Grace To You

Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Phil 1:2

Thursday, January 19, 2012

End Republic or Restore America?





Our Founding Fathers were some of the wisest men of their generation. And, their wisdom was not just limited to writing The Declaration of Independence and leading us to victory in the Revolutionary War. They also crafted The Constitution and The Bill of Rights as the foundational documents of our limited federal government and saw to it that, Under God, our nation got off to a good start. 

But starting good was not enough. They wanted this nation to endure and it was obvious to them it wouldn't occur by happenstance. The lifespan of this democratic Republic would depend on the  lifestyle choices of the American people. Benjamin Franklin warned that our nation would only endure if the American people lived moral lives based on ethical principles such as those found in the Bible. He said, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom."

This virtue he spoke of is the producer of the happiness referred to by Thomas Jefferson in The Declaration of Independence.  

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, 
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Thomas Jefferson, speaking for all the founding fathers, claimed to be declaring established truths clearly revealed by the Creator God. These truths were so clearly revealed he called them self-evident! That means they require no proof, explanation or argument. One has to be blind not to see them and dishonest not to acknowledge them. So, what are these truths?

I.  All men are created equal. (Men should have been stated as "individuals" because it includes all human beings without distinction, but prejudices die slowly. Equality of value does not ensure equal giftedness, equal opportunities, or equal lifestyles. God rules over men and circumstances.) 

II. All men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. (Unalienable Rights are supernatural gifts from God which cannot legitimately or ultimately be sold, surrendered or taken by mortal man or governments. Yet, if these Rights be temporarily stolen by men, they are safe in God!)

    A.  These Rights include but are not limited to: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

  • The Right to Life is self-evident. Life originates with the Creator God. And, in all their       attempts to uncover any other origin of life, evolutionists have failed, because life comes from God!  And yet, the Supreme Court of the United States authorized mortal women the "right" to deny "Immortal Unborn Individuals" their "God-given Unalienable Right to Life" in this life. We must understand they still have eternal life and God will make things right in due time.
  • The Right to Liberty is self-evident.  All individuals were created in the image of God and given a free will. To exercise this free will man was given a free mind, a free body, opportunity for freely entering relationships, acquiring wealth, land and possessions, etc. Law abiding individuals have a right to live free, and no one has the right to take another person's property, or to compel another person to go against his own conscience. Of course, God desires moral living-- as it is best and leads to blessings. A man may forfeit physical freedom by egregious behavior.
  • The Right to Pursue Happiness is self-evident.  God is Good! He enjoys LIFE! He gave us life, in His image, and liberty so we could pursue the same happiness He enjoys due to His Goodness.  The colonists understood that liberty could only be maintained when happiness was pursued by virtuous means. They were not looking for a license to do evil. They wanted freedom to do what was right, as they saw fit, according to the light from God's Word that shined on their paths. They had come to this country for religious freedom, not for freedom from religion

Unfortuantely, things have changed in the USA through the years. New generations arose that had not  experienced religious persecution, or fought for religious freedom, and complacency set in. As Jesus foretold, Satan stoled the Word from the shallow minded, hard times drove others away from the faith, and the distraction of worldly cares and pleasures kept many from effectively promoting godly faith as the preservative of society. The salt lost much of its flavor and the light became less bright.

This spiritual vacuum in society left an opening for secular humanists to take over our school systems and colleges and undermine the faith of many young people who hadn't been grounded in the truth of the Bible during their formative years. History was revised to deny the godly foundation of our country and evolution replaced Creationism in our centers of learning. As a result, many people forgot that happiness cannot be attained without virtue.

Under these conditions the liberal media, educators, judiciary and legislators managed to wreak havoc in our nation. By undermining religion and moral values, they began to rob us of our Unalienable Rights. After all, if there is no Creator God, our Rights have no originator, or guarantor.

So, the liberals offered us relativism to replace Christian morals. They suggested petitioning social workers for help with problems instead of praying. And, they were quite sure the government could fill the role of God. Yes, socialism would be much better than capitalism. Just get on the public dole! 

Americans, who had been born and bred for independence and self-reliance, with help from God and kind neighbors, began to allow themselves to become addicted to government aid. And, it wasn't free. It came at the personal cost of broken homes, forsaken dreams and lost liberty!

We are at a crossroad. We can either allow the wealthiest nation this world has ever known to become the likes of Socialist Russia or we can stand up for what's right in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Reject O-merica!  Let's "Restore America" in this next election!  


 "Of all tyrannies
a tyranny sincerely exercised
for the good of its victim
may be the most oppressive.

 It may be better to live under robber barons
than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep,
his cupidity may at some point be satiated,
but those who torment us for our own good
will torment us without end
for they do so
with the approval
of their own conscience."

C. S. Lewis



"When the people find that they can vote themselves money,
that will herald the end of the republic." — Benjamin Franklin



May I suggest you read the eye-opening, Life At The Bottom, by Theodore Dalrymple. 

"the liberal defines success by how many people he has managed to help through government action; the conservative defines success by how many people he has freed from need of such assistance."

Thursday, January 5, 2012

You Shall Not Covet or Occupy Wall Street!


"... there exists... in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom."   Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America ( Ch3, 56) 





As you know, we are living in volatile times. Some are currently calling it pre-revolutionary. As the picture illustrates, Occupy Wall Street protesters are out sharing their bleak, distorted picture of the future based on the class warfare message that President Obama and his anti-American, socialist partners have given them. 

Another sign I saw read, "Where's our bailout?" Pure socialism! While it's appropriate to protest bank bailouts and the entire immoral "Too Big to Fail" policy. It is not okay to expect the government, using taxpayer money, to support all American citizens, whether they work or not, from cradle to grave.

Freedom and the Nanny State cannot co-exist! And, in spite of the Utopian dreams, the Nanny State can only hope to offer an impoverished equality among the 99% of its enslaved subjects. No middle class! No hope for change! But these sign bearers don't get it.

We must ask ourselves how much our freedom is worth? Many have already paid for it with their lives! Will we sell ourselves and our children into slavery for the hopes of a piece of bread?

As for me, give me "freedom with inequality" as we have it now! 

We need change, but not the kind that's being forced on us by President Obama and his backers. We need to return to righteousness!

The Bible says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children." Hosea 4:6

America was founded on Christian principles. God wanted us to be a nation of priests for Him. People who know Him and His commandments which under gird progress and prosperity, providing abundant life for those willing to responsibly participate in civic life!

He birthed our nation in freedom through godly and courageous founding fathers who developed God-inspired documents proclaiming and legally ensuring our God-given unalienable rights!


Yes, our founding fathers and the earlier generations of this great nation had godly knowledge. They built their lives and our nation's foundations solidly on their personal understanding of the Bible as God's Holy Word. From young children they knew the 10 Commandments.

The Bible was freely read and used for instruction in our schools and colleges. Godly knowledge filled the land and the nation prospered. And, that's when de Tocqueville visited America and attributed her greatness to her goodness! (What would he say now?)

But, slowly, secular humanists began rewriting our history and taking over our public schools which had been started primarily to teach our nation's children how to read the Bible so they would be virtuous citizens.  Secular humanists rejected godly knowledge and used ungodly judges to twist our founding documents to forbid the very Bible those documents were based on from being used in our schools.

Secular humanists began to lead many people back into spiritual darkness. By forbidding the posting of The 10 Commandments and banning prayer in schools, they left teachers and students afloat in troubled seas, in a morally rudderless boat, without a compass. And this "unguided" boat swiftly drifted into dangerous waters; so that, now we must work to ban guns instead of chewing gum from our schools!

This lack of moral guidance led to the tragic shooting of an eighth grade student in Brownsville, Texas this week. I wonder how many of the 10 Commandments he knew? Knowledge matters!

Those who still know the 10 Commandments know that the Occupy Wall Street movement is wrong, even if our president doesn't. The 1% being used as a political scapegoat cannot carry our sins away or even pay our bills for us! We, as individuals and as a nation, need to return to God!

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Exodus 20:17

Occupy Wall Street, while accusing some of greed, is squarely based on covetousness (wanting what belongs to your neighbor), which God's word says is a sin! And, it is not the way to get our nation back on the right track and to secure the renewed blessings of liberty in our land.

As Paul said in Romans 7:7, "I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, "You must not covet." 
Well, if you didn't know, now you do. So, "Go and sin no more."  :-)

Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, is provided in a free country. It does no good to demand rights! If we want to retain our freedom, we must repent of our sins and do what is right.


Thou Shalt Not Covet or Occupy Wall Street!


For more on Alexis de Tocqueville see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville

Democracy in America (1835), published after his travels in the United States, is excellent. It's an education in democracy, freedom based on religiously inculcated virtue, and American exceptionalism. 

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Islam and Destruction Go Hand In Hand

Very little outcry was heard when the Taliban destroyed the ancient Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. For many non-Buddhists, it may very well have seemed to be a trivial event. However, in an age dominated by the secular media, which espouses the near sacred virtues of multiculturalism, one could have expected a loud expression of outrage. But, it didn’t happen because the media rarely criticizes Islam on any level.

Taliban Destruction of Buddhas in March of 2001 from Wikipedia
 
The fanatical Taliban destroyed two standing Buddhas which were sculpted out of a sandstone rock cliff by Buddhist monks in the 6th century. These historical artifacts were older than Islam. They were a testimony to man’s ancient, artistic, engineering abilities. Now they’re gone.

180 ft Buddha of Bamiyan before and after destruction by the Taliban. Wikipedia

Why? On March 13th, 2001, Afghan Foreign Minister, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel said, "We are destroying the statues in accordance with Islamic law and it is purely a religious issue”. It’s the same reason they use for destroying churches and synagogues, and for slaughtering Christians, Jews and other infidels. It’s nothing personal.

The tragic Christmas Eve and Christmas Day church bombings in Nigeria come to mind. The jihadis in Nigeria won’t stop until they take over Nigeria or someone stops them. And, the loss of life is infinitely more deplorable than the destruction of ancient artifacts. This ungodly slaughter and destruction has gone on in one country after another for over 1400 years now. Two million people have lost their lives in Sudan in the past 50 years and jihad continues in Sudan, Tunisia, Nigeria, Libya, Somalia, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Israel, and all around the world. Individuals and entire cultures are perishing.

On December 17, 2011, whether by accident or on purpose, a Muslim mob destroyed the Institute of Egypt, founded by Napoleon in 1798. Maintained for the purpose of advancing scientific research, it contained around 192,000 books and documents from as far back as the 1500s. Now, it’s gone.

Institute of Egypt
 
Cairo Institute of Egypt Burning Dec 17, 2011
 
Egyptian Institute Books Burned

For those of us who wondered how the Alexandrian Library could have perished and why no one stopped it, now we know because we see.

And, now the Salifist Islamists have bigger targets. They actually want to make the pyramids disappear! It’s beyond my comprehension.

Sphinx-pyramid
 

Can you imagine the pyramids and the sphinx covered in wax? (Wouldn’t that melt in the sun? :-) Egyptian tour guides aren’t too happy about the Islamic Salifist’s desire to remove or hide Egypt’s ancient pyramids and other artifacts. Why else would one visit Egypt?

“Anger was directed at Abdel Moneim Al-Shahat, who is highly popular among Egypt’s Salafis and who has questioned the moral integrity of priceless ancient statues that dot the country.

Al-Shahat, who failed to win a seat in an electoral run off this week, denied the statues should be smashed, but suggested they could be covered with wax. “People would be able to see through wax,” he told Dream Television.

His comments aroused painful memories of Afghanistan’s hardline Taliban, which blew up two monumental Buddha statues in Bamiyan in 2001, arguing the pre-Islamic art was idolatrous.”

By Marwa Awad and Crispian Balmer / Reuters
      December 9, 2011   
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/people/protesting-tour-guides-fear-islamist-rise.html

The foundational teachings of a society matter. Beliefs manifest in actions. Even the most secularized nations of the West still benefit from the Judeo-Christian teachings its society was based on. Faith, hope and love undergird us and the greatest of these is Love! We believe in the future. We long for peace. We desire to be a blessing to all the peoples of the world.

“Put away your sword,” Jesus told (Peter) him. “Those who use the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52)
Although Gandhi was a great man, his peaceful methods didn’t make the British leave India. Jesus, through their Christianized response to Gandhi, did.
People in western societies who never open the Bible are shaped to some degree by the Christian values that have permeated the West for over 2000 years now.

In contrast, one sees the Islamized societies based on the Koranic teachings of conquest.

Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.” Koran 2:216

There is no peace within Muslim countries or between them and the rest of the world. Beliefs matter. That’s why Islam and destruction go hand in hand.

Please pray for Muslims to be delivered from the deception and destruction of Islam.