BallPointBlog

Updates....11/05/10

2010-11-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

Just an update from my too infrequent postings....a Civil Rights leader you never heard of passed. From the New York Times in mid-October.

Most people remain mystified as to the root causes of Black-on-Black homicide. Sociologists, criminologists, police, politicians, and even pastors continue to be baffled as to why Black folk murder their own kind at the rate in which they do.

Most think the root causes are economic, but as I observe too often in Atlanta, most of the murders have little connection with robbery or illegal drugs. But there is an instructive passage in Bible tells us in Proverbs 26:2 "...the curse causeless shall not come."

If we would look to the causes of the involuntary death rate of Blacks in this country, we would do well to cast a glance at the statistics on voluntary homicide - that is, the Black abortion rate for a root cause to this evil curse. "...the curse causeless shall not come."

Saints like Mildred Jefferson devoted their lives to saving lives and calling attention to the scourge of death which invariably begets the culture of death - like the one now running rampant in the Black Community.

May the good Lord Jesus, the Christ of God, welcome her with open arms! Maranatha!

Politically driven: Obama and the 'precepts' of Jesus

2010-09-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

Wow. A startling confession from the president that he is a Christian. We've been waiting for some kind of confirmation that Obama was who he said he was since his presidency began, namely a Christian. Two weeks ago he went to church with his family. Congratulations. Now, he's giving testimonies of faith. Progress.

Cynics are saying this is poll-driven faith-noise - and it may well be. But I'm willing to accept a teleprompter free statement - almost any statement - from this president supporting Christianity because it gives us a moral point of reference to address. For example, what do the "precepts" of Jesus tell us about the sanctity of life? Then why do you, Mr. President, support legal measures which terminate the lives of the unborn? What does the Savior have to say about marriage and homosexuality? Then why do you, Mr. President, support homosexual marriage and for all legal purposes, extending equal rights of homosexuals with heterosexuals? If the precepts of Jesus have any meaning at all, they have a moral point of reference.

Having a moral point of reference in the first place locates moral norms and provides people with a appeal to reason on controversial issues. After all, how can we dialogue if I don't know where you're coming from? Were it not for the Law of Moses, the Pharisees might not have been able to place a charge against Jesus. So now, at least the president says he is a Christian by choice and the Savior died for him, too. OK. I can work with that.

Now we can begin the critical dialogue with the president's liberal Christianity on a national stage. This is better than nothing. I just couldn't take another presidential Sunday filled with golf and basketball while the president's wife and daughters are - yet again - starved of the nourishment of the faith dad claims he has while there's no Church, no Communion, no mention of Christ, ever, in the first family's lives.

MARANATHA!

The Quote of the Year

2010-09-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

The Quote (so far) of the year comes from John Kelly from the American Thinker:

There is a sense with Obama and his academic cadre that Americans have fallen into Wonderland's rabbit hole and are whirling, unstable and uncertain, while being forcefully attended to by blind visionaries bent on dictating the madness of a hellish and impossible utopia.

This captures the feeling I have had since early on in the Obama presidency. I keep trying to figure out things, but when you are whirling about in an opaque abyss - that seems like some kind of parallel time warp in which down is up and up is down - there's not a lot that can be understood with clarity other than "Danger, Will Robinson!". Something bad is happening, but you can't see it - yet, you can only sense it.

MARANATHA!

Getting it Right: Sharia Law is the Issue

2010-09-14T21:43:00.000-07:00

This article from the Washington Times gets it right. Sharia Law opens wide the critical fault line between Muslims and the West. It is the "2nd wave", so to speak, of Islamic attack on Western values - after outright violence. Thus, to ignore Sharia while focusing on the Qu'ran is folly.

May God open America's eyes.

MARANATHA!

Burning the Qu'ran...what's the point? Here's one.

2010-09-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

This issue reminds me of a terrible Chris Rock joke where he once said he could never beat his wife - but he certainly understood those who did. There is a dark wit hidden behind the revulsion there, of course. But likewise, there is something about burning a Qu'ran that while it is initially repulsive, but I can see where those who would do it - could do it.

Indeed, there is, if one would be really honest, something quite sinister behind Islam, jihad, the Qu'ran, and the anti-Western and anti-American messages of the "Islamic radicals". What people who are not sympathetic to the Qu'ran burners are not seeing - and perhaps don't want to see - is the reality that there is a war going on in the name of Islam. Sure, Islamic "radicals" have declared this war, but how many more times must we in the West be surprised again by the violent actions of a so-called Muslim "moderate"? As we have seen, Muslim moderates lack both voice and conviction in their denunciation of Islamically inspired violence against the West. But who is a radical and who is not isn't the point, though. The point is...when will we in the West get absolutely serious about the Qu'ran, Sharia Law, and the imams who weekly preach the fundamentals of what really is scarcely little more than a political manifesto of world conquest in theological drag?

To say that Islam - as it is being preached and taught - is encroaching upon American sensitivities is an understatement. For sure, the anniversary of 9/11 always reopens an old wound. The U.S. Cole. The Ground Zero mosque. The Fort Hood shooting. The Shoe Bomber. The New Jersey reconnaisance crew. This list has grown out of control. Even this most recent false alarm: why in the world would you tape a watch to a bottle of Pepto Bismol and tuck it in a piece of flight luggage separate from your original destination - if you were not up to something evil? Come on now, if we will be honest, the continual arrests of Islamic men - foreign and domestic - intent on doing harm to America is without precedent - and yet the people will not point to the obvious.

Indeed, even largely secular Europe is warning America. What has happened to us can happen to you sooner than you think, Uncle Sam, they are saying. Look at London, Amsterdam, or Paris. Controversy upon controversy over hijabs, burkas, Muhammad cartoons, airport screenings, and many other things all seem to have a point of commonality - Islam and its inability to cope with the West.

So what does the West do? Again and again, retreat from principle and TOLERATE. Most Americans have come to accept the flag-burnings and "Death to America" chants as a given. But even aloof France, an avowedly secular country, has gotten concerned. And with evidence from a smuggled video of a Parisian Muslim call to prayer on a busy Paris street, ordinary Parisiens are dismayed by what Islamists are doing to their secular city, block by block, burb by burb.

So, while these Qu'ran burning pastors may seem a little cuckoo, what they are doing, like canaries in the coal mine, is sounding the alarm. I hear it. Clanging loudly. I hear what they are saying. None of them hate Islam, per se, it seems, but they love Christian America so much that they cannot allow another day to pass without bearing witness, like the Watchmen on the Wall in Ezekiel 3, of an encroaching enemy.

The question isn't whether or not America will tolerate Islam and "be a good neighbor" but whether or not this country's men of God will join these "crazy" pastors and put up a spiritual and moral stand at the 50 yard line, or retreat, tolerate, and eventually put up a stand - by force of arms, perhaps - at our own goaline.

However, given the weakening of our leadership in Washington and our collectively diminished moral discernment, will we, like the Jerusalem priests and false prophets who scoffed at genuinely prophetic warnings of doom, also not heed the warnings before us because the men doing the shouting and Qu'ran burning are "crazy"? Could these men be right?

So, no, I wouldn't burn a Qu'ran, but I certainly understand those who would.

MARANATHA!!

Thank you, Stephen Hawking!

2010-09-06T20:23:00.000-07:00

Wow! It is not often that Christians receive a gift from unbelievers. But here's one right here. The reknown agnostic physicist Stephen Hawking has just upped the ante on reverse brilliance. Simply put, it is a conclusion of exceptionally moronic proportion - absurdity on a platter, if you will. Are you ready?

SPONTANEOUS CREATION.

The universe and all we know about it came into being spontaneously.

Wow. Ranks right up there with the best of Grimm's "Just So" stories. And they laugh at us Christians for taking it on FAITH that God - an intelligent Agent of an immense kind - created the universe and the material world that we observe.

Don't you just want to laugh right back when you see a man of such a depth of intelligence explain away the created order via self creation? I had to read the article some ten times to make sure I got it straight. Never mind "ex nihil - nihil fit" we all learned in Philosophy 101, Mr. Hawking and his physicist cohort at CalTech, Mr. Mlodinow, have indeed proven Albert Einstein's maxim: "The man of science is a poor philosopher."

Dare I say that Romans 1 suggests the perfect epitaph to modern science and cosmology: "Professing themselves wise, they became fools....and worshipped the creature rather than the Creator...".

These people need our prayers.

MARANATHA!

Glen Beck and the Separation of God from Country

2010-09-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

First of all, I want to say I that admired Glen Beck's boldness and initiative in organizing the Rally at the Mall in Washington, D.C. last week. 300,000 looked to me to be about right in terms of how many attended. Obviously, he has a finger on the pulse of the Patriotic Soul of many Americans. His instinct is sure. And right now, the "God and Country" theme is what's up. Restoration and Recovery. Ordinary Americans are sensing the slipping away of the symbols and substance of America. The elites just don't get this. They never do.

However, what made this rally so interesting to me was that it was as much about getting right with God as it was a finger-wag at the Three Branches of Government. Sure, Obama angers many. But he's a Socialist neophyte who's been found out. And as far as We The People are concerned, like The Who sang, "We Won't Get Fooled Again". And the Courts are out of control, too, imposing loftily and ideologically from the bench. How in the world does a Constitutionally vested Federal judge invalidate Natural Law? He did in California. The U.S. Congress may be too far gone. As corrupt as the Roman Senate under the Gracchii, these "leaders" are contempible - spending the People's money wildly, not reading the bills they pass, and passing laws that do not apply to themselves. Unwilling to stand firm for anything, they've become as toothless and obeisant as the National Convention under the Ancien Regime.

But the people by and large also sense that pointing fingers can be awfully hypocritical. The moral lessons of the Good Book, the Bible, particularly from the New Testament, shout at us to get our own houses in order. If the country is to be saved and reclaimed, as Mr. Beck suggests, salvation must come from the People, not from Government. Populism does have a moral center - and it's certainly not in Washington.

And therein lies my discontent. Where, precisely, is America's moral center? Presumably it can be found in the faithful and believing Christian core of America. Among those diehards that hold to the truth of the Word of God and who happen to believe that America has a divine calling in the world. Mr. Glen Beck, on the other hand, is a Mormon. He is a believing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who collectively, - despite their clever nomenclature - are just not Christians in any historic or theological sense. But more on that later. What needs to be said is that we are all servants of those whom we obey and heed. Thus, to the extent that we hear and heed Glen Beck, we serve Glen Beck and his interests - and we serve the deity that Glen Beck serves. But has it come to this? - the view that Faith is a relative exercise? The Vox Populi is a Mormon one?

Now, about Mormonism itself. There are websites galore that reveal what they believe, how, and why. No need for a critique of Joseph Smith or of Mormonism tout court here and now. Suffice it to say that their confessions of faith, their creeds, their sacred scriptures, and their history, simply have no relationship to the Jesus of Nazareth of the New Testament. The founder of the faith, Joseph Smith, was as enigmatic a character as had ever been seen in revival-soaked America in the early 1800s. Beginning just with the issue of polygamy, most Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholics would have a very hard time with Mormon teachings on God, the Trinity, the eternality of the Jesus, salvation, the Chosen People, the sacra biblica, and the many, many other issues vital to holiness and faith in historic Christianity.

Which brings us to the huddled masses who listen to Mr. Beck and came to see him and hear him speak this past weekend. My intuition tells me that not more than 10% of them were Mormons. My intuition tells me that most were probably Evangelical, Mainline, Roman Catholic, and perhaps a smidgen of Jews. What did they come forth to see? A voice crying in the wilderness? Or was it a lost voice in the wilderness?

On the one hand, Glen Beck's clever use of "God and Country" themes are the stuff of patriotism. Good and important questions were asked. Moreover, it kept his gathering relatively free from political posturing, pro and con. I mean, you can scorn the themes all you want, but being a Patriot has been expanded to mean you love God, too, and this was long before the Pledge of Allegiance was edited in the 1950s to "include" Him. But on the other hand, and quite uncomfortably for me, Glen Beck's rally raised the specter of "Which God?"

I really mean this. Are the Mormoms, now, to be counted among those who may sing the hymn "God of our Fathers" truthfully and with the resonance of a faithful kinship? Can, or rather should, a Mormon now lead the Christians to salvation, repentance, and restored government? Are Mormons now Christians? is a better question. If so, what then do we say of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - and the Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Shall a disciple of Joseph Smith - of all people - now lead us? (The implications for evangelical support for a Mitt Romney presidency hangs on this question, I believe.)

Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice. They will not follow the voice of a stranger." Given these crisp and insightful words, coupled with what I saw this weekend, I am certain I can no longer trust the discernment of We The People, nor their wisdom, for it seems they have gone the way of Baal. In listening heartily to the voice of "another", I fear that We The People are quietly being sifted as wheat.

MARANATHA!

The laying on of hands pic...re-examined

2010-08-31T22:56:00.000-07:00

This is a curious pic if for no other reason than its capture of President Obama actually submitting to the prayerful laying on of hands by Christian ministers. How quaint. I'd almost forgotten about this pic.

But is this pic solid evidence of his Christianity? I hardly think so.

My question is - which of these ministers of God is his pastor? Oh, what, you say? I'm sorry...he doesn't have a pastor? Why not? Because he doesn't attend church. Well, well. Has anyone thought that perhaps because he isn't submitted to a man of God, might this be a good reason why his country isn't submitted to his office? It could be.

One question bothers me though: without a church or a pastor, how does he take Holy Communion, I wonder? Does he even take Holy Communion? I really don't know. Does anybody know? Perhaps he's one of those Christians who presides at and toasts bon sante to Muslims at Ramadan celebrations, plays several rounds of golf on the Lord's Day, yet refrains from Communion. Yeah, perhaps he's one of those "Christians". If so, then they NEED to lay hands on him, I guess.

Quite the stranger in the White House.

MARANATHA!

Obama's Faith Defenders

2010-08-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

Not surprisingly, the president's Christian loyalists have rallied to his defense. In an open letter bizarrely entitled, Faith is Not a Political Issue", several ministerial leaders offer a resounding affirmation of Mr. Obama's Christian convictions. Questioning a political leader's faith conviction is not a topic of public discourse, they say. I beg your pardon? This isn't China - it's the United States. The history of political jousting for higher office in the US is immersed in questions of religious fitness, Christian critique, jibes, controversy, and certainly innuendo - from the Quaker abolitionists to the Mormons of Utah to the Irish Roman Catholics. It might help to put down a theology book and pick up a history book.

And I hate to break it to you guys, but in a free-speech zone, as yet exists in the USA, Mr. Obama's faith and his allegiance to that Faith remain a topic of concern to the electorate.

But look, the real issue is that very little the president's said or done in executive office sounds or looks uniquely Christian to anyone. And tellingly, nothing in this letter defends his faith, either. And I dare say that if the president had been in the habit of performing overtly Christian acts, his deeds would have surely been enumerated. The list reads like a Who's Who of Progressive and hard-Left social justice Christians, AME's, UCC's, PCUSAs, and the occasional gay-ish "community" church leaders who are all "deeply troubled" about the political discourse surrounding Obama's faith, but apparently expressed no opinion about the Christian president's continual absence from their pews, nor was there a line in the letter prodding Michelle, at least perhaps, to bring the girls to church.

Hey, we who are the so-called conservative believers were just asking. And we still are. Even non-believers send their kids to church. Show us a devoutly Christian gesture that engenders confidence in your Christianity Mr. President. We live in a land steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition. We Americans know a Christian act when we see one. So, come now, throw us a bone. We are waiting.

Ah, Reverend T.D. Jakes, I have always liked you, but even the good ones can slip up I suppose.

MARANATHA!

Why defend the Faith?

2010-08-24T09:21:00.000-07:00

As usual, Albert Mohler sums up why now is the time for the Lord's people to learn how to defend the Faith. College students who happen to be Bible-believing Christians are under attack. There really are college professors who seek to do harm to Christianity by undermining parental teaching and instruction. Previously, such persons were likely to say nothing, preferring discretion in order to win tenure, get a research grant, and make friends. But in today's hostile-to-Christianity climate some in higher academia have taken off the gloves and are now telegraphing the plays. Why is this?

These profs see Christianity as a kind of literary pest from the past, a religion based on an archaic "just-so" story, the lone obstacle to both the triumph of scientific inquiry and the kind of ethical libertinism they prefer in their own personal lives. So, the last thing they want is conservative-minded students dotting the classroom who are confident in their Christianity. Seeing themselves as "change-agents", the first order of the day for them, then, is to use the classroom as a bully pulpit to hurl critical abuse at the teachings of the Bible and in so doing, discredit the Faith intellectually. Hearing this kind of anti-Christian erudition and sophistication can come like a stun-grenade. For most Christian students, it will be the first, but not the last, serious challenge to the "whys and hows" of what they believe. Naturally, they waver and wonder. Even the verbally astute among them are silenced into worldview submission.

So what's a Christian parent to do?

Prepare for battle, for one. While the weapons of our warfare are not ultimately carnal, we must be ready to do battle for the minds of our children by strengthening our areas of weakness. Leaving the safe confines of a Christian home for the adventurous world of higher learning - where ideas are always in motion - can be a bit intimidating. I'd heard R.C. Sproul say once that the unfortunate choice for many Christians in higher education was between a good education or a Christian education. But this doesn't have to be. One universal area of weakness among Christians I meet today is in the arena of Christian Apologetics - the defense of the Christian faith. Though Christian Apologetics has been around since the infancy of the Church, most have never heard of it. One of my ministry's main goals is to change that.

Since I happen to teach Christian Apologetics at the high school and collegiate level, I want to recommend a couple of books to encourage believing parents to give to their rising juniors, seniors, and graduates preparing for college. One is Dinesh D'Souza's "What's So Great About Christianity". Concise, intelligent, and a thoroughly enjoyable read. Students (and parents) will read about the tremendously impressive contributions of Christianity - uniquely above all other faiths - to the Western and modern world. This book will make you say "Wow!" at least once. Here's a link to Dinesh's website.

The second book I'd like to recommend is "The Privileged Planet", by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards. This book also comes as set with a very nice DVD. The premise of the book is that there is - to a remarkable degree - such unique and design-friendly construction involved in the dimension, size, scope and elemental details of the Universe, the Solar System, and the Earth. Moreover, the fact that this kind of highly complex design is detectable to scientists in the first place raises all kinds of questions about intelligence versus coincidence and design versus randomness. The conclusion that there just might be some kind of Intelligent Agent involved in the making of the world as we know it is a compelling one.

The Intelligent Design movement emerges from this same logic. The idea isn't to draw students into a theological argument about Who designed the world or why it was designed but to engage students with where the science is right now and what this science is drawing intelligent people to conclude.

It would be difficult to read both of these books in a Summer and not be ready to go toe-to-toe against professorial bullying by Fall semester. Armed with prayer and skilled apologetics, the Christian student can make a serious dent in the campus culture.

MARANATHA!

President Obama, a Christian? I kinda doubt it.

2010-08-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

From the "if it walks like duck..." files, the blogosophere and media don't often share headlines, but the latest Time Magazine poll asking Americans about President Obama's religious convictions showed that a very surprising (for them) number of Americans think Barack Obama is Muslim. Almost one in five. But only 34% think he is a Christian.

For conservatives, this is not a surprising result. For the MSM it was jarring, I'm sure. But what bothers me greatly is the "White House spokesmen" who tell us Obama is "obviously" a Christian. He prays every day.

What is that? An explanation? A response? Evidentiary apologetics? He'd have been better off saying the president reads his Bible daily or he's a part of a daily Bible study led by chaplain such-and-such. "He prays daily" no more puts you in the Christian camp than "he writes daily" makes you a playwright.

That said, I have TEN question I'd like to pose that, if I could get a persuasive answer, might shade me into the 34th percentile-"maybe he really is a Christian"-crowd.

But for now, I'm still deeply skeptical of his Christianity, OK? So, here goes:

1. President Obama, why haven't you found a church home yet? How long has it been now? (Paul admonishes us to "forsake not the assembling of ourselves as is the habit of some..." Heb. 10:25)

2. President Obama, why hasn't your family, or even just Michelle & the girls, been photographed attending worship services at a church? I mean, you have photo-ops for everything else - luncheons, dinners, parties, schools, cookouts, business groups, etc. But never a church. You were even recently photographed toasting at a Ramadan dinner, for goodness sakes. If you are a Christian, why are you keeping it at such a low profile? Let your light SHINE before men.

3. President Obama, how did you come to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Did Romans 10:9-10 come into play in your conversion? No offense, but twenty years under Jeremiah Wright's pastorship and tutelage doesn't place you in the Christian camp. He is an affirmed Marxist and Trinity Church is UCC - social gospel at best. Can the blind lead the blind? A sister in the Lord asked me, "Is Obama even saved?". I could not answer her affirmatively.

4. Mr. President, do you have a chaplain who preaches the Word of God to you regularly? What is his name? Where is his church?

5. Mr. President, you have said publicly that the USA is not a Christian nation. If so, what are your personal views of the Judeo-Christian worldview that served as the nation's moral fabric at its founding and which helped to establish the founding documents of our government?

6. Mr. President, why aren't you a deist?

7. Mr. President, of the Five Pillars of Islam, which have you NOT done in your lifetime?

8. Mr. President, do you categorically reject Sura 19:88-93, that God does not has a Son?

9. Of what value might there be in granting Christianity a foremost place in the minds and hearts of the people to whom you serve as president of their government - especially in light of the fact that over 80% of all Americans profess Christianity?

10. President Obama, is it too difficult to see how ordinary Americans might sense that you very well may be a Muslim given your name, given your Muslim tribal inheritance from Africa, given your very close friendships with Muslim professors and activists in Chicago and at Harvard, given your unemotional clumsy shoutout to a nobody at a speech announcing the massacre of Army soldiers by a stealth Muslim assassin, given the White House's strident PR effort to separate "Islam" and "terror" - though the two have gone together like peanut butter and jelly the past twenty years, given the your Administration's intent to hold a trial for an avowed Islamic terrorist near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, given your terrible insensitivity and political intrusion into the Ground Zero controversy by siding with the Muslim developer over the building of a mosque there, given your heavy-handed diplomatic treatment of the head of the State of Israel, given your former pastor's disdain and contempt for the Jewish people (a similar posture of most Muslim states), given your seeming inability to find a Christian church among the thousands that are in the metro DC area, given the fact that as a man holding the most powerful office (right now) on Earth, you have no pastor, no spiritual headship, and irresponsibly do not appear to be leading your children to a relationship with Jesus Christ....?

Given all these things, President Obama, you folks at the WH ought not to be so dismissive of the intuitive and common sense of the American people who, while they might possibly be wrong about you some of the time, cannot be fooled - as Lincoln so aptly surmised - all of the time.

MARANATHA!

How smart is Obama? (Not very...)

2010-08-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Victor Volsky, for voicing what I've been suspecting the past couple of months. I suppose we could all have wished for a exceedingly bright and intellectually sophisticated Harvard guy to lead the free world - as opposed to the dumb, obtuse, Yale guy that led us the last eight years - but Barack Obama ISN'T that guy.

They told us he was whipcrack sharp and an intellectual heavyweight. And, boy, were they ever wrong!

Day by day, and month by month, his Indonesian, Hawaiian, Occidental, Columbian, and Harvardian educational pedigree reflects his true nature: a man of privilege, arrogance, and superficiality. He's been told he's great just because. And what we've found out is that he's been places and seen things, yet he has experienced little. Here's a guy who was used to being kow-towed to in the collegiate classroom, whose manner was cool, professorial, and detached, yet polished enough to mask his intellectual limitations and ideological biases. And people took this aloofness to mean that perhaps his genius would be too much for us, that if he so chose to unleash it - he might overwhelm us with his brilliance and leave us gasping for breath at his know-how. Better to keep it canned until it's needed.

Staying on the sidelines intellectually actually buys you some level of respect until somebody calls you out. Barack Obama's slinky ability to appear neutral and be unidentified ideologically fed his mystique and people collectively saw what they wanted to see. "Y'all ain't ready for me!", his polished verbiage seemed to suggest. Most saw a brilliance that was only a mirage. Harry Reid said Obama didn't speak with a Negro dialect unless he wanted to. That right there was impressive enough for many Whites - for liberal and independent Whites, even more so. In street talk, we'd say he was selling wolf tickets. Somebody of substance needed to call him out, but nobody did.

Until now...in the public spotlight, governing day in and day out, on issue after issue, event after event, we have him in our sights - like a distant star that has been fully identified by different telescopes on different continents, from different parallaxes - we have discovered just whom we have elected. Crystal clear, we see the man, Barack Obama - an intellectual lightweight with a great resume, sensitive to criticism, terribly inexperienced as a governor of people or director of institutions, a possessor of a centrist's vocal moderation and tone but with a militant progressive's instinct and assumptions; but above all, and perhaps to the country's great regret, a man whose heart doesn't burn for America.

We had hoped Reverend Wright's most prominent parishioner would be diametrically opposed to the pastor's worldview, especially after he had publicly disavowed his most inflammatory comments. The way things have progressed, on issue after issue, it looks as if the president only disagreed with Wright's choice of words. Their worldviews are similar. Which means Obama isn't a chauvinist for America "right or wrong". Not for him does "My country 'tis of thee..." have resonance. And for that we should be sorry and perhaps a bit scared.

MARANATHA!

No Mosque, or Physician heal thyself!

2010-08-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

I'm willing to call it what it is. The opposition to building a mosque near Ground Zero in NYC is rooted and grounded in a Judeo-Christian chauvinism. It's true and it's OK. Let's get comfortable with this.

Like many nativists I share this instinctive bias against the spread and intrusion of "foreign" religions. Especially against their representation on hallowed ground. The Romans were biased in favor of Rome, the Athenians were chauvinists for Athens, the French for La France. Likewise, given a choice, it's Pax Americana for me. So it's like this: the fall of the World Trade Towers on 9/11 bonded this country, if only for a little while, in suffering and sorrow and left deep, deep scars. The memory of that day should never be forgotten as long as any American who witnessed it lives. Those who died that day cannot be forgotten if you love America. That is why the ground must be memorialized somehow. The question is, who gets to memorialize it?

Now, whatever else may be said about the 9/11 attackers on that day, they went to their deaths in the name of ALLAH clutching their Qu'rans. They muttered his name and committed themselves to a matrydom that was consistent with the teachings of the Qu'ran. Their struggle was, according to several passages in the Qu'ran and the Sunna, a "just struggle". This is why the voice of "moderation" in Islam doesn't really exist. It's there on the page, as they say. If the so-called extremists can point to the writings on the page - what can the moderates say? As far as I can tell, they have been incredibly unpersuasive on their own soil. Where is the freedom to build a church or synagogue in the heart of Islam - Saudi Arabia - for example? The beatings and jailings over Western dress is not the voice of moderation in action, it is the voice of moderation in defeat. Islam is functionally and fundamentally intolerant because it has to be. Dissent is disallowed in Islam. It is not a religion that is consistent with enlightened thinkers and ideals. Read up on some of the Ayatollah Khomeini's writings while he was in exile in Paris, or from Sayyid Qutb's memoirs from America in the Fifties and you'll get my drift.

So the building of a mosque on this hallowed ground by "moderates" in order to "build understanding" is not only incredibly insensitive to the memory of those who died at the hands of Islam, it is shallow in its reasoning. Americans have not - to my knowledge - undertaken a public campaign against Islam and against mosque-building in this country, so who is it exactly that needs this "voice of moderation"? Americans? Hey, we're the tolerant ones. Muslims? Physician heal thyself!

The so-called moderate Muslims have not put forth an argument worthy of the ground on which they intend to build.

Now, nobody questions the legality of the mosque building. By virtue of the laws of this Judeo-Christian country, the mosque builders have the right to build. Now into the fray comes comments from our madrassa-educated, non-churchgoing, Kenyan-Leftist, and dictator appeaser president, Barak Obama. And what our Islamic president doesn't get and what most people on the left and among the intellectual and ruling classes don't get, is that the American people, despite the 1st amendment of freedom of religion, are stubbornly root-and-branch committed to Judeo-Christian values, especially when it comes to freedom of worship.

I'm just telling it like it is. For everyday Americans Islam is still a gross unknown. It is FOREIGN. It is OTHER. It's not "us" and never will be "us". It is not a religion that the Founders of this country and the Framers of the Constitution would have conceived as a legitimate expression of Providence, of enlightenment, or of blessing and commonweal. The Judeo-Christian faith has served us well in so many areas where Islam has utterly failed. So quite frankly, Islam is a poor choice over against the religion handed down to us by our forefathers. In fact most Americans, if polled, would probably agree that Islam and Islamism are antithetical to Judeo-Christian values and civilization. And they would be intuitively correct in my view. (How many of my own African-American brothers and sisters realize that Islam would NEVER have freed the slaves? or given women the right to vote? Indeed, Islam has yet to emancipate women from burqa's and hijabs. "Moderate" Islam at work.)

So, yeah, I'm against a mosque being built at Ground Zero too, for different and similar reasons as most of the opposers. Moderate Islam must convince its own house of its justness and worth. And there is no principled reason to build on the ground of 9/11 aside from Muslim triumphalism.

That said, I would not be against, as I suspect most Americans would not be against, the building of a church or a synagogue there. So there. Your "freedom of religion" argument altered. YES to a church. YES to a synagogue. Absolutely NOT to a mosque.

MARANATHA!!!

FYI: Timothy McVeigh was NOT a Christian (and never was).

2010-08-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

I'm just simply dumbfounded how a rumor got started that Timothy McVeigh was somehow a Christian. There isn't one biography written about him that claims he was, yet many continue to parrot a falsehood as if it were true. It's just NOT true on any level. He never professed Christ, never acted in Christ's name, never went to church as an adult, and never was affiliated with anything remotely Christian. Just because he's a white guy from the upstate NY or the Midwest who loved guns doesn't make him a Christian AT ALL.

Here's one write's take on the matter, which I share, for your edification.

Any cursory read of the many bios of McVeigh on the library shelves is that Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian because he was an avowed Agnostic who may even have even sympathized with Islam. There many accounts of his dealings with Islamic terrorists - though not one to link him with any so-called Christian Identity movement. Indeed, his letters to his friends suggest a Junius Brutus-like attachment to the idealism of the Declaration of Independence and its call for the overthrow of tyranny. Might I remind anyone the Declaration of Independence is not, nor has it ever been, a Christian document?

And truly, anyone, and I mean anyone, who uses the grande ode to human self-will, "Invictus", as a final written epitaph shortly before execution by lethal injection certainly isn't preparing his soul to meet Jesus Christ. Not by a mile. Even the thief on the cross was smart enough to repent and it strikes me that McVeigh was no dummy.

So again I ask, was Timothy McVeigh a Christian? Not on your life.

Surprise! Gay Judge rules Prop 8 Unconsitutional

2010-08-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, himself a gay man, has ruled that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. Propostion 8 was a ballot measure sponsored by a group called Protect Marriage and placed before the voters of California. The petition simply states: "Marriage shall be defined by the constitution of the state of California as between a man and a woman."

52% of the voters of California, the nation's largest state, and one of the country's more politically and socially liberal states, agreed with Proposition 8 and rejected the idea that a homosexual union is identical to and should be afforded the same rights, benefits, and status as a heterosexual marriage. Proponents of Prop 8 support the traditional view of marriage as it has been understood for centuries by multiple cultures, faiths, governments, and social groups. The verdict is expected to be appealed.

A gay judge disagreed with the majority of the voters - again. Indeed, wherever so-called "gay marriage" has been put before the people, the people have rejected it. In fact, 100% of gay rights victories have come from the courts or from state and municipal legislatures, not from voters.

The crumbling of the Judeo-Christian era and its flagship nation - the United states of America - continues apace.

Jack Tatum: NFL hero dies

2010-07-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid in the early 70s, the Oakland Raiders were a dominating, winning team that seemed to relish the darker side of football. They were the Bad Guys in Black, but somehow they became my team. I'm not sure what attracted me to the Raiders seeing as I was not from the Bay area, but I loved them and hated the Pittsburgh Steelers. I had two idols - my number one guy was Kenny Stabler. "The Snake" as he was called, was one the NFL's best ever clutch performers at quarterback. I taught myself to throw a football left-handed because of the Snake. (Born a natural righty, I never could do much else left-handed, but I could throw a football 50 yards left handed - and won a couple of bets, too. Thanks Kenny.)

My other hero was Jack Tatum.

"The Assassin", as Tatum was called, was simply a brutal force of nature in the Raiders defensive secondary. The tackles he delivered from strong safety to receivers and running backs were not really tackles, but rather were crushing, near-criminal blows. Watching a Jack Tatum collision was like watching a car wreck. Hits so hard you were awestruck that a man could do that to another man. Leading with a shoulder pad, helmet, and powerfully swift legs, Tatum made receivers unwilling to catch balls over the middle and gave the Raiders defense a fearsome reputation that led them to a Super Bowl win in the 1976-77 season.

Tatum was an All-American high school star out of Passaic, NJ and was recruited by the Ohio State Buckeyes and legendary coach Woody Hayes as a running back. Then-secondary coach Lou Holtz convinced Hayes to convert Tatum to safety and the legend was born. He started as a sophomore on the 1968 national championship team, was a two-time All-American and the national defensive player of the year as a senior in 1970. Drafted in the first round by the Oakland Raiders in 1971 he was a three-time Pro Bowl selection from 1974-76. He was traded by Oakland to the Houston Oilers in 1979 and finished his playing career with the Oilers following the 1980 season.

"In the Rose Bowl, he ran down O.J. from behind and made a hell of a tackle on him," said former Ohio State coach Earle Bruce, an assistant coach on the 1968 team. "But he also made hits that were unbelievable. He had one on a Michigan quarterback that knocked him out."

White said Tatum was "as fast as he needed to be. Nobody could outrun him. He had a blazing speed and an uncanny ability that only a few people had. He could run full speed in the open field and hit a guy square-on. He never had to slow down or break down. When he tackled somebody, he literally ran through them. That's why he was so devastating. There may have been other guys who had that ability, but nobody had it with the speed and strength and size that he brought to the table."

After becoming Ohio State coach in 2001, Jim Tressel instituted the "Jack Tatum Hit of the Week" award for that week's best block or tackle.

If you were an opposing receiver and caught a ball over the deep middle of the field against the Raiders and you were merely tackled and not hit, you considered yourself lucky. If you did it again, you were carried out on a stretcher.

That was Jack Tatum the Enforcer doing his job. And he was my guy. In his prime he was like an Achilles - that big #32 galloping about, eyeing, threatening, fearsome. His hits were famous: his first game as an NFL rookie knocking out both Colts tight ends in the same game; the awesome Earl Campbell goal line hit that spun the burly Campbell around in the end zone and left him clutching his chest in pain on the bench; the belting hit on Frenchy Fuqua that catapulted the ball in a low line drive backwards nearly 30 feet fatefully into the hands of Franco Harris for the Immaculate Reception; the powerful, crushing hit on Sammy White in Super Bowl XI over the middle which separated White from both his helmet and chinstrap; and sadly, the brutal, but legal, hit on Patriots receiver Darryl Stingley that broke two vertebrae leaving Stingley paralyzed for life.

Nobody hit harder than Jack Tatum - ever - and perhaps thanks to modern NFL rules against unecessary roughness, nobody ever will.

The Enforcer died yesterday of a heart attack brought about by complications from diabetes. He was 61. R.I.P. Jack.

Maranatha!

Wish I'd been there...

2010-07-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

This one is from the "Wish I'd been there" department. Yahoo News reports that a massive pillow fight in Minsk, Belarus was put down by police using billy clubs. Hilarious! Here's a pic from it:

A Muslim Space Odyssey

2010-07-09T20:57:00.000-07:00

NASA outreach to Muslim world: a "foremost" priority

2010-07-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

Count this among one of the more ridiculous proposals I have ever heard. A space administration bows to social and political policy by tailoring its mission to Muslim outreach and inclusivity. Well, if ever there were any doubts about the Obama administration's favoring Muslims and Muslim countries over many other people groups this story should just about remove those doubts.

"This is a deeply flawed policy" says a former NASA head. Sure it is. It flows from the mindset and priorities of a community organizer-led group of leftists with minimal appreciation of the greatness and achievements of America which include space exploration. These leftists seek instead to reorient American greatness, diminish it, and place it into the category of shared social achievement with the world. But an outreach to the Muslim world as part of NASA's "foremost" mission? What is going on there?

It's part of the worldview shift of the Obama left. They see scientific achievement as important only in a social context. They see America as important only in an international context. NASA, then, becomes a tool of American social policy wherein America's (i.e., the West) scientific and technical greatness must be used to salve the self-esteem of the non-scientific Muslim world by "outreach" and seeking "shared contributions" with them.

Amazingly strange and weird. Kinda like the smart kids sharing their A-level high-tech science projects with the kids with the planets on coat hangers. Kinda like saying if the Yankees win a World Series it's a win that should be shared with an unrelated city like Bismarck, North Dakota, or having the Yankees organization prioritize an outreach to groups that don't even play baseball, like to Buddhist monks in Tibet.

It's a head scratcher. But then President Obama - the internationalist, Muslim, community organizer - is himself a head scratcher.

And these are very strange times we live in.

Maranatha!

Oh, never mind...TSA rescinds policy.

2010-07-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

Perhaps sensing their policy as too Stalinesque a day after announcing it, the Washington Times has reported that the TSA has reversed course on its "controversial opinions" policy.

Again, stay tuned. Yesterday's announcement may have been a trial ballon probe to sense the public mood for such a draconian power grab. But the fact that it was seriously thought about lets you know what the sentiment of that agency - and others like it - is.

Maranatha!

The Road to Tyranny, pt 1.: TSA to block "controversial" web sites

2010-07-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

Chilling stuff. CBS News reports the TSA will now begin blocking "controversial" web sites. (are we sure we aren't in Germany, 1933?) In the name of national security the TSA and - any of the czarist-like mega-agencies of this administration for that matter - will resort to raw governmental power to transform America into a state more or less unidentifiable from Putin's Russia.

The erosion of American freedoms continues. I will continue to post until I no longer can. Himmler-in-a-dress may be watching me even now. Soon, even Christian sermons and biblical truths will be labeled "controversial". Just you wait.

Maranatha!

Jon Voight: J'Accuse Obama!

2010-06-22T16:20:00.000-07:00

An open letter from actor Jon Voight to President Obama:

June 22, 2010

President Obama:

You will be the first American president that lied to the Jewish people, and the American people as well, when you said that you would defend Israel, the only Democratic state in the Middle East, against all their enemies. You have done just the opposite. You have propagandized Israel, until they look like they are everyone's enemy — and it has resonated throughout the world. You are putting Israel in harm's way, and you have promoted anti-Semitism throughout the world.

You have brought this to a people who have given the world the Ten Commandments and most laws we live by today. The Jewish people have given the world our greatest scientists and philosophers, and the cures for many diseases, and now you play a very dangerous game so you can look like a true martyr to what you see and say are the underdogs. But the underdogs you defend are murderers and criminals who want Israel eradicated.

You have brought to Arizona a civil war, once again defending the criminals and illegals, creating a meltdown for good, loyal, law-abiding citizens. Your destruction of this country may never be remedied, and we may never recover. I pray to God you stop, and I hope the people in this great country realize your agenda is not for the betterment of mankind, but for the betterment of your politics.

With heartfelt and deep concern for America and Israel,

Jon Voight

I saw the potential destruction of this nation as a possibility, given the politics of Mr. Barack Obama, but I wanted to believe for the best and hope for the best from him. And here we now sit amidst FOUR major challeneges before us:

1. The US and world economies are on the brink
2. The BP oil spill
3. The border of Arizona
4. The war in Afghanistan

This is what happens when you oppose God. The curse, causeless, shall not come.

I wholeheartedly endorse the letter from Jon Voight to President Obama.

Maranatha! Baruch Hashem!

Israel and the West: joined at the hip

2010-06-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Spanish Prime Minister for saying what needs to be said in the face of worldwide anti-Semitism and widening approval of radical Islamism. Here is the link: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/former-spanish-pm-if-israel-goes-down-we-all-go-down-1.297004

Things are unraveling in a hurry precisely because of the world's opposition to Israel - God's people on His Holy Land. We told you so. Come to know the Messiah while there is still time.

Baruch Hashem! Maranatha!

The Drive for Pleasure

2010-05-18T07:53:00.001-07:00

One of the most powerful and persuasive lines from Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias's work is his conclusion on the state of man and his drive for SOMETHING. It goes something like this:

"the drive for power or the drive for pleasure - Hitler or Hugh Hefner."

Hugh Hefner is every bit more impactful to the world's morals and mores than Adolf Hitler could ever have dreamt. This article from Commentary magazine yields some telling moments as to the shaping of Hugh Hefner and his desire to drive out Puritan morality. He has been overwhelingly successful - and how far worse off are we all.

A sexual pervert for a grandfather drew Hugh to a stunning conclusion.

When Hugh found out years later that Grandpa was a pervert, he blamed the puritanical sexual tyranny that twisted good people into sad deformity.

Later, a fiance who cheated on him while he sought to remain chaste shook him badly.

Then one day Millie confessed in tears that she had slept with another man. Hefner was shattered. He forgave her, they married, but his faith in romance and female virtue was never the same.

Such are the direction posts in life. Apres moi, le deluge.

Maranatha!

The Moral Lives of Babies

2010-05-18T07:19:00.000-07:00

I read this article in the New York Times about two weeks ago and was as fascinated as Albert Mohler, Jr. was. His conclusions and mine are similar. Infants are made in the Image of God and are endowed with a vastly undeveloped - yet innate - sense of right and wrong. I commend this link to you here: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100512/the-moral-life-of-babies-and-the-ideological-life-of-adults/index.html

The actual NYT article is linked here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html

It is dismaying but humorous to read the scientists struggling take on the origins of this moral sense - in infants. Of course, they HAVE to defend evolution or lose their research funding, but you can just see that they've opened a window to the human soul and they are fascinated by its implications. They suggest and hint at a supernatural "cause" for this "blueprint" of morality - but they cannot bring themselves to do more than suggest it. "GOD DID IT" is shouting at them in their work, but their research funding won't allow them to go with their intuitions.

Kind of like when Jesus did a miracle, it was seen by all, but His opponents had to come up with a convoluted explanation for it - up to and including blasphemy. Deny the miracle or deny the cause of the miracle, one or the other. Same with the moral sense of babies. Fascinating stuff.

Maranatha!

Just when you think you've heard it all...

2010-04-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

Put this in the just when you think you've heard it all department. A Gay Softball World Series 2nd place team finish was invalidated because.... bi-sexual men were found on the team. Now, those bisexual men are suing the league.

The quote of the year so far:
At one point during the proceedings, the lawsuit alleges, one of the plaintiffs was told: "This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series."

It only goes to show that people very often want to and expect the right to discriminate according to their "kind". This proves even homosexuals discriminate and now a minority within a minority wants call them out on it.

But, really. A GAY Softball World Series? My Lord. Save us, now.

Maranatha!

Campus diversity group misses elephant on the diploma!

2010-03-31T11:34:00.000-07:00

Amazing. This article is about a diversity group on the campus of Presbyterian-founded Trinity University in San Antonio, TX that is seeking the removal of the words, "in the year of our Lord" from their graduating diplomas. They say these words are an affront to the diversity of the campus graduates presumably because not all students are Christian and that the words themselves reflect a Christian pressuposition.

Head scratcher time: Doesn't the word "Trinity" presume a Christian point of view?

The campus diversity group, headed by a Muslim student, brought the petition. Here's a quote:

"In order for our diplomas to accurately reflect the diversity that Trinity University proudly upholds, we respectfully ask that they simply state ‘the year two thousand nine [ten, eleven, etc.]’ or use the designation ‘Common Era’,"

Why the group didn't also ask to have the word, "Trinity", a Christian theological term if ever there was one, removed from the diplomas was something no one has explained.

The battle for the Judeo-Christian worldview and faith is certainly underway.

Maranatha!

Obama's War on Israel

2010-03-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

This is an important editorial from the Jerusalem Post. Maybe the Jews have awakened from their slumber. If so, it is high time. The article outlines several valid POLITICAL reasons for Obama's seeming about-face towards the State of Israel.

But one possible reason for Obama's turnabout that's ignored in this piece - and I dare ask it. Maybe it's possible that because Barack Obama is an anti-Semite, his policy against Israel is a logical outworking of his anti-semitic worlview?

Of course this assumes that an anti "State of Israel" policy is by definition an anti-semitic policy - and that is a question, while fair enough, often leads to a very raw discussion. As we know, there are many Jews who themselves are anti-State of Israel and anti-Zionist. (which raises another question of whether a Jew can be self-hating enough to be an anti-semite) However, it may be countered that anti-Semitism by definition places one into the anti-State of Israel campground no matter how you slice it.

And to be fair, there may be political reasons for this president's abrupt turn against Israel. But given Obama's direct spiritual influence - chiefly from his notoriously anti-Semitic pastor, Jeremiah Wright - it is a plausible assumption (this anti-Semitism, that is) that has merit. There are other key Muslim influences in the president's life and career that have also shaped his view of Israel for the worse. So stay tuned, it's not called the End Times for nothing.

I have a feeling that we as a nation are about to find out if Genesis 12:3 is really true. Keep an eye on Israel, the Lord's time clock. And pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.

Maranatha!

Shortened Days...what if?

2010-03-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

One of the most intriguing biblical passages I have ever read in the New Testament is the end-times passage of Matthew 24:22 where Jesus tells his disciples that one of the signs of the end-times would be that the days would be shortened.

Well, a NASA scientist has explained that the Chilean earthquake actually did shorten the Earth's day - literally. In fact, the 2004 Sumatran earthquake also shortened the Earth's days by altering its axis.

What if, by the sheer frequency of earthquakes the Earth's days are literally shortened to clearly noticeable levels? Would that be at least some measure of fulfillment of the Mathean prophecy?

I'm just asking...

Maranatha!

Black Babies: Endangered Species

2010-02-18T01:45:00.000-08:00

Billboards are up in our town highlighting the systematic extermination of Black talent, potential, and future: the Black infant. As we have highlighted before on these pages, ABORTION is the #1 killer of Black youth in America.

Fox News has the article and has shined a spotlight on one group's attempt to call attention to this contemporary Black holocaust.

Margaret Sanger LIVES. What so disappointing about this article is the response of an academic Quisling named at the end of it: Beverly Guy-Sheftall. (Funny, I think I went to high school with this academic dunce.) For Guy-Sheftall and others like her, the point is to get Black women to not notice - to look away - from the horrifying evidence and to ignore the macabre history of eugenicists and their present-day heirs at Planned Parenthood in their plan to DESTROY African-Americans through the abortion mill.

Ignorance, Ms. Guy-Sheftall, is NO EXCUSE. As an academic with responsibility to inform the community, you are FAILING your people! How this differs from the Jewish Holocaust and the Final Solution is miniscule.

God will not hold us blameless for the murder of the unborn. In fact, stopping ABORTION could very well be the key to stopping the demonic stronghold of violent murder in the Black community.

Rubbish, you say? Think again. Does the Law of sewing and reaping work? Indeed, it does not fail!

I commend to you Abraham Lincoln's 2nd inaugural address regarding the Civil War and the "scourge" he so longingly wished the Lord would've ended sooner. In Lincoln's view it was not beyond the pale of a holy and just God to take life by scourge in return for life taken by hatred.

I'm just saying....

MARANATHA!

And the 2010 Judge Roger B. Taney Award goes to....

2010-02-16T21:01:00.000-08:00

Amazing. An article from the San Francisco Gate online exposes the District Court judge now hearing the California Proposition 8 case - the judge is himself gay! And the crazy thing is that the SF Gate seems to think that this is not an issue! OMG.

Perhaps you recall Roger B. Taney as the Dred Scott vs. Sanford (1857) judge who ruled that slaves were fundamentally property and had no laws the White man was bound to respect - thereby eliminating Dred Scott's right to even bring a case to Court - since slaves are "property" and "property" can have no legal standing as a "person or persons" who can sue anyone.

Well, of course, Judge Taney was a slaveholder and a Southerner deeply sympathetic to the cause of slavery. Who in their RIGHT MIND would think that Roger B. Taney's slaveholding sentiment and background would be a NON-ISSUE??

Yet somehow a District Judge - a GAY District Judge - overseeing a case in the most populous state in our land having to do with the hottest cultural issue of our day, SAME SEX MARRIAGE, would NOT be biased in favor of the Prop 8 plaintiffs sseking to overturn the will of the California majority?

If you truly believe justice will be blindly served in this case, I've got a bridge to Oceania to sell you....LOL...So let us forthwith present AHEAD of the mortifying HOUR the Judge Roger B. Taney Award for Abominable and Prejudiced Decision Making to Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker!!

Maranatha!

The Virtue of Sports in America

2010-02-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed reading this article from David Brooks of the New York Times. Brooks goes deep into the cultural inheritance of sports in America - at least on the collegiate level. It further illumines the unique quality of America as a country and nation shaped largely from the influences of the Greeks, Romans, and English.

Maranatha!

Pastors File Suit Against Hate Crimes Law

2010-02-05T06:32:00.000-08:00

This should be a warning to all Christians as to the inevitable clash of homosexual rights, masquerading as "human dignity" and "hate crimes", versus religious freedom in the United States of America. All of us who are ministers of the Gospel should cease and desist from the notion that persecution cannot happen nere.

This case is one in which gospel radio broadcasting in Michigan has infiltrated Canada and, of course, biblical admonitions againt homosexuality and the so-called "gay lifestyle" is in direct confrontation to Canadian law which restricts what pastors can say regarding homosexuality. So we have this lawsuit filed by US pastors in Michigan against any expanded interpretation of US law by the courts which might place them - and by extension ALL ministers of the Gospel - in contravention of existing "hate crimes" laws.

Make no mistake: the Gay agenda is bent on silencing the Gospel regarding homosexual sins and this agenda wants the protection of their "lifestyle" federalized. Of course, our consciences dictate we must obey God rather than Caesar - so it really doesn't matter, we will preach the Gospel and "then shall the end come" - but we must pursue legal means while we can to "seek peace with all men" and to be obedient to Caesar's law as much as we are able.

This is heady, exciting, and a bit sad. The time is definitely short. It now becomes clearer that even in the US, there will be a time in which we will be "hated by all men for My [Jesus'] namesake."

Who knew?

Maranatha!

Margaret Sanger Quote of the Day

2010-01-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976

Planned Parenthood Centers are not located in urban population centers for nothing.

I want my baby back, baby back....

2010-01-19T21:42:00.000-08:00

An awful, heart-rending piece of news from the fallout of a Lesbian "union". Even becoming born-again - as this woman has found out - will inevitably clash with child custody "rights" of a former lesbian lover.

An old article, but something I'd been meaning to post for its portent for the future of the American family and child-custody cases involving gays. And if President Obama's most recent nominee for a federal EEOC seat, Chai Feldblum, has anything to say about it - for whom "private beliefs" like Christianity are of small consequence - this kind of ruling could become the norm.

I wonder what I'd do if I were that mother's shoes. Lord knows I could not give my child up to anyone involved in the homosexual lifestyle. In this case, the courts says she must.

What would YOU do?

Maranatha!

Kwanzaa: a very nice take on a bogus holiday

2009-12-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

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!

Adam Lambert: The Future of Rock n Roll?

2009-11-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

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!

Rev. Jeremiah Wright Unmasked

2009-11-03T17:39:00.000-08:00

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.

Black Genocide Part II

2009-10-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

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!

Mao: the Man and the Butcher

2009-10-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

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!

Israel: The Canary in the Coal Mine

2009-09-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

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.

Religion Under Attack II: Homeschooler ordered to Government school

2009-09-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

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.

The cure for disease, etc., etc.

2009-08-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

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...

Race V...or III

2009-08-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

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!

Physician, Heal Thyself!

2009-08-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

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!"

Health Care Debate - an Abortion update

2009-08-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

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!

Race IV...Gates as race victim

2009-07-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Yeshua is Kosher!

2009-07-20T16:11:00.000-07:00

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:

You see the apostasy coming...

2009-07-14T07:50:00.000-07:00

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.

Let the Sodomites depart...

2009-07-13T10:50:00.000-07:00

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?

Religious Liberty and Homosexual Marriage: Incompatible

2009-06-18T19:51:00.000-07:00

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!

Rev. Wright and "them Jews"

2009-06-10T11:03:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

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...

Persecution in America

2009-05-28T08:19:00.000-07:00

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!

I'm back!

2009-05-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

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!!!!

Another Confessing Catholic Speaks Out

2009-04-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

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!

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

2009-04-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

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!

Hallelujah...out of the mouth of Beauty Queens

2009-04-20T10:42:00.000-07:00

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!

What manner of man...is this?

2009-04-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Geert Wilders and the decline of Free Speech in Europe

2009-04-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

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.

Pro-Life Black Pastor Jailed

2009-03-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

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!

My sister got married...

2009-03-25T16:19:00.000-07:00

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!

Obama meets with Gorbachev

2009-03-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

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!

Nice Illustration!

2009-03-18T16:08:00.001-07:00

Saw this on Ray's website. Enjoy!

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

Kings and Kingdoms....

2009-03-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

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.

A Vatican Sellout...no to Intelligent Design

2009-03-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

"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.

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

2009-02-25T14:57:00.000-08:00

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.

The Cause of Anti-Semitism

2009-02-19T08:30:00.000-08:00

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!

David's Census...Obama's Census

2009-02-14T04:01:00.000-08:00

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!

Speaking Engagement...Come hear me

2009-01-31T14:50:00.000-08:00

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!

Heraclitus and the Economy

2009-01-28T08:21:00.000-08:00

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.

Obama, Abortion, and the Silent Black Pastor

2009-01-26T08:31:00.000-08:00

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!

Bittersweet Pride and Joy

2009-01-20T15:48:00.000-08:00

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!

Prayer to "the God of our many understandings"

2009-01-19T11:04:00.000-08:00

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!

The beginning of the Falling Away?

2009-01-13T17:06:00.000-08:00

This article from Worthy News about the latest Barna Research seems to suggest a serious falling away among Americans as the influence and confession of Christianity fades in the culture.

End times predictions are moving now with rapid speed! Let us who believe take heart and hold on to the end! Are you yet holding on? Then keep on keeping on, baby!

2 Thess. 2-4
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

I like the chronology here, if it is what it appears to be.

The Day of the Lord is at hand. I think with the war in Israel, a collapsing world economy, uncertainty among political and economic leaders worldwide, moral rot on the public airwaves and internet access points, signs of fear emerging among some professed Christian groups, Iran nearer than ever to an atomic bomb, an incredibly corrupt and power hungry Russia using heating oil as a political weapon in Europe, the U.N. issuing denunciation after denunciation of Israel, the entire world seems to have a need for an adult to enter the room.

The day of the Lord is at hand!

But - even then - the day will not come before a falling away happens. The obvious conclusion is that the falling away is one of a falling away from the essential doctrines of the Faith. The above article from Worthy News, I think, suggests that very strongly also.

But then, after the falling away...

The Man of Sin is revealed. Now that's what I'm waiting for! But who IS he?

Putin? Obama? Ahmadinejad? Chavez? Ban Ki Moon? Who??

I don't know!

(Of course, until Gorbachev is eliminated - he remains my primary candidate!)

Maranatha!!

No morality? No ethics.

2009-01-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

It's kind of sad to see the lament over the lapsing of ethical behavior and not see the connection between these lapses and the erosion of the moral worldview which shapes and reinforces those ethics in the first place. But in this article, somebody sees it. The last sentence is particulary telling.

Lev. 19:11-12
You shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another. And you shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shall you profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-26T09:24:00.000-08:00

May the peace, power, and promises of God through Jesus the Christ be with you all this holiday season - and ever after!

The memorial of the birth of Christ also reminds us not merely of the joy of a newborn babe, but of the love of God. As Paul Harvey would say, "Here's the REST of the STORY..."

That story is about the profound and marvelous life of Yeshua, the tragic and seemingly unjust death of this great man, followed by his awesome ressurection to life, his appearance, and his ascension to Heaven, the anointing of his followers with his Holy Spirit, and his trustworthy promise to return.

And how deep the Father's love for us that he should give his only Son to die in our place for the unmerited privilege of living in Him, with Him, and He in us - forever!

I don't know about you, but to me that is GOOD NEWS!

Maranatha and Merry Christmas!

Speaking Engagement...Come hear me

2008-12-19T11:41:00.000-08:00

This Sunday I'll be speaking at Atlanta's Church of All Nations, 650 Rowland Road in Stone Mountain, GA., at 1:00pm. Come out and hear me preach the dynamic word of God and deliver God's special message to you and for you.

I look forward to seeing you this Sunday!

Baruch Hashem and Soli Deo Gloria!

Been Busy!

2008-12-18T09:24:00.000-08:00

My apologies to all those who peruse the BallPointBlog from time to time. I haven't posted a thing in three weeks! Well, besides being a minister (I am bi-vocational), I work in the retail industry. Of course, one day I'd like to be full time. Please pray for me in that regard, will you? But since it is Christmas time you can imagine how busy I've been. I have tons of things to talk about and throw out to you, including a short article I am working on regarding America's covenant with God and Israel.

I know that 99% of you do not care to respond to my musings and diatribes - but that's quite OK with me! The blog was never intended to be a dialog. It is however from my heart and mind to yours!

Baruch Hashem! Soli deo Gloria! and Merry Christmas!

Obama: Ordained of God? You Betcha!

2008-12-01T14:05:00.000-08:00

Of course, if one believes in the doctrine of the complete sovereignty of God, as I do, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that Barack Obama's presidency was ordained. The real question that many Christians are right now having a challenging time answering is whether or not Obama is God's choice for America. That is to say, if God were choosing the best person to right now lead America - would Obama be it?

The difficulty in that question lies in the unfolding of what we think God's will is for the nation and the people. Jim Bramlett's article in InJesus.com comes to the conclusion that Barack Obama may be a Saul - handsome, debonair, a looker, but ultimately not the king God would choose.

I take a different track. The track I take is based on the belief that God will permit evil to flourish in a godly nation in order to cause them to turn back to Him in repentence. That is to say, God will actively cause havoc to reign to bring about both His immediate and long-term purposes. I firmly believe God is an "actor" in the world today, as He was yesterday, and as He ill be at the end of the Age.

Exhibit "A" would be the nation of Israel in the Book of Judges. The "five-fold cycle" in Judges was something like this:

1. Israel forgot God's promises and turned to idolatry (forgetfulness and idolatry)
2. God gave them into the hands of their enemies (oppression)
3. They cried out to God for deliverance (outcry and promise to repent)
4. God raised up a judge to deliver them (deliverance by God)
5. When that judge died, they would return to idolatry (recidivism)

Martin Luther offered this point with regard to the raging problem of his day - militant Islam: "As a religion Islam is either a scourge sent by the devil - or worse - sent from God." In Luther's view God used Islam as a "rod" to both chasten and judge his Christian people. This is to say that God does raise up people, nations, and individuals for purposes that are not apparently good to those believers who suffer at their hands.

So it follows then that when the peace, safety, comfort, ease, and finances of God's people are disrupted - and we yet abide in and tolerate gross sin in our midst - we may most assuredly conclude that God is behind the disruption.

Whether it is...

Passive
- if you do "X" - then the dreadful consequences of doing "X" follow
If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land: But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it. (Isa. 1)

or

Active
- I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things"(Isa. 45:7)
- Lo, I will bring a nation upon you from far, O house of Israel, saith the LORD (Amos; Jer.)

I believe God raised up the Pharisees, the advocates of zeal for god's Law - so that His Son may be glorified in teaching Israel - and us - about His love and grace.

I believe God raised up and chose Herod the Great, a king committed to the transformation of Israel into a Rome of their day - a move that only incensed and stirred the Jewish people into rebellion against the Romans leading to and culminating in the Jewish War which saw the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. A fall that God had prophesied in the book of Jeremiah.

I also believe God raised up Adolf Hitler. Suffice it to say on this very sensitive subject that without the worldwide scourge of the wicked Third Reich, the conditions for the creation of the modern nation of Israel would most certainly not have existed - and thus Israel, a modern miracle - would not have been born.

Barack Obama may quite possibly have been raised up for the nation's good - in that peace and prosperity will arrive with him and the nation is blessed. Then we may know for sure that God is with him and us. Only time will tell.

But the problem with this line of thinking - and there are many who think this way - is that there are clear violations of God's moral laws in the positions that Barack Obama has either endorsed or defended. Issues related to -
- Homosexuality
- Adultery
- the sanctity of Human Life
- Murder
- Religious worship
- Idolatry

But it follows, conversely, that if the people of God, i.e., "His nation" suffer and are waylaid as a result of Obama's (or the liberal Democratic Party's) policies, practices, affections, or rule, we may rightly say that Obama was sent by God to scourge and chasten the people. It may be for our ultimate good that these sufferings will drive us to God; but of course, such things are never pleasant. It is a foreboding of bad times to come.

An additional problem confounding the matter is that we cannot say for sure what God is doing in the life of Barack Obama, the man. Is he even saved? If not, what makes anyone believe that God is with him? Do we even know if the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor of 20 years, is saved? If he is not, then Obama certainly is not. We do know that Black Liberation theology is hardly Christian. It is fringe Christianity. It is Liberal Christianity. And because liberal theologians like to play footsie with so much that is not sound doctrine, I think it's fair to call into question basic issues of salvation with them, like we do with the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormoms. There is so much we don't know about Obama the sojourner, now President-elect.

The question for me then, isn't whether or not Obama is God's choice, the question is for what purpose has God raised him up to lead us? To heal or to scourge? To gather or to scatter?

Matt. 12:30
"He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathers not with me scatters abroad."

C.S. Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Attack on the Covenant People...

2008-11-28T05:43:00.000-08:00

The recent terrorist attack in Mumbai was yet another in a series of violent Satanic outbursts against humanity in general and the Covenant people of God in particular. I don't like to read too much into an article but this line caught my eye:

"Their main targets appeared to be Americans, Britons and Jews, though most of the dead seemed to be Indians and foreign tourists caught in the random gunfire."

Jews? Why the Jews? In India? Of all places. I didn't even realize there were Jews in India until I recalled an anti-Semitic remark a Bible college professor of mine once said to his OT theology class. "No matter where you go in this world, there are two things you can always find - an empty Coke can and a Jew." Yeah, it stunk then too.

But an article I read from a Jewish website suggests that many Jews seem to have come to some rational conlusion as to why world hatred has historically been directed against them.

At Sinai Jews were told that there is one God, [one] who makes moral demands on all of humanity. Consequently, at Sinai the Jewish nation became the target for the hatred of those whose strongest drive is to liberate mankind from the shackles of conscience and morality. At Sinai the Jewish nation was appointed to be "a light unto the nations." There are those who embrace Jews and the Jewish faith because of that light; but there are also those who want the world to be a place of spiritual darkness. They object to morality. Those would-be harbingers of darkness attack the Jews as the lightning rod for their hatred.

Now, however, I would argue that the vast majority of Americans and Britons have no idea why they are the targets of so much terrorist hatred. The roots of the relationship of Britain and America with Israel are deeply spiritual - beginning with Christ - and hence, the spirit of anti-Christ which moves like a wind through the children of destruction to do violence to both Jews and Christians. It's motive is to uproot the Jews from their land, separate America and Britian from Israel, and ultimately silence the Jewish pulse from Christianity. The ultimate point is that the Jews must go.

You see this in supercessionism, especially, (and is one of the reasons I have separated myself from Presbyterianism) in anti-semitism among some Christians - whose roots that date back to the Marcion heresy, incidentally. But I'd like to call attention to the identity of the American nation and the British nation(s). This identity is an identity of covenant relationship with Israel under God and is under attack. Unfortunately it is seldom noticed. People riot and American and British flags are burned in the streets and all folks can say is American political "policies" are to blame. American "ideology" is at fault. Yeah, right. My argument is that ideology and policy follow - at least nationally - from identity. Who you are profoundly affects what you think and believe. And who you are spiritually affects your destiny.

Very rarely does anyone point out that the relationship with Christians and their Jewish brethren is spiritual and relational before it is ideological and political. Romans 11 bears this out. The gospels bear this out. The concealed nature of this relationship is one that the enemies of God would rather not see revealed - Hitler excepting.

The Jews are our kinfolk. Period, point-blank. Our kinship to them is indissoluble. One may as well tear the Bible in two or tear the Savior from his Jewish roots before any separation can be made. (I realize most people don't think like this, but God's enemies do!)

And so it follows from the logic that America and Britain, as "Christian nations" whose relationship with modern Israel and its capital, Jerusalem - founded by the British General Sir Allenby, sealed by Britain's Balfour Agreement, recognized - alone - by America in 1948 are in a deep, profound sense related to the people of Israel. Thus the explanation for the ideological and political lockstep in favor of Jewish interests in the Middle East.

Thus the terrorists wrath. America had better wake up. It positively stinks when you've got a Covenant with God and the Prince of this World has been loosed.

Rev. 12:5-6, 14
And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up to God, and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and three score days. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.

Religion under attack...

2008-11-17T09:14:00.000-08:00

Most folks who've studied their history may already know that the United States of America was founded as an Enlightenment-style democratic republic. However, much greater consideration should be given to the fact that we were - and are - a covenant nation as well. A covenant means that an agreement of meaningful and solemn proportions was been made. This agreement was made with the God of Heaven and Earth. How else to explain this country's unique Christian sensibilities?

Religious symbols and mottos abound in our states. Religious ceremony and prayers initiate our Congressional sessions. Our national songs are rich with religious references. There is a church on every corner in most of our towns and cities.

America has a relationship with God - and whether anyone likes it or not - that relationship cannot be revoked without grave cost. The religious sensibility of Americans has been noted many foreign observers throughout history. Today, the Jerusalem Post reports from a poll done by the Anti-Defamtion League that a majority of Americans are feeling a sense of values attack.

And though the poll is geared to measure the level of anti-semitism involved in American's sense of who's responsible for the values attack, it is refreshing to note most Americans don't think the Jews are behind it. Of course, Hollywood is cited as a hostile player and I'm pretty sure for the next four years a Democratically dominated Washington, D.C. - whose campaigns have been financed largely by Hollywood elites - will be of little help.

We shall see...

Amos 3:1-3
Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. Can two walk together, except they be agreed?

Black America: Sheep in Wolves Clothing

2008-11-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

I didn't really want to write this, but I am compelled to address the spectacular contradiction of Black Christian allegiance to biblical truth and a liberal political worldview that I think is best illustrated by the phrase "sheep in wolves clothing".

What triggered my thoughts (and exasperation) on this issue was that fact that polls showed that in California, perhaps the most liberal state in the Union, the Proposition 8 Initiative that essentially outlawed gay "marriage" in the state, was defeated largely by African-Americans. It's true. Oh yeah, and you'll hear about the enormous funding from the Mormon church and so on, but Prop. 8 opponents (pro-gay marriage) outspent the supporters by 16 million dollars (45 mil to 29 mill), so the problem wasn't the Mormons nor was it money. The problem was that Obama's core support, African-Americans, voted in favor of the proposition 70% to 30%. Put another way, if Blacks had only voted consistently with their liberal leanings - and consistent with the leanings of their candidate of choice, Barack Obama - Proposition 8 would have gone down to a miserable defeat.

And gays would have enshrined homosexuality as the law of the land in the nation's largest state and perhaps in Florida and Arizona, who also shot down pro-gay marriage initiatives. But this didn't happen, and hence my point.

Gays everywhere publically protesting against the Mormon Church (and by implication against all biblically believing Christians), but privately they have to be miffed at African-Americans in general and the Civil Rights lobby in particular which failed to deliver their liberal votes for their principal Equal Rights issue.

But here's what I don't get. How is it that African-Americans, largely a conservative Protestant Christian people, can find in their consciences to elect to the highest office in the country a man whose policies are so diametrically opposed to what they say they value? Put another way, are Blacks politically and socially liberal - or are they not? Do we prefer the false comfort of somehow being politically liberal yet socially conservative?

Of course, it is well-known from past elections that Blacks tend to vote the Democratic slate virtually "straight-ticket". But I admit to being quite surprised that Barack Obama - a liberal's liberal - can garner near unanimous support from a people whom the polls show are largely anti-gay ("homophobic" using today's PC terminology); who attend Bible-believing churches regularly; are largely anti-abortion (though they have them disproportionately); anti-evolution in their worldview; who tend to favor lower taxes; who are the recipients of the largest middle class properity growth in recorded history from 1980 - 2005 (under mostly conservative Republican governance, btw OK?); and who favor strong law and order law initiatives. Because, because, because, fellow Christians, Barack Obama doesn't favor any of these values.

Why do we persist in voting with the side that opposes our prosperity and weal, values that come from the godly application of the promises of the Bible?

Now, the forces of darkness have agitated the gays. Protesters have hit the streets almost daily since the Tuesday defeat. And in a strategic sense they are justified in their anger at this latest "betrayal", but they have targeted the wrong group for their protests. It's not the Mormons, a publically conservative religious group that has never been friendly to homosexuals. It is African-Americans who have let them down. (Personally, I want the gay community to "call out" African-American voters. See who's on who's side.) Their protest marches should be right out in front of the offices of the California, Florida, and Arizona chapters of the NAACP and other African-American institutions (and churches) who campaigned for the same liberal ticket as they did, but who secretly shot down a centerpiece liberal Equal Rights initiaitive in the voting booth.

You can call it the "Prop 8 Effect". Or you might say the gays got "Bradleyed."

Whatever the case, the larger point is this: gays instinctively sense that liberals should stick together on values issues. After all, liberals are tolerant, right? But Black folks - largely Christians - hold conservative values that are shaped mostly by belief in the Bible, as I earlier listed. Strangely, they seem to have other ideas when they vote the liberal ticket.

One thing is apparent though. This latest Black Christian voting pattern didn't see the relationship between politics and values. That's why I call them sheep in wolves clothing.

The sad thing is I truly believe Barack "that's above my paygrade" Obama does see the relationship. As do Rev. Jeremiah Wright, James Cone, Louis Farrakhan, and many Liberation, Black Liberation, Gay Christians, and Liberal Christians. They see the relationship all too clearly. And it is they who will expand their vision for America by dismantling the conservative values African-Americans have traditionally held. Why? Because they now have a friend in the White House. How? Already, there is talk of the use of Presidential executive orders to speed agendas through. Barack is ready to "rule".

Can you say "last days apostacy"?

Remember, Hitler came to power democratically but governed through emergency decrees.

A warning to all Black Christians: Sheep don't make good wolves.

1 Kings 18:21
"And Elijah came to all the people, and said, How long halt you between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him...

...and the people answered him not a word."

Devil his due...

2008-11-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

This is the quote of the week.

"Give Obama his due: It is an exceptional politician who can win the support of Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, and Kenneth Duberstein, former chief of staff to President Reagan; of William Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist and Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, founder of modern conservatism; of Rashid Khalidi, an Israel-hater, and Edgar Bronfman, former head of the World Jewish Congress."

In two short years, Obama has managed to become all things to all men. How else to explain it? My question is this: can the center hold? Can what has bound these disparate ideologues together keep them together?

The common sense answer would be no. But it does not now appear that we are living in commonsensical times. The things that used to be "just so" are not. Up is now down and down is now up. And I'm just praying my way through!

And now Cliff May offers the enticing tidbit that this election was nothing short of a revolution. The Democratic Party holds the White House, formidable majorities in the Senate, the House, the majority of the 50 state governorships, the majority of 50 state legislatures, the news media, almost all of the entertainment media, the unions, the educational establishment, the lion's share of the philanthropic community, and increasing power over the courts.

Change indeed!

The initial losers? Evangelical Christianity, Israel, the Republican Party, conservative talk radio, free market capitalism, bipartisanship in Washington, the U.S. military, homeschoolers in California and perhaps elsewhere, "Drill Now", and anything else the Democratic Party is against.

Of course, the eventual losers will be all of us should this revolution of change not work out.

In the meantime, pray, pray, pray for our nation!

Black and Nobama

2008-11-06T21:32:00.001-08:00

Sorry, the title is a bit misleading. Yes, I am Black and while I will pray (and have already prayed and interceded) for our President-elect, yet I cannot see how a man of God could have found it in his biblical and moral sense to have voted for a man who - for all I have read of his views on morality - opposes several important and vital biblical principles. And I apologize. This is just beyond my thinking capacity.

Now we read where churches are divided ethnically (racially?) on Obama based on the vote. Ya think?

But hey, we can talk candidly now, he's going to be the President. OK?

Pro-gay rights. Pro-abortion. Pro-LIVE BIRTH abortion (i.e., murder). A socialist democrat who intends to redistribute wealth. An anti-Israel demagogogue who wants to woo the world and yet has nothing on his resume to assure us of his capacity to vote sensibly, much less run the country sensibly.

Now, as a Black Man, I AM PROUD of him as a Black Man. I am proud of WHO HE IS but I CANNOT BE PROUD of WHAT HE STANDS FOR. Unlike the First Lady, Michelle Obama, I AM UTTERLY DISAPPOINTED IN MY COUNTRY. Have we lost our minds? Are we blind? What is our excuse? Did George Bush make us do this? Are we apostate? Why couldn't we have not - therefore - picked a Muslim, a Wiccan, an atheist, or a Shaman for president? I mean, folks, the likelihood that Barack is even Christian is very low given that Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his Liberation theology is as far from the Gospel as the Bhagavad Gita.

Think on it! What has he believed and when did he believe it? He has no language of faith. His mother had no faith in God at all. His father, well... Pastor Wright became his surrogate dad to replace the absentee bigamist Barack Obama, Sr. became. And Pastor Jeremiah Wright is from the Chicago/Detroit school of northern, political pastors. All liberation and no faith (at least not in God). A three points and a poem pulpiteer of dubious discipling ability and an outsized ego. Furthermore, and let's be clear here: any man who can preach "God-D-mn America" sermons regularly - and after 9/11 especially - without batting an eye is not saved! Okaay?

It's as if Black Christians have en masse said - to heck with the Bible - we need "one of us" in the White House. And any ol' smooth talking brotha will do. Should sound like Billy Dee Williams and be able to talk to white folks real good. And with a bit of a shoulder lean say, "Hey Putin, c'mere. Come talk to a brotha." That's our kind of President. That kind of sellout mentality to a racial "high" and historic "moment" will come back to hurt us. It's a sad reminder of how we, as a people, tend to value too much style and not enough substance. The numbers don't lie.

In this historic election of the nation’s first African American president, black voters made up 13 percent of the electorate – up from 11 percent in 2004 and 10 percent in 2000. Fully 95 percent of blacks voted for Obama. In 2004, Kerry won 88 percent of the black vote and Gore won 90 percent in 2000.

Even Saul had his thousands.

Then you read in the Root.com where some columnist suggested that anybody Black who voted for McCain is somehow vested in "self-hate". Baloney Sandwich. It's more like self preservation, sister. I want to live. And I want my family to live.

Sure, I would have loved to have seen an African-American chief executive - but under a much different banner. One with conservative gravitas and talent and charisma and faith in the God of the Bible would have done nicely! One who bleeds America and proudly sports a flag pin, who salutes the flag willingly. One whose roots are in this fine land and not a sojourner seeking the nomination to become some "Mundus Imperator". A Cincinnatus, not a Caesar. One who cherishes Edmund Burke-style human liberty, not some Marxist "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" drivel - which Marx himself apostasized from Acts 4:32. I could no more have voted for Obama than I could now begin pulling for the Tennesee Titans just because they have a Black quarterback since after all, I root for the Atlanta Falcons (who happen to have a White QB).

Obama is just not on my biblical team.

And I wonder what biblical team is brother Thomas Dexter Jakes on?

Guess I am now a Five Percenter. Hey, if the first African American president has made history, I suppose I have been officially recorded as among the five percent of African American voters who did not vote for him. So, I too have made history. We have made history. We few. We happy few. We band of brothers...

Hail Caesar! Hail to the Chief!

2008-11-05T10:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Barack Obama was duly elected as the 44th president of the United States. We wish him well and will earnestly pray for our national chief executive. The Electoral College will certify the will of the people in December.

Spiritual Warfare

2008-11-03T09:59:00.000-08:00

I believe in doing spiritual battle against the forces of darkness. Therefore, I am asking you - the saints of God - for your prayers in two important areas:

A) My son. He is undergoing all kinds of disciplinary challenges that we (his parents) know are not purely the fruit of his doings. We know his character. While he is rambunctious, we know he is not malicious. The out-of-nowhere suddenness of a slew of issues bespeak a spiritual "cause" to the relational and situational "effects" - if you will. We want him to be more spiritually aware and watchful, too.

B) Finances. Everybody we know is experiencing some kind of pinch over finances, so this is not an uncommon request. My request is that the Lord should combine my employment with my calling. I believe when that happens it will unlock the door of His treasure upon our lives - not always monetarily of course, but in the sense that our family will flow in His blessings and find favor in all we put our hands to.

Isaiah 54:17
No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, said the LORD.

Deut. 28:1-13
And it shall come to pass, if you shall listen diligently to the voice of the LORD your God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command you this day, that the LORD your God will set you on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on you, and overtake you, if you shall listen to the voice of the LORD your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your cows, and the flocks of your sheep. Blessed shall be your basket and your store. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. The LORD shall cause your enemies that rise up against you to be smitten before your face: they shall come out against you one way, and flee before you seven ways. The LORD shall command the blessing on you in your storehouses, and in all that you set your hand to; and he shall bless you in the land which the LORD your God gives you. The LORD shall establish you an holy people to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and walk in his ways. And all people of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of you. And the LORD shall make you plenteous in goods, in the fruit of your body, and in the fruit of your cattle, and in the fruit of your ground, in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. The LORD shall open to you his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain to your land in his season, and to bless all the work of your hand: and you shall lend to many nations, and you shall not borrow. And the LORD shall make you the head, and not the tail; and you shall be above only, and you shall not be beneath; if that you listen to the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day, to observe and to do them.

America asks for a king

2008-10-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

This is a great article. Pretty much sums up the big picture of America, her future, and this election.

Do we really want a king? Somehow I think we do, though I am not quite sure why I think this.

^{1 Sam. 8:4-7}Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, and said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

Race III...the Silencing of America

2008-10-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

The Obama camp has cleverly shielded itself from pointed criticism in a number of ways. The most effective method thus far has been the handy-dandy "racism" smear. It's incredibly effective. Any labeling, criticism, or counter-position against the orthodoxy of Obamaism - or against the man himself - is "racist" speech.

Call Obama a socialist? that's racist.
Call Obama "uppity"? that's racist.
Suggest Obama is "a candidate who inspires fear" and you're associated with George Wallace.
Linking Obama to a shady executive in the Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac scandal is racist.
Accuse Obama of palling around with terrorists and that's racially tinged.
Conclude that the only way Obama could lose the election would be due to racism.
Posit that any background issues surrounding Obama are "pseudo-controversies" involving a "racial calculus" (as PBS anchorman Ray Suarez believes).

Here's an article written by a black pastor who suggests that not everything said in criticism of Obama is racist - sometimes criticism is just that, criticism.

But the bigger problem - as I see it - is in the silencing of American debate when it comes to Barack Obama. The difficulty - an ominous one - is that if only Barack and his people get to determine what is or is not racist speech, not only are their critics marginalized, they defeat legitimate criticism as well. Because who wants to wade into the thicket of policy debate and wind up tarred and feathered as some kind of David Duke? And you can expect this kind of smearing to be used as long as it is effective - that is to say, as long as Obama is president. And not only will it be used for political purposes to silence any unfavorable criticism of the policies of Obama and the Left, it can conceivably be used to socially marginalize anyone who may have misgivings about Barack Obama the man or his judgment.

Perhaps it could all backfire. It could be used so much it loses its effectiveness from overuse. Let's hope so.

Gay Wedding Field Trip...for First Graders

2008-10-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

Ok, Ok. So this should render in bold, block lettering, the word "LIE" to the ridiculous claim that gay marriage, if legalized, will have no effect on public school children's education. Exhibit "A" to the lie is a first grader's field trip to a gay wedding in San Francisco (where else?). Why defile the innocence of the young? Why??

This is ranks way up there in the moral outrage category. But this is the "Change" America wanted, I suppose.

Matthew 18:6-7
But whoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!

The James Ossuary - a Clever Fake?

2008-10-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

An interesting article in Time magazine examines how the owner of the James ossuary, an ancient (60 A.D.) container of the bones of the brother of Jesus, the Apostle James, came to be accused of forgery. Interesting. Not sure I liked the science vs. belief angle from the author, Nina Burleigh. The conclusion one should supposedly derive from this article is that The Faithful are the real dupes, while The Doubtful and Skeptical are vindicated in their skepticism.

As Burleigh describes it, the debate over the authenticity of these sacred items pitted scientists against believers. She writes: "The faithful - those who believe in a higher, supernatural power that leaves a material record of itself for man to literally hold and behold - must also confront and grapple with the painful presence of doubt."

The facile criticism of evangelicals hardly veils the suspicion that People of Faith somehow depend on physical evidences for their faith, and that when they don't have them the faithful become the gullible. Another problem with this line of thinking is that science is somehow devoid of such faith impulses and is by definition skeptical in the arena of belief. How sad.

But the owner of the ossuary - being tried in an Israeli court - is innocent until proven guilty, and the trial is nowhere near finished. So, this is a lot like calling the game over at halftime. We'll see.

Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Obama - No friend of Israel in the Middle East

2008-10-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

The New York Post reports that the Rev. Jesse Jackson is suggesting that the Obama administration's foreign policy will tilt against Israel in the Middle East. Is his opinion of President Barack Obama's foreign policy a preview of things to come for America and the region? I'm not sure what to think. Knowing that Jesse Jackson would like Obama's foreign policy to shift against Israel doesn't mean that it will. We'll have to wait and see. Rev. Jackson is claiming Obama as "family" so perhaps he has some insight. Or perhaps it's his wishful thinking.

But by the afternoon Jackson was already denying the report from the NY Post. Either way, Obama will have his hands full. The next flashpoint may be just now lit. An old, abandoned synagogue has been reopened just 100 meters from Temple Mount and the Al Aksa Mosque.

Apologia, etc.

2008-10-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

So my nephew attends this Anglican/Episcopalian high schoo l and he's taking this Bible course on New Testament. I figure that's a good thing since the Bible is the one of the pillars of Western Civilization. But then he tells me before we're heading off to church that his Bible instructors are telling him that the Bible was written by man, so therefore it has mistakes and errors in it. And I thought to myself, "Why is Western Civilization in general and America specifically, backpedaling from the onslaught of rest of the unbelieving world?" You know why? Because they're steadliy aimed at the erosion of the foundations of the social order: the Bible. And y'know who's leading the way? The so-called leaders of Chirstianity! This verse sums up the matter I suppose:

Ephesians 2:1-3
And you has he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 2 Wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience: 3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

The children of disobedience are not the ordinary, everyday heathen. The ordinary heathen are already under the curse of the Law. They are doing what their nature tells them to do. They obey the world, the flesh, and the Devil. The disobedient are the ones who are supposed to be on the Lord's side but who are set against the Lord's covenants. They are the people who have been taught the rudiments of godliness. They are the people who ought to know better but whose minds are set on spreading the latest flawed biblical criticism to impress their students, etc., etc.

Yeesh!

I wanted to scream when I heard my nephew tell me this. So I said to my 10th grade nephew, after gathering my composure, the next time you're in class ask your professor this:

"Professor, if the Bible is flawed because it was written by men, by your own criteria - your telling me this is a verbal opinion written by men , isn't it? How do I know you're not wrong? You're a man - they were men. And there's another thing that puzzles me, prof. The Bible claims it was written by men led of God to say what it says - but you're not claiming to be led by God in saying what you're saying. So why wouldn't I believe the Bible's testimony rather than yours? It's got 2,000 years of living, active support and use. You're quoting biblical critics from only 200 years ago, right? I do want to be on God's side, professor. What should I do?

The scholarly support for inerrant autographs is virtually substantiated. The Bible we have is solid, sound, and is everything it says about itself. Why? Because Jesus thought so, too.

Jesus frequently used the Scripture as the proof text from which He both substantiated His view, as well as refuted the improper views held by others. He relied on Scripture for what it was--the very Word of God. While it is true that Christians do not have the same Divine authority as the Son of God, and while we often overstep our authority here (unfortunately, even grossly so at times), this benefit is also extended to us. Based on Jesus' example, we can likewise build our position on the truth of Scripture, and use it as our Guide for evaluating other positions. A key aspect here, as already emphasized, is that this approach allows us to show the truth of Christian theism to unbelievers, even when using critical methods.

It is no wonder the Anglican church is having the problems it is having with the Enemy hammering continually at its gates.

Community Organizers register the Dallas Cowboys

2008-10-08T12:15:00.000-07:00

Voter registration fraud alleged in Nevada. The offices of the Association of Community Oranizers for Reform Now (ACORN) have been raided by state investigators of Nevada. The allegations of voter registration fraud were made in part due to the entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys showing up on the registration rolls in Nevada. Looks like there is more of this type of fraud coming out of the investigation. ACORN is the activist organization that Barack Obama used to represent as an attorney in Chicago. Stanley Kurtz wrote an article that shows Obama's ties to that group - deeper than what was first thought - a group Kurtz says is as radical as Code Pink or Move On.org.

Gal.6:7
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
- Abraham Lincoln

Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Jungend! Ein Fuhrer...Obama!

2008-10-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

Frau Goebbels, the wife of the nefarious Dr. Josef Goebbels, was in love with Adolf Hitler. She was an idealist, and the Third Reich was her Millenium. There was nothing she would not do for her ubermensch, Hitler. So when it became clear in the very last days of the Reich that Hitler would commit suicide in his underground bunker, she sobbed, "My children are too good to live in a world without National Socialism." Touched by the loyalty of the Goebbels family and before he was to retire to his private quarters, Hitler granted them a private audience where the six young children sang a beautiful Fatherland lullaby to "Uncle Hitler". They were later poisoned in their beds by Frau Goebbels. This is sourced from Joachim Fest's phenomenal book, "Inside Hitler's Bunker".

The following video brought that episode to mind:

Then there's this video. I'm not sure what to make of it but that it is a youth "step" dance done with Obama as the inspiration of hope for these urban boys. But the uniforms, the camouflage pants and gold boots, complete with militant attitude and fist salutes smacks of fashion plated Hitler Jungend. The Fruit of Islam also comes to mind, as does the S1Ws - if you will permit me a humorous digression. Check it out:

But isn't this the stuff that's supposed to happen in other countries? Aren't these the activities and marks of a flawed civilization? The cult of political personality has arrived in America - ubiquitous, all-powerful, strong, yet inspiring and idealistic. Kinda like...Adolf Hitler before anyone knew what he was really up to. Are we sure, really, that we know what Obama's all about? I'm just asking.

You see, we never were taught to sing songs to or about Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, Madison, or Teddy Roosevelt when I was in school. It was generally thought to be un-American to exalt our leaders like kings or saviors - else we'd have been fine with George III. But even if we had been asked to sing, those men deserved national acclaim even before they became presidents. Still, they were men; they merely presided over the Congress and didn't rule over them. So if change was gonna come, it would take a whole host of leaders to do it. So my question is: What's Obama done to deserve this kind of passionate belief in his ability to change things in our country? What are his change ideas? There's gotta be more to it than what we've seen and read of him. Obama is not Jesus, after all. But I fear his converts - and this nation - may be too far down the road to discern truth - even if something dastardly were found out.

But....

Matt 10:26 Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.

Gorbachev...back in town?

2008-10-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

Why is it significant that Mikhail Gorbachev is back in the news? Not entirely certain, but perhaps it has something to do with the end times. I mentioned him in an earlier blog. Just noticing things, y'know?

Jackie Mason...telling it like it is...no to Obama!

2008-10-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

A funny video from Jackie Mason decrying the Sarah Silverman video in which she states that if Barack Obama doesn't win the presidential election, she'll blame the Jews.

I can only pray and hope that America wakes up. She was not raised up by God to be like other nations. She is related to Israel by faith - and as such, she is a covenant nation. I have heard the debates, the arguments, and the rhetoric. Alea acta est.

Baseball and Apologetics, etc.

2008-09-26T12:37:00.000-07:00

Those of you that know me well, know I enjoy baseball. And this is my favorite time of the year. Hey, what's not to like? Pennant races, pennant chases, the drama. It is like the playoffs. But go figure, the Dodgers are in the playoffs - yeah, the Dodgers. So, it's a strange year right there. Rags to riches Tampa Bay is in. That's wild. The White Sox have imploded and the Minnesota Twins have overtaken them by a half game with three games to play. One of the two teams is staying home. The Mets aren't out of it, but they're moribund. The Milwaukee Brewers, hmm. I just can't figure out the Brew Crew. They could win nine in a row and lose nine in a row at the drop of a hat. The Angels and the Red Sox are still my choices for the ALCS. As are the Cubs and the Phillies in the NLCS. I'm picking the Cubs to beat the Red Sox 4 games to 2 in the World Series.

In other baseball news, my son made the Travel Ball Select All-America Honorable Mention team. (Yay!) We're so proud of him. The "Bambino" is on the national map now, and word comes from his coach that he has been nominated for the Rawlings Defensive Player of the Year Award, too. Congrats, Nile.

Since the beginning of the school year, I have been teaching apologetics to some homeschoolers in the metro Atlanta area and - I must say it - I am very impressed! The questions I get are intuitive and reasoned. Their responses are usually correct. These are some of the brightest kids in Atlanta for whom the "ontological argument for the existence of God" is encountered without raising an eyebrow. They've more or less absorbed most of the basic arguments of the apologetic task, so it is my job to immerse them further into the more sophisticated realms of the apologist's mein. It is on to Big Bang Cosmology, William Lane Craig, and Glenn Miller!

Race II

2008-09-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

More race questions, prejudice examinations, and bigotry analysis....and hey this is only a few strides after the starting gun.

Then there was this at an Obama rally: Blacks Against Obama!

But I feel somewhat exonerated from the self-hate charges that have been levelled against Black people who do not support Obama. Perhaps there are more of us out there. Hmmm. Anyhow, this quote just about sums me up:

Lots of Republicans harbor prejudices, too, but the survey found they weren't voting against Obama because of his race. Most Republicans wouldn't vote for any Democrat for president—white, black or brown.

AMEN.

Give me wise leadership, don't endorse the murder of infants, and lower my taxes. Be ready to fight for our nation Mr. President, and above all - always be proud of our country. OK?