Saturday, December 19, 2009

Kwanzaa: a very nice take on a bogus holiday

I love this man's article on Kwanzaa and its creator, Ron Karenga. He's got his facts straight, plus he delivers a nicely intuitive take as to why Black people don't even celebrate this faux "Black Holiday". The writer's name is Ralph Bailey and he's a good read.

Maranatha, y'all!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Adam Lambert: The Future of Rock n Roll?

Spouting "Long Live Rock n Roll!" as his anthem, Adam Lambert may be the new Elvis, or he may just personify what is so frightening about openly gay celebrities: the soulless abyss of the sexual deviant. Coupled with this fear is a tension, an unease. Most people don't want to offend gays, but homoerotica - even simulated - is certifiably pornographic. People sense this.

On the American Music Awards last evening, American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert gave America a taste of what's on his mind when he thinks "Rock n Roll!". It wasn't enough for him to sing, prance, and dance. There was simulated oral sex with a male dancer, him kissing a man, and the groping of a female dancer as part of his routine - but the network that carried the Awards show, ABC, says it was all unrehearsed!

Okaaay.

That shaking feeling is the cultural tremor of yet another broken public taboo. Sodom and Gomorrah are almost nearly prime-time on network television. Rock n' Roll is again the conduit. Make no mistake, gay celebrities like Lambert have a vested interest in the mainstreaming of homosexuality to the American public as just another in a series of off-beat alternative lifestyles, but, but, but...their trip wire is - and has always been - homosexual sex. The vast majority of the American public want none of that part of the gay lifestyle. Outraged viewers flooded the network with calls complaining about the Lambert performance only to receive sheepish apologies and mea culpas from the network bosses.

But nothing will happen. This is just a hiccup. Atlas continues to shrug. Passivity in the face of cultural assault has become the norm for TV in America. It has just about become the norm for American households. Drag queens and transvestites are next in line, closely followed by the pederasts of NAMBLA on your local stations. Small wonder there are any standards of decency at all given the whirlwind of change we have all been subjected to in less than ten years of cultural suicide, disguised as relativism. Lambert, for his part, sees only hypocrisy - as do all relativists - in his interview on the CBS Morning show with Maggie Rodriguez yesterday:


RODRIGUEZ: Now that you have had time to think about the children, your child fans, do you – do you feel that you need to apologize to them?

LAMBERT: I think it’s up to the parents to – to discern what their child’s watching on television.

RODRIGUEZ: Well, but they had no idea they were about to see something like that on network TV.

LAMBERT: Well, you know – and you know, just to play Devil’s advocate with you, Lady Gaga smashing whiskey bottles. Janet Jackson grabbing a male dancer’s crotch. Eminem talked about how Slim Shady has ‘17 rapes under his belt.’ There’s a lot of very adult material on the AMA’s this year and I know I wasn’t the only one. I’m not using that as an excuse and I don’t have any – I didn’t take any offense with those performers’ choices, I’m just saying I think it’s up to a parent to watch the television. It was almost 11:00 at night. If they’re concerned with certain material maybe Tivo it and preview it before you’re small child is watching it.

RODRIGUEZ: So you don’t feel that it’s your responsibility to – to issue an apology?

LAMBERT: I’m not a babysitter. I’m a performer.


BAM!

God has long ago given America over to its lusts. We are now only feeling the tremors of the earthquake and shuddering breeze of the whirlwind to come.

MARANATHA!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Rev. Jeremiah Wright Unmasked

What need have we of any further witnesses? You have heard it from his own lips... Jeremiah Wright is a Communist and Socialist with a capital "C" and "S". Here's his latest intellectual pretensions as posted on Youtube.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP6_qtLoW98&feature=player_embedded
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D5YN09bAFlwY
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DwkDceH8K0Do


We thought he might be a Marxist, but we weren't 100% sure. Now we are. Indeed, the climate's right for many more such Marxist-Leninists and Communists to "out" themselves, feeling so emboldened by a Leftist president and a gullible, greedy, largely unprincipled Democratic party. But the Republicans aren't much better, I might add: hypocritical, deceiving, and spineless. Teddy Roosevelt would spew them out of his mouth.

Twenty years as member of Rev. Wright's "church". Hasn't found a church home to raise his family spiritually. Dear Lord, save us from comrade Obama and from all such evangelists of the tyranny of the soul called Communism.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Black Genocide Part II

It's a systematic destruction. Or is it systematic self-destruction? The numbers are in: More African-Americans die from abortion than from the seven leading causes of death of African-Americans combined!

I'm thinking most people already know this, however not many are aware of the extent to which this has become a health and wellness crisis in the African-American community.

But I want to call attention to a key point from the article from a spokeswoman with the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health research group.

Susan Cohen, director of government affairs at the Guttmacher Institute, said that black women are not inordinately targeted.

It is the high number of unintended pregnancies among black women that explains the disproportionate number of black abortions, she stated in a policy analysis, “Abortion and Women of Color: The Bigger Picture (2008),” which was provided to CNSNews.com by Guttmacher Institute spokeswoman Rebecca Wind.

While acknowledging that the abortion rate for blacks in the United States is “almost 5 times that for white women,” Cohen concluded in her analysis, “these higher unintended pregnancy rates (among African American women) reflect the particular difficulties that many women in minority communities face in accessing high-quality contraceptive services and in using their chosen method of birth control consistently and effectively over long periods of time."

Because black women experience so many more unintended pregnancies than any other group—sharply disproportionate to their numbers in the general population—they are more likely to seek out and obtain abortion services than any other group,” said Cohen.


So, what is it that's driving these numbers? Unintended pregnancies. And why so many? Because they do not have access to contraceptive birth control. Oh,really?

So why haven't our nation's Civil Rights leaders been howling, shouting, crying aloud, and holding news conferences over this - apparently - widespread denial of contraception to African-American women?

This is a far, far worse enemy to Black people than the Ku Klux Klan ever was! Where is the Congressional Black Caucus? Where is Al? Jesse? Joseph Lowery? WE NEED TO HEAR FROM Y'ALL!!!!

Stop the genocide! Reverse the Curse of Margaret Sanger! Choose Life!


Deut. 30:19
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:


Maranatha!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Mao: the Man and the Butcher

Recently, Obama administration communications director, Anita Dunn recently praised Mao-Zedong at a high school graduation speech as a "favorite political philosopher" and one of "two people I turn to most" for inspiration. I am utterly fascinated that people who ought to know better haven't come down on her for this. This is an outrageous admission that would have received mass condemnation had she replaced Mao with Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin.

Because in fact a China scholar, Prof. R.J. Rummel estimates that Mao was more lethal than Hitler or Stalin. Perhaps Dunn has not received the scorn she is due for her remarks because of the failure of history teachers and professors in this country and elsewhere to teach and highlight the mass murders committed in the name of "progress" and "reeducation" by Far East regimes.

But it seems the political Left knows what it is doing. Mao Zedong is, in fact, a hero to many of them. Ms. Dunn's remarks were calculated to draw into this worldview the young and impressionable minds of high schoolers.

This is very, very sad. We are witnessing the takeover of our great nation and its institutions by the Far Left - led by a glib, leftist professor. I pray daily for the fall of this administration and their quick exit from the national and world stage. And, no, Obama's fall would not be our nation's fall. Yet may God open the eyes of this people that we may regain our sight to see how far we have fallen.



>"The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness."


Maranatha!

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Israel: The Canary in the Coal Mine

A very prescient article. Cliff May quotes liberally from the eminent scholar, George Gilder. Gilder is not a theologican, not an evangelical, not even a zionist, but he is someone who "gets it" with Israel in a different way than many have posited before. As I have said on many occasions on this blog, America and Israel are joined at the hip. As one goes - so goes the other.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Religion Under Attack II: Homeschooler ordered to Government school

Since I teach American History, Western Civilization, and Christian Apologetics to homeschoolers, I am keenly interested in this story. Divorced parents who cannot communicate usually wind up with a government solution that satisfies no one.

In this case it is being held - incredibly - that the daughter, under her mother's influence, holds her beliefs too "sincerely" and that this is a threat to her "socialization". I don't know if the ex-husband is a Christian or not. Perhaps he is or was. But the courts are to blame here. What exactly is the compelling government interest in this above-average student's socialization? Since when did the government get into the business of deprogramming beliefs?

From where I sit, this appears to be nothing short of a transparent government intervention against the deeply religious beliefs of a parent being transmitted to a child. What a shame the suit was brought in the first place, but the court's behavior in this situation is certifiably shameless.

What these government secularists don't realize is that once Judeo-Christianity is gone, America will fall.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

The cure for disease, etc., etc.

Seems there is no frontier science won't cross without rushing past an ethical boundary. From embryonic stem cell harvesting to human/animal "chimeras" to human cloning and now on to three-parent embryos. Ethics is virtually non-existent among scientists.

"The market" seems to determine the research. Whether privately funded or publicly funded - the issues are ethically very thorny. That is to say if governments who are answerable to its voters get involved with these types of bioscience endeavors it (or at least voices of conscience) can place limits in the name of bioethics upon certain types of forays into the bizarre. On the other hand if governments do not get involved, it becomes an "anything goes" laboratory. But when governments do get involved who have no qualms about killing the unborn - as is the case with our own government in power - the power to fund the bizarre and race past the ethical boundaries of life is made manifest.

Consider this latest breakthrough.

Another thing: was there ever any frontier science crossed that was not done using the "curing disease" catchphrase? People may argue that all research is worth a try to see if it can cure disease, but isn't it equally possible for the chemotherapy to be worse than the cancer?

Just thinking...

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Race V...or III

John Stossel's ABC blog article points out what I've already said would happen. What I did not predict is this president's thin-skinned reaction to criticism. In defense, his supporters have chosen to bring out the "big guns" early by branding his critics "racists".

Granted, there are racists in America who are critics of the president. But there are also - and I would be willing to say the vast majority of - critics that are not racist. But the presidents supporters haven't made this clear distinction in his defense. I am African-American. I am a critic of a biracial president's policies. Am I also a racist? Are my motives for criticism racist? Am I racist against his white half or his black half? Not sure.

This nation is being divided and sifted in so many unhealthy ways. We are very near to reaching the point of no return, of permanent division between Left and Right, between Red State and Blue State, between belief in God and unbelief, and between possessors and professors.

God grant us the discernment in these days of trial!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Physician, Heal Thyself!

You knew this was coming. Another attempt at capturing the moral highground on the health care debate. As a Black minister, I am not persuaded by a suddenly evangelical President's emotional plea for "righteousness" in the health care debate. Unfortunately there are too many liberal left preachers for whom the gospel is only a social gospel and far too many fellow conservative Black preachers who've traded their moral birthright for a mess of leftist porridge. Obama only preaches verses the Left likes.

In invoking a type of Good Samaritan or Cain & Abel principle of "I am my brother's keeper and I am my sister's keeper", he's attempting to biblicize the debate, when in fact the debate is solidly political. No one anywhere is against health care reform, Mr. President but a solid majority of folks are against his version of it.

Moreover, since President Obama has framed a political issue in moral terms and brought it to the table of the moral leaders of the nation, he must assume that the pastors agree with him on the role of government tout court. These few pastors may, but the congregations of most churches largely do not. I'd even say the Bible does not. In a cursory search of the scriptures, nowhere does Jesus appeal to Herod or Caesar to be that "brother's keeper" - but His appeal is rather to individuals in their everyday walk. Private people making private decisions to love their neighbors and provide for their needs is what the Saviour was appealing to.

In attempting to appeal to their hearts, Obama seems to have misread the wisdom of the American public, because in the minds of the vast majority of Americans, government cannot be the moral answer to moral problems.

Besides all that, when or if this president ever finds a church - then perhaps I'll listen to his biblical pronoucements. Until then it's "Physician, heal thyself!"

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Health Care Debate - an Abortion update

This is the latest from Culture of Life about the abortion language and what is and is not in the health care bill currently.

Beware the "Health Advisory Board". If ever there was a dark, bureaucratic, amoral group under President Obama - it's this group. They are the Abu Ghraib prison guards of health care for the rest of us (Congress excluded). They will make Josef Mengele-like decisions that determine life or death over your aged parents and mine. And because Health Secretary Kathleen Sebellius - a staunch pro-abortionist - will appoint them, the group will be stocked with pro-death, amoral, bureaucratic judges whose decisions will have enormous power over Christians.

Pray for the salvation of many in these last days!

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Race IV...Gates as race victim

The media has been awash with talk about race since the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates at his home in Cambridge Mass., last week and with President Obama's summary judgment of the whole affair as "stupid". To his credit the president has retracted his words as ill-chosen and wrong. But as I've said in a few earlier posts, race talk will not go away during the Obama administration. Why? For three good reasons:

1. The racial narrative of "African-Americans as victims" plays into white guilt
over issues of slavery and Jim Crow. Many Whites want to redress and fix these
historic grievances in the here and now and be absolved of guilt. And so long as
there are racial imbalances in life - perceived or real - they are judged to be caused by White privilege and advantage, thus Whites have something to continually "fix" or "repair" in the race "problem".

2. The racial narrative provides a powerful and convenient excuse for African-
American underachievement in many arenas - educational, economic, social, and cultural. Many Black conservatives, like John Mcwhorter and most notably the economist Thomas Sowell, have pointed out the failure of anti-achievement thinking where the racial narrative fuels a type of cultural defeatism. Why work hard to achieve and overcome if "the system" is perceived to be solidly rigged against you? Sadly, far too many African-Americans continue to think and act as if this is true.

3. Black liberals and intellectuals have vast economic interests to protect in the
racial spoils industry. Anti-discrimination is now big business.

This is not to say racism does not exist in the United States of America. It does exist - but nowhere near the extent to which it has existed in this country historically. But well beyond the extent it does exist, no matter how small it exists, there are entrenched social and political interests driving the amplification of race, racial grievance, racial profiling, and racial discrimination. With Blacks starring as perpetual victims, coupled with an industry geared to profit from racial thinking and racial bias, as the old Carpenter's song put it..."we've only just begun...."


One Day in the not too distant future, the nations of the world will be at peace under the banner and guard of the Prince of Peace. Only then we will see "race" for what it is and was - an artifice of difference designed to poison and undermine godly brotherhood.

Oh, by the way...the arresting officer, an Irish white guy named Sgt. Crowley, and the arrested professor, Henry Gates, an African American with an Irish heritage - are related!

John 13:34-35
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Yeshua is Kosher!

Who says history doesn't repeat itself? An interesting development has occurred in Israel whereby a woman who ran a kosher bakery converted to Christianity, but then as a Messianic Jew had her bakery declared non-kosher by the Chief Rabbinate. Well, the Supreme Court of Israel has overruled the Rabbinate saying that belief in Yeshua as the Messiah could not be used as a valid reason to revoke the certificate of kosher. Sounds like the same biblical divisions of 1st century Judaism in its protrayal of a nation not quite sure what to do about Yeshua and His followers.

But what moved me most was her testimony of how she and her husband came to know the Lord. Read about it here:

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

You see the apostasy coming...

The Episcopals of North America are moving inexorably toward ordaining homosexuals as ministers of the gospel. The bishops of the Episcopal Church have voted and are now in agreement that God "has called and may call" practicing homosexuals "in committed relationships" to ministry.
I mean, you can see the apostasy coming here. Ultimately, the goal is to sanctify homosexuality as an innocent, normative, and thereby "righteous" part of the overall human condition. Once done, no holy office can be shielded from this perversion. Not legally, not institutionally, not in any way. If one objects to homosexuality on biblical grounds people will then ask, "What's your problem? The Episcopalians are OK with it. Are you holier than they?"

By then it will be checkmate. The tables will have turned. Conscientious objectors will then be "opposers of the church".

But I believe in God's protection. I believe He can and will thwart the schemes of the unholy. I am not an Episcopalian. But I believe that churches tend to rise and fall in similar ways. History has shown where regions of the world where the gospel was once preached with fervor and with signs and results following - overrun by armies or apostasized into oblivion - became pitifully reduced to the status of museums and curious landmarks.

But Jesus said, "the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church". This, I believe.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Let the Sodomites depart...

More schismic warnings from the American Episcopals. Why don't they just shut up and move on with their pro-gay bishops agenda? Why foist this ungodliness on those who wish to maintain fidelity with scripture and faith?

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Religious Liberty and Homosexual Marriage: Incompatible

This is an old article from Chuck Colson. He provides a few case studies of what happens when Christians try to exercise their religious liberty over against the intersts of the homosexual agenda.

Maranatha!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Rev. Wright and "them Jews"

Perhaps as you read this article it might be helpful to remind you that the current President of the United States sat under this man's teaching for 20 years.

But as I have said before, if you don't understand American history and Black history you cannot fathom a Rev. Wright. He seems like a pulpit crackpot. But the truth is, he is not atypical of many Northern Black pastors and churches. He is probably more mainstream than many outside the Black community are aware of. It is unfortunate. His views are Black Nationalist and are ideologically driven by an alienation from "White American" Christianity of the 1900-1930s. Huh, you say? I think it should be called the hate that hate produced. Many Northern Black Christians and Churches responded to an indifferent White Christianity by leaving the faith altogether (Nation of Islam), radicalizing (Shrine of the Black Madonna) or melding Black nationalist ideology with Christian replacement theology (Trinity United Church of Christ).

That the vast majority of mainstream white Christian churches were indifferent to the plight of oppressed Blacks in America from the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement - with a couple of exceptions - is a documented fact. Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is a not a reply to "racists and Ku Klux Klanners" but to the mass of indifferent White Christian pastors who refused to ally themselves with the evident work of the Lord in clarifying the moral aims of the Civil Rights Movement.

Thus, the indifference of the so-called "White" Christian church in America led Black people to conclude that "White" Christianity is the enemy of Black people. And it became possible, in this construct, for Black pastors to identify themselves and their churches with the ultimate oppressed figure - Jesus himself - at the hands of the Jews. Moreover, "the Jews", or in this case "them Jews", at-large have become the co-conspirators with Whites in the narrative of "keeping the Black man down" and "practicing genocide" and opposing the truth. Indeed, contra Jews and Israel, many Black churches have adopted the radical Palestinian mantra of "Zionism = Racism".

The trouble is, despite evident racial progress and a very real change of heart from many White Christians and predominantly White churches, Rev. Wright and many others have never deviated from this "ideology as theology". The oppression narrative has expanded its scope and has explanatory power for Black pathology now. It has filled the church pews Sunday after Sunday with the alienated and economically desperate throughout urban and northern housing communities for four decades. It remains very activist. And what community organizer worth his salt would not want be an active part of such a community institution? By golly, with the help of charismatic pastors fully committed to the rhetoric of nationalism, fully committed to the narrative of Jews and Whites as continual oppressors, why, an activist politician sitting the pews for 20 years under such teaching might actually come away with having learned something.

Good Lord, help us!

Interesting megachurches study

Here's a link to Christian Post about a study of megachurches. What most piqued my interest is what I intuitively sensed about them: most of the attendees are single. most people go to a megachurch because they're attracted to the worship style; most people stay at a megachurch because they're attracted to the senior pastor.


Interesting stuff...

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Persecution in America

Can't have Bible studies in homes? In San Diego? Well, it had to happen sooner or later. And certainly if the scriptures are true, it was bound to happen - even here. Still, it shakes you. Nobody I know of thought Christians would be openly persecuted in our generation, not in America. Is this the beginning of things to come or is it a big misunderstanding?


The reader comments to this article are also worth the read! It's good to see others are outraged by this as well. : )

Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and you shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations; and then shall the end come.

Maranatha! Soli Deo Gloria!

Monday, May 25, 2009

I'm back!

Sorry for the inactivity...but I'm still around! It's Memorial Day. My prayer is for our blessed experiment in democratic government - led and administered by godly and moral people - should continue for the sake of world. Why? That all men everywhere may know the love of Jesus and commit to an abiding relationship with him.

Now is the day of salvation!!!!

Monday, April 27, 2009

Another Confessing Catholic Speaks Out

This is good news. Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon, a devout Roman Catholic author and public intellectual, has refused the Laetare Medal - and along with it the privilege of speaking at the very same Notre Dame commencement ceremony that President Obama is scheduled to speak. This medal is apparently the highest honor given to a Roman Catholic:

'The Laetare Medal is an annual award given by the University of Notre Dame in recognition of outstanding service to the Roman Catholic church and society. The award is given to an American Catholic layperson "whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the church and enriched the heritage of humanity."'


Why is she doing this? Principle. There is such a thing. President Barack Obama's stated views of the sanctity of life runs counter to the policy of the U.S. Catholic Bishops. Here's a choice quote from her letter to First Things magazine:

First, as a longtime consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, I could not help but be dismayed by the news that Notre Dame also planned to award the president an honorary degree. This, as you must know, was in disregard of the U.S. bishops’ express request of 2004 that Catholic institutions “should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles” and that such persons “should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” That request, which in no way seeks to control or interfere with an institution’s freedom to invite and engage in serious debate with whomever it wishes, seems to me so reasonable that I am at a loss to understand why a Catholic university should disrespect it.


These days there's not a lot for social conservatives to cheer about, so when we get two such highly publicized incidents, (Miss California & Traditional Marriage being the other) it is cause to lift one's countenance in hope there is still salt and light in this dark period in America.


Luke 18:7-8
And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night to him, though he bear long with them? 8 I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the earth?


Maranatha & Baruch Hashem!

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Waterboarding = Torture; D&E Abortion Procedure = Not Torture

The President says with near-impossible hypocrisy that as a nation America is at risk of "losing our moral bearings" - on the issue of the CIA's use of alleged torture techniques, like waterboarding, during intense interrogation sessions.

Perhaps from now on we'll just not place sweets on their pillows during their hotel stays.

But the larger picture is this: who is he to judge about American morality? Isn't this kind of judgment way over-the-top from a "when life begins is above my paygrade" President who was and still is famously pro-abortion from the Senate to the White House? The nerve! The effrontery! President Obama is poised to make Executive decisions regarding U.S. taxpayer funding of ANY kind of abortion as law - and he has the nerve to lecture the American people on moral bearings?

The President supports the abortion of innocent life at every possible stage and in every possible way, but we pour water on a suspected terrorist's head to make him confess to mass murder and we receive actionable intelligence, but somehow - by his twisted morality - we are at risk of losing our moral bearings?

This is how he said it after meeting with a foreign digitary:

"...And we rely on some very courageous people, not just in our military but also in the Central Intelligence Agency, to help protect the American people. And they have to make some very difficult decisions because, as I mentioned yesterday, they are confronted with an enemy that doesn't have scruples, that isn't constrained by constitutions, aren't constrained by legal niceties. Having said that, the OLC memos that were released reflected, in my view, us losing our moral bearings. That's why I've discontinued those enhanced interrogation programs..."



When the President of the United States can make these kinds of statements and no one bats an eye - Good Lord, help us!

Maranatha and Baruch Hashem!

Monday, April 20, 2009

Hallelujah...out of the mouth of Beauty Queens

Yessiree. California - again - steps up. Miss California 2009, you are beautiful in spirit, in truth, in word and deed! What a surprising and unexpected rebuke of so-called 'Gay Marriage". Her simple, courageous, and sincere, opinion on a public platform so rattled the pageant directors that they felt compelled to offer afterwards a confused diclaimer invoking freedom of religion! Wow.

For those of you who are not so spiritually discerning - this is the equivalent of an "ouch!"

Even the demons believe - and tremble!


Matt. 19:4-6
And he answered and said to them, Have you not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall join to his wife: and they two shall be one flesh? Why they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.


Baruch Hashem and Maranatha!

Friday, April 17, 2009

What manner of man...is this?

Can anybody tell me what quality this President possesses that even universities - reputed to be strong in their worldviews - will abandon even the symbols of what they believe in, award him an honorary degree, just for the opportunity to hear him speak? My goodness!

Word has it that Georgetown Universtiy was compelled to hide the "IHS", the symbol for Iesus Hemeteros Soter - Jesus Our Savior, even though it was not done for former First Lady Laura Bush who'd spoken at the same Georgetown lectern three years earlier.

And what about Notre Dame, by reputation a staunchly pro-life, Catholic institution electing to grant a public pulpit and an honorary degree to a man who'd only weeks earlier signed an executive order lifting all public funding restriction to abortion access in U.S. overseas programs (We wrote about this in an earlier post) even though they know President Obama is disingeuous about having a "dialogue" with pro-lifers.

This is too wild.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Geert Wilders and the decline of Free Speech in Europe

An excellent speech by Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders regarding both the decline of free speech in Europe and its cause: the rise of European Islam. Hits the nail on the head, I think.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Pro-Life Black Pastor Jailed

This is what happens when an organization whose very origin was designed to eugenicize the African-American population is morally "called out" for its continued stand against the unborn. This time the pastor is an African-American pastor.

Nevertheless, he was thrown in jail.


The origins of the Abortion movement are directly tied to Margaret Sanger and her organization, the American Birth Control League, later known as Planned Parenthood.

Once the government and the people get a handle on secularization as a cultural and legal norm, they will lose their fear of doing harm to Christians, and the beginning of Christian persecution will be upon us - yes, even in America. And after what I've seen in just the past five years as far as a people taking a moral plunge in this country, I know that anything is possible. Jesus said that persecution of believers for his name's sake this would be a sign of the nearness of the end of the age.

Matt. 24:9-13
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and you shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. 11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations; and then shall the end come.


1 Peter 4:16-19
Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf. For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Why let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as to a faithful Creator.



Baruch Hashem! Maranatha! Soli Deo Gloria!

Obama's Youth Service Corps...Religious Worship Forbidden

This is outrageous if true. Among the prohibited activities of the Obama Youth Volunteer Corps are:

"engaging in religious instruction" - Isn't that what Sunday School and Worship services do? So, in effect, in order to be a participant a person may not go to church since churches (and synagogues and mosques) engage in religious instruction.

In fact the language seems to desire to scrub participants clean of any hint of a connection to religious worship. This policy of secularization - of youth - is disturbing. Just what is going on here?

If it turns out that President Obama truly endorses these deep religious prohibitions, then it must be asked: why would any Christian would have a problem with a youth volunteer attending church, or bible study, or attending Sunday School? I have had suspicions about the President and his "salvation" and this only deepens them. This is among the many reasons why I believe Barack Hussein Obama may not even be a Christian.

So, the next question we must ask ourselves is this one: if he is not, then what?

Baruch Hashem! Maranatha! Soli Deo Gloria!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

My sister got married...

In a way this blog entry should have been an occasion to rejoice for her, but I just discovered something this week: I am estranged from her.

Yet what perplexes me is why didn't I know this?

I was not invited to her civil ceremony wedding. She called and announced her marriage to me days after the fact. Wow. He is a Muslim and a foreigner. She is a Christian, a hurting one it seems, but a believer nonetheless. Still, I would have loved to have been there. My parents would have, too. But she has turned her back on them too, it seems.

Lots of soul searching and self examination this week. I am hurt and a bit wounded by what has trasnpired. But I am still happy for her.

Well, it looks like I've got some work to do...my sister has something against me.

Matt 5:23-24:
Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.


"Baruch Hashem! Maranatha! Soli Deo Gloria!

Monday, March 23, 2009

Obama meets with Gorbachev

President Obama has met and has had talks with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. I've talked about him on this blog before, so you already know what I think of Gorbachev.

Note the Reuters photo of Gorby with the "Peace" dove in the blue background.
Ochen interestnaya!


Is he the Man of Sin? I don't know for sure, but his foundation, Green Cross International has all the global warming assuming, peace bringing, "world solutions-based" orientation of a global sinister plot that could control the world's economic, political, and commercial resources.

I read Mr. Faid's book about Gorbachev years ago and was impressed by it. And Mikhail Gorbachev did win the Nobel Prize. Of course, I could be wrong, nevertheless Faid's book is a compelling read given the time and season we now live in. But let's just conjecture for argument's sake say I'm on to something, Obama's meeting with him would be HUGE. Sort of like Jesus's meeting with John the Baptist. And I have said before, Obama's "aura" is for a reason. He may not be the Antichrist, that Man of Sin, but given the times and seasons we now live in he may be a forerunner - sent as a preparer for a charismatic leader of gravitas and stature whose vision and leadership will usher in global world peace.

Yet for the discerning believer, Obama is also a thermometer, a gauge of the world's hunger for leadership, its hunger for the cult of personality who can lead us all to peace as the world envisions peace. His design is to eliminate American "exceptionalism", her former role in the world by subduing her power and remaking her and thereby bringing her into the coordinated efforts of the nations of the world in terms of economics, commerce, political aims, and even justice.

But America is divided over these apparent aims. She is the last of the "holdout" nations to global unity. We had gotten quite used to our exceptionalism, but with Democrats in power - the President, the Congress, and a majority of state governorships - the exceptionalism we once had is gone and will probably be gone for good. The Devil plans to sift us as wheat and I believe Obama is his tool to that end.

But lets' not lose sight of the eschatological ball, Israel is his main target and she must be isolated by global boycott. Why? Because the holy hill of Zion - where JESUS(YESHUA) SHALL REIGN - is the Devil's prize. He seeks occupy that hill by world opinion and force of nations (UN?), by political necessity and military force. Right now, his religion, the religion of the False Prophet, occupies the hill (Al Aqsa Mosue) only partially, and even then by permission of Israel. The question is now, will America, Israel's last and most powerful ally, betray her? An anonymous intelligence specialist thinks it will likely be the case under the Obama administration.

The End Times are just about set. So where will YOU spend eternity?

Baruch Hashem! Maranatha! Soli Deo Gloria!

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Nice Illustration!

Saw this on Ray's website. Enjoy!




"In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth..."

Monday, March 9, 2009

Kings and Kingdoms....

People ask me all the time about Barack Obama and what he means for the United States - either for our good or for our bad - for our weal or for our woe. It always makes me chuckle. We'll find out, I usually say.

And because I'd written a blog entry some time ago about President Obama and was content to let events pass along, and because I can't help noticing the pointed concern from believers - bordering on fear - let me throw something in that I hadn't thought of before, but was suggested from a brilliant sermon I heard this weekend.

Is Obama worse than...

Pharoah?
Sennacharib?
Nebuchadnezzar?
Artaxerxes?
Darius?
Antiochus Epiphanes?
Herod the Great?
Nero?
Domitian?
Diocletian?
Julian the Apostate?

Well, if not, then people of God can be assured that if these world leaders - hostile as they were to the WORD of God, hostile in varying degress to the PEOPLE of God, hostile in so many ways to the PRESENCE of God - could not destroy God's people, try though they might, then we as believing Christians have no good reasons to fear Barack Obama and a left wing government in the USA.

We should, however, begin to pray fervently, aloud, and very often for souls to be saved.

I believe America - the nation - is no longer under God's covering protection - though we remain a covenant nation, that is why we are seeing the abominable happen in our land socially, the radical reversal of our economic fortunes domestically and globally, and our foreign policy crumbling before our eyes. Our nation's enemies sharpen their swords for war and I have no doubt they intend to bring it. Almighty God "sends" these things our way so that we may cry aloud to him. The exact same things happened to Israel.

Let us open our Bibles and see what is plainly written. I think then we'll see that our situation is almost a carbon-copy of the stories of God's people and how they were delivered when, and only when, they repented.

Friday, March 6, 2009

A Vatican Sellout...no to Intelligent Design

"Intelligent design is incompatible with science." So says a spokesman for a conference - going on right now - sponsored by the Vatican-based Pontifical Gregorian University, entitled: Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories. Of course, the usual suspects are involved, the Templeton Fund - a group extremely hostile to Intelligent Design (ID)- whose primary dedication it seems is to promote a theological baptismal of Evolutionary Theory.

If, as the Vatican claims to believe, "the Heavens declare the glory of God and the Earth shows forth his handiwork", why would it be beyond the pale to admit even the scientific possibilities of ID among men of intelligence? And why is any criticism of the philosophical implications of Evolution seemingly off limits?

My only guess is that the Templeton folks are simply committed evolutionists who've finally found their ecclesiastical sellout - an institution that dreads being seen as scientifically unfashionable: the Roman Catholic Church. And for the RCC's part, it's as if they just want to curry favor with "Big Science" and have a hand in the making of the Novus Ordo Secularum. First you disinvite the Faithful. Then invite the Evolutionists over for dinner and say absolutely nothing to offend their sensibilities. That's super amazing grace right there. The Vatican's science and philosophy departments ought to be ashamed. Denying ID a place at the table of discussion virtually guarantees a conference devoid of scientific acknowledgement of a Creator. It virtually guarantees the conference will be a celebration of the triumph of Darwinism in all its forms over Faith, too. But alas Rome, in retreat, suggests otherwise.

Check out this juicy tidbit from the Vatican:

"A Christian can believe in the providential design of God in Creation, without transforming it into a “scientific theory” that competes with another one: these are definitely different levels of interpretation. However, this in turn requires that no scientific theory is placed as the ultimate explanation of reality, which would reduce it to a pseudo-metaphysics, or to a pseudo-religion – in any case, the opposite of science."

In other words, you may believe in God's design, just don't try to make it a scientific claim to knowledge. We just don't compete with Evolution.

This is not purely about seeking dogma and finding none - because that's not what this meeting is about. And to be sure, the Young Earth Creationists operate from a different playbook as everyone knows, but ID is - at the end of the day - a scientific redeclaration of the same views of Einstein, Newton, Pascal, Galileo, and many other titans of science who happen to believe in the awesome complexity of God's design. It is the voice of truth found in all of the complexity of the universe as we measure it and understand it. And I (and others) ask the RCC: WHAT IS TRUTH?

Vatican teaching holds that Roman Catholicism and evolutionary theory are not necessarily at odds. Okay. But let's not forget Tertullian's question: "What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?" It raises the question of any ultimate compatibility between Faith with Science - because with "Big Science" the problem only gets worse for Jerusalem. It would be interesting to see if the Vatican folks remember this once the bamboozling gets underway at that conference.

As an evangelical Protestant, I often tell people to respect the intellectual rigor and tradition of Roman Catholicism, but to keep an eye on their uncanny ability to give away the biblical farm.

Remember Sola Scriptura!


Psalm 19:1-3The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork.
Day to day utters speech, and night to night shows knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.


Psalm 139:6
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain to it.

Isa. 58:8-9
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, said the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

So this guy converts FROM Christianity to...Atheism!

And he writes a book about his "journey" from Christian Apologist to Atheist. So I read a book review by Norm Geisler about this man's journey and BAM! I can't see for the life of me why anyone could believe in atheism.

Given the OBVIOUS design of the Heavens and the Earth: atheism is ridiculous.

Given the presumption of nothingness and then BOOM! existence - and all of this harmonized complexity: atheism is whacky.

Given the prevalence of religion in history and the many and varied questions of metaphysical possibility: to be ipso facto "an atheist" is beyond comprehension.

But I suppose you have to have faith in it. Or be a fool for it.

Psalm 14:1
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Cause of Anti-Semitism

Ever wonder how it is that the nations of the world in all their many and varied expressions of uncooperation, conflict of interest, division, and diplomatic differences can all seem to agree that on some deep level the Jews are somehow responsible for the problems of the world? I used to wonder about this as a youngster. Why the Jews? Why not...the Albanians? or the Scots? or why not the Turks?

It wasn't until I became exposed to the late Derek Prince's ministerial work that I became keenly aware of the central role the Jews have played and still play in the history of the Christian world and in the timeline of God's dealings with mankind. The Jews are hated because our ancient foe - the Devil - hates them. And as Prince of the Power of the Air, a title won at the Fall in Eden, Satan has been given great powers of intrusive thoughts, of evil suggestions, and over the imaginations of all of fallen Mankind. Thus it is from fallen thoughts and rebellious mindsets that anti-semitism emerges. Just combine a hatred of mankind and a hatred of God - and one can easily arrive at a hatred of the Jews. But why should the Devil hate the Jews?

I offer four good reasons (I promise to keep it short).

1.
The Devil hates the Jews because as a people they are the special "voice" of God. The Apsotle Paul said that unto the Jews is given the "oracles of God" - the very words of God. They have been given the 10 Commandments and the Torah, or Laws of God, to live as a chosen people and a light to the Gentiles.

2.
The Devil hates the Jews because his conqueror is a Jew. Yeshua Ha Massiach is the same Jesus the Christ - our Lord and Savior of the Gentiles by faith. Born of a Jewish mother - the criteria for establishing Jewishness by blood - He lived as a Jew and taught among the Jews. Ultimately, He defeated Satan in both the Wilderness temptation and at the cross of Calvary. These twin defeats signalled the beginning of the end of the Devil's rule over Mankind.

3.
The Devil hates the Jews because their presence is a constant reminder of his twin defeats and his removal from office, still to come. Seen any Hittites lately? No, you haven't. Yet the Jews are an ANCIENT people - living right now among us - whose historic identity remains largely intact. I like to think of it this way: imagine a sport where your opponent is allowed to rub your nose in the defeat - hour after hour. You wouldn't like it either, would you? Well, in this case it is a struggle between the people of the KINGDOM of GOD versus the the power of the Prince of this World, which places the stakes of winning and losing into galactic proportions.

4.
The Devil hates the Jews because they are back in their homeland. In terms of history this is unprecedented because this is the SECOND TIME AROUND for them. The return to Palestine is for them, as it would be for any people, nothing short of a miracle. How many times does recorded history show where an ethnic entity, a substantially large people group, having been forcibly removed from their ancient land, gets an opportunity to RETURN TO THAT LAND? It just doesn't happen - ever. But the Jews have now pulled this feat off - TWICE.

But the return of the Jews to their homeland has specific eschatalogical (end of the age) implications for us all and - most especially - the Devil. Why? Because the prophetic indications are that Jesus, Yeshua, will return to His people, for His people, and will establish His kingdom in the homeland of His people in the city of JERUSALEM. And it is from there He will judge the Nations of the World.

So when you see conferences like this one, it is a reminder the Devil is still in operation, notwithstanding the intentions of other conferences - like this one - aiming to mitigate anti-semitism. But as long as the Devil remains in charge of this world, you may know for sure that anti-semitism has a supernatural driving force behind it.

As the song goes..."the Devil is defeated, God is exalted, and Jesus Christ is Lord!"


Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus! Baruch Hashem!

Saturday, February 14, 2009

David's Census...Obama's Census

Sometimes things that have good intentions can be used for evil. As a baseball fan, steroids comes immediately to mind. As a minister with a finger on the pulse of today's culture, prescription drugs among the youth is another. Apparently, or perhaps not so apparently, the census is now under the control of the White House Chief of Staff. (How like ancient Rome this is!) Nobody can quite put a finger on it, but why would the White House - of all places - have such a deep interest in the census? It brings to mind King David's census of Israel. Apologetics Press explains the matter.

Census-taking under the Law of Moses was not inherently evil. In fact, God actually commanded Moses to number the Israelite soldiers on two different occasions—once in the second year after deliverance from Egyptian bondage, and again about forty years later near the end of Israel’s wanderings in the desert (Numbers 1:1-3,19; 26:2-4). Even though the book of Numbers describes many of their experiences while wandering through a barren land, the book takes its name (first assigned by the translators of the Septuagint) from these two numberings of the Israelites. Indeed, the taking of a census was a legitimate practice under the old law (cf. Exodus 30:11-16). Sometimes, however, one’s motives can turn lawful actions into sinful deeds (cf. Matthew 6:1-18). Such was the case with King David when he decided to number the Israelites in the latter part of his reign. God had not commanded a census be taken, nor did David instigate it for some noble cause. Instead, the Bible implies that David’s intentions (and thus his actions) were dishonorable, foolish, and sinful (cf. 2 Samuel 24:3,10ff.).


We shall see...something's not quite right about this.

Baruch Hashem! Maranatha!

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Speaking Engagement...Come hear me

This coming Saturday, February 7th, at 9:00a, I'll be apeaking at the Crossroads Presbyterian Church in Stone Mountain, Georgia. The group will consist of many young people on the verge of entering college - and parents. I will be sharing an evangelical/apologetic topic entitled, "Worldviews in Collision" with a Q&A afterwards. If you are concerned about the spiritual direction of your children as they begin to pursue higher education, then this message is for you! I'm hoping and praying it will be a life changing and life encouraging message. Please come and fellowship with us!

2 Tim. 4:1-5
I charge you therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; 2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned to fables. 5 But watch you in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of your ministry.



Maranatha! Baruch Hashem! Soli Deo Gloria!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Heraclitus and the Economy

It was the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who said that the only fixed thing is change itself. And so it is height of folly to suggest that the kind of change President Obama is bringing will countermand the immoral impulses of those that spend our money in Congess. This item from Drudgereport underscores my point.

Many of America's institutions and leaders are becoming increasingly indifferent to biblical morality. There is a certain undefinable stench in the air of this country.

Regis Nicoll argues that this foundation has been rendered fragile due to 20-plus years of hammering away and destroying the foundation for the nation's ethics and morality. Remove ethics classes from the elite universities, he says, and don't be surprised at the corporate theft, deception, and evasion of transparency from our political and business leaders in this bailout.

Our profit-based capitalist system was held in check by a biblical morality which placed boundaries on greed and corruption, which made personal and corporate virtue, i.e., seeking the good of others in seeking our own interests, virtuous. Adam Smith called this steady, almost counterintuitive balance an "unseen hand", which flowed from people working for their self interests. But Adam Smith did not put a finger on the bridle of exclusive self interests. Individual interests informed by throughgoing biblical retraints and the voluntary exercise thereof, makes the capitalist economy hum. In this kind of scenario, people trust each other to a significant extent while pursuing their own interest - and institutions follow suit also in trusting other institutions and individuals. I call this "trusted virtue".

Nowadays, people are looking to an unvirtuous Washington and Wall Street to solve an ostensibly economic mess. What has the nation come to when a tax cheat passes muster as the nation's next treasury secretary? It is now quite clear that this economic mess has deep roots that are moral and ethical. And this is one of the reasons why I think people wanting the Obama administration to fail on political and policy grounds are misguided. Policy change won't help us; a reinvigorated capitalist system won't save us. Instead, I pray that any success Obama has in delivering health and prosperity to America will be so because in the end it will only come from God. So, yes, I'm hoping Obama will turn to God for help.

I'm not naive, here. To be sure, the Obama crowd's natural impulse is - at the end of the day - to yield to economic socialism because leftist and socialists deeply believe that class struggle can only be abated when everything of material value in a given society is shared top to bottom. But behind every socialist is a person who believes that people cannot and should not be trusted. And that is a moral problem. Which itself raises the question of why people in this society ought be trusted, when individuals - the basis for all corporations - are no longer trustworthy ? And why are they not trustworthy? Because people by and large have abandoned the first principles for origin, meaning, morality, and destiny - the Bible. In the Bible we learn what life is all about, we learn what is to be valued and what is to be shunned, we learn to share of our own free will our wealth and resources, and we learn that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, thus making us all stewards to an owner with whom we have to give an account.

Social and economic policy "change" in a corrupt, post-capitalist nation - is corrupt still. Even Heraclitus knew this. But when the moral and ethical foundations of profit systems are chased away fully and trust dies, only facism and tyranny can keep the system afloat. And that's where this ship is headed.

But then, and only then, might America come to its senses and return to its biblical roots.

Yes, Lord, we need a revival.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Obama, Abortion, and the Silent Black Pastor

OK, Black pastors. Where are you??? The time is now to speak out for the weak and the unwanted: THE UNBORN.

Despite the predictions and warnings from the White House of hard economic times ahead, one of the first acts President Obama has done is to sign an Executive Order which further burdens U.S. taxpayers in the funding of abortion efforts and abortion groups worldwide.

Astonishing.

Then, in a case of where you can't have your cake and eat it too, it would appear that Obama's presidential order essentially silences U.S. PRO-CHOICE criticism of China's forced abortion policy.

How ironic.

So let me get this straight: the financially strapped U.S. taxpayer will now pay for abortions and abortion groups worldwide, but can do nothing about. But even those U.S. abortion groups and pro-choice U.S. human rights groups who are now empowered by a pro-choice White House can say nothing about China's forced abortion practices (a so-called human rights issue) because of compromised U.S policy.

Amazing.

It's a wonder there is a Devil when you have this type of behavior.

Predictably, most Black pastors can be counted upon to be SILENT even though it is a fact that abortion disproportionately affects Black familes more than any other U.S. demographic. There is however a vocal minority and I'm praying they'll speak loudly on this issue. As I've said before, when being pro-Black = being unbiblical or immoral, you can count me out.

Deut. 30:19-20
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: 20 That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days...


Maranatha! Baruch Hashem!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Bittersweet Pride and Joy


Unlike First Lady Michelle Obama, I can honestly say that I have ALWAYS been proud of my country. But today, despite the worshipful words and idolatrous phraseology toward Barak Obama from those not possessing a biblical worldview (and from those who perhaps do), I am very proud to be an American. An African-American? Perhaps. Well, maybe more than I will care to admit. Unlike so many of my African-American "brothers and sisters", I have never thought it prudent to be Black first and to be a human being second. Somehow, I always knew who I was and who my God is!! It has never bothered me that 43 of our country's presidents were white men. Political office was never a validation or proof of equality.

But be that as it may. It is a time for all Americans and well-wishers to be hopeful and prayerful for Barack Hussein Obama.

Many African-American churches are in full praise tonight and will be throughout the week. I have asked the Lord for extraordinary and uncommon wisdom for this president. Because it seems to me that if he has nothing else, with wisdom he will have just about everything he needs to lead and govern. How about you? I think guys like Joseph Farah, whom I respect, are in the end, misguided in praying for Obama to fail.

Sure, I'd have rather he had been a conservative and more biblically aware and grave, and because he is not, I am rather saddened for our nation's sake. The challenges before us will only be solved by a man God appoints who loves him, loves his people, and his word. Of course Obama doesn't fit the bill. But we may hope and pray a worse man doesn't come along to wreak havoc, either. After all, Jacques Necker was better then Danton, who himself was a choirboy compared to Robespierre during the Terror. And of course, Madame de Stael said Napoleon was essentially Robespierre on horseback - and millions were slain under Monsieur Bonaparte. So there could be worse presidents than Obama. But alas, I feel the ill winds blowing, too. What on Earth can be done amidst so much Obama-worship?? This part is not good.

Nevertheles, I hold out hope. Abe Lincoln changed while in office from his "House Divided" 1st inaugural speech to his 2nd inaugural speech of full acceptance of the Lord's justice in bringing the Civil War about. Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post likens President Obama's task as that of the pilot of Flight 1549. He's gonna need some SKILLS.

So I have to tell myself - things can change!

It seems that so many Dr. King analogies and remembrances have been raised it is appropriate - I guess - to throw in my two cents. I will attach - as soon as I can figure it out - the Prologue and Chapter One of my doctoral dissertation written in 2005. Check it out. Ignore the big words, will you?



Prologue

A Call to Righteousness: Reviving the Imago Dei

The Civil Rights Movement marked a watershed period of American History. Indeed, throughout the world, the movement itself inaugurated a change of heart and direction in the cause for the equality of humanity. The movement also answered forcefully the question of the Imago Dei. Are all men created in the Image of God? For up to its genesis, the resounding non-answer from perhaps the freest nation in the world was that men were not all made in the image of God. The presuppositions of the day, rooted and grounded as they were in science, existentialism, naturalism, and in evolutionary doctrine, were foundationed upon the belief that mankind was by and large an evolutionary accident. On the other end, the opposition to this party line, the Christian Church, lay dormant and tepid – and without a vigorous challenge to this view. In fact, one of the repeated lessons of the history of the Church was that wherever she was challenged in her worldview by the science and philosophy of her day, in time her retreat was an inevitability. It is one of the more shameful chapters in her history to note her active participation in the denial of the equality of being, worth, and ability of so-called Black, dark skinned believers, and believers of color. The enforced racial segregation of her own flock, the denial of equal status in her pews, and the rejection of equal access to her sanctuaries were denied not by belief or doctrine but by virtue of race and ethnicity alone. In the pages to follow I will discuss some of the historical and philosophical issues raised by the rejection of the equality of mankind and the Imago Dei.

This paper is mainly an historical survey. But it is a survey of history informed by theological and philosophical ideas and perspectives relevant to the Image of God worldview as set forth in the Bible. I am, as outlined in the scope of the work, embracing the view that the Church – evangelical and conservative – remains the repository of active belief in God and it has been given solely to her, by Christ Himself, to act as the heaven-birthed agent of moral righteousness in the land to call to account people and institutions involved in unrighteous practices in the mistreatment and indignities human beings have suffered through racism and ethnocentricism. Hence, the view that I am taking that while not all American churches have historically embraced the ethnic and racial segregation of the past - most have. Although a church body may be ethnically segregated it does not follow that it is ipso facto a racist institution. But it is the purpose of this paper to be a small contribution to the body of knowledge that recognizes the fact that most churches have indeed been passive bystanders if not inheritors of racism, ethnic thought, and racist ideologies, for good or for evil, throughout their denominational or cultural history. I will also attempt to show that embracing these ideas have involved the shaking of the very soul of the nation. These ideas have hindered its moral growth, its unique moral development as a champion of the Imago Dei, its pursuit of biblical human rights and biblical human liberty, and ultimately has rendered null and void its advocacy for the pursuit of justice as God would ordain through Christian life, liberty, and love. This paper is about America and what she inherited and embraced. It is also a call for the churches of America to regain their voice and vocabulary on race and ethnicity and understand what it means to be different yet acceptable by God; to be of a different nationality, but also be a part of the kindred of God from every nation, tribe, and tongue that glorifies the Lamb of God (Rev. 5:9).


Chapter One


Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Speech in Washington, D.C., 1963

Every significant social movement has a turning point. The point at which the Civil Rights Movement emerged from a regional anti-discrimination movement to a nationally endorsed social drive toward racial equality can be plausibly traced to the famous “I Have A Dream” speech that Dr. Martin Luther King gave to a national audience in Washington, D.C. in 1963. The occasion for the speech was the culmination of a civil protest march on Washington originally organized by A. Phillip Randolph, president of the Sleeping Car Porters Union, but later becoming the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The context of the speech was framed as the oratorical finale of the event in which Dr. King, on public display for the first time before a national audience, echoed the prevailing themes of America’s rich heritage. It is no doubt true that he had a familiar name and that many people knew of the particular quest of the Civil Rights Movement, still the nation had yet to hear the depth of his passionate vision of America, his underlying affirmation of America as the Good Nation, and his willingness to allow the citizens of the nation to entertain, for a moment, the “better angels” of their collective natures. It was a triumphant speech. Using the stylistic flavorings of the old southern Negro preacher, with its rhythmic call-and-response pauses, King’s words reflected a fresh mix of the articulate scholar/ poet whose poetic remembrance of national goodness and exhortation to further glory called America to imagine that the world of racial equality was nothing to be feared. In effect he asked America to share in his imagination, in his dream, of a reality not yet lived out. His audience, by the power of the Spirit’s presence, was attentive and receptive. Indeed, it was listening to a call to an ontological dynamic that would require national cooperation and will. The Church had not responded to King’s call to brotherhood in the image of God, so the nation itself would be called to give Dr. King a hearing. His moving recitation of the familiar anthem, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” set the tone. The speech was a marvel of rhetorical skill and improvisation:

“My country ‘tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing

Land where my fathers died

Land of the pilgrim’s pride

From every mountainside

Let freedom ring! 1

… And if America is to become

a great nation… this must be true.”

King here implies a universal understanding that the potential for the nation had not yet been attained. Indeed, the race question was a difficult question that had been with nation from its beginning2, and he suggests here that it was perhaps the struggle that would have to be overcome in order to achieve “great nation” status. The prerequisite for such a change of mind and heart, King suggested, are awakened consciences and the collective will to achieve what the consciences have determined to be just. This “achievement” would serve as a catharsis – a purging of past sin – and a repentance - a resolve to never go back to past injustices. And this was the key point in the construction of King’s appeal to the American conscience. It must be noted that King was willing to grant what a great many in the African-American community would not grant: the belief that whites could and would change their minds on the question of racial equality.

“I have a dream today… that this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”3

The appeal to the Enlightenment presuppositions of the country’s principal founding document was King’s brilliant reminder of the raison d’etre of America. It was never the case that men were to be treated as inherently inferior beings on the shores of America. Quite the opposite was true. The United States of America was to be unlike any other nation that had ever existed. Prior to its revolt, the Founders appeal to the British Crown and to the British Parliament was against excessive taxation, taxation without representation, and against unilateral property seizures by the government. All appeals were made with a unique Enlightenment concept of liberty in mind. This concept, instantly recognized as the philosophical ruminations of John Locke and Edmund Burke, was unwelcomed by an authoritarian Crown buttressed by the divine right of kings. Contrarily, this concept demanded that equality of persons be an a priori concept by which people may assent, discuss, debate, protest, and make justifiable violent coercion if necessary to secure their liberties. The history of Western Civilization, of which it may be said that America is a logical heir, is littered with conceptual ideas such as liberty and freedom – often compromised - yielding to the cold harsh reality of facism, feudalism, and militarism. Defiantly, and accepting the historical challenge, the Declaration of Independence thumbed its nose – so to speak - at historical precedent. There is little doubt that Thomas Jefferson spoke for all dissenting Americans against British control in the general thrust of the document’s tenor. Protest gave way to a yearning for independence; independence was in turn to bring about a liberty that could truly be lived out and experienced. But it is ironic that the generations of Americans who have come to a collective assumption of the “rightness” of the founding documents and their declarations of conceptual equality have differed as to their true meaning. For all practical puposes, Dr. King’s true meaning certainly differed from that of Andrew Jackson’s, whose own true meaning would differ from Abraham Lincoln’s. And from both the philosophical and political vantage points, the differences are vast. Literary criticism might point out the fundamental differences between the categories of meaning that words have from generation to generation. Indeed, structuralism as a linguistic category assumes that the phraseology of the Declaration of Independence is fixed in a time in which Enlightenment thinking predominated and in which a concept such as a “self-evident truth” made perfect sense, but in no other time period would it resonate. (In only 70 years that very same concept was thought absurd by no less than the governor of South Carolina!) I will discuss the philosophical and political problems and objections to the concept of self-evident equality of creation in another chapter. But suffice it to be said that Dr. King’s appeal to credal integrity was made to a citizenry convinced of the “correctness” of the Declaration of Independence. This was an American citizenry moved and convicted – as Americans were before and during the period of the Civil War - by both the Christian biblical tradition and the very real power of the Holy Spirit.

“I have a dream that one day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveownwers will be able to sit down at the table of brotherhood…”4

While the Christian church and its traditions have historically confessed to the universal brotherhood of mankind, the traditional practice has not been a tidy one. There have been, during the Church’s history, numerous debates over the extent of that brotherhood. Some views have held to the notion of the elect only, that is, those who are saved in Christ, as the only true brothers and everyone else, i.e., the lost and unsaved, as outside the bounds of the privileged relationship. Yet the Bible itself is not ambiguous about the fact that all of mankind share a common set of first parents created by God: Adam and Eve. However, the idea of relatedness with which brotherhood has become synonymous loses some of its meaningfulness in any cursory examination of the Old Testament. The Bible tells us that the introduction of sin into the world germinated into a generational and collective hard-heartedness within mankind toward his Creator. As it followed, the breakage between man and God led to a breakdown in the relationship of man and man - to become a man versus man world. National pride, hatred, envy, and idolatry have always been the successful formulas for wars of aggression, oppression, and annihilation. This absence of goodwill and love between nations, given a political articulation by Thomas Hobbes, the author of The Leviathan, was mostly gloom and doom. It formed the basis of German/ Aryan Realpolitik, for example, and inspired the darkest aspirations of struggle as characterized in Friedrich Nietszche’s "Will to Power" theses. But the antithesis of this state of affairs, the conditions of peace and brotherhood among men, even from Christian and Christian-informed worldviews, had been cast primarily in eschatological terms and conditions, as in the Millennial reign of Christ, for example, where the brotherhood of men is immanently enforced, or in the vastly implausible Christian dominion theology.

Dr. King does not spell out the specifics of the conditions of brotherhood he envisions in this speech, but merely assumes a change of the times that neither slave nor slaveowner, racist or humanist, could have envisioned. The audacity of his “dream” bears our deepest consideration of the times as they were. The post-World War II American hegemony produced by victory over facism in turn brought about a triumphalism of American ideals and values – a type of Pax Americana. But it also placed the nation in a uncomfortable conundrum. Having its domestic laws and values scrutinized and taken seriously by an international community forced to come to grips with long denied concepts of freedom, liberty, and righteous brotherhood, America was discovered to be in embarrasingly short supply of its own ideals that it both claimed to cherish and fought to export. In reality however, American culture and laws at that time accurately reflected the collective hearts of its people. And what became clear to many people outside of Black America was that the nation had not sufficiently demonstrated in any serious domestic sense the values it sought to carry to a needy world. Lacking leadership in this new role, the country instinctively exported the one known moral commodity that it had in abundance - the gospel message. Sure enough, after World War II Christian churches mobilized and ramped up their mission work abroad. By 1949, almost overnight, Billy Graham became an international sensation. His compelling presence and oratorical intensity served as a conduit of the good news of the Cross and of the Redemption of mankind and was fully capable of meeting individual human needs5. But for a world seeking acts of Christian demonstration from an ostensibly Judeo-Christian nation, there was still much work to be done. The American domestic zeigeist, a collective conscience that Lincoln believed that all Americans had in common, was no longer able to live with the tension of this unresolved question. The gospel preached abroad and at home compelled the need for national reconciliation on the race question. Thus, the call to moral cleanliness was revived and intensified. Moral values exported abroad – it was sensed - would have to be practiced at home. If the parable of the good Samaritan had any relevance whatsoever, it could certainly be applied to the American Negro and his oppressed condition within the United States. With the “Negro Question” having become increasingly an international embrassment, it was clear that the nation could not continue to point the moral finger at the mote in its neighbor nation’s eyes while ignoring the beam of racism in its own eyes. It could not repudiate Hitler and the horrors of the Holocaust in bloody sacrifice without repudiating George Wallace, Bull Connor, the Ku Klux Klan, and the regular lynchings of Black folk in the South. It was a nation in the midst of self-evaluation that saw the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, what I will herafter refer to as the Racial Equality Movement: a Spirit-led force of bold, non-violence; of calm ministerial confrontation whose message resounded with the deep spiritual resonance of biblical social justice now. Its contention was simple: genuine conviction from the Spirit must be accompanied by action. Its message: individuals must join together to publicly assent to the message of truth and moral cleansing in order for moral cleansing to become a living reality and for truth to take hold in the streets. King himself put it this way:

The primary reason for our uprooting racial discrimination [racism] from our society is that it is morally wrong. It is a cancerous disease that prevents us from realizing the sublime principles of our Judeo-Christian tradition. Racial discrimination [racism]…relegates persons to the status of things. Whenever racial discrimination [racism] exists it is a tragic expression of man’s spiritual degeneracy and moral bankruptcy. Therefore, it must be removed not merely because it is diplomatically expedient, but because it is morally compelling. 6


King's words echo biblical truth. The Bible's message was that all men are created Imago Dei. To bear witness to its truth, the message bore at least two pieces of the fruit of the Spirit: Love and Peace. The message was timely and indiscriminate. How else might it be accounted that a group of meek, non-violent, southern African-American pastors should have so successfully carried out the very same message that had been for more than two centuries violently suppressed? The imprimatur of God should have been detected from within the American Christian Church. After all, the boldness of vision sought inclusivity: the oppressed would invite the oppressors not only to repent and get clean, but to share a meal at the table of brotherhood. The demonstration of Christianity among men had not met so great an ecclesiastical opportunity. To the believing Church’s everlasting regret, the invitation went unaccepted. Like the strangers, vagabonds, and other initially uninvited guests of Luke 14 who are, after a while, invited to the great feast of the “certain man” because those originally invited made excuses, the message became an invitation to the nation to join in on the feast of brotherhood and righteousness – a “feast” that the Church made excuses not to attend. It is, again, a uniquely American message with deeply spiritual resonance. The brotherhood table of the sons of slaves and sons of former slaveowners was by invitation only. And King was issuing a call to all bigots, hatemongers, discriminators, as well as the indifferent – each of whom are more or less adversaries of righteousness - to make collective peace with their African-American brethren. It is this interpretation of Dr. King’s vision of brotherhood that holds lasting sway because of the apparent influence of the Spirit, the audacity of the message, and the realization that the time for brotherhood had, at long last, arrived in America. Where it differed was in the fact that this substantial call did not merely emphasize believing, but action – action from the Church first - and if unheeded, from the Nation. This action would be critically necessary for greatness to be achieved.

“When we allow freedom [to] ring… We will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last – free at last – Thank God Almighty we’re free at last!” 7

It is a sad fact of history that the evangelical, Bible-believing churches in America are, and remain, very much segregated institutions8. Dr. King himself once said that Sunday mornings are the most segregated time in America. This needed not to have been. I will discuss in a later chapter how this came to be, but for now it is important to understand just who Dr. King and the Racial Equality Movement were speaking to and why. There were more than 200 mainstream Christian denominations in American during the period of 1945-1960 and it is likely that all were very much aware of the plight of the Negro in America. Unequal social conditions could not have gone unnoticed by institutions presumably committed to bettering society through moral imperative. What appeared to be a tranquil Church on the shores of America was, in reality, a series of fragmented institutions – each going about their own business of advancing, through their own myopic lenses, the moral good of the land. Churches did not by and large care to become invloved in the what was perenially termed, “the Negro Question”, or the “Negro Problem”. But “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere9”, King once said. And it was this condition of injustice, either ignored, shied away from, or not understood by people of faith that lay beneath the surface of the Church. From thence, its legacy was to spoil the land by making it socially and legally unfruitful for those who differed not by their beliefs, but by their racial ethnicity. That racial division was as much an impenetrable reality among Christian believers and their churches is a sad legacy given the biblical imperatives to regard one another as brethren in the faith. Spiritual non-differentiation was apparently set aside for the predominant thought patterns of humanism, Christianity-ism, racial hierarchy and segregation. What is even more amazing is that not only were churches caught up in this thinking and reduced to silence on race matters, most churches could be expected to reaffirm the blessings of freedom and liberty bestowed to the state.

The Church, as Mark Noll put it, was not merely expected to be, but could be counted on to be silent in the face of state transgressions10. To the question of the institution of slavery, for example, there never existed in America’s history a unanimous charge from its churches against the state in its praxis. There were, to be sure, regional and spiritual charges against regional interests within the government, namely the New England abolitionists against the Southern slaveocracy; but even this was attentuated to the admissability of certain criteria within the debate: the question of freedom rather than equality for example, for the Negro slave. Under only the rarest of instances was it countenanced that the Negro, slave or free, was the White man’s equal; nor was it argued to any major extent by American churches at large that the Black man shared in the Imago Dei reality with the White man. Churches, with few exceptions, did not feel comfortable with race, social interaction, and its attendant messiness of civil rights and civil liberties. Many times was William Lloyd Garrison in the 1840s and 50s nearly physically thrown out of speaking halls and churches for his views on abolition and racial equality. With this historical legacy, and not answering the call to share at the table of brotherhood, the Church found itself on the outside looking in. This biblical metaphor is appropriate: while the table was set in the Master’s house, the children of the Master made their excuses.

Because Dr. King’s appeal to America was based in part on the Founding Documents, it was in part a deistic, Enlightenment message of humankind, a view that all men are the creatures of a benign Creator. But the message was provided its moral power by a thoroughly Christian faith and the belief that when our common humanity is taken seriously and morally - good can triumph over evil. The national achievement to be grasped in the post-WW II milieu of the 1950s and 60s was essentially an invitation to the “good”. And this goodness was based on the biblical principle of the Imago Dei – that all men were made in the Image of God and therefore having certain creaturely qualities based on God’s imprint - which cannot and must never be oppressed. And while the cojoining philosophical principle of humanity was based on a deistic rights-of-man thesis – it served as the handmaiden of the Imago Dei, it was the de facto legal and transparently moral underpinning of those documents which carried a binding, we-the-people contract that applied to all of America – regardless of ethnicity. It was in this vein that the Racial Equality Movement marched in the power of the Spirit, proclaiming and reclaiming the revelation and principles of these sacred and secular ideals.



Baruch Hashem! Maranatha! Soli Deo Gloria!

Monday, January 19, 2009

Prayer to "the God of our many understandings"

Well, Episcopal bishop and open homosexual Gene V. Robinson has publicly connected the spiritual dots of the agenda of radical homosexuality and anti-biblical religiousity. His invocation prayer at the Inauguration of Barack Obama will be made without a Bible - which I take to mean without biblical reference or foundation. To my way of thinking, this proves the spiritual relationship of homosexuality is indeed of the Antichrist. The Bible tells us that homosexuality is not biological - it is driven by a spirit. No wonder it eludes scientific detection - it is not genetic.

But its rampant practice is one of the clearest signs of deep spiritual decay and bondage found in scripture. Thus, those who advocate its normalcy do so against biblical teaching. But even if one is a devoted secularist, intuitively, people sense something is "wrong" with it as a practice and a lifestyle. It defies natural law. It eludes scientific pinpointing. And because it's spiritual - one can detect the realignment of its agenda with a spiritual cover apart from the Christian majority in this country. Its agenda is now becoming openly apostate.

Mark my words, it will only be a matter of time before the agenda is militantly anti-Christian.

And for many homosexuals, this is just fine. Most gays were never comfortable with a Bible that condemns their lifestyle. Even the most radical biblical interpretations that sought to assert zero condemnation of sodomy in scripture have never found traction in the millions of pulpits and Bible studies around the country and abroad. Sodomy is - in most biblically plain-meaning and common sense renderings - ungodly, and therefore is sin. Not only do common churchgoers sense this, most so-called "gay churches" do not care to debate the issue. The Bible and homosexual practice are not compatible.

As for our society, homosexual practice is given place and a voice because of the American ideological virtue of tolerance. And tolerance is a very good thing - up to a point. But when the practice is given legal trump and begins to intrude more and more upon the liberty and practices of the thousands of Christian churches in this country, then will it become what it has always sought to be: a root virus of open sin and defiance against God. Never was this so in America, but it is becoming more so now than ever.

Bishop Gene Robinson's unbiblical prayer - despite his own insistence that it is not his conviction - is to be made to the "the god of our many understandings". It is an act of defiance against both the church that ordained him (or maybe not now) and against the good wishes of millions of Christians who pray daily for the health and weal of our nation. And despite his insistence that this prayer does not proceed from his own conviction, you can guarantee it will be a prayer the gay agenda will be confortable with. It will indeed be a prayer of tolerance, for sure. But it will be a prayer that calls no one to account for the Bible's view of sin; it will be a replacement prayer; a "civic" prayer to the god (or gods) who can neither hear, save, or judge.

The Bible calls that apostate. And I say - to paraphrase a popular football coach - the gay agenda is what we thought it was! It stands for radical change of morality; it is anti-Bible, anti-God, and Antichrist. Separate America from the Bible and you separate America from her soul. She cannot long endure, or exist without it.


Jer. 2:8-9
The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit. Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the LORD, and with your children's children will I plead...

11-12
...Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the LORD.



Maranatha! Baruch Hashem! Soli Deo Gloria!