"....This Has Been A Test...."

         Most likely the reader of this post visited the Christian blogs section of blogspot.com, something they probably often do to read encouraging posts on the Christian faith, and came across my posts. Or maybe the reader saw my bumper sticker and were just curious to see what it was about? To those readers....you are living in a time of epochal history. By that I mean it is a supercritical time period, surreal, as the eye of a hurricane, almost suspended animation where we watch the events occurring but feel detached from the dangers.
         This post will most likely change nothing in your perception of the dangers facing us as Americans. What I hope that it will do is become wedged somewhere in the recesses of your mind to be recalled at some later date.
         We have a "Manchurian President' whose actions are so strikingly similar to Vladimir Lenin's philosophy of revolution that it cannot be coincidence. Lenin was constantly surveying the Russian culture looking for the right move to make, the right time to play the endgame. He knew that it could not just be his comparatively little cadre of revolutionaries that could establish a dictatorial Communist state but that various stratums of society must be ripe to, on the one hand help and on the other hand be blissfully ignorant dupes, but eventually, true power was to reside only in the party for the people were not capable of making decisions.
       Barack Obama's window of opportunity is closing fast but there are things in his favor. The media is mad at Obama but nothing near dangerous to him yet. It's the beginning of football season. The Republican Establishment class of Elites are helping greatly. They are so fixated on winning the Senate that they are oblivious to the fact that Capitol Hill is collapsing into a sink hole.
       Back to my original statement, this is this generation's Pearl Harbor multiplied many times! The threat to the Republic is real. Communism is real. A collapse of the economy of epic proportions is real. The expanding threat of Islamic terrorism and a Caliphate is real. Pandemics are not out of the question. Volcanic and seismic problems are more than a concern. A porous border and shrinking military both in numbers and leadership is more than alarming, and a culture that has no discernment and is on a narcissistic binge..... is real.
       All of this started with cutting God from the squad and trading Him for John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Charles Darwin, Charles Grandison Finney and a player to be named later.

       ****This has been a test**** please click on the 'next blog' at the top of the page you will be returned to the original programming.

Blue Ribbon

         I was raised up to the age of twelve in Buffalo and then moved to Pittsburgh. Rare trips to the country were a big deal to me. I remember a day trip to Knox Farm near Buffalo as a kid where I bought a little set of farm animals with a barn and fence. I probably never saw a cow up to that point. Well I live well outside of the city today and love state and local fairs, one of which we were at tonight. I'm still trying to figure out what goats and pigs are all about, especially the goats. For some reason I get the feeling that they think they're smarter than me....just the way that they stare at me or something.

         Anyway, it's the simplicity of the fairs that draws me to them. I look at the people much more than the animals or the entertainment or the rides. It's America. The people are real. The smells are real. If I had to choose my favorite thing it would be when a young girl or boy leads some huge farm animal into the arena hoping to win that blue ribbon. How blessed that child is to value something like this and how blessed America has been for people like this. At one point tonight, while walking past the goats and donkeys, my mind, for a few moments anyway, was in Jerusalem two-thousand years ago, and in Bethlehem...in a similar stall.
         I bought a bush hat for five dollars! I'll never wear it but....five dollars....come on! We ate supper standing up and threw ping pong balls from a bucket towards water filled jars hoping....not...to win a gold fish that I would be obligated to feed every day. I just wanted to toss the balls. A friend's two little girls came up to me and they were thrilled as I shared the ping pong balls, their parents also rooting for the balls to bounce to the ground.
         I talked to a local pastor for a little while at his church's booth, listened to a young lady mixing country music with yodeling, and had a short talk with the man at the Republican booth. Last year at the same fair I had a tee shirt made with this blog's URL emblazoned on the back in neon green lettering. My wife loves that shirt so much that she protects it by rolling it in a tight ball and storing it safely in the back of my shorts drawer.
         When I was in Catholic grade school in Buffalo we were sometimes treated to a Hollywood movie shown on a film projector. One movie, and one movie only sticks in my mind.... Rogers and Hammerstein's State Fair....starring Pat Boone, Bobby Darin and Ann-Margret. I can even remember Pat crooning:

Our State Fair is a great State Fair...
Don't miss it, don't even be late...
It' Dollars to donuts that our state fair....
is the best state fair in our state!"

Who Knew?

         There are few things more enjoyable to me in everyday life than good conversation, and few enjoyable things harder to come by. Picture this...I work in an industrial setting where most of us are blue collar, drive or own a pick-up and a Harley, hunt, fish or golf, scratch where it itches, use earthy language and have no use for political correctness....good men who love their families, work hard and play just as hard. It was probably twenty years ago that I brought a board game in and placed it on the lunch table. It was called the Ungame. There were no winners or losers to the game. The dice and board were just something to move one along to pick up their next card. On the cards were questions that simply asked for an honest answer. One question might be "What was the saddest day of your life?." Another might be "What do you love most about our country?" These guys looked at me as if I were nuts, but we were all friends so they played along. It turned out to be one of the better experiences I've had with these men. The game was brought out again and again for a couple of weeks. These men wanted to share their innermost thoughts and hear those of others but never had the opportunity! It was a special time and I've never forgotten it.
         I tend to cringe at the thought of dinner parties or even wedding receptions for I know that the conversation will be "catch up" on what's new. In a previous post I related this story from our recent cruise to Bermuda, "I had great difficulty getting into serious discussions about the world that we live in but I did have one lead-in for a serious talk. After returning from an excursion I sat on the bed in our stateroom and turned on the television. That classic 1953 film Titanic had just started and I planned on watching it. Early on, in the middle of a serious scene where Barbara Stanwyck's character was in tears discussing with Clifton Webb's character their soon to be divorce, the screen went blank for a few moments and a Bob Hope comedy started in its place! I couldn't help but wonder if a member of the crew spotted the cable channel's offering about the sinking of the Titanic and hurriedly somehow switched the programming.
         I brought this up at the dinner table and focused on the story of the Titanic. Those people were sitting around dinner tables just like we were, being waited on hand and foot by a very professional staff of shipboard waiters, talking about the same incidentals of life that we were talking about. Life was exciting to them on their transatlantic voyage as it was to us on our luxurious cruise to Bermuda.....until the Titanic brushed the ragged subsurface of the iceberg, then life changed for everyone. I followed this concept up with the great film Mrs. Miniver where Greer Garson's character lived a privileged life life in a beautiful English home on the Thames River outside of London. She was preoccupied with the purchase of a Sunday hat that she desperately wanted. Walter Pidgeon's character of her husband was equally preoccupied with the purchase of a new sporty automobile. Their children had wonderful prospects for the future....once again... only until England was forced to enter the war. I mentioned two very different church services from the film, one in the beginning where the family was thinking about anything but God and the other at the end where, under the blue sky visible through the bombed out roof of the church, everyone gave rapt attention to their Creator. They now knew that the God who could sustain them as a nation could also lift His protective hand from them. I received no response from our friends at the table and the conversation soon returned to the cruise.
         Sometimes I'm surprised at how conversations can evolve and the following post from December of 2012 is an example of how there might be great conversations out there, and friendships, if we could somehow unearth them.

Who Knew?

One Act Play...sort of. (click on View Web Version for the iPhone)

         Betty and John Hunter are in their car talking about the couple that they barely know save for a lengthy conversation while seated together at the wedding of the daughter of a mutual friend. Tom and Jen Ayers invited them over the following Saturday, for their children did attend the same elementary school and it seemed like the proper thing to do. Betty and John cheerfully accepted for it also seemed like the right thing to do.

Betty: Where's your smile John?
John: This is my smile.
Betty: I know better than that.
John: I know. I like Tom. It's just....It's all hunting and sports with him.
Betty: What about me? Jen is like... almost a chef....everything is food, food, food. (pausing) But
they were nice enough to ask us over.
John: I just hope that I don't have to look at more pictures of Tom crouching over a dead deer.

Meanwhile at the home of Tom and Jen Ayers.

Jen: Tom! Try to smile. They're nice people. It's not going to be that bad.
Tom: Jen. I know they are nice but we have absolutely nothing in common. John's a contractor.
Going to Lowe's is like sitting in the dentist's chair to me. And Betty...Her conversation is all
triglycerides, blood pressure and vitamins while I haven't been to a doctor in my life.
Jen: (Peeking through the drapes as a light flashed outside) They're here...be nice.
Tom: I'm always nice.

Betty and John enter with a bottle of wine as a gift.

Jen: Thank-you. Ooh, Tears of Gettysburg. It's one of my favorite wines!
Tom: Hi John. How's everything?
John: Hi Tom. Fine. How's everything with you?
Tom: Good.
Betty: It's just about to rain. My Arthritis always acts up in damp weather.
Jen: Well we have dry heat. Maybe you won't notice?

Jen served up a beautiful (there's no other word for it) vegetable plate and dip. and Tom didn't have to show pictures for a mounted deer head was hanging a foot over John's head at the table. Tom felt that he had to comment.

John: Wow! Get that this year Tom?
Tom: Yeah....ten point. I was only an hour in the woods.
Jen: This dip is great Betty.
Betty: I'll give you the recipe Jen and walk you step by step through it.
Tom: What have you been up to John?
John: I'm remodelling the kitchen. The house is a disaster area right now.

An hour into the visit and John's complete design was laid out for Betty and Tom. Tom then started talking about his golf game. John just nodded not having the slightest idea what a slice was. Jen took Betty into the kitchen and supplied Betty with pen and paper to write down the steps in making the dip while Betty analyzed the ingredients to see how the dip would affect her triglycerides. They retreated to the living room and Tom was just happy to get out from under the mounted dear head.

John: Whew! It's 9:30. Maybe we ought to be heading home Betty?
Betty: Well, church in the morning. We go to a 9 AM service.
Tom: Where do you go to church?
John: First Reformed Presbyterian in Lawrenceville. How about you?
Jen: We go to First Baptist right here!
Betty: Do you have a good preacher there?
Tom: Betty, he preaches the Cross of Christ every week. I don't know what I'd do without it.
John: That's unusual Tom...preaching Christ.....We're blessed too. I don't think that we have ever
had a Lord's Day where the Gospel wasn't preached. We had spent five years in a church
previous to First Reformed Presbyterian where the Gospel was never really preached, the
name of Jesus was everywhere but nothing about our lost condition and His atoning work
work on the cross.
Jen: Hey! Can you two stay a little bit longer. I'd like to go into the den and show you Tom's book
shelves. Have you ever heard of Michael Horton?
John: Jen, we were on a White Horse Inn cruise in April and had conversations with all of those
guys! I'd like to see the books. Got any decaf coffee?
Tom: It'll only take a few minutes. What about getting up early?
Betty: Ah...we both had afternoon naps today...Right John?
John: I'm not tired at all.

John and Betty spent and additional two and a half hours at the homes of their new friends.

In the car on the way home.

John. Ya know. I really like Tom. He's a wonderful brother in Christ.
Betty: When do you think the kitchen will be done so we can ask them over?
John: The kitchen doesn't have to be done. I already asked Tom about coming over next week. You
Don't mind do you?
Betty: No! We'll just put some plastic up over the doorway to the kitchen.

Meanwhile back at Tom and Jen's.

Jen: How about that Tom. I just love Betty. What a wonderful time tonight!
Tom: I was wrong about John. Yeah he has those interests but I never knew that they paled next
to his Christian faith.
Jen: Who knew
Tom: Yeah. Who knew?

Red Solo Cup.....Let's Have A Party

The following was first posted in December of 2011:


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

Double-Duped

         Princeton Professor Cornel West published a harsh diatribe against Barack Obama and seemed surprised at what has unfolded in this administration. Professor West has been double-duped. Barack Obama is a dupe and therefore also those who listened to him.
   
         The generations represented in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twelve will be made known to either be of vintage American stock that may make more mistakes than it should be allotted but ultimately humbles itself before it's Creator and is given strength and wisdom to persevere and overcome..... or..... it will be the last generations of this grand "American Experiment."
         The Leftist movement in America is now showing itself to pure Communist in it's DNA. Our nation is being handed over to this sharing, fair-minded and peace loving group that has a prod and whip in one hand and branding iron in the other.

Dupes........September 15, 2011


          The relationship between the American Progressive and Communism has always been a dysfunctional one, the Progressive longing for someone to look to as a hero and the Communist not only abusing that adulation but sneering at those so gullible as to think that there is anything compassionate or caring about them. The Communist knew the extraordinary weaknesses of the liberal American mind and had taken advantage of it from the beginning, for a century now! It has a new face today, hiding behind a semi-capitalist veil, for it retreated and reinvented its outward appearance.
          This generation will never be able to say that they were not told, not warned, for the evidence is everywhere if only we would look. I've reported on more than a dozen outstanding books on the deteriorating condition of our nation and its causes in this blog of almost three 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/Progressive 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 (sound familiar?) 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 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.

Feelings Toward Barack Obama.... Then And Now

     
        

         I bring back the following post fairly often. It was written in November of 2009, about ten months after Barack Obama became President! He may have started out only weak but had graduated into dangerous and since taken up full time employment as a demolition expert to our Constitution and coordinator in amongst our enemies. The Republican Establishment Elites should have threatened impeachment a long time ago and started those proceedings months ago but that would mobilize the Tea Party once again and that's the last thing they want, for they would be next.
          I could not write this post in its entirety, or even most of it, today!
  
Some Things I Like About BHO

          You would not have to read very far into this blog to realize that I believe that Barack Obama was unprepared and possibly not qualified to be President of the United States, that his method in taking office was deceptive, his foreign policy lowers the defense of this nation, his domestic policies are too close to the beginnings of a totalitarian state and that he represents a socialist takeover of America. Is there not anything good that I can say about him? Actually there are some things. I do not wish ill of this man, our president. I've mentioned before that the optimism I perceive on the faces of the black community, particularly the children, tempts me at times to overlook some of these serious problems, tempts me greatly but fails to convince. Here are the things I like about Barack Obama. He came from a dysfunctional family and survived. One does not have to be poor during their youth to be disadvantaged. He was a bright and motivated student that accomplished much in academia. He is a faithful husband and loving father of two beautiful children. His speech is polite and constrained and at times he can be charming. I do not doubt his compassion, rather his wisdom. I want him to utterly fail in instituting his agenda but succeed in dealing with threats to this nation both foreign and domestic. I want him to learn and grow into a job that Saul Alinsky did not prepare him for, and I want him to retire from office in three years with the respect any former President should receive.

          Some day I may want to write about the things that I like about Hillary Clinton, but that will be the day the men in white uniforms come for me and put me into a room with big Plexiglas windows and rubber walls which I will surely think is a racquetball court and ask for a paddle and ball to practice with.

Life Is A Cabaret.....Old Chum

         Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel made the comment yesterday that "the world is exploding all over." I could have told him that years ago. Breitbart has a piece up right now titled "Left-Wing WAPO (Washington Post) columnist:  "Obama Vacations As The World Burns." and another piece titled "CNN:  'Awkward,' Not Terrific "optics" For Obama To Golf As Chaos Consumes The World," and the New York Times reported that Obama has golfed three times so far in his vacation of four days. The following posts are about a month old and address the lack of discernment in America today:

Life Is A Cabaret...Old Chum

         The actor Shia LaBeouf made news by being arrested after causing a disturbance at a Broadway showing of Cabaret. I remember enjoying the same play back in the early seventies at the Stephen Foster Memorial performing arts center on the Pitt campus, and I remember the extraordinary talents of Lisa Minnelli in the film of the same name but the storyline always had an unsettling effect on me. As I think back on it today it's even more unsettling, for our culture resembles a hedonist cabaret in the last days of the Weimar Republic as totalitarianism watches our antics and plans our demise.
            As Lisa Minnelli's character succumbs to the death spiral of the cabaret at the end of the film she belts out the title song that I'm sure you are familiar with, some of the lyrics of which are:

Life is a cabaret,
Old chum
Come to the cabaret

Come taste the wine,
Come hear the band,
Time for a holiday

Start celebrating,
Right his way
Your table's waiting

No use permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away

Start by admitting
From cradle to tomb
Isn't that long a stay old

Life is a cabaret, old chum
It's only a cabaret, old chum
And I love a cabaret

"God Gave Us Barack Obama"

           I chose the New American Standard Bible for this verse from Hosea 9:7... "The days of punishment have come; Let Israel know this! The prophet is a fool, The inspired man is demented, Because of the grossness of your iniquity, And because your hostility is so great."
          Those faithful preachers who weep in their pulpits....who weep for America, for their children and their children's children, and who weep at what America and the American church has become, are thought of as country bumpkins, fundamentalist fools and worse. Such is the state of the American mind in this age of rampant rebellion and toxic temperance towards godlessness as our nation surrenders on every hill. Such is the hostility to anything that might interfere with plans and goals.
          There is no excuse for not seeing the imminent peril our nation faces. There are reasons but not excuses. Our nation's leaders are the beginnings of our punishment. In speaking to a church congregation this past week, New York Congressman Charlie Rangel made this statement..."God gave us Barack Obama." He probably never spoke truer words.
          There has never been a perfect storm as is brewing today and we are rapidly becoming a police state as it is about to hit. Yet we party on. Billy Graham has been consistent in his warnings to America. John MacArthur has been consistent also, but we don't have ears to hear, and we don't have eyes to see. We are deaf to the Approaching Hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, to use the title of a 1985 book by Rev. Graham
          Fervent prayer, steeped in humility and salted with our sweat is our only hope, our only defensive weapon.

Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan.......

Jim: "Tom, do you really want Jesus to return?"
Tom: "Sure I do Jim, but I mean come on, I just got that promotion. Karly has the lead in her school play Bye Bye Birdie, Mike has Penn State recruiters calling all the time. Sure I want Jesus to come back, we all do but....hey look, I agree with you, these have to be the last days. I think that Jesus will return within twenty years. Why are you looking at me like that? What do you want me to do? We just have to be ready!"
          Jim isn't suffering from a rare spiritual disease for just about every one of us have it to one degree or another. The return of Jesus Christ in power and in glory is something we attest to but also something we don't really want just right now. Twenty years would be OK...even ten years. Maybe we wouldn't have this hesitation if we really thought that this might be the time but we have been conditioned to believe that it's actually a weak mental condition to think in such terms.
         There are many though, all over the world, who really pray, even plead for the return of Jesus, Most of them are suffering persecution every bit as horrendous as first century Christians.
         I have brought the following post back many times:

Remember Those Who Are......

          I have to return to this topic from time to time, in my own mind if nothing else, and I don't do it as often as I should, and I'm the lesser man and the poorer Christian for it.  As I write, brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus are persecuted, maimed and killed. Pakistan is in the news today, the Middle East often, and many other parts of the world continuously. Christians are not the darlings of the liberals nor the poster children of the United Nations therefore their stories are not worthy of review. Often they are just defending themselves and wind up being reported as merely one of two bickering religious groups. In most cases all they have to do is renounce God to avoid persecution....yet they do not. And I sit here outraged over our own predicament in America. No, I'm not saying to ignore our situation... to let go of our heritage or to let down our posterity. Quite the opposite, for if we do then we most certainly will be persecuted, for the hatred of God is pandemic. All I'm holding myself up to is keeping our problems in perspective and our priorities straight.
         We can learn from these our brothers and sisters in Christ for they are far beyond us. We can be so much a part of the world that we can no longer see what being a peculiar people is. I'm including myself here and if you are above this then I'm thankful for that but I have no such resume and no such biography as missionaries who have travelled far and sacrificed much. Praying for our persecuted brethren can open our eyes to our own failures. Praying for them can alleviate their suffering and increase their faith, for God hears our petitions. This I believe is fundamental to Christianity, that we uphold our brothers and sisters who are in need, who are persecuted and downtrodden, who have few of the worldly comforts that we do and who know that their faith may bring about their martyrdom.

I Was Democrat Before Democrat Was Cool

          I was seven years old when I first saw the movie Bridge On The River Kwai. My mother was working the afternoon shift at Sister's Hospital in Buffalo and my father had taken me to the Aero Drive-in to pass the time before he had to pick her up. Perhaps you are familiar with this David Lean film starring William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins and Sessue Hayakawa? The British colonel, played by Guinness, would have died before giving up the honor that his whole army career, his whole life, was based on. He never did relinquish his honor...only his mind. He ultimately supported the enemy that was at war with his nation because his reasoning was damaged by a distorted sense of that honor, not in a cause but for an ideal, that of the ultimate British officer. At the end of the film he sees the reality of his misguided efforts. His whole purpose in life came crashing down upon him. At that moment of realization he could only look up and ask "What have I done?"
          I was a Democrat for most of my 62 years. OK, that includes from the day of my birth in that same Sister's Hospital but I distinctly remember my dad making a big deal about finding a union barber shop when I was a young boy. I idolized John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy even more. My father is buried a few hundred yards from both of them in Arlington National Cemetery. I remember seeing the president himself riding in a motorcade by my elementary school after he arrived at Buffalo International Airport. I was devastated when Bobby was assassinated. I shook Jimmy Carter's hand...twice... and volunteered for Ted Kennedy's failed presidential run in 1979. I still have some Democrat blood running through my veins. The picture of Bobby Kennedy standing atop an automobile in Soweto, South Africa, the cuffs of his white dress shirt rolled up and his shock of hair dangling over his forehead as he reached out to the black faces, still moves me as does the same deep concern for the poor of this nation and the world.
          As far-right as this blog might appear to the first time reader I do not march in lock-step to any political mantra... if only more Democrats could make the same statement. Bill, Al, Hillary and Barack are not Democrats, not in the sense of anything that I grew up knowing Democrats to be. My hope has been that real Democrats, and there are a few of them, retake their party for we need two, actually three or more parties to keep each other in check. Today we have only one party, the UniParty (please see my Dec. 25, 2013 post on this if you are interested). I have to believe that if I were still a Democrat I would have long ago demanded the ouster of Eric Holder and a complete investigation of Barack Obama's agenda and what sinister force propelled him to where he is. Pick up a copy sometime of A National Party No More by former Georgia Democrat Senator Zell Miller (paperback isbn 0807897015724) to see what the Democrat Party was and how it has changed.
         The day will come when the modern Democrat, the real Democrat, and many Republicans, find themselves in the same position as Colonel Nicholson from Bridge On The River Kwai. He (she) will weep over what has happened to America and will also say "What have I done?" The rest will be in denial, the final stage of the postmodern culture we are polluted by. Oh, for that day when both sides bow before Jesus Christ and humbly ask for undeserved mercies; when we may differ as Americans but not as different kinds of Americans; when we follow laws and not men; and when  a politician would rather resign than work only for a career, defend the Constitution over a platform, and survey his conduct over conducting a survey.

Renaissance Man

         The single most ludicrous concept that I can come up with right now is the often heard excuse that today is just like any day in years past where there were wars, and violence and crime and economic downturns and.....well you get it. It's denial that we are in any more difficulty in America than we have ever been in. While our military is purposely being depleted we have people
making decisions on national security who even if they had any love or admiration for America have absolutely no qualifications to even sit in the back of the room where strategy is taking place. The economy is ripe for catastrophe again and the next time the economic repercussions will be far worse. We have emboldened enemies and given them a window of opportunity that they have never seen before and will never see again. Our domestic situation is utter....utter....havoc. This should be a time of weeping, rending of garments and of extreme soberness, yet we are as content as a sleeping infant who only wakes up occasionally to cry for more food and giggles at the faces made to him.
         The following post is a plea to men. It was originally a Father's Day post and concerns the greatest vulnerability on our families and therefore our nation and that is the modern day Renaissance Man who knows a whole lot about many things and is even an expert on some but knows little about that which ultimately effects his family, his nation and his eternal soul:

2011

         Essentially, my only advertising for this blog, other than the cards I occasionally leave around, is the bumper stickers on my car. I change the message with each blog in such a way that a driver behind me at a traffic light might just be inquisitive enough to visit the site. I'll often look in the rear-view mirror and see a man alone in the car, or a woman, or a couple, and lift up a prayer for them.
I've appealed often in this blog to the concept of a father's love for his children.
         The average man is willing to take the chance of staying away from God. He has just enough stubborn determination to stay with the crowd for a long time but I want him to realize something, that he is applying this decision of his to his children also. "Oh, they can make up their own mind later on in life," he might say, but they will most likely make the same decision based on the pattern they saw in the father they loved.
          So, speaking here to these men....How much work have you put into this question of God and man? Might I offer a few possible answers.... You gave it some thought on an occasion or two and were not convinced.... You were dragged to church when you were young so you know what it's all about....or, Carl Sagan didn't buy it...and he was very intelligent. Maybe you are more of a philosopher...if there is a God why is there so much suffering, or... I'm not that bad of a person. I'm not concerned here with trying to answer these questions but rather in saying to you That's it? You are consigning your children to a future of not knowing Jesus because of your own limited experiences or because you stumbled over some questions that multitudes of Christians have trusted God with and thanked Him for ever since?
          Let me take a real leap here and assume that someone reading this might actually consider my thesis, that although they themselves are not being drawn to Jesus Christ, they love their children more than their own life. What are they to do? The first thing is to pray with your children...before meals and at bedtime. How hard is this guys? They will never...ever...forget this! Second...put a Bible, God's word to us, on the coffee table and pick it up to read on occasion for them to see. Third...humble yourself before God and admit that praying with your children and picking up a Bible are a mere pittance of what a father should do but plead that God might take that morsel and protect them through it.
          Another Christian reading this might wonder what kind of advice I'm giving? Twenty-five years ago or so, on one of our Pittsburgh rivers, there was a boating accident with a father and small child. The father couldn't swim and struggled as he held his child's head above the water. The child survived but the father drowned. That's what kind of advice this is! Hold your child's head above the water for you love them more than your own life. You might be surprised at what may happen for you indeed may be saying "I am not worthy... but have mercy on my child!" Your response here may turn out not to have been of your own volition, for many have come to Christ in similar ways as this. We thought that we were making an insignificant step but God had initiated it. We didn't realize this until later. Take your child by the hand to Christ and see how He may respond...even with you.

An Insignificant Post From An Insignificant Blogger

         I wanted to put this short post up after reading a news clip on what happened yesterday on the House floor. Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Tom Marino made some statements on the immigration debate from the microphone and after doing so was hotly pursued by Democrat House leader Nancy Pelosi. It was a short exchange and Representative Marino later tweeted this:
         “Rep. Pelosi called me an 'insignificant person' on the Floor of the House. I'll ponder that for a while driving to Williamsport tonight. Of course I'll be driving myself, with no staff or security. And I'm just a country lawyer who worked in a bakery until he was 30,” he said in three separate tweets.
         Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid should be the focus from every Republican's campaign this fall, should God even let us continue. Nancy Pelosi made it very clear that if you are merely a Congressperson you are insignificant. The House and Senate leadership are all that matters and you better obey them or you will be marginalized.
         Voters should know that if they vote for Democrat John Doe that they are supporting and sustaining Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama. They may get moneys earmarked for their district as the candidate campaigned on or some other legislation that supports their particular issues such as gay marriage, entitlements or abortion but they will also get a collapsing national defense, a police state and a stock market bubbling over and ready to implode.
          I think that this was a 'significant' mistake on Nancy Pelosi's part and indicative of the frustration they, the elites of both parties, feel as they see their reign of tyranny coming to an end, The question is will America itself last long enough to govern as the Founding Fathers intended it to govern.
   

The Children's Crusade

          There are multitudes of applicants all over the world waiting for paperwork to be completed to come to America and become citizens, and to honor us in this endeavor. They still see us as we once were, a land full of promise where any man and every man has an opportunity to follow a dream. What must go through their minds as they hear about the lawlessness on our border and read about our lawless president that makes a mockery of their patience?
          Those children who have crossed our southwest border in this debacle should be treated as our own children, with every comfort, nourishment and medical attention possible........until they are returned. This mess has very little to do with immigration. These are not refugees...they are pawns! It's a political ploy.....and damn anyone who gets in the way or suffers in the process. It's actually more than merely a political ploy, it's an ideological ploy... one more piece in the puzzle to bring America to its knees, an ideological gambit hatched in the darkness of either the world's ultra rich or the Communist playing his end-game, or both.
          One tact being used is to shame the Christian for not having compassion on the children. Compassion on the children is what this is all about. Without an America that is a ray of hope, a strong arm when needed and most of all a promulgator of the Gospel of Jesus Christ every child in this world will suffer! When the Soviet Union imploded, Leninist/Marxists did not all of a sudden give up their totalitarianism cause, nor did the Chinese leadership relinquish state control of the people's lives after they incorporated some aspects of capitalism. Communism is a dialectic that will change every outward appearance if it has to to keep the nightmare alive. Compassion is born in truth and in laws and in justice, not in lies, in chaos and in corruption. Compassion is in defending liberties, freedoms and law and order and then calling others in, not in giving them a bait & switch.
          Immigration has always been a jewel in America's crown and hopefully, should God have mercy upon us and pull us out of the muck and mire of spiritual and intellectual idolatry, it will continue to be so! My great-grandparents were immigrants and just about every American citizen can say something like that. We need more immigrants, many more, and they should see welcoming arms. Illegal immigration efforts have distorted this beauty and amnesty would be but one more nail in the coffin of our rule of law. If these people win we can make up signs welcoming the millions given amnesty and those signs should read...... welcome..... welcome.....to Cuba.....or Venezuela, for it won't be anything like America any more.

The Children's Crusade

          We don't know the specifics on what happened in the Children's Crusade of the early 13th century, for there are not many original sources to refer to, but I think that we can conclude this much, that at the invitation of someone, thousands of people, many of whom were children, started marching towards the Holy Land. Their purity and innocence would surely convert the Muslims and their success would shame the very act of war itself. How many died, how many quickly returned home, and how many were robbed and even enslaved, we don't know.
          Solomon's words ring true in this today for there surely is "nothing new under the sun." Barack Obama is the Pied Piper behind the disgrace at our southwest border. Whoever came up with this idea got it out of the bowels of the netherworld. These children were to shame us into amnesty. And why do Democrats want amnesty? Is it compassion for peoples who want to come to America? No. It's all Machiavellian politics. Amnesty represents Democrats winning elections for years to come no matter how corrupt and destructive they are. Why does the Republican establishment want amnesty... and they do? Is it an act of fairness on their part, even at a great cost to Americans? No again. They think that they can be competitive for those new votes. Putting myself in their place for a moment, in their exalted positions, with all their perks and a pension that would never lead one to worry about little things like Obamacare.....it must bring sheer terror to them to think about losing their seats in Congress and no longer be introduced as "the Honorable.....so and so "
          So the children are merely pawns in this real life game of medi-evil chess. And the rest of us are left to appear as the bad guys and clean up the mess. And yet it is only one of many abominable acts that this administration has involved us in. Stabbing Israel in the back is another, lying and spying on everyone..everywhere is another, an unjust Justice Department is another, a political IRS is another, a looming police state is another, a politically correct military is another, man-made global warming is yet another, and on and on and on....these people are not capable of telling the truth. Their mind's software never incorporated algorithms....only Al Gore....ithms!

"....In The Gathering Darkness"

         The following book review was posted two and a half years ago. I rarely, if at all, have led off a post with this plea......please read this and consider the message...for it not only pertains to America today but the consequences are engulfing us as I write:

Those Who Ignore History.....

          Erwin W. Lutzer is the long-time pastor of Moody Church in Chicago. He's the author of Hitler's Cross and is known for his studies into Hitler's Germany, its relation to the German Christian church and for warnings to America that a mass movement such as Nazism can happen here. He followed up his award winning book with When A Nation Forgets God, 7 Lessens We must Learn From Nazi Germany. This book can be purchased from Amazon.com for under ten dollars and I encourage you to give it to your loved ones, to friends and to anyone concerned about the path that America has taken.

          What you'll find in this paperback are remarkable similarities of Hitler's methods in conquering a culture for his purposes to our own slide into oblivion in America. Lutzer focuses on the weakness of the human mind when in the hands of master villains. He reminds us that our allegiance is first to Almighty God, and that what happened in the church of Nazi Germany should prove to us that "Christ must always stand alone...worshipped as One who stands not alongside the government leaders of this world but as standing above them as King of Kings and Lord of Lords."

          In his first warning, When God is separated from government, Judgment Follows, Hitler first tried to make peace with the church on his terms, then took power away from the German Parliament and finally used that usurped power to "obliterate" the church... "transforming (it) so thoroughly that every vestige of Christianity would be smashed." The "Confessing Church" of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller that challenged Hitler was dealt with harshly. The state would take over from the church on all issues such as dedicating infants, marriage and holidays which would become paganized. God would be so separated from the state that He became an enemy of that state.
          Lutzer gives us German theologian Niemoller's warning in a sermon, "We have all of us-the whole church and the whole community-we've been thrown into the Tempters sieve, and he is shaking and the wind is blowing, and it must now become manifest whether we are wheat or chaff. Verily, a time of sifting has come upon us, and even the most indolent and peaceful person among us must see that the calm of meditative Christianity is at an end."

          His second warning emanating from the Nazi experience is It's Always The Economy. I had a friend tell me just last week that he voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 for one reason and one reason only...the economy. Lutzer reminds us that Hitler "could never have come to power if the German economy had remained strong after World War I." Hitler exploited the crisis and the result was National Socialism. The author writes (as if we here do not already know and have not seen evidence of it today) "an economic crisis is always a gift to a leader who wants to capture a nation." Lutzer points out that "Hitler not only attracted the support of the middle class, but also of university students and professors." He created emergencies when needed and the Germans didn't care if they were losing their freedoms as long as the economy improved.

           The "majority" of Lutheran churches sided with Hitler and when eventually "mandated to swear personal allegiance to the Fuhrer," 800 pastors who refused to do so were "arrested and imprisoned." Hitler satisfied the people through monetary policies that would only later be shown as disastrous and on this Lutzer quotes Thomas Jefferson in "The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." He also quotes Abraham Lincoln in "We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor." He quotes Jesus in the feeding of the five thousand and consequent demand that Jesus be made king, "do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you." (John 6:27)

          Lutzer's third warning is about the Law and is titled That Which Is Legal Might Also Be Evil. Hitler created his own laws to legitimate his crimes. The Jews were not persons, so the SS could "legally" kill them. In fact this was the defense given by many in the post-war trials. We suffer from this malady today for in the postmodern mind laws are tools to accomplish our desires, not statutes of eternal truths. Today, Czars create their own laws in the form of regulations. One need look no further that Roe v. Wade to see how we legalized murder and consequently one's conscience is clear simply because one is within the law. Same-sex marriage applies the same thinking. Under attack today are the thoughts of the Samuel Rutherfords and William Blackstones of yesteryear. Lutzer lays it out very clearly in, "A student of the history of law in the Untied States should have been able to predict that human life would soon be reclassified as unworthy of special protection. Abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, homosexual marriage- these are the inevitable result of secular humanism's (and evolution's) worldview. When God dies, so does man."

          Lutzer fourth warning is Propaganda Can Change A Nation. He quotes Hitler from Mein Kampf, "The first task of propaganda is to win people for subsequent organization. The second task of propaganda is the disruption of the existing state of affairs and the permeation of this state of affairs with the new doctrine, while the second task of the organization must be the struggle for power, thus to achieve the final success of the doctrine." Just to be clear, that is Hitler writing...not Saul Alinsky. Lutzer continues, "Of course as any skilled propagandist knows the masses should never be told the end-game, that is, where the leader actually intends to take the people." Hitler believed that in order for people to believe the obvious lie that they had to be part of a "cultural current"... that many people would never change their minds individually, but would do so if they were in a crowd of several thousand convinced followers. When a seeker steps into a crowd of thousands, wrote Hitler, that seeker is swept away into the mighty effect of suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm...confirm(ing) to him the rightness of the new doctrine."

           Hitler knew that "terms and slogans could be used for broader appeal." Read, meditate and weep, if you will, on this quote from Mein Kampf ..."The magnitude of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to the big lie than to the little one, since they themselves lie in little things but would be ashamed of lies that are too big." And yet another Hitler quote, "By clever and persevering use of propaganda even heaven can be represented as hell to the people, and consequently the most wretched life as paradise." Lutzer writes of Albert Einstein's feelings on Nazi Germany in that the universities, the newspapers and the intellectuals gave in to Hitler...only the (Confessing) church "stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth...I am (therefore) forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."

          Lutzer fifth warning is Parents-Not The State, Are Responsible For A Child's Training. Hmmm...where have I heard the concept of the state being responsible for our children? From Hitler again..."German youth... must be consciously shaped according to principles which are recognized as correct...according to the principles of the ideology of National Socialism." Private schooling was abolished and "all education was unified under the Nazi ideology....textbooks were rewritten." Children's natural desire to be independent of parents was "exploited." Attitudes were taught and "values" were "clarified" and "facts were deliberately distorted." Here is another quote, from many years ago, this time from Harvard University professor Chester Pierce...(are you sitting down?) "every child in America who enters school at the age of five is mentally ill, because he comes to school with allegiance toward our elected officials, toward our Founding Fathers, toward our institutions, toward the preservation of this form of government....the truly well individual is the one who has rejected all these things...the true international child of the future." Lutzer's final plea was..."take charge of your child's education."

          The author's last two lessons to be learned have to do with what our response should be to what is going on. The first being... are we to take hold of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called, "cheap grace" or be inspired by "costly grace?"
          His last lesson, the most important of all, is labeled We Must Exalt The Cross In The Gathering Darkness.
         From my perspective, and I have blogged upon it many times, the church today has found more powerful concepts to preach than the cross of Jesus Christ, and here is the rub as it pertains to this book; preachers will look you in the eye after preaching a sermon that is 100 percent application, void of the gospel, and tell you "well, the gospel is actually in the application." The overall church is thus weakened,  susceptible to all forms of poor teaching, even to heresy, and is perfectly content to live in a dumbed-down doctrinal Christianity, all because the shepherd has configured his logic in such a way that the gospel, and the power thereof, is not spoken...but is there anyway!
         According to Lutzer, "Nazism did not rise out of a vacuum" and that "cultural streams" were more problematic than individuals. The cultural streams in America today are equally debilitating. American Christianity can learn a lot from the experiences of the German church. Very difficult days are likely ahead and Erwin Lutzer encourages us with a quote from Bonhoeffer, "it is before (the) cross and not before us that the world trembles." I offer here a Puritan prayer, in part, from Arthur Bennett's Valley Of Vision, which I highly recommended for daily devotions. It is also available at Amazon.com:

Lord God Almighty,

May I maintain a supreme regard to another
and better world,
and feel and confess myself a stranger
and a pilgrim here.
Afford me all the direction, defense, support,
and consolation my journey hence requires,
and grant me a mind stayed upon thee.
Give me large abundance of the supply of
the Spirit of Jesus,
that I may be prepared for every duty,
love thee in all my mercies,
submit to thee in every trial,
trust thee when walking in darkness,
have peace in thee amidst life's changes.
Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief
and uncertainties.

Impeachment

         I first mentioned impeachment in these posts in September of 2011 and in February of this year wrote this:  "Impeachment of President Barack Hussein Obama with a guilty verdict in a Senate trial would be more than difficult and maybe not even possible but it has to be pursued" and the following post is from the 12th of this month. Had the Republicans in the House of Representatives initiated impeachment proceedings when it first became very clear that Barack Obama had an agenda, and that agenda was not in the best interests of America, or its citizens, or its economy, or its allies, and that that agenda was not only deceptive and unethical but it involved....high crimes and misdemeanors, then we might not be experiencing what we are on our Southwest border today, and one of our strongest allies might not be ridiculed around the world for defending themselves.... and these are just two examples that  might have been prevented or at least impeded.

High Crimes And Misdemeanors.....July 12, 2014

         We always knew that Barack Obama was a socialist but in short order it became clear that he was purposely destructive to our Constitution, narcissistic beyond comprehension, and to those who know what Communism is...a closet Communist. By the summer of 2012 the American public seemed to have caught on and Obama would be a one-term president but the powers that be in the Republican Party would not settle for that for they wanted one of their own in the Oval Office. They gave us a flawed candidate and a campaign that would not call out the dangers of Barack Obama, only the imperfections. They greatly underestimated the recuperative powers of Barack Obama who not only won reelection but came back with a vengeance, but he himself may have underestimated the restorative powers of freedom and liberty when they are being choked by tyranny.
          Pat Buchanan started it all off with a column that strongly advised against any thoughts of impeaching Barack Obama. He chose this topic after hearing the 'I word' bandied about in our nation's capitol and wrote that it would be trading a winning hand for a losing hand. Sarah Palin came back quickly and her call for impeachment was titled .... 'time to impeach;' nice choice of words, particularly since I wrote my post of the same title days before. John Boehner joined in stating there would be no impeachment of Barack Obama but Mark Levin backed up Sarah Palin. The Wall Street Journal, a paper I long ago gave up on in favor of the Investors Business Daily, joined in on the side of Buchanan and Boehner. Sarah Palin then expanded on her call for impeachment.
          This is certainly not the first talk of impeachment for there are books out on the topic, and I recommended one the other day but it is the latest round of impeachment talk and with Matt Drudge calling the blow-by-blow.... one no longer has to say or write the 'I word' but can now freely say....impeach.
          The last thing that the elites of the Republican Party want is to be pressured by a groundswell of protest into beginning impeachment proceeding against Barack Obama. Blood is said to be thicker than water and these elites are "blood brothers" with Pelosi and Reid and the gang whereas they are only baptised by immersion in the dirty water of politics into the Republican Party. What we hear from them is that it is more important to win back the Senate. It's a ploy, 'forget our inter-party battle and elect us.....again!'
          The Niagara River separates around Grand Island before coming together again just before going over the falls and that's about what the Republican establishment is offering us, both parties are taking us into the gorge.
          As appeared on the Drudge Report today, a very recent poll informed that 42% of Millenials..."say they're 'socialist' " but only 16% "know what it means." It may not be possible to impeach Barack Obama, indeed we may not even have enough time before his booby traps detonate, but attempting it would be a sign of a functioning Constitutional Republic once again. We can give Americans and Millenials a lesson on their Constitution and a primer on Communism that has been kept from them in this postmodern atmosphere

What Would Happen If....

          What would happen if a President of the United States were to go completely rogue? Just one of the crises that we are facing in America today is that our President often operates outside of the law and outside of our Constitution. It's a natural result of something like this that Americans would protest and even come together to form political blocs, it's part of being American, but it's not natural for the American government to double down and consider those protesting to be a threat, even domestic terrorists, that is not unless that government does indeed have ulterior motives that concerned the citizens to begin with.
          There are, and have been for quite some time, ominous news reports on government munitions, mechanized armor, intelligence gathering on all American citizens, training and practical exercises in controlling citizens, the forming and training of swat teams for government bureaucracies that one would never associate with the need for a paramilitary force, and other very questionable policies and dictates.
          It seems like this administration expects an upheaval and may even want one. It foments distrust and outrage from one part of America and then uses that distrust and outrage as an excuse to arm itself to the teeth.
          Barack Obama's mental stability is even being questioned. His comments and actions are often anything but presidential, his reasoning akin to a young boy who blames everything on his brother. One very disturbing trait is that he can make policy that is absurd, provocative and threatening and be castigated for it, even by members of his own party, and pause for only a brief moment before continuing as if never challenged at all. Is this something beyond arrogance? What if he institutes martial law? What if he suspends our Constitution or our national elections under the threat of a national emergency, a brewing national emergency he may have conveniently ignored?
          So back to my original question....what would happen if a President of the United States were to go completely rogue?
   

America.....Spiralling Out Of Control

          Do you really love America? Do you even know what it once was, and what it is becoming today? Do you even care?
          Pat Buchanan wrote yesterday that we are in danger of no longer being "one nation" but "Balkanized into ethnic enclaves." It's probably not the first time that he inferred that our bond as Americans is disappearing and many others have commented on the same thing as did I in the following post from 2009. We are disintegrating at every level! What does it mean to love America and how can you love something that is only a faint shadow of what it once was? One would first have to know what it once was and few today remember it, were even taught it in school and have scant interest in all the fuss about losing it.
          The following post was written over five years ago and our downgrade is now spiralling out of control! Our only hope....our only....hope...is that God's Spirit would move over our collective hearts and minds as harvest winds over fields of grain, yet our political class is only intent on threshing the grain of these fields with the winnowing fork of electoral pragmatism then collecting only the chaff to feed their own livestock.

April 15, 2009: America The Beautiful

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

High Crimes And Misdemeanors

          I contacted our congressman with a simple message...now is the time to consider impeachment of Barack Obama. I did not request a reply because there is no way a congressman is going to be open on a subject like this. I did receive a prepared response to questions on impeachment which in effect said that our Constitution allows for impeachment only in the case of "Treason, Bribery, or high Crimes and Misdemeaners" thus implying that Barack Obama is not guilty of impeachable offenses. The Congressman's response went on to say that the Congress must use its "oversight authority" in stopping certain policies. In fairness to him, he may be on the border of considering impeachment or he may be concerned that a two-thirds guilty vote that would be needed in a Democrat Senate would be impossible to achieve.
          Richard Nixon was threatened with articles of impeachment consisting of 1) Obstruction Of Justice, 2) Abuse Of Power and 3) Defiance Of Subpoenas. Bill Clinton was charged with articles of impeachment consisting of 1) Perjury To A Grand Jury and 2) Obstruction Of Justice.
          Within the last few days John Boehner announced that a lawsuit is being considered against Barack Obama. Here is his reasoning: "Every member of Congress swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So did President Barack Obama. but too often over the past five years, the President has circumvented the American people and their elected representatives through executive action, changing and creating his own laws, and excusing himself from enforcing statutes he is sworn to uphold." Apparently this description, which is only a small part of this President's overt and covert attempts to undermine our Constitution, empower our enemies and imperil our allies and impose a Marxist state, even tyranny, upon the American people does not meet the criteria of "Treason, Bribery, or high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
          It could take years to see the end of a lawsuit. It could take months to see if the House of Representatives even has standing to bring about a lawsuit. Impeachment proceedings are no answer to our problems in America but they must take place. They should not be contingent upon a favorable verdict in a Senate trial, nor should they hinge on whether or not they might stir up the Democrat base. Successful or not, impeachment proceedings could, if handled correctly, serve to do what our national news media has failed to do. They could inform Americans from Miami to Prudhoe Bay and from Honolulu to Bangor Maine that we are a Constitutional Republic that is under siege from those who have no appreciation for our past and no concern for our future, it could enlighten the American public as to the strategies of the Communist over the past century and the almost picture perfect similarities to the Obama administration, and it could be the determining factor in preventing this President from implementing even more egregious circumventions of our Constitution.
          What this may boil down to is the character of our elected representatives. One gets the feeling that they are not of the same stouthearted, resolute, resourceful and unyielding determination as that of our founding fathers. Some are, no doubt, but as of now not enough. The same grid can be held up to the American people, and also to me, for we are a nation in need of introspection.
          Impeaching Barack Obama has nothing to do with politics, it has everything to do with doing what is right. Scripture tells us that God knows our "frame." He knows that we are inherently weak and prone to fall away. The pressing question is do we ourselves know our own ...frame? If we did we would look only to Him and depend upon His strength.
         The American people do not realize the scope of our predicament, our Congress does not realize the extent of our distress and the church is not aware of its own culpability in our collapse as a society or the imminence of judgement. May God awaken us and have mercy upon us and restore some semblance of character and wisdom of which he instilled in those who came before us, and may He do it for His purposes and entirely to His Glory alone!

Two recommended books:
Catching Our Flag, Behind The Scenes Of A Presidential Impeachment by James E. Rogan
Faithless Execution, Building the Political Case For Obama's Impeachment by Andrew C. McCarthy

Buck Up Special Dog

Buck Up Special Dog.......April, 2011

         It was quite a few years ago, maybe ten, while listening to Renewing Your Mind that R. C. Sproul dropped his guard for a moment and mentioned how some in the religious academic community had mockingly referred to him as Le folle (madman) Sproul or some similar disparagement. A few years ago Rush Limbaugh had a similar weak moment although in his case thirty four million dollars a year may ease the pain somewhat. More recently South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, openly displayed discouragement to radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock in that he, at times, felt all alone in the Senate in fighting the forces arrayed against our nation. Hedgecock responded Buck up man...we (the people of the United States) got your back and DeMint continues today to lead the charge in that formerly august body. (and today at the Heritage Foundation)
          At the complete opposite end of the spectrum in importance there is me, I get dejected and dispirited at times too. Day after day and year after year of sounding a warning can take it out of you. I have given up so much for so long! I could be clubbing a small white ball and then motoring up to it in a little cart to club it even further. I could take a wall out of my house, or call someone to do it anyway, to make room for a giant television to stare into the pores of Katie Couric. I could be working on my abs, assuming they are under there somewhere. I could be Tae Bo-ing with a room full of hot chicks who recently dropped 120 pounds. I could have the Pittsburgh Steeler logo tattooed on the back of my neck. I could wander aimlessly around the Jersey Shore for the summer hoping to get into a fight with Snookie. I could take Yoga and learn to touch the top of my head with the back of my thigh. I could take an interest in vampires..all of them except Hillary of course. I could learn how to tweet; for instance right now I'd tweet My stomach just growled from that half bag a tortilla chips and jar of salsa I just ate, and forget Barack Obama, I'd want to see Suzanne Somers' birth certificate. But no, I have chosen to forgo all these pleasures. For what? For monitoring a measly totalitarian takeover of the world! And I'm the only one! Oh poor poor me :(
          On a more serious note, and truer to the intent of this particular blog entry, one does have to fight discouragement, for the calamity that we see coming is unparalleled in American history. There is no satisfaction in later being able to say we told you so. Winston Churchill was fortunate in that after subjecting himself to criticism verging on ridicule as he warned against the Nazis, he was able to lead his government, and the world for some time, in bringing Adolph Hitler to that dark bunker in Berlin in April of 1945. It is difficult seeing one's country, that one loves, lose its purpose, its essence, and the security that it once had in its might as it distances itself from, and even blames, the One who bestowed all of these blessings upon it.
          Churchill, in the second volume of his history of the Second World War wrote of Britain's malaise as Hitler built his war machine "Official responsibility rested upon the government of the time. But moral responsibilities were more widely spread." I have personally given decades to the demise of this nation through self indulgence. Churchill also wrote (I am reading this volume, Their Finest Hour, right now and have his words at hand) that the British people had a remarkable unity when war was waged against them, "because everyone realized how near were death and ruin." And in his speech to the nation on May 13, 1939 he said "without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire...." Fortunately for the British there were far less distractions and far fewer toys than we have today, and they had an even greater ally in the wings (us)that had not yet evicted God from its schools and its halls of power.
         We have no such ally but we have something far greater in a God who is merciful as He is just but if we do not desire Him as our Lord and as our Savior, He is as swift in judgement as He is fair. So the message to myself, from myself, in this blog is buck up Special Dog...for there is no other choice. The encouragement is in knowing that if we fall, even this will ultimately be to His glory, and if we rise it will be to the glory of His name alone!.

A Heavenly Genealogy

The following post from last year is my Lord's Day offering:

A Heavenly Genealogy

          I was never much interested in genealogy. My surname is about as English as you can get, although I'm primarily Scotch-Irish, and there is a well known and much visited tower in London with the same name. My wife and I had an interesting experience almost two decades ago. A very popular and prolific Christian writer of historical fiction started a new series of books and a main character of the first book had my first and last name. Not only that but my wife thought that his physical description described me right down to the scar on the left cheek; the character's scar from dealing with the turmoil at the time of King Henry VIII and mine, not so heroic, from an infected spider bite while in the army. William Tyndale and John Bunyan even make appearances in this Reformation era book! She even wrote the author about this and received a very nice reply.
          I 'm really interested in hearing about other people's genealogical history. I just have no interest in my own. It wouldn't matter in the slightest if my ancestors were princes or paupers. There's only one ancestor that I'm concerned with and that is Adam in the Garden of Eden. I inherited his sin just as much as I inherited my father's high forehead. There's only one inheritance that matters and that's the imputed righteousness of Christ. This topic of conversation came up between my son and me when he was about 13 years old. I sat down at a computer and drew up this tartan that you see at the top. Every color in it has a meaning. The green signifies the world, the yellow the church and the scarlet line in the middle is the precious blood of Jesus Christ shed for us on Calvary. So this is our tartan of a heavenly genealogy, an adoptive Father and a spiritual Brother who is also our Lord, Our Savior and our coming King!

Nineveh

          God's word to Nineveh, given through Nahum, was unrelenting. It wasn't a warning, it was a proclamation. The warnings had already been given and gone unheeded. Nineveh was a "bloody city.....full of lies and robbery"....and a "mistress of sorceries." It had been great and powerful whose "merchants" were multiplied "more than the stars of heaven" but now its "shepherds slumber" and "the gates of (its) land (were) open for (its) enemies."
          It's a dichotomy. On the one hand is America's heritage....the greatest nation on this earth, that God used to spread His gospel and secure freedom and liberty for multitudes of people. On the other hand many of our laws now mock God and attempt to keep our children away from Him. We wantonly kill the preborn and then celebrate how liberal we have become. The coup de gras is that in the future our children, in every way imaginable, through entertainments and education, in every facet of everyday life, will be coaxed, prodded and even threatened to deny God's commands to us concerning homosexuality.
          Oh yes there is still a remnant, you can see it in many churches, in our military, in young mothers who will never turn their children over to a village chieftain, in hard working fathers who teach their children to work and not to demand handouts as rights, in older generations who know of America's heritage, of God's protective hand upon it, and consistently remind and warn everyone who will listen of its unravelling, in immigrants who saw our Constitution and laws, and loved what they saw, and came here to help us defend them while becoming part of us.
          We have had forty years of Jonahs, we've had a hundred years of Jonahs, we've had a hundred and fifty years of warnings but we interpret that longsufferring of God towards us as evidence that He hasn't the will or the power to bring judgement.

Pat Robertson

         The following post is a book review from August of 2010:

       1982 was the year when something wonderful happened to me and I was born again. I don't know the day, nor do I know the month. There was no sinner's prayer that I remember. What there was was weeks, if not months, of inquisitiveness, turned to outright research, turned to amazing joy. Many people are in the equation here, not the least of which is Pat Robertson. I did not tune into the 700 Club and then become inquisitive; rather I tuned in as part of what was happening to me. I then called them seeking referral to a church where I could hear something that was akin to this glorious news I was hearing.....the Gospel. They recommended a church which my wife and I, and later our son, attended for about eight years. We were members of the 700 Club for years. We visited, and stayed, at the Founders Inn in Virginia Beach twice and more recently visited it while our son was in the midst of a law school search.
          David Edwin Harrell Jr. recently wrote a biography on Pat Robertson called Pat Robertson, A Life And Legacy which I highly recommend if you are interested in this iconic figure. Many people do not know that Pat's father was a United States Senator from Virginia. A young Pat Robertson was going to take the world by storm, and have fun doing it. He was prep school educated before graduating magna cum laude at Washington and Lee University. Next came Yale Law School culminating in a failed bar exam and entry into the business world to get his fortune. This was interrupted by service in the Korean War as a Marine officer.
         Eventually something wonderful happened to him followed by being born again. What follows might be good lyrics for a country song "he buys a radio station, becomes a star, runs for president and gets pretty far.....starts a college, and a law school too, knows the "secrets of the kingdom" and would like to give them to you. "
         As a avid reader of biographies, I found this book very well written. It gave a lot of answers to questions I have had over the years. It is, as someone described, a sympathetic biography but as someone who knows from the inside what goes through the mind of the latter 20th century evangelical mind, it is also accurate. The reader is taken through the early years when Jim Bakker was on staff, to the headiness of reaching so many people through the flagship program 700 Club, to the apex of financial success, to his campaign for the Presidency, and then in and out of the financial misadventures and turmoil that any major CEO would experience over time.
          As a young man he may have seemed flighty to some, but then so did Ted Turner, His gift was in presenting the love of Jesus Christ to people who would tune in the 700 Club. His ability, something very different, was to raise enormous endowments for his projects which include a university and law school, enormous compassionate enterprises in medicine and disaster relief and broadcasting throughout the world. His genius was as an entrepreneur with a dual major in the political sphere, as his American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is a strong, maybe the strongest, legal deterrent today to the secular religionists.
         The problem with this incredible life and legacy is not in ethics as some would have it, for this man is no lover of money...it is theological. His strong Charismatic Theology may be partially responsible for his financial misadventures, of which were many, and also his numerous... seemingly never-ending string of oratorical gaffes, all documented in the book. One failure of the book is in not challenging the claims of the millions of salvations throughout the world due to Charismatic ministries, for choreographed healing ministries say little about actual conversions, and signing a card may make one a Republican but not born again.
         More than one person, multitudes maybe, can give a testimony similar to mine where Pat Robertson's face on a television played a part in a metamorphosis; but the validation is of God not the ministry...and of the gospel itself, not necessarily the messenger. He has, all too often, ventured beyond his gift. The unsound and even heretical extremes of the Charismatic Movement come into the equation, as does also the malignancy of ecumenism gone wild.
         It was one thing to have Roman Catholic scholar and lawyer Keith Fournier head Robertson's ACLJ, a legal mission that gave no pretense to doctrinal adherence; but another thing altogether was in Mitt Romney being given the podium as commencement speaker at Regent University, a Christian university, tolerant of doctrinal diversity, but that diversity should not extend into Mormonism. Oddly, the book only describes reaction to this misadventure as.... ruffled feathers. It is more than ironic that Mr. Fournier left the ACLJ because he refused to be part of an ecumenical communion service. He was true to his beliefs where Pat Robertson's vision sometimes compromised his.
         Pat Robertson should be looked at as ambitious and greatly talented and dedicated man, devoted to his God, but a man none-the-less. The few times I get to see the 700 Club today, I find myself praying for those watching it; not praying that they are not taken in by words of knowledge or Charismatic theology, but praying that the portrait given of a Savior might bring the same joy and awe that it did for me. That was the purpose in the beginning of the 700 Club and the ministry of Pat Robertson. His work in education, constitutional law and compassion ministries are by-products of this. His political and financial ventures around the world were often gross miscalculations of his original mission. As the author laments, many may define Pat Robertson by his mistakes but those like me will, hopefully, ultimately, define him by the 700 Club, and by his gift of preaching Jesus Christ in front of a camera to lost and hopeless souls.