be robbed, their liberties taken away and their families made subservient to a totalitarian state entity. Destroy marriage and brainwash the children in a political correct educational system and America will be taken as easily as Samson after his haircut.
Scripture is very clear in that rebelling against God is one thing but purposely leading children into rebellion is another level. Try this exercise at your leisure of which we in America hold sacrosanct; imagine a society where same-sex marriage has not only been legitimized but forcibly ingrained into the minds of its people. Imagine trying to raise Christian children in such a society. And one more thing to imagine...you can go to just about any book of the prophets from the Old Testament for research.....then imagine God's reaction to a nation that had sacrificed its children on the pagan altars of the day.
If we place this issue anywhere other than the very front burner, if we fail to recognize how this will affect the children, if we continue to ignore God's clear word on this and if we judge to be love that which is enmity towards God and compassion that which is utter irresponsibilty then God's judgement upon us may not reveal itself as that of Jonah's forty day waiting period but rather Nahum's proclamation of swift destruction without so much as an offer to repent.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Pulpit....Not The Podium
Radio host Mark Levin will be honored in two days at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He is to receive the inaugural Andrew Breitbart Defender of the First Amendment Award. Mark Levin deserves to be honored. His books and his radio program have been invaluable to an America under siege and I have written of them often but our problems are deeper than even the tyranny in our midst.
During those first years after a burden of sin appeared on my back and I came to the cross of Calvary and found redemption in what Jesus Christ accomplished on that day over two thousand years ago I found myself frequenting Christian conferences. They were a time of great joy and I'm so thankful for them but if one is not careful one can live only for the conferences and seminars and begin to live vicariously through the speakers and come to depend upon their efforts to sustain one's enthusiasm.
Only a reformation in American Christianity holds any hope for us to survive as a nation. God's Holy Spirit is the only one who can transform us by the renewing of our minds. It is only upon the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ that we can depend. Should God have mercy upon America it will be through our pulpits that he reforms us and there is scant evidence at the present time of such mercy. The vast majority of my brothers and sisters in Christ would disagree with that assessment but that same vast majority has been given little to compare with present day evangelicalism. The following post is from August of 2011:
Pulpit....Not The Podium
One of the running themes in this blog is the need for America to humble itself before God, before God humbles us before our numerous enemies. Yesterday, Texas Governor Rick Perry hosted a major prayer event in Houston of upwards of 25,000 people with that very message. One might therefore expect the writer of this blog to wholeheartedly rejoice in this but that's not the case. I agree with the diagnosis, but not prescription of a media event.
We are falling apart in every way imaginable. Our Congress is clueless which is a description far too generous to use on our White House. Our culture is in chaos. Our media is in denial while our enemies are certain of our collapse. Pep rallies are not the answer especially when politics is part of it. I'm not questioning the intent of the organizers or Governor Perry for I know what it is like to finally figure out that America is collapsing because its reliance upon God has vanished, because we have gone our own way and God is permitting us to reap what we have sown.
I have probably written a dozen times in this blog on the need for America to humble itself before God and I hope in those blogs that I made it known that I was talking about myself as much as anyone who might read it. Ultimately, we do not have to see America's sins clearer...we have to see more clearly the one sinned against (God.) A deficient view of the holiness of God can result in feelings of a satisfactory repentance and the consequent projection upon others of the need to do so also. A heightened view of the holiness of God will hardly get one off the hook so easily.
The Puritan mind could see clearer... God and His character, hence repentance was an everyday occurrence as they humbly approached God for all their needs. The secular mind of today sees the Puritan mind as a lifelong quest to quench joy in anyone and everyone and the evangelical mind is a product of these times, on display in Christian bookstores, Christian music concerts and events, and fundraising telethons, and is much more susceptible to a good gimmick than what is really needed.
The podium, the bookstore and the blogosphere can indeed address our inflated view of our minds and ourselves and the turmoil that lies ahead but only the pulpit can effectively deflate that view, soften the heart and ease the burdened soul through the proclamation of redemption through the blood of Christ as written in God's Word. The speaker on the dais and the soapbox tends to point out every culprit except the one standing on the dais and the soapbox and those gathered together to listen.
We attended a Lutheran church (Missouri Synod) this past week while traveling. I scoured the local church websites looking for a Lord's Day sermon topic on Christ and, as I had done in the past, wound up choosing the Lutheran church, for the atonement is at least always present in the liturgy if not the sermon. As it happened, a "retired" minister was filling the pulpit for the regular pastor. In essence, his sermon was "Christ is the only answer." A worshipper came up to my wife and recommended that we should come back next week when the regular pastor is in the pulpit but I think that we were blessed with the right day, the right minister and the right message. In our storied past, calls for national days of prayer and fasting have been corporate, where the composer of the call was in need of repentance as any of the represented, but ultimately the pulpit is what God utilizes in calling individuals and nations to repentance. Unfortunately for today, our pulpits are in need of awakening. Such is our extreme dilemma.
Once again I would like to recommend refnet.fm as a resource for a comparison of our church age today and that of times past.
During those first years after a burden of sin appeared on my back and I came to the cross of Calvary and found redemption in what Jesus Christ accomplished on that day over two thousand years ago I found myself frequenting Christian conferences. They were a time of great joy and I'm so thankful for them but if one is not careful one can live only for the conferences and seminars and begin to live vicariously through the speakers and come to depend upon their efforts to sustain one's enthusiasm.
Only a reformation in American Christianity holds any hope for us to survive as a nation. God's Holy Spirit is the only one who can transform us by the renewing of our minds. It is only upon the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ that we can depend. Should God have mercy upon America it will be through our pulpits that he reforms us and there is scant evidence at the present time of such mercy. The vast majority of my brothers and sisters in Christ would disagree with that assessment but that same vast majority has been given little to compare with present day evangelicalism. The following post is from August of 2011:
Pulpit....Not The Podium
One of the running themes in this blog is the need for America to humble itself before God, before God humbles us before our numerous enemies. Yesterday, Texas Governor Rick Perry hosted a major prayer event in Houston of upwards of 25,000 people with that very message. One might therefore expect the writer of this blog to wholeheartedly rejoice in this but that's not the case. I agree with the diagnosis, but not prescription of a media event.
We are falling apart in every way imaginable. Our Congress is clueless which is a description far too generous to use on our White House. Our culture is in chaos. Our media is in denial while our enemies are certain of our collapse. Pep rallies are not the answer especially when politics is part of it. I'm not questioning the intent of the organizers or Governor Perry for I know what it is like to finally figure out that America is collapsing because its reliance upon God has vanished, because we have gone our own way and God is permitting us to reap what we have sown.
I have probably written a dozen times in this blog on the need for America to humble itself before God and I hope in those blogs that I made it known that I was talking about myself as much as anyone who might read it. Ultimately, we do not have to see America's sins clearer...we have to see more clearly the one sinned against (God.) A deficient view of the holiness of God can result in feelings of a satisfactory repentance and the consequent projection upon others of the need to do so also. A heightened view of the holiness of God will hardly get one off the hook so easily.
The Puritan mind could see clearer... God and His character, hence repentance was an everyday occurrence as they humbly approached God for all their needs. The secular mind of today sees the Puritan mind as a lifelong quest to quench joy in anyone and everyone and the evangelical mind is a product of these times, on display in Christian bookstores, Christian music concerts and events, and fundraising telethons, and is much more susceptible to a good gimmick than what is really needed.
The podium, the bookstore and the blogosphere can indeed address our inflated view of our minds and ourselves and the turmoil that lies ahead but only the pulpit can effectively deflate that view, soften the heart and ease the burdened soul through the proclamation of redemption through the blood of Christ as written in God's Word. The speaker on the dais and the soapbox tends to point out every culprit except the one standing on the dais and the soapbox and those gathered together to listen.
We attended a Lutheran church (Missouri Synod) this past week while traveling. I scoured the local church websites looking for a Lord's Day sermon topic on Christ and, as I had done in the past, wound up choosing the Lutheran church, for the atonement is at least always present in the liturgy if not the sermon. As it happened, a "retired" minister was filling the pulpit for the regular pastor. In essence, his sermon was "Christ is the only answer." A worshipper came up to my wife and recommended that we should come back next week when the regular pastor is in the pulpit but I think that we were blessed with the right day, the right minister and the right message. In our storied past, calls for national days of prayer and fasting have been corporate, where the composer of the call was in need of repentance as any of the represented, but ultimately the pulpit is what God utilizes in calling individuals and nations to repentance. Unfortunately for today, our pulpits are in need of awakening. Such is our extreme dilemma.
Once again I would like to recommend refnet.fm as a resource for a comparison of our church age today and that of times past.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
It Would Make No Sense....
I cannot remember what it feels like not to know Jesus Christ as my Savior, my Lord and King. Oh I remember what it is like to trample underfoot the grace that He bestowed upon me, sinner that I am, for I would only have to go back hours if not minutes for that, but I cannot remember how I thought prior to 1982. I know what wasn't in my mind but cannot remember what was there. I can recall my fourth birthday party where my older cousin Buzzy hid behind a door to scare me. I remember putting a full carton of my lunch milk into the milk crate, spilling it all over the kindergarten floor at North Hill Elementary School, and then not owning up to it as Mrs. Martin had us circle the crate until until the guilty party fessed up. It's not for lack of memory powers, it's for lack of something else.
I remember what it was like to be....religious. I remember sitting in the pew before grade school, holding my daily missal in my hands almost entranced by the Latin words coming from the altar. I remember trying to converse with God on long walks in the rain while in my teens. I remember attending Mass in Vietnam on those Sunday mornings when I didn't have a hangover. I remember walking over to St. Paul's Cathedral for evening Mass after finishing work at Hillman Library at Pitt. I just cannot remember the name of Jesus as anything more than a distant personage who must surely be revered as someone very important but for reasons as distant in understanding as the heavens themselves where Jesus lived.
Someone won over $400 million dollars in the Powerball yesterday but that experience cannot possibly rival receiving the grace poured from the cross of Calvary. I have a Bible hanging on the side of my locker at work all of the time. I doubt that it is picked up very often. Here is something that should make that $400 million jackpot appear as a worn penny on the street in value but it goes unrecognized. Bibles are everywhere in America but can't compete with an iPhone in perceived value.
Arminianism is the prevalent theology in evangelicalism today. In this doctrine man responds positively to the Gospel and is born again. But this is not what Scripture describes. In the Gospel according to Jesus Christ a dead person (spiritually) is made alive!!! He then responds to the Gospel that he truly hears for the first time. For ten years I thought that I made a decision and God responded by pouring His grace out upon me, that I wasn't as dumb as I look! Then I saw what really happened, that for some reason known only to God, he said..."You....the lowest of the low....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" It was He that opened my eyes, that made me see my previous 32 years. I saw the filth and the rebellion, the pride, the hate, the ignorance and the arrogance.....and then I saw a King before me, the King of Kings! My heart stopped beating and a new heart began to beat. My lungs collapsed. I could draw in no air for the majesty I was in the presence of. I yelled as John Bunyan's pilgrim..."Life, life, eternal life!"
If I sit and meditate and try as hard as I can to remember what it what like before God said to me..."You"...I start to tremble. Something wafts through my nostrils...an odious smell...and then it disappears. I perceive that God will not let me return any further then the address. I see the outside of the building but cannot go in. I never want to go into that building but I also never want to forget it for therein is my only remembrance of what I was rescued from, and every time I see it I yell once again...."Life, life, eternal life!'. My desire is that you hear what I heard....the words "You.....the lowest of the low.....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" for it makes no sense that God would have had mercy on me but that I could tell you of it!
I remember what it was like to be....religious. I remember sitting in the pew before grade school, holding my daily missal in my hands almost entranced by the Latin words coming from the altar. I remember trying to converse with God on long walks in the rain while in my teens. I remember attending Mass in Vietnam on those Sunday mornings when I didn't have a hangover. I remember walking over to St. Paul's Cathedral for evening Mass after finishing work at Hillman Library at Pitt. I just cannot remember the name of Jesus as anything more than a distant personage who must surely be revered as someone very important but for reasons as distant in understanding as the heavens themselves where Jesus lived.
Someone won over $400 million dollars in the Powerball yesterday but that experience cannot possibly rival receiving the grace poured from the cross of Calvary. I have a Bible hanging on the side of my locker at work all of the time. I doubt that it is picked up very often. Here is something that should make that $400 million jackpot appear as a worn penny on the street in value but it goes unrecognized. Bibles are everywhere in America but can't compete with an iPhone in perceived value.
Arminianism is the prevalent theology in evangelicalism today. In this doctrine man responds positively to the Gospel and is born again. But this is not what Scripture describes. In the Gospel according to Jesus Christ a dead person (spiritually) is made alive!!! He then responds to the Gospel that he truly hears for the first time. For ten years I thought that I made a decision and God responded by pouring His grace out upon me, that I wasn't as dumb as I look! Then I saw what really happened, that for some reason known only to God, he said..."You....the lowest of the low....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" It was He that opened my eyes, that made me see my previous 32 years. I saw the filth and the rebellion, the pride, the hate, the ignorance and the arrogance.....and then I saw a King before me, the King of Kings! My heart stopped beating and a new heart began to beat. My lungs collapsed. I could draw in no air for the majesty I was in the presence of. I yelled as John Bunyan's pilgrim..."Life, life, eternal life!"
If I sit and meditate and try as hard as I can to remember what it what like before God said to me..."You"...I start to tremble. Something wafts through my nostrils...an odious smell...and then it disappears. I perceive that God will not let me return any further then the address. I see the outside of the building but cannot go in. I never want to go into that building but I also never want to forget it for therein is my only remembrance of what I was rescued from, and every time I see it I yell once again...."Life, life, eternal life!'. My desire is that you hear what I heard....the words "You.....the lowest of the low.....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" for it makes no sense that God would have had mercy on me but that I could tell you of it!
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