Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Why Russia is God's Nation on Earth
In America, we have many perversions which not only our media but additionally our schools and our elected representatives feel the personal responsibility of promoting.
I. Destroying the Christian religion
II. Defending Islam as a religion of peace and placing them in high office and defending the Muslim Brotherhood against Bashar Al-Assad and the good people of Egypt. Inspiring chaos in the Middle East and revolution.
III. Promotion of homosexuals. This happens in TV shows like 'The New Normal' and 'Modern Family'. Homosexuals are placed in prime positions as talk show hosts (Ellen Degeneres), reality tv contestants (Chaz Bono on Dancing With the Stars), and placing many non-gay but strongly pro-gay speakers in prominent positions.
It is Russia that has been involved in fighting these very influences. Those influences of the homosexuals who are polluting the culture and priovocatively advertising their way of life to children. It is glorious Russia that has just recently defied the global community in passing legislation that will restore order to society and morality by outlining acceptable limits of behavior, for instance, in the cases of homosexuals.
(II). Russia has also recently made known that it will not harbor Islamic terrorists*. While my nation courts them in Egypt and Syria, it is Russia who wants to maintain order in these highly fractured nations given to many disputes over the years.
And as far as the true practice of Christianity, our nation has gone into Russia to demand of Putin that he pass laws favorable to the United States and better for their bottom line, and their prejudices for how society should operate. Russia, they say, should allow the overspreading of the abomination of homosexuality, and should stay out of Syria, instead, let pro-Western puppets take power and radical groups take over.
America: Who the hell are you to demand that Putin turn away from his Christian policies? You, a land founded on Christianity and conscience and morality now try to fashion Russian government after the bankrupt way of life you live in the West. You have brought a target upon all of our heads because of your damned political correctness! It is Russia who has us in the corner! It is you America who think that you have brought the Russians to submission but it is you who will submit like a dog. God help us all.
*http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/09/300-detained-at-moscow-muslim-prayer-room-following-putin-crackdown/
Russia arrested 300 Islamists. What would the West do? America would consult a team of analysts and local experts at universities and hordes of attorneys, to be explained why they cannot arrest these people because the response of the media, international pressure, and the pressure of subversive "rights" groups in the US. The government would be liable for hundreds of possible legal cases including years of litigation leading up to the Supreme Court and possible impeachment. Meanwhile, they would let three hundred Islamists threaten our citizens and way of life for the sake of political correctness.
Pussy Riot: They were rightfully charged and convicted for desecration of religious property and services, engaging in their profanities during a morning service. Our anti-Christian government who hates the most noble faith is the one that supported this desecration and placed pressures onto honorable Russia to release these subversive and dishonorable women, who are not women at all but pigs. Our despicable conscience in Western society will be our own undoing.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Christianity in Public Policy
Why Christianity In Public Policy Is Bad For Christianity
Many Christians feel that the Bible provides a basis for our laws. They use the Bible to support various initiatives. Among them are the death penalty, continued prohibitions of drugs and laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol, a regressive or flat tax, and many other perspectives as well. But what if using Christianity as a guide in public policy is bad for Christians as a whole? It seems obvious, the only basis for law is not a Bible or other religious text. It can only be good law.
One popular issue being discussed recently is prayer in the legislatures[1]; that is, opening with prayer. What the Christians want is to be able to pray to their Christian God but refuse all other religions the right to pray to their gods. But if we don't want others praying to their gods, then the issue shouldn't be introduced at all. The politicians should stick to problems of economic, judicial, and social impact and whatever else it is they do. I don't want them sending prayers to Allah and if they make it so Christians can offer their prayers, then others will follow along in offering prayers to Satan, and it will be perfectly legal. And guess what? Many of our representatives, if they don't view only themselves as being gods, more or less actually do follow Luciferianism. And guess what. Even if 'prayer' is made legal, it is all a farce anyway. It's so crazy now you risk being court-martialed for evangelizing in the name of Christ if you are active duty military. Is this the same government you think is going to start saying prayers in Jesus' if the Supreme Court makes it legal? Guess again. They can say they're praying to the Christian God all they want. If they are praying to the Great Architect, the Great Spirit or any other fancy new-age named god, it is not the God you and I grew up with. They are praying to false gods and the Christian are joining hands with them in prayer to imposters. Stop drinking the Kool Aid and wake up!
What I will do in the next several paragraphs is talk about how Christianity as a guide for public policy is dangerous to the interests of Christians and dangerous to society as a whole.
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AGAINST MARIJUANA BANS
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It's a drug that has been illegal for over 70 years. It's likely that the majority of Christians would like to see it continue to remain illegal. They want naturally to see that the streets are free of drug addicts, bums, drug dealers, and also that their children are free from the risk of exposure to or possible use of it and that society benefits from greater safety. But here, where the Christian perspective is adopted, Christians are doing harm to themselves and society.
I. Drug legalization does not increase drug usage [2].
For most, this is counterintuitive and isn't even considered as being a possibility. But there are good reasons for why this is true. First, if you are someone who is disposed toward drug use or abuse, restrictions on use or opportunities for use will make little difference on the conscience of a young man or woman committed to getting high. If it is available, or if it must be pursued from drug dealers, the person will acquire it and use it.
Second, those who due to upbringing or religion are not at risk of experimentation are no more inclined to use illicit substances where there is a wider availability than when there are prohibitions in place.
And finally, there may be some drawn into the culture motivated by risk-taking who in a state where some legalization has been adopted, they would not be as drawn into such a lifestyle. On the flip side, there may be a few not morally opposed who would be drawn into it because some of the old restrictions were set aside.
II. Kids have greater access to drugs than to alcohol [3]. Kids have this extra access for many reasons. The vast majority who go to public school have on nearly every campus a sub-culture of youths who experiment with drugs, many of whom do not recognize in risk of providing them to your son or daughter or selling them. Kids can find themselves in many settings such as concerts, parties, in the woods across from the campus (that was one for us), where they can meet a peer for drug deals or just to get high. Alcohol on the other hand, there are not really any 21-year-old kids in junior high or high school to buy them beer and unless they come from a liberal environment at home or have a connection to get it for them, asking random people t buy it for them generally wouldn't work as most people have at least some desire to not go to jail, have their licenses suspended, or be charged hundreds or thousands of dollars in fines. Criminalization in this case has resulted in a greater availability of drugs, not less.
III. Prohibition hasn't made us safer but made our society more violent with more deaths, not less [4]. The cartels and gangs have a heavy incentive to engage in the trafficking and sales they're well know for. Drugs cost nothing to produce, the cultivators are paid nearly nothing, and so it is almost all tax-free under the table profit. Necessarily, turf wars, drug deals gone bad, cartel against cartel and much more violence goes along with that. Drug addicts engage in non-violent crime such as theft, burglary, or even robberies to support addictions and consequently the streets are more dangerous and there are more deaths, not less.
What Christianity has done is to put on a false exterior of being a more moral society or a society more concerned with pleasing God but instead they have built a society that stands above the kings of the earth as the great whore, an abomination, and a laughing stock. America is probably the most drugged up nation on earth, what with the millions of illegal drug users, millions on prescription narcotics and benzodiazepines, and even millions of parents in this country having their kids drugged with amphetamines. So we're not an exception country, unless we mean exceptionally arrogant, ignorant, high, and depraved.
Christians in their pursuit of utopia have managed to help in this country being destroyed.
If we made drugs legal for adults and sold them in pharmacies or establishments specially designed to sales it, much of the crime would be eliminated, tax revenue would be generated, addicts would find it easier to admit they have a problem and seek help for their substance abuse, cartels and gangs would be severely crippled in their business efforts, and children would grow up no more glamorizing drug use than they do tobacco use, which decades of health initiatives have helped to make one of the most hated habits in all of America. Here, it's not Christianity that helps to bring about a better society, but liberal democracy.
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AGAINST ALCOHOL BANS
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This is an issue that has been in the news in Texas a lot recently. Many counties and towns have had bans on alcohol sales for generations and as of the last few years, in my region of Texas, many towns and counties have sought to make alcohol sales legal. But there has been very serious organized opposition against the passage of these laws from the churches, non-denominationals and baptists in particular. But rather than make city streets safer, they have participated in making them more dangerous and sought to ensure that more people die, not less.
The facts: Dry counties have higher drunk driving rates [5] and higher drunk driving related deaths [6].
Longer drive times to pick up alcohol, where drivers must cross the county line or into the next town over allow for more opportunities for intoxicated drivers on the road. Where there are bars or clubs, it happens that drunks leave in many cases to go home but kill someone on the way back. In counties where alcohol sales are legal, citizens have no reason whatsoever to drive drunk. They go down to the corner market, pick up their drinks, go home and get drunk and don't go out for the rest of the night.
Christians in order to put off an outward, superficial image of morality, have done so at the costs of more dangerous roads, more dangerous for drivers and pedestrians, drinkers and abstainers alike, and also at the cost of more lives. Here we see that in their pursuit of utopia, necessarily innocent people, sometimes even children, get caught up in the mix and lose their lives, so Christians can advertise their communities as being 'family-friendly', 'conservative', based on 'family values', when they are actually destroying families and people's lives.
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AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY
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Death penalty is certainly something that the theonomists were concerned about and I will get to theonomy in the next division of this article. I just realized, I'm not sure how Christians pass the smell test in claiming that the Law is obsolete and that we are in an age of grace and at the same time advocate so strenuously for the death penalty for many of society's most hated criminals.
I am for the death penalty. What I am not for is men who are prone to error, who have in fact in the administration of their duties as judges, jurors, and executioners HAVE IN FACT seen to it that not only many guilty men receive the lethal injection, but that many innocent men AS WELL. One is too many. If that means we take a few thousand of the most murderous evil bastards off the death row to save one life, I cannot imagine how as a Christian I could make any argument whatsoever that we should sacrifice that one man just to kill the other three thousand. But Christians don't see it that way. They overlook that innocent people are convicted everyday. Innocent people sometimes serve decades behind bars before some non-profit happens to pick his case to go over and finds one critical piece of evidence that was ignored that would have allowed the man to live the majority of his adult life in freedom and pursuing life, rather than sitting for thirty years behind bars. These organizations are all too familiar of how untold thousands sit in prison EVERY DAY who are innocent. But there is such a dearth of time and resources, that sadly, most of them will serve out their sentences or die behind bars.
These men did the best they good. The judges and juries had no intention to put innocent people away. But because of the reality that sin and depravity is in the world, fallenness, and not only fallenness of morality but a fallenness of the mind, sometimes the wrong decision is made. This is perfectly in line with Christian teaching. To say God instituted authority so we have to trust the government to be infallible and if innocent people are falsely executed it must have been God's will is naive at best and at worst exposes the true bloodhthirsty murderous ambitions that may not have been fully satisfied after centuries of crusades followed by a much longer period marred by murder of religious dissidents and sectarian violence. Many of you, let me say, would be ones to stone to death the adulteress and many of you would be quick to crucify Christ as well. All the people that I hear Americans calling for the death of, they scarcely know of what they're discussing and who they're discussing and it's all conjecture on their part thinking they even know what actually happened. Look at the Zimmerman case. People trying to threaten him, his parents, brother, and many other innocent people had their lives threatened because some stupid ass like Spike Lee [7] thought it important to publish addresses of INNOCENT PEOPLE without researching it to find out that they were not the addresses of the Zimmermans like he thought. Roseanne Barr similarly posted the address of Zimmerman's parents [8]. What did she hope to accomplish by having Zimmerman's near elderly parents killed and why does she think they should answer for what their son did*? The number must have been at least near a dozen of people who had to flee their homes for their very lives because people in states thousands of miles away thought to inspire death and violence towards people they do not even know.
*Deuteronomy 24:16 "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin."
What it boils down to is this: There are certainly crimes worthy of a death penalty; however, the human race is so corrupted, and clearly over the last several years is getting worse and not better, and necessarily makes the mistake from time to time to send innocent people to their deaths, and therefore the death penalty has to be thrown out.
You can read about former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and his decision to ban the death penalty here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/08/illinois-death-penalty-ab_n_833250.html
If you don't know the story you should read about what happened. But I will quote in part here...
"Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has long supported capital punishment, looked drained moments after signing the historic legislation. Lawmakers sent him the measure back in January, but Quinn went through two months of intense personal deliberation before acting. He called it the most difficult decision he has made as governor.
"'If the system can't be guaranteed, 100-percent error-free, then we shouldn't have the system,' Quinn said. 'It cannot stand.'
"Illinois becomes the 16th state in the nation without a death penalty more than a decade after former Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions out of fear that the justice system could make a deadly mistake.
"Quinn also commuted the sentences of all 15 men remaining on death row. They will now serve life in prison with no hope of parole.
"In his comments, the governor returned often to the fact that 20 people sent to death row had seen their cases overturned after evidence surfaced that they were innocent or had been convicted improperly."
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THEONOMY AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
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We've looked at several topics. I've explained why the Christian answer to how to govern on certain questions is actually harmful overall to Christians and society. Bad policies on drugs, weapons, crime... they result clearly in the deaths of many innocent people. I don't think anyone who I share a faith with actually want people to have greater access to drugs, drunks speeding through the streets their children use to walk to school, or want innocent people being given the lethal injection. What this article has the intention of showing is that the popular Christian thesis on how to solve many of society's greatest problems DO result in these effects. We certainly disagree on policy, but I think all reasonable people agree on the effects. We want improvements in society, but it won't be the Christian consensus that brings us there.
The final article, before I discuss what the solution is, is the article against theonomy.
Theonomy was a small movement beginning in the 1970s that wanted to see government established that was based solely on God's law. It could also be described as Christian Reconstructionism. They were more or less deranged Presbyterians. They advovcated for many absurd ideas. One of the most offensive is that women guilty of sexual activity prior to marriage should be executed. I couldn't find where the theonomists said the men who were present during the sexual misconduct should be executed too. Despite their insistence on the role of God's law, they also claimed that dietary laws were overturned (they weren't) and indicated for convenience' sake they were willing to throw out certain laws. Their system also would provide for stoning of disobedient children and heretics, to be determined by a party of Calvinist overlords and that alone should scare most people, since the Calvinist murderers were not much more forgiving than the Catholic crusaders.
Breathe a sigh of relief to know that Rousas Rushdoony and Greg Bahnsen are dead.
This is the final demonstration that applying Christian revelation to the realm of government is dangerous and harmful, to Christians and to society. Do many people feel comfortable with a Calvinist ruling class determining who should die for this or that doctrine, or a Catholic council, or an Islamic council, etc etc? "God's law" can never be applied because no one can fully understand it.
There are thousands of bills discussed in the United States Congress every single year. How do we know how God would rule on those thousands of cases?
Take THREE, just THREE issues that the Bible devotes a substantial degree of lines of elaboration on. Christians will not even agree as to the answer on three issues. We have 30,000+ denominations catering to every variety of belief that can be dreamed of. No one would have a reason to prefer a dictator of Baptist background as opposed to Episcopalian, Christ Scientist, Branch Davidian, or Discordian. A sane person should say the ideal politician is one who preserves liberty and nothing else. Theonomists are clearly as absorbed in the flesh as any of the most carnal thinkers, to think they could fashion a political system bent on death and killing.
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LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
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One of my strongest beliefs is their should be no tearing down and criticizing if one is not prepared to offer an alternative. I want to offer that alternative and hopefully get a fairly good definition of what God's intent was.
The government God wanted us to have most was the American government! But not the American government today. Our government today is like late 1930s Germany. The America I'm discussing is a time from the 1700s on into the early part of the 1900s. And specifically what was special about that time was it was devoted to serving liberty. Government had clearly defined bounds as to what it could and could not do. No one question the right of the unborn child. No one thought it was unjust to not allow gays to marry. People farmed hemp, they smoked natural tobacco, they had children, they had jobs and they had faith. A man's home was his castle. Sheriffs ruled their counties and a man ruled his home. There were only a fraction of the laws that we have today. Businesses were able to form, grow, and hire many employees without being crushed by regulations from tax authorities. Many modern people don't think so but they knew how to read. There were colleges for the bright ones and anything from farming to manufacturing for the average young men and women.
A few men tried to outline what governments were in the business of, what was in their domain or not.
Frederic Bastiat, the 19th century French economist, in his pamphlet The Law asks, "Can the law -- which necessarily requires the use of force -- rationally be used for anything except protecting the rights of everyone? I defy anyone to extend it beyond this purpose without perverting it and, consequently, turning might against right."
The role of government for Bastiat is "contained in these simple words: Law is organized justice."
John Stuart Mill had a similar perspective in advocating the harm principle. "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." [9]
For classical liberal political philosophers, the government's primary purpose was to preserve liberty and nothing else.
I feel God blessed this country so strongly and brought us to being the greatest power and richest nation was because for many years our government executed righteousness by preserving liberty. Men made their decisions on how to best provide for themselves and families. And criminals were prosecuted. Politicians took oaths ON THE BIBLE and swore to defend THE CONSTITUTION, the great constitution ever known to man I consider as being a document only a degree less inspired than the Bible itself, and they meant it. God blessed this nation because it pleased Him and we were His people. We cannot say that any more.
The lesson here today is America has lost its way. The hopeful encouragements from pastors reciting 2 Chronicles 7:14 is a farce, a fantasy. This nation is coming under the judgment of God and there is no turning back. The politicians have taken us on this course, aided by the marginally literate morons who help elect them continually. There will be no repentance for this country.
*If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Religion has no place in politics. And the government should stay out of religion which we know they do not do. They shouldn't mix. Politicians rarely have any faith and they try to coopt religions for their benefit. Religionists who have sought power through history generally thought about nothing other than killing and riches. I think people are so tired of governments like I am that the next logical step is anarchy. Enough of governments. They make war, kill, and empty coffers. Morality should be inculcated on our own terms, not inspired by government.
I want to conclude with the words of Voltaire, from his Lettres Philosophiques, subtitle On Mr. Locke.
"It is not Montaigne, nor Locke, nor Bayle, nor Spinoza, nor Hobbes, nor Lord Shaftesbury, nor Mr. Collins, nor Mr. Toland, and so on, who have carried the torch of discord in their native country; it is theologians, for the most part, who having first had the ambition of being leaders of their sect, have soon afterward desired to be heads of parties. Why, all the books of the modern philosophers will never make as much noise in the world as once was made just by the dispute of the Cordeliers* over the shape of their sleeve and hood."
*Greyfriars, Franciscans
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footnotes
1. http://ncronline.org/news/politics/house-members-file-supreme-court-brief-legislative-prayer-case
2. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/07/global-report-decriminalization-does-not-increase-rates-of-drug-use/
3. http://blog.norml.org/2009/08/28/study-says-its-easier-for-teens-to-buy-marijuana-than-beer/
4. http://reason.com/archives/2003/01/29/prohibition-violence
5. http://thetimestribune.com/local/x1511619555/Dry-counties-show-higher-rates-of-DUI-related-crashes
6. http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/InTheNews/DrinkingAndDriving/20060517124659.html
7. http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/03/spike-lee-didnt-do-the-right-thing/
8. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/roseanne-barr-zimmerman-tweets-893416
9. On Liberty, quoted from www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle
Many Christians feel that the Bible provides a basis for our laws. They use the Bible to support various initiatives. Among them are the death penalty, continued prohibitions of drugs and laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol, a regressive or flat tax, and many other perspectives as well. But what if using Christianity as a guide in public policy is bad for Christians as a whole? It seems obvious, the only basis for law is not a Bible or other religious text. It can only be good law.
One popular issue being discussed recently is prayer in the legislatures[1]; that is, opening with prayer. What the Christians want is to be able to pray to their Christian God but refuse all other religions the right to pray to their gods. But if we don't want others praying to their gods, then the issue shouldn't be introduced at all. The politicians should stick to problems of economic, judicial, and social impact and whatever else it is they do. I don't want them sending prayers to Allah and if they make it so Christians can offer their prayers, then others will follow along in offering prayers to Satan, and it will be perfectly legal. And guess what? Many of our representatives, if they don't view only themselves as being gods, more or less actually do follow Luciferianism. And guess what. Even if 'prayer' is made legal, it is all a farce anyway. It's so crazy now you risk being court-martialed for evangelizing in the name of Christ if you are active duty military. Is this the same government you think is going to start saying prayers in Jesus' if the Supreme Court makes it legal? Guess again. They can say they're praying to the Christian God all they want. If they are praying to the Great Architect, the Great Spirit or any other fancy new-age named god, it is not the God you and I grew up with. They are praying to false gods and the Christian are joining hands with them in prayer to imposters. Stop drinking the Kool Aid and wake up!
What I will do in the next several paragraphs is talk about how Christianity as a guide for public policy is dangerous to the interests of Christians and dangerous to society as a whole.
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AGAINST MARIJUANA BANS
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It's a drug that has been illegal for over 70 years. It's likely that the majority of Christians would like to see it continue to remain illegal. They want naturally to see that the streets are free of drug addicts, bums, drug dealers, and also that their children are free from the risk of exposure to or possible use of it and that society benefits from greater safety. But here, where the Christian perspective is adopted, Christians are doing harm to themselves and society.
I. Drug legalization does not increase drug usage [2].
For most, this is counterintuitive and isn't even considered as being a possibility. But there are good reasons for why this is true. First, if you are someone who is disposed toward drug use or abuse, restrictions on use or opportunities for use will make little difference on the conscience of a young man or woman committed to getting high. If it is available, or if it must be pursued from drug dealers, the person will acquire it and use it.
Second, those who due to upbringing or religion are not at risk of experimentation are no more inclined to use illicit substances where there is a wider availability than when there are prohibitions in place.
And finally, there may be some drawn into the culture motivated by risk-taking who in a state where some legalization has been adopted, they would not be as drawn into such a lifestyle. On the flip side, there may be a few not morally opposed who would be drawn into it because some of the old restrictions were set aside.
II. Kids have greater access to drugs than to alcohol [3]. Kids have this extra access for many reasons. The vast majority who go to public school have on nearly every campus a sub-culture of youths who experiment with drugs, many of whom do not recognize in risk of providing them to your son or daughter or selling them. Kids can find themselves in many settings such as concerts, parties, in the woods across from the campus (that was one for us), where they can meet a peer for drug deals or just to get high. Alcohol on the other hand, there are not really any 21-year-old kids in junior high or high school to buy them beer and unless they come from a liberal environment at home or have a connection to get it for them, asking random people t buy it for them generally wouldn't work as most people have at least some desire to not go to jail, have their licenses suspended, or be charged hundreds or thousands of dollars in fines. Criminalization in this case has resulted in a greater availability of drugs, not less.
III. Prohibition hasn't made us safer but made our society more violent with more deaths, not less [4]. The cartels and gangs have a heavy incentive to engage in the trafficking and sales they're well know for. Drugs cost nothing to produce, the cultivators are paid nearly nothing, and so it is almost all tax-free under the table profit. Necessarily, turf wars, drug deals gone bad, cartel against cartel and much more violence goes along with that. Drug addicts engage in non-violent crime such as theft, burglary, or even robberies to support addictions and consequently the streets are more dangerous and there are more deaths, not less.
What Christianity has done is to put on a false exterior of being a more moral society or a society more concerned with pleasing God but instead they have built a society that stands above the kings of the earth as the great whore, an abomination, and a laughing stock. America is probably the most drugged up nation on earth, what with the millions of illegal drug users, millions on prescription narcotics and benzodiazepines, and even millions of parents in this country having their kids drugged with amphetamines. So we're not an exception country, unless we mean exceptionally arrogant, ignorant, high, and depraved.
Christians in their pursuit of utopia have managed to help in this country being destroyed.
If we made drugs legal for adults and sold them in pharmacies or establishments specially designed to sales it, much of the crime would be eliminated, tax revenue would be generated, addicts would find it easier to admit they have a problem and seek help for their substance abuse, cartels and gangs would be severely crippled in their business efforts, and children would grow up no more glamorizing drug use than they do tobacco use, which decades of health initiatives have helped to make one of the most hated habits in all of America. Here, it's not Christianity that helps to bring about a better society, but liberal democracy.
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AGAINST ALCOHOL BANS
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This is an issue that has been in the news in Texas a lot recently. Many counties and towns have had bans on alcohol sales for generations and as of the last few years, in my region of Texas, many towns and counties have sought to make alcohol sales legal. But there has been very serious organized opposition against the passage of these laws from the churches, non-denominationals and baptists in particular. But rather than make city streets safer, they have participated in making them more dangerous and sought to ensure that more people die, not less.
The facts: Dry counties have higher drunk driving rates [5] and higher drunk driving related deaths [6].
Longer drive times to pick up alcohol, where drivers must cross the county line or into the next town over allow for more opportunities for intoxicated drivers on the road. Where there are bars or clubs, it happens that drunks leave in many cases to go home but kill someone on the way back. In counties where alcohol sales are legal, citizens have no reason whatsoever to drive drunk. They go down to the corner market, pick up their drinks, go home and get drunk and don't go out for the rest of the night.
Christians in order to put off an outward, superficial image of morality, have done so at the costs of more dangerous roads, more dangerous for drivers and pedestrians, drinkers and abstainers alike, and also at the cost of more lives. Here we see that in their pursuit of utopia, necessarily innocent people, sometimes even children, get caught up in the mix and lose their lives, so Christians can advertise their communities as being 'family-friendly', 'conservative', based on 'family values', when they are actually destroying families and people's lives.
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AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY
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Death penalty is certainly something that the theonomists were concerned about and I will get to theonomy in the next division of this article. I just realized, I'm not sure how Christians pass the smell test in claiming that the Law is obsolete and that we are in an age of grace and at the same time advocate so strenuously for the death penalty for many of society's most hated criminals.
I am for the death penalty. What I am not for is men who are prone to error, who have in fact in the administration of their duties as judges, jurors, and executioners HAVE IN FACT seen to it that not only many guilty men receive the lethal injection, but that many innocent men AS WELL. One is too many. If that means we take a few thousand of the most murderous evil bastards off the death row to save one life, I cannot imagine how as a Christian I could make any argument whatsoever that we should sacrifice that one man just to kill the other three thousand. But Christians don't see it that way. They overlook that innocent people are convicted everyday. Innocent people sometimes serve decades behind bars before some non-profit happens to pick his case to go over and finds one critical piece of evidence that was ignored that would have allowed the man to live the majority of his adult life in freedom and pursuing life, rather than sitting for thirty years behind bars. These organizations are all too familiar of how untold thousands sit in prison EVERY DAY who are innocent. But there is such a dearth of time and resources, that sadly, most of them will serve out their sentences or die behind bars.
These men did the best they good. The judges and juries had no intention to put innocent people away. But because of the reality that sin and depravity is in the world, fallenness, and not only fallenness of morality but a fallenness of the mind, sometimes the wrong decision is made. This is perfectly in line with Christian teaching. To say God instituted authority so we have to trust the government to be infallible and if innocent people are falsely executed it must have been God's will is naive at best and at worst exposes the true bloodhthirsty murderous ambitions that may not have been fully satisfied after centuries of crusades followed by a much longer period marred by murder of religious dissidents and sectarian violence. Many of you, let me say, would be ones to stone to death the adulteress and many of you would be quick to crucify Christ as well. All the people that I hear Americans calling for the death of, they scarcely know of what they're discussing and who they're discussing and it's all conjecture on their part thinking they even know what actually happened. Look at the Zimmerman case. People trying to threaten him, his parents, brother, and many other innocent people had their lives threatened because some stupid ass like Spike Lee [7] thought it important to publish addresses of INNOCENT PEOPLE without researching it to find out that they were not the addresses of the Zimmermans like he thought. Roseanne Barr similarly posted the address of Zimmerman's parents [8]. What did she hope to accomplish by having Zimmerman's near elderly parents killed and why does she think they should answer for what their son did*? The number must have been at least near a dozen of people who had to flee their homes for their very lives because people in states thousands of miles away thought to inspire death and violence towards people they do not even know.
*Deuteronomy 24:16 "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin."
What it boils down to is this: There are certainly crimes worthy of a death penalty; however, the human race is so corrupted, and clearly over the last several years is getting worse and not better, and necessarily makes the mistake from time to time to send innocent people to their deaths, and therefore the death penalty has to be thrown out.
You can read about former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and his decision to ban the death penalty here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/08/illinois-death-penalty-ab_n_833250.html
If you don't know the story you should read about what happened. But I will quote in part here...
"Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has long supported capital punishment, looked drained moments after signing the historic legislation. Lawmakers sent him the measure back in January, but Quinn went through two months of intense personal deliberation before acting. He called it the most difficult decision he has made as governor.
"'If the system can't be guaranteed, 100-percent error-free, then we shouldn't have the system,' Quinn said. 'It cannot stand.'
"Illinois becomes the 16th state in the nation without a death penalty more than a decade after former Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions out of fear that the justice system could make a deadly mistake.
"Quinn also commuted the sentences of all 15 men remaining on death row. They will now serve life in prison with no hope of parole.
"In his comments, the governor returned often to the fact that 20 people sent to death row had seen their cases overturned after evidence surfaced that they were innocent or had been convicted improperly."
____________________________________________________________
THEONOMY AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
____________________________________________________________
We've looked at several topics. I've explained why the Christian answer to how to govern on certain questions is actually harmful overall to Christians and society. Bad policies on drugs, weapons, crime... they result clearly in the deaths of many innocent people. I don't think anyone who I share a faith with actually want people to have greater access to drugs, drunks speeding through the streets their children use to walk to school, or want innocent people being given the lethal injection. What this article has the intention of showing is that the popular Christian thesis on how to solve many of society's greatest problems DO result in these effects. We certainly disagree on policy, but I think all reasonable people agree on the effects. We want improvements in society, but it won't be the Christian consensus that brings us there.
The final article, before I discuss what the solution is, is the article against theonomy.
Theonomy was a small movement beginning in the 1970s that wanted to see government established that was based solely on God's law. It could also be described as Christian Reconstructionism. They were more or less deranged Presbyterians. They advovcated for many absurd ideas. One of the most offensive is that women guilty of sexual activity prior to marriage should be executed. I couldn't find where the theonomists said the men who were present during the sexual misconduct should be executed too. Despite their insistence on the role of God's law, they also claimed that dietary laws were overturned (they weren't) and indicated for convenience' sake they were willing to throw out certain laws. Their system also would provide for stoning of disobedient children and heretics, to be determined by a party of Calvinist overlords and that alone should scare most people, since the Calvinist murderers were not much more forgiving than the Catholic crusaders.
Breathe a sigh of relief to know that Rousas Rushdoony and Greg Bahnsen are dead.
This is the final demonstration that applying Christian revelation to the realm of government is dangerous and harmful, to Christians and to society. Do many people feel comfortable with a Calvinist ruling class determining who should die for this or that doctrine, or a Catholic council, or an Islamic council, etc etc? "God's law" can never be applied because no one can fully understand it.
There are thousands of bills discussed in the United States Congress every single year. How do we know how God would rule on those thousands of cases?
Take THREE, just THREE issues that the Bible devotes a substantial degree of lines of elaboration on. Christians will not even agree as to the answer on three issues. We have 30,000+ denominations catering to every variety of belief that can be dreamed of. No one would have a reason to prefer a dictator of Baptist background as opposed to Episcopalian, Christ Scientist, Branch Davidian, or Discordian. A sane person should say the ideal politician is one who preserves liberty and nothing else. Theonomists are clearly as absorbed in the flesh as any of the most carnal thinkers, to think they could fashion a political system bent on death and killing.
__________________________________
LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
__________________________________
One of my strongest beliefs is their should be no tearing down and criticizing if one is not prepared to offer an alternative. I want to offer that alternative and hopefully get a fairly good definition of what God's intent was.
The government God wanted us to have most was the American government! But not the American government today. Our government today is like late 1930s Germany. The America I'm discussing is a time from the 1700s on into the early part of the 1900s. And specifically what was special about that time was it was devoted to serving liberty. Government had clearly defined bounds as to what it could and could not do. No one question the right of the unborn child. No one thought it was unjust to not allow gays to marry. People farmed hemp, they smoked natural tobacco, they had children, they had jobs and they had faith. A man's home was his castle. Sheriffs ruled their counties and a man ruled his home. There were only a fraction of the laws that we have today. Businesses were able to form, grow, and hire many employees without being crushed by regulations from tax authorities. Many modern people don't think so but they knew how to read. There were colleges for the bright ones and anything from farming to manufacturing for the average young men and women.
A few men tried to outline what governments were in the business of, what was in their domain or not.
Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)
Frederic Bastiat, the 19th century French economist, in his pamphlet The Law asks, "Can the law -- which necessarily requires the use of force -- rationally be used for anything except protecting the rights of everyone? I defy anyone to extend it beyond this purpose without perverting it and, consequently, turning might against right."
The role of government for Bastiat is "contained in these simple words: Law is organized justice."
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
John Stuart Mill had a similar perspective in advocating the harm principle. "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." [9]
For classical liberal political philosophers, the government's primary purpose was to preserve liberty and nothing else.
I feel God blessed this country so strongly and brought us to being the greatest power and richest nation was because for many years our government executed righteousness by preserving liberty. Men made their decisions on how to best provide for themselves and families. And criminals were prosecuted. Politicians took oaths ON THE BIBLE and swore to defend THE CONSTITUTION, the great constitution ever known to man I consider as being a document only a degree less inspired than the Bible itself, and they meant it. God blessed this nation because it pleased Him and we were His people. We cannot say that any more.
The lesson here today is America has lost its way. The hopeful encouragements from pastors reciting 2 Chronicles 7:14 is a farce, a fantasy. This nation is coming under the judgment of God and there is no turning back. The politicians have taken us on this course, aided by the marginally literate morons who help elect them continually. There will be no repentance for this country.
*If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Religion has no place in politics. And the government should stay out of religion which we know they do not do. They shouldn't mix. Politicians rarely have any faith and they try to coopt religions for their benefit. Religionists who have sought power through history generally thought about nothing other than killing and riches. I think people are so tired of governments like I am that the next logical step is anarchy. Enough of governments. They make war, kill, and empty coffers. Morality should be inculcated on our own terms, not inspired by government.
I want to conclude with the words of Voltaire, from his Lettres Philosophiques, subtitle On Mr. Locke.
"It is not Montaigne, nor Locke, nor Bayle, nor Spinoza, nor Hobbes, nor Lord Shaftesbury, nor Mr. Collins, nor Mr. Toland, and so on, who have carried the torch of discord in their native country; it is theologians, for the most part, who having first had the ambition of being leaders of their sect, have soon afterward desired to be heads of parties. Why, all the books of the modern philosophers will never make as much noise in the world as once was made just by the dispute of the Cordeliers* over the shape of their sleeve and hood."
*Greyfriars, Franciscans
____________
footnotes
1. http://ncronline.org/news/politics/house-members-file-supreme-court-brief-legislative-prayer-case
2. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/07/global-report-decriminalization-does-not-increase-rates-of-drug-use/
3. http://blog.norml.org/2009/08/28/study-says-its-easier-for-teens-to-buy-marijuana-than-beer/
4. http://reason.com/archives/2003/01/29/prohibition-violence
5. http://thetimestribune.com/local/x1511619555/Dry-counties-show-higher-rates-of-DUI-related-crashes
6. http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/InTheNews/DrinkingAndDriving/20060517124659.html
7. http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/03/spike-lee-didnt-do-the-right-thing/
8. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/roseanne-barr-zimmerman-tweets-893416
9. On Liberty, quoted from www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle
Monday, July 22, 2013
The Forty-Five* Inspired Books of the Old and New Testament
*or 43 or 44, I haven't decided yet...
The Word of God
I believe in the Word of God. Many of you think that is what is also referred to as the Bible. But I believe the Word of God it contains and the rest is the words of men. The words of God traditionally WERE ONLY GIVEN THROUGH PROPHETS. Those books in the Bible that are not written by prophets are absolutely NOT THE WORD OF GOD. Several books apply here:
Song of Solomon: A book of porn and smut, written by a worshipper of false gods such as Molech and clearly has a sexual disorder, what we would call in women nymphomania. He has the gall to lecture us on self-control yet indulged his passions with sex with hundreds, perhaps thousands of sexual partners and likely children, and possibly drunkeness. His crap ought to be published by Harlequin Romance publishers, not Bible publishers.
Ecclesiastes: Ecclesiastes stands out to me as a book that is easily debunked as being the authentic word of God. Following the train of thought of the author is as easy as interpreting the average scribblings in the journal of a disorganized schizophrenic. He makes the mistake, one to be expected from a novice, in saying that there could be no fulfillment in work or friendships or anything one sets one's hands to, that it all has been done before and is meaningless. While that may be true for someone like Solomon who indulged his appetite in drunkeness and extreme sexual perversion, Solomon's mistake is extending his experience and making it normative for all persons. It's the normal attitude of someone conceited with the view of their own intellectual superiority. It indulges the passions of a petty nihilist with its devaluation of life, its proper application and the pleasure that can be derived from it. It was always held that God was between the lines, that Solomon intends to say life without God is not worth living. It's magical thinking on the Christians' part; however, since no such thing is clearly taught, only the complete desecration of the sanctity of life.
Esther: It's a good book, but it fails the test of propheticity. It's has a worthwhile point and is something that is worth quiet reflection and study. But I cannot consider this as high as the Word of God.
Ezra/Nehemiah: The Apostles and Yeshua never quotes from these books and otherwise I am not able to comment from lack of reading them but to offer the same pattern of thought as the previous one: Without presence of the prophetic word then I'd say it's worth study, but is not equal to God's Word.
Psalms: Much of Psalms being inspired, I also keep in mind that some aspects of it may merely be edifying, consoling, and for these and other reasons, useful.
Proverbs: Typical Confucian* and helpful insights but it starts off in an incredibly boastful manner and I can't say is inspired, but words to live by.
*I don't know anything about Confucius except he said, "Foolish man give wife grand piano. Wise man give wife upright organ!" Okay, not really. But it's clear in the world of proverbs we have the lower tier, thoughtless lazy proverbs found in a fortune cookie, and then we have proverbs that are quotable, wise, and that you'd expect to hear from a wise man fortunate to have seen a long life and learned much wisdom in his years. When I identify Solomon's proverbs as Confucian,. all I mean is they are of the more profound variety rather than the fortune cookie type.
All of Paul's Epistles: Paul was not a prophet and has no authority to offer Scripture. I exclude Peter, James, and Jude as they are directly intellectually connected to the greatest prophet Yeshua as His students and are connected to the Prophet John, also called John the Revelator or the Apostle John and of equal stature to John, except for John being trusted with the highest of all revelations, The Revelation, and also that John was the Beloved. Otherwise, they are John's equal.
I am now identifying 19 books (not counting Psalms as this was heavily quoted by Christ and the apostles and has established propheticity) as being on a second tier of authority and not binding in the degree in which the prophetic word is.
Where we find the prophetic word:
The Torah
Judges
Six books of Kings, Chronicles, Samuel
The Psalms
The Three Major Prophets
and Lamentations and Daniel
The Twelve Minor Prophets
The Four Gospels
The Epistle of James
The Two Epistles of Peter
The Three Epistles of John
The Epistle of Jude
The Revelation of Yeshua ha'Mashiac
Joshua and Ruth I have not read and have not established propheticity yet. It's clear to me propheticity is established in Judges but I have never read the book.
Job: There is a dilemma in Job is that it purports to record the words of God to Job but does not have a demonstrated pattern of propheticity. That is to say, in regarding it as 'God-breathed' we unintentionally cede inspired status to Eliphaz and his two friends, which we clearly cannot do. God towards the end of the book makes very clear His disaproval of the words of Job's friends. It is a dialogue between several men and for that reason I dispute its propheticity.
Hebrews: Demonstrates an unreliability by including facts as to the genealogy of Christ that is inaccurate, uses this false information as a central component in its analysis of the Law as obsolete, and through this demonstrates that it is a report not from a first-hand witness or anyone involved but a work of second-hand or third-hand sources or even worse and is clearly not of apostolic origin and on account of its inaccuracies, clearly lacks propheticity.
Acts: The presupposition is that the Epistles of Paul cannot be rejected and simultaneously accept the authenticity of Acts. I disagree. Luke was clearly an accomplished historian, who is said to have been the greatest scholar of his time. The work of archaelogy and all science has proved many of Luke's claims and by no means disproved even one. It has been standard practice that the extensive geographical, cultural, and historical observations within Acts have been used as parameters, a guiding source in modern day excavations because of its established track record of accuracy. Luke was absolutely a witness of many events of apostolic times, widely traveled, highly educated, fluent in a variety of languages it can be suspected, a scholar of the highest caliber. It was because of his great learning that his criticism against Paul was covert, veiled in language on an esoteric level that would not be apparent to the casual observer, and certainly not apparent to anyone today except the very few who complete the most thorough and unbiased investigation. Yet at the same time, his conclusions would be much more apparent to the readers in his day. He records in one instance a quote that the blinding light was seen yet not heard, and at another point that it was heard but not seen. So his dedication to accurate reporting takes him in some cases to present holes and at times, seems to shrewdly expose his skepticism of the stories of Paul and his company. I can guarantee that absolutely wanted us to have this book today, in that it is a report not of what truly happened, but of what was reported to have happened and Luke's skepticism of it. I give this a semi-inspired status in that it was divinely guided, God inspired it to perfect accuracy yet it was penned by Luke and not what I would call God-breathed.
42 authentic, 21 books disputed, 2 unclassified, 1 semi-inspired or of top-tier authority but not 'God-breathed'.
God speaks only through prophets. No self-appointed smart-ass like Solomon or some self-promoted self-promoter like Paul gets to pen words and pretend they are from God. Only prophets are given authority to speak on God's behalf. Other writings may get a few things right but are susceptible to error, whereas God's word is not. It is why you will find contradictions in Paul's epistles or in other books, because they are not from the Final Source.
And if a prophet speaks today, I'll say, to you. You must listen and obey his words and you will answer for that, but not if he's speaking of himself, but only if he gives you a word from God. God still speaks today so we must be careful not to accept anyone who claims to speak for Him but do not, and also be careful NOT TO REJECT THOSE WHO DO SPEAK FOR HIM because of a general fear of false teachers. We should test carefully. If it is not of prophetic origin, it is not the Word of God.
The Word of God
I believe in the Word of God. Many of you think that is what is also referred to as the Bible. But I believe the Word of God it contains and the rest is the words of men. The words of God traditionally WERE ONLY GIVEN THROUGH PROPHETS. Those books in the Bible that are not written by prophets are absolutely NOT THE WORD OF GOD. Several books apply here:
Song of Solomon: A book of porn and smut, written by a worshipper of false gods such as Molech and clearly has a sexual disorder, what we would call in women nymphomania. He has the gall to lecture us on self-control yet indulged his passions with sex with hundreds, perhaps thousands of sexual partners and likely children, and possibly drunkeness. His crap ought to be published by Harlequin Romance publishers, not Bible publishers.
Ecclesiastes: Ecclesiastes stands out to me as a book that is easily debunked as being the authentic word of God. Following the train of thought of the author is as easy as interpreting the average scribblings in the journal of a disorganized schizophrenic. He makes the mistake, one to be expected from a novice, in saying that there could be no fulfillment in work or friendships or anything one sets one's hands to, that it all has been done before and is meaningless. While that may be true for someone like Solomon who indulged his appetite in drunkeness and extreme sexual perversion, Solomon's mistake is extending his experience and making it normative for all persons. It's the normal attitude of someone conceited with the view of their own intellectual superiority. It indulges the passions of a petty nihilist with its devaluation of life, its proper application and the pleasure that can be derived from it. It was always held that God was between the lines, that Solomon intends to say life without God is not worth living. It's magical thinking on the Christians' part; however, since no such thing is clearly taught, only the complete desecration of the sanctity of life.
Esther: It's a good book, but it fails the test of propheticity. It's has a worthwhile point and is something that is worth quiet reflection and study. But I cannot consider this as high as the Word of God.
Ezra/Nehemiah: The Apostles and Yeshua never quotes from these books and otherwise I am not able to comment from lack of reading them but to offer the same pattern of thought as the previous one: Without presence of the prophetic word then I'd say it's worth study, but is not equal to God's Word.
Psalms: Much of Psalms being inspired, I also keep in mind that some aspects of it may merely be edifying, consoling, and for these and other reasons, useful.
Proverbs: Typical Confucian* and helpful insights but it starts off in an incredibly boastful manner and I can't say is inspired, but words to live by.
*I don't know anything about Confucius except he said, "Foolish man give wife grand piano. Wise man give wife upright organ!" Okay, not really. But it's clear in the world of proverbs we have the lower tier, thoughtless lazy proverbs found in a fortune cookie, and then we have proverbs that are quotable, wise, and that you'd expect to hear from a wise man fortunate to have seen a long life and learned much wisdom in his years. When I identify Solomon's proverbs as Confucian,. all I mean is they are of the more profound variety rather than the fortune cookie type.
All of Paul's Epistles: Paul was not a prophet and has no authority to offer Scripture. I exclude Peter, James, and Jude as they are directly intellectually connected to the greatest prophet Yeshua as His students and are connected to the Prophet John, also called John the Revelator or the Apostle John and of equal stature to John, except for John being trusted with the highest of all revelations, The Revelation, and also that John was the Beloved. Otherwise, they are John's equal.
I am now identifying 19 books (not counting Psalms as this was heavily quoted by Christ and the apostles and has established propheticity) as being on a second tier of authority and not binding in the degree in which the prophetic word is.
Where we find the prophetic word:
The Torah
Judges
Six books of Kings, Chronicles, Samuel
The Psalms
The Three Major Prophets
and Lamentations and Daniel
The Twelve Minor Prophets
The Four Gospels
The Epistle of James
The Two Epistles of Peter
The Three Epistles of John
The Epistle of Jude
The Revelation of Yeshua ha'Mashiac
Joshua and Ruth I have not read and have not established propheticity yet. It's clear to me propheticity is established in Judges but I have never read the book.
Job: There is a dilemma in Job is that it purports to record the words of God to Job but does not have a demonstrated pattern of propheticity. That is to say, in regarding it as 'God-breathed' we unintentionally cede inspired status to Eliphaz and his two friends, which we clearly cannot do. God towards the end of the book makes very clear His disaproval of the words of Job's friends. It is a dialogue between several men and for that reason I dispute its propheticity.
Hebrews: Demonstrates an unreliability by including facts as to the genealogy of Christ that is inaccurate, uses this false information as a central component in its analysis of the Law as obsolete, and through this demonstrates that it is a report not from a first-hand witness or anyone involved but a work of second-hand or third-hand sources or even worse and is clearly not of apostolic origin and on account of its inaccuracies, clearly lacks propheticity.
Acts: The presupposition is that the Epistles of Paul cannot be rejected and simultaneously accept the authenticity of Acts. I disagree. Luke was clearly an accomplished historian, who is said to have been the greatest scholar of his time. The work of archaelogy and all science has proved many of Luke's claims and by no means disproved even one. It has been standard practice that the extensive geographical, cultural, and historical observations within Acts have been used as parameters, a guiding source in modern day excavations because of its established track record of accuracy. Luke was absolutely a witness of many events of apostolic times, widely traveled, highly educated, fluent in a variety of languages it can be suspected, a scholar of the highest caliber. It was because of his great learning that his criticism against Paul was covert, veiled in language on an esoteric level that would not be apparent to the casual observer, and certainly not apparent to anyone today except the very few who complete the most thorough and unbiased investigation. Yet at the same time, his conclusions would be much more apparent to the readers in his day. He records in one instance a quote that the blinding light was seen yet not heard, and at another point that it was heard but not seen. So his dedication to accurate reporting takes him in some cases to present holes and at times, seems to shrewdly expose his skepticism of the stories of Paul and his company. I can guarantee that absolutely wanted us to have this book today, in that it is a report not of what truly happened, but of what was reported to have happened and Luke's skepticism of it. I give this a semi-inspired status in that it was divinely guided, God inspired it to perfect accuracy yet it was penned by Luke and not what I would call God-breathed.
42 authentic, 21 books disputed, 2 unclassified, 1 semi-inspired or of top-tier authority but not 'God-breathed'.
God speaks only through prophets. No self-appointed smart-ass like Solomon or some self-promoted self-promoter like Paul gets to pen words and pretend they are from God. Only prophets are given authority to speak on God's behalf. Other writings may get a few things right but are susceptible to error, whereas God's word is not. It is why you will find contradictions in Paul's epistles or in other books, because they are not from the Final Source.
And if a prophet speaks today, I'll say, to you. You must listen and obey his words and you will answer for that, but not if he's speaking of himself, but only if he gives you a word from God. God still speaks today so we must be careful not to accept anyone who claims to speak for Him but do not, and also be careful NOT TO REJECT THOSE WHO DO SPEAK FOR HIM because of a general fear of false teachers. We should test carefully. If it is not of prophetic origin, it is not the Word of God.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
American Christians are Ignoramuses
To many Christians, America is their God
American Christians have dual-mouths. Out of one side they preach that obeying the Law is in vain and that Christians are not under the Law anymore. Then out of the other side of their mouths, they teach us how America is the government God established on earth to bring freedom and the gospel to people. They add how Romans 13 teaches us we have to obey the laws of America.
Christians are so stupid, they say that the 613 laws of God are too burdensome, too extensive, impossible to follow, they're only there to prove how messed up we are as a people.
According to searchamelia.com, In 2009, America January "saw 40,627 new laws on the books in the USA and its overseas territories and protectorates." That was just in one year. It's not clear however if this is to say on the federal lawbooks or federal and state... But let's say it's safe to say there are WAY more laws than this overall. Hundreds of thousands I'd suppose.
Those are the laws that govern this nation.
You could practically spend the rest of your life reading, and not even understanding, what is contained in these books. It is 50 sections and 23,000 pages.
America is a damned nation, but Christians here come very well close to saying that we have to obey everything contained in these books of law but the law of God isn't worth the paper it's written, it's toilet paper.
Well I've got news for you: It is you Christians who are worthless toilet paper.
img from:
http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/
Yeshua rings revolutionary with these timely observations:
Luke 11:46
"And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers."
Matthew 23:4
"For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers."
What did God say about how long His law was valid?
Exodus 12:14
Speaking of the Passover, He says, "And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever."
Matthew 5:18
"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
Obviously not all has been fulfilled yet.
On those who rebel against Him by eating swine and mouse
Isaiah 66:17
"They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord."
What were we promised if we followed God and His ways?
John 15:10
"If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love."
John 3:16
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
How do we demonstrate our belief, our faith?
John 14:15
"If ye love me, keep my commandments."
Christians defend themselves by saying Jesus taught us to eat pork. But Jesus tells a different story.
Matthew 5:19
"Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."
You Christians blaspheme when you say Jesus taught us to violate the commandments. If this is true, then Jesus is the least in the kingdom of heaven and He shall serve us! Of course that is absurd, but what is just as absurd is when Christians make this implication.
American Christians have dual-mouths. Out of one side they preach that obeying the Law is in vain and that Christians are not under the Law anymore. Then out of the other side of their mouths, they teach us how America is the government God established on earth to bring freedom and the gospel to people. They add how Romans 13 teaches us we have to obey the laws of America.
Christians are so stupid, they say that the 613 laws of God are too burdensome, too extensive, impossible to follow, they're only there to prove how messed up we are as a people.
According to searchamelia.com, In 2009, America January "saw 40,627 new laws on the books in the USA and its overseas territories and protectorates." That was just in one year. It's not clear however if this is to say on the federal lawbooks or federal and state... But let's say it's safe to say there are WAY more laws than this overall. Hundreds of thousands I'd suppose.
Those are the laws that govern this nation.
You could practically spend the rest of your life reading, and not even understanding, what is contained in these books. It is 50 sections and 23,000 pages.
America is a damned nation, but Christians here come very well close to saying that we have to obey everything contained in these books of law but the law of God isn't worth the paper it's written, it's toilet paper.
Well I've got news for you: It is you Christians who are worthless toilet paper.
img from:
http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/
Yeshua rings revolutionary with these timely observations:
Luke 11:46
"And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers."
Matthew 23:4
"For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers."
What did God say about how long His law was valid?
Exodus 12:14
Speaking of the Passover, He says, "And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever."
Matthew 5:18
"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
Obviously not all has been fulfilled yet.
On those who rebel against Him by eating swine and mouse
Isaiah 66:17
"They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord."
What were we promised if we followed God and His ways?
John 15:10
"If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love."
John 3:16
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
How do we demonstrate our belief, our faith?
John 14:15
"If ye love me, keep my commandments."
Christians defend themselves by saying Jesus taught us to eat pork. But Jesus tells a different story.
Matthew 5:19
"Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."
You Christians blaspheme when you say Jesus taught us to violate the commandments. If this is true, then Jesus is the least in the kingdom of heaven and He shall serve us! Of course that is absurd, but what is just as absurd is when Christians make this implication.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
A doctrinal-test view of salvation
A view we will look at here is whether or not there is a test for determining if a person is saved. A test could either show that a person is saved or they are not saved. It may not be limited to one issue but could be a composite test of issues.
I know a person, I can't really say a friend because he doesn't behave toward me as a friend would be expected to, and I won't call him an acquaintance either because we have spent enough time talking and hanging out to be only acquainted with each other. But he was very angry that I did not believe in the idea of an eternal hell and he tried very hard to get me to change my mind. I told him I didn't want to talk about it. For one, I'm not interested in having my mind changed, he isn't either, and this conversation at this time was only pursued out of his hope of me changing my mind, and like I said, that wasn't going to happen. It's a discussion that was rife with potential for an argument, and I'm acquainted well enough with churchfolks to know it gets a lot of people riled up this issue, and I know because I've had the conversation before. Sometimes you only lead a horse to water though and he insisted on talking about it. He left that night with his feelings hurt, or if he's too masculine to admit to that, I'll just say he stomped off on home pouting about it. This could be a particular issue, among others, that may cause him to question my salvation which for one isn't for him to decide, but at least if he does try to decide it, then there is a system to do that. I want to share what is the system and what is not the system.
I want to start off with one of my great objections to Calvinism. Calvinism is an idea that comprises a range of thought flowing from humans having very little choice and mostly being a product of predestination to having no choice at all and essentially just being puppets with God, angels, and demons, tugging away making us do whatever they want. If we're lucky, God pulls our strings and we go to Heaven. If God just hates our stinking guts, for no reason at all (just because He can!!) He gives us to the devil to be tormented and tortured (for no reason at all but just because He felt like it!!). So no one gives their life to Christ, no one chooses to sin or not sin. It's only what God wants. If God wants Hitler in Heaven, he gets to go. If he wants someone like Mother Teresa burning and being tortured in Hell, then he gets to do that too. God is supersovereign in their view. It would even be pointless to ask someone you just met if they are Christians. In its most basic sense, no one gets to decide if they're Christians or not, only some cosmic lottery decides who's of the elect.
But God is not supersovereign. Only an insecure little man desperately trying to retain his hold on power would try to micromanage his government on that level. You would only hold that tight a grip fearing if you let up ever so slightly you would lose all control over it. The Calvinists see a vulnerable and reactionary God who willy-nilly chooses to send people to hell for little more than a momentary inclination to do so. Jefferson rightly called this bigot a demon who has no relationship at all to the God of the Bible. The demon Calvin worshipped makes Hitler look like an Eagle Scout.
Supersovereignty is dangerous because it leads to a question that is not the purview of man to even consider. Men are reduced to physical effects of supernatural causes. A person does not choose to get saved. God chooses that for him. A Calvinist does not so much consider whether you are a Christian, or initially whether you identify as one. His question is if the preordinate actions of God the Father predestined you as one of the elect, whether in His supersovereignty He saw fit to choose you.
So the thing on the Calvinist's mind is not to ask you if you are a Christian because he esteems your opinion as valid. His job is to divine from the cosmic lottery if you are a Christian or not. It is his job to see if he may esteem you as a Christian, not if it is something you truly believe in or identify as.
If you ask if a person is a Christian, you should be content with receiving a yes or no answer. We should generally suspect the inherent honesty of all persons, unless and until it can be demonstrated that they are lying snakes. So if a person identifies as a Christian and you suspect that is not the case, there has to be a substantial indication that they are not living as Christians would be expected to live, or some bar/disqualifier to their integrity that supercedes any other criterion.
And it happens that one of the things people consider as a valid indicator of a person's authentic orientation is a doctrinal test. This has all the problems of the Calvinist supersovereignty view. It distorts the question to start off with. We start with an idea that 'no man can judge another's salvation. Then we go and extend it to say, 'Many believed themselves to be Christians and it was proven that they really were not but they were deceived". And then absurdly we arrive at, "So therefore it is my place to judge if he is a Christian or not". In some sort of logic, we see how the progression is carried but it's logically profane to go from 'we should not judge' to 'we should judge'. So the question is not a 'let your yes be yes and your nay be nay' [Matthew 5:37] 'are you a Christian?'. When it comes to a doctrinal test, it's the question of 'do you subscribe to my brand of orthodoxy or not?'
Christians are not called to be proficient as mathematicians, geologists, botanists, welders, or underwater basket weavers. How did anyone decide (and from what verse did they gather) that all Christians are to be gifted and educated theologians. If your test for whether a person has genuine faith is whether they can explain correctly the Trinity, hypostatic union, the eternal nature of Hell, the pure and unadulterated view of Calvinism, along with conformity totraditional orthodox views and church teaching... I have to tell you, you have no biblical support for that anywhere and it's presumptuous to think you have the knowledge to construct such a test, a sort of test the Bible doesn't offer.
One clear fact presented in every such test is the answers always conform to the prejudices of the test taker.
Paul Crouch used a term, 'heresy head hunters' and he probably borrowed it from someone else but let me roughly borrow it from him. Those who are zealous to hunt for heresies... I advise against that, lest in your zeal you take out proponents for many true beliefs as well as those who promote false beliefs. This happened on occasion and Gamaliel warns of this in Acts, saying if the message is not of God, it will die. But don't fight against it, because if it is of God, you will be fighting against God in doing so (Acts 5).
One forum had made many policies against "false teachings". One of them was not to teach against the pre-tribulation Rapture or you would be banned. Others were just as laughable... I'll quote some of it.
"hyper Dispensationalism, Arminianism, hyper-Calvinism, adding good works of Lordship Salvation, Ecumenical Interfaith, KJV Onlyism, nor other ideologies of religious legalism. Do not play 'devil's advocate' for the sake of argument."
"Do not promote insurrection propaganda or fear based threads on FEMA camps and other government conspiracies false prophets, heretical movements, paganism, ritualism, Two House, Ten Lost Tribes, Old Earth, Third Wave Latter Rain, Words of Faith (WOF), Words of Knowledge (WOK), extra biblical teachings from tele-preachers, John Wimber's Vineyard teachings, Dominion theology, Soul Sleep, Signs & Wonders, Gospel to the Stars, the Mazzaroth, Toronto Blessings, Mike Bickle's I.H.O.Prayer, 7th Day (Sabbath) keeping, liturgy of works and practices for obtaining and maintaining salvation, Eucharist, Lordship Salvation, Annihilationism, Universalism, Calvinism, Arminianism, predestination, catechisms (RCC and their offshoots), Ecumenism, baptismal regeneration, prayers for the dead, false scriptures such as the Pseudepigrapha , Apocrypha, Book of Mormon, Bible codes, Ufology, Inccubi, Succubi, Angelic procreation and cloning, demon seeds, or any other extra biblical preoccupations with demonic and extrasensory beliefs.Do not post from tele-teachers entangled in any of the above such as TBN, Perry Stone, Jesse Duplantis, Alex Jones, Todd Bentley, J. R. Church, Rick Warren, Don Piper - "90 Minutes in Heaven", FiveDoves, Coo Thomas, Sid Roth, etc..."
Woo! And trust me, that's not all... There's probably another 75 to 100 or more to go, and that might be a low ball estimate. It could be closer to 200.
The interesting part is when they say to not talk about legalism, which is just another way for saying we don't have to obey God's law (in their mindset obeying God is legalistic) but nevertheless here's only about 450 rules of ours that we expect you to obey............???? I wish I had a smiley face to show jaw dropping disbelief at it. To even have an entire site dedicated to an event in some Christians' eschatological forecast THAT WILL NEVER EVEN HAPPEN. And if you even ask a question about it, you're banned.
__________
You may not be as extreme as these complete nutjobs at www.raptureforums.com but if you are advocating some sort of doctrinal test, resting on the idea that all truly saved people automatically become gifted theologians at conversion, by nature you are deranged while in degree you're just not as deranged as the people at Rapture Forums.
Do you have good intentions in banning what you see as inadmissible? Don't do it. This is an example, you ban too much and then somewhere along the lines, say Jesus showed up at your site and I can guarantee you you would be banning Him.
And keep in mind larger ideas, such as inerrancy. My problem with this David was he couldn't determine how someone believing the Bible as an infallible document could come to the conclusion that hell is not eternal. But it's too black and white to say if someone doesn't fit a theological mold that they are now opposing the inerrant Word of God. 'The person denies plain teaching, it could only be an attack against the integrity of the Bible,' it could be reasoned. The question should be, within an inerrant system, how does the person defend an idea that so seemingly contradicts the plain language). For the system to fit into the mainstream of Christian thought, one idea saying we can take the Bible at its word, it has to rise to the challenge of showing how the current understanding is predicated on a fault of interpretation, incompetency in understanding the culture of the time... in other words, it has to preserve the Bible as the Word of God.
Finally, if right doctrine does not a saved person make, and a cosmic lottery doesn't either, then what is a 'test' for considering a person's salvation? Incidentally, I can only refer to what the Bible says is a valid test.
God's true people are described throughout the entire book.
They are said to be honest, they are people of faith, they love their neighbors, they help people, they go out on limbs and are usually laughed at for it but they do it because of their faith despite the consequences, they speak the truth even when it hurts or jeopardizes themselves, and they will lay their lives down for their friends.
They will sit in cisterns (Jeremiah), lion's dens (Daniel), prisons (Peter), fiery furnaces (Shadrach, et al.), old wooden ships in the midst of total deluge (Noah), marooned on an island (John), or awaiting their execution (John the Baptist) all for the sake of the gospel. They quietly reflect in the wilderness or in a garden, they revere life and they are gracious and thankful for their blessings, if not troubled at injustice in the world.
Paul made several comments about these people, and I shortly quote him here.
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." [Galatians 5:22,23]
John 10, Jesus speaks a lot about the true sheep, saying, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice." [John 10:1-4]
John said in his first epistle, "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world." [1 John 4:2,3]
But there are also the faults they suffer from in their weakness. FOr some it's smoking or drugs, others pornography, cussing, bad business practices and many other things as well. But these go with the territory. They are fallen because our great-great-great-...ad nauseam-granddaddy Adam made a poor choice one day in the garden. But they are on a path of seeking God and coming closer to God. As God gives them greater awareness of the harms they cause, they make adjustments and improve upon their former ways. They receive more and better information and God speaks to them through. His word. He chastens them and corrects them, and they listen and obey.
____
This is biblically what can be determined about God's people. None of it anywhere advocates a theological test for a Trinity, Hell, speaking in tongues, five fold ministry, premilliennialism, or any other system. He isn't searching for theological professors but men and women who like David, are after God's own heart, willing to give up families and properties and every possession for the gospel. That is what makes a Christian. Not some man made test. Some of you I can already hear are starting to say this is all sentimental. I wish it was. Not only would it be easier for you to write me off as a whackjob, it'd be easier for me to write myself off. I could stop taking anything seriously and let myself go altogether. But that is not really the truth.
As to the sin of David
David in his anti-Catholic ministry has had the stirrings for some time now as a false minister. If he continues to work from a man-made system such as doctrinal-test, or some other way that reduces men to Calvinistic robots and sees them as products of circumstance or supersovereignty, that is, a politic of division, of trying to divide people out of the camp, I can speak from my own personal observations and my conviction in the faith that you will only succeed in driving yourself out. You will expose yourself as a false prophet. Let me be clear: If your ministry involves sifting the wheat and separating out the chaff, which you're not qualified to do and is not your calling to decide which is chaff or if it is wheat, you will only sift out yourself. It is that way because it is not for man to divide men out of the camp.
Let us all be clear as to what the sin is:
To rebuke someone as not being a Christian, who are believed to identify themselves falsely, under a condition which is not a biblical position, is the work of the adversary.
If I say to this man here, that he does not conform to my opinion of the Trinity, and is therefore unsaved, that is my opinion, and a judgment on something I am not qualified to be judging.
If I say he does not conform to my prejudice of hell and is therefore unsaved, I have no support for that either.
That is a doctrinal test. One thing about bias: if someone were to design a test to measure a person's understanding on certain facts, the answers being sought out would only be answers that conform to the prejudice of the test writer. That is why little of that our faith teaches is salvific.
When a man like David, who holds to a superior and haughty view of right and wrong and true doctrine, supposing that he has the benefit of having many correct answers on many quesions,such that he finds it necessary for him to become a detractor from anyone who disagrees with his theological views, (in other words he cannot accept that others are entitled to their beliefs as well within the context of a healthy Christian life) then he is a wolf, and if he gives in fully to this false system of division, a false prophet.
You do not get to put forth a doctrinal test for the same reason the Jehovah's Witnesses don't, the Baptists, the Church of Christ, or anyone else. Christians should be accepted if that is what they are. In any dispute, fight the idea, not the person. If you choose to fight the person, then know that you are operating under the spirit of those who killed Christ, you are a false prophet, and guilty of murder (Matthew 23:35, Revelation 18:24).
I know a person, I can't really say a friend because he doesn't behave toward me as a friend would be expected to, and I won't call him an acquaintance either because we have spent enough time talking and hanging out to be only acquainted with each other. But he was very angry that I did not believe in the idea of an eternal hell and he tried very hard to get me to change my mind. I told him I didn't want to talk about it. For one, I'm not interested in having my mind changed, he isn't either, and this conversation at this time was only pursued out of his hope of me changing my mind, and like I said, that wasn't going to happen. It's a discussion that was rife with potential for an argument, and I'm acquainted well enough with churchfolks to know it gets a lot of people riled up this issue, and I know because I've had the conversation before. Sometimes you only lead a horse to water though and he insisted on talking about it. He left that night with his feelings hurt, or if he's too masculine to admit to that, I'll just say he stomped off on home pouting about it. This could be a particular issue, among others, that may cause him to question my salvation which for one isn't for him to decide, but at least if he does try to decide it, then there is a system to do that. I want to share what is the system and what is not the system.
I want to start off with one of my great objections to Calvinism. Calvinism is an idea that comprises a range of thought flowing from humans having very little choice and mostly being a product of predestination to having no choice at all and essentially just being puppets with God, angels, and demons, tugging away making us do whatever they want. If we're lucky, God pulls our strings and we go to Heaven. If God just hates our stinking guts, for no reason at all (just because He can!!) He gives us to the devil to be tormented and tortured (for no reason at all but just because He felt like it!!). So no one gives their life to Christ, no one chooses to sin or not sin. It's only what God wants. If God wants Hitler in Heaven, he gets to go. If he wants someone like Mother Teresa burning and being tortured in Hell, then he gets to do that too. God is supersovereign in their view. It would even be pointless to ask someone you just met if they are Christians. In its most basic sense, no one gets to decide if they're Christians or not, only some cosmic lottery decides who's of the elect.
But God is not supersovereign. Only an insecure little man desperately trying to retain his hold on power would try to micromanage his government on that level. You would only hold that tight a grip fearing if you let up ever so slightly you would lose all control over it. The Calvinists see a vulnerable and reactionary God who willy-nilly chooses to send people to hell for little more than a momentary inclination to do so. Jefferson rightly called this bigot a demon who has no relationship at all to the God of the Bible. The demon Calvin worshipped makes Hitler look like an Eagle Scout.
Supersovereignty is dangerous because it leads to a question that is not the purview of man to even consider. Men are reduced to physical effects of supernatural causes. A person does not choose to get saved. God chooses that for him. A Calvinist does not so much consider whether you are a Christian, or initially whether you identify as one. His question is if the preordinate actions of God the Father predestined you as one of the elect, whether in His supersovereignty He saw fit to choose you.
So the thing on the Calvinist's mind is not to ask you if you are a Christian because he esteems your opinion as valid. His job is to divine from the cosmic lottery if you are a Christian or not. It is his job to see if he may esteem you as a Christian, not if it is something you truly believe in or identify as.
If you ask if a person is a Christian, you should be content with receiving a yes or no answer. We should generally suspect the inherent honesty of all persons, unless and until it can be demonstrated that they are lying snakes. So if a person identifies as a Christian and you suspect that is not the case, there has to be a substantial indication that they are not living as Christians would be expected to live, or some bar/disqualifier to their integrity that supercedes any other criterion.
And it happens that one of the things people consider as a valid indicator of a person's authentic orientation is a doctrinal test. This has all the problems of the Calvinist supersovereignty view. It distorts the question to start off with. We start with an idea that 'no man can judge another's salvation. Then we go and extend it to say, 'Many believed themselves to be Christians and it was proven that they really were not but they were deceived". And then absurdly we arrive at, "So therefore it is my place to judge if he is a Christian or not". In some sort of logic, we see how the progression is carried but it's logically profane to go from 'we should not judge' to 'we should judge'. So the question is not a 'let your yes be yes and your nay be nay' [Matthew 5:37] 'are you a Christian?'. When it comes to a doctrinal test, it's the question of 'do you subscribe to my brand of orthodoxy or not?'
Christians are not called to be proficient as mathematicians, geologists, botanists, welders, or underwater basket weavers. How did anyone decide (and from what verse did they gather) that all Christians are to be gifted and educated theologians. If your test for whether a person has genuine faith is whether they can explain correctly the Trinity, hypostatic union, the eternal nature of Hell, the pure and unadulterated view of Calvinism, along with conformity totraditional orthodox views and church teaching... I have to tell you, you have no biblical support for that anywhere and it's presumptuous to think you have the knowledge to construct such a test, a sort of test the Bible doesn't offer.
One clear fact presented in every such test is the answers always conform to the prejudices of the test taker.
Paul Crouch used a term, 'heresy head hunters' and he probably borrowed it from someone else but let me roughly borrow it from him. Those who are zealous to hunt for heresies... I advise against that, lest in your zeal you take out proponents for many true beliefs as well as those who promote false beliefs. This happened on occasion and Gamaliel warns of this in Acts, saying if the message is not of God, it will die. But don't fight against it, because if it is of God, you will be fighting against God in doing so (Acts 5).
One forum had made many policies against "false teachings". One of them was not to teach against the pre-tribulation Rapture or you would be banned. Others were just as laughable... I'll quote some of it.
"hyper Dispensationalism, Arminianism, hyper-Calvinism, adding good works of Lordship Salvation, Ecumenical Interfaith, KJV Onlyism, nor other ideologies of religious legalism. Do not play 'devil's advocate' for the sake of argument."
"Do not promote insurrection propaganda or fear based threads on FEMA camps and other government conspiracies false prophets, heretical movements, paganism, ritualism, Two House, Ten Lost Tribes, Old Earth, Third Wave Latter Rain, Words of Faith (WOF), Words of Knowledge (WOK), extra biblical teachings from tele-preachers, John Wimber's Vineyard teachings, Dominion theology, Soul Sleep, Signs & Wonders, Gospel to the Stars, the Mazzaroth, Toronto Blessings, Mike Bickle's I.H.O.Prayer, 7th Day (Sabbath) keeping, liturgy of works and practices for obtaining and maintaining salvation, Eucharist, Lordship Salvation, Annihilationism, Universalism, Calvinism, Arminianism, predestination, catechisms (RCC and their offshoots), Ecumenism, baptismal regeneration, prayers for the dead, false scriptures such as the Pseudepigrapha , Apocrypha, Book of Mormon, Bible codes, Ufology, Inccubi, Succubi, Angelic procreation and cloning, demon seeds, or any other extra biblical preoccupations with demonic and extrasensory beliefs.Do not post from tele-teachers entangled in any of the above such as TBN, Perry Stone, Jesse Duplantis, Alex Jones, Todd Bentley, J. R. Church, Rick Warren, Don Piper - "90 Minutes in Heaven", FiveDoves, Coo Thomas, Sid Roth, etc..."
Woo! And trust me, that's not all... There's probably another 75 to 100 or more to go, and that might be a low ball estimate. It could be closer to 200.
The interesting part is when they say to not talk about legalism, which is just another way for saying we don't have to obey God's law (in their mindset obeying God is legalistic) but nevertheless here's only about 450 rules of ours that we expect you to obey............???? I wish I had a smiley face to show jaw dropping disbelief at it. To even have an entire site dedicated to an event in some Christians' eschatological forecast THAT WILL NEVER EVEN HAPPEN. And if you even ask a question about it, you're banned.
__________
You may not be as extreme as these complete nutjobs at www.raptureforums.com but if you are advocating some sort of doctrinal test, resting on the idea that all truly saved people automatically become gifted theologians at conversion, by nature you are deranged while in degree you're just not as deranged as the people at Rapture Forums.
Do you have good intentions in banning what you see as inadmissible? Don't do it. This is an example, you ban too much and then somewhere along the lines, say Jesus showed up at your site and I can guarantee you you would be banning Him.
And keep in mind larger ideas, such as inerrancy. My problem with this David was he couldn't determine how someone believing the Bible as an infallible document could come to the conclusion that hell is not eternal. But it's too black and white to say if someone doesn't fit a theological mold that they are now opposing the inerrant Word of God. 'The person denies plain teaching, it could only be an attack against the integrity of the Bible,' it could be reasoned. The question should be, within an inerrant system, how does the person defend an idea that so seemingly contradicts the plain language). For the system to fit into the mainstream of Christian thought, one idea saying we can take the Bible at its word, it has to rise to the challenge of showing how the current understanding is predicated on a fault of interpretation, incompetency in understanding the culture of the time... in other words, it has to preserve the Bible as the Word of God.
Finally, if right doctrine does not a saved person make, and a cosmic lottery doesn't either, then what is a 'test' for considering a person's salvation? Incidentally, I can only refer to what the Bible says is a valid test.
God's true people are described throughout the entire book.
They are said to be honest, they are people of faith, they love their neighbors, they help people, they go out on limbs and are usually laughed at for it but they do it because of their faith despite the consequences, they speak the truth even when it hurts or jeopardizes themselves, and they will lay their lives down for their friends.
They will sit in cisterns (Jeremiah), lion's dens (Daniel), prisons (Peter), fiery furnaces (Shadrach, et al.), old wooden ships in the midst of total deluge (Noah), marooned on an island (John), or awaiting their execution (John the Baptist) all for the sake of the gospel. They quietly reflect in the wilderness or in a garden, they revere life and they are gracious and thankful for their blessings, if not troubled at injustice in the world.
Paul made several comments about these people, and I shortly quote him here.
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." [Galatians 5:22,23]
John 10, Jesus speaks a lot about the true sheep, saying, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice." [John 10:1-4]
John said in his first epistle, "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world." [1 John 4:2,3]
But there are also the faults they suffer from in their weakness. FOr some it's smoking or drugs, others pornography, cussing, bad business practices and many other things as well. But these go with the territory. They are fallen because our great-great-great-...ad nauseam-granddaddy Adam made a poor choice one day in the garden. But they are on a path of seeking God and coming closer to God. As God gives them greater awareness of the harms they cause, they make adjustments and improve upon their former ways. They receive more and better information and God speaks to them through. His word. He chastens them and corrects them, and they listen and obey.
____
This is biblically what can be determined about God's people. None of it anywhere advocates a theological test for a Trinity, Hell, speaking in tongues, five fold ministry, premilliennialism, or any other system. He isn't searching for theological professors but men and women who like David, are after God's own heart, willing to give up families and properties and every possession for the gospel. That is what makes a Christian. Not some man made test. Some of you I can already hear are starting to say this is all sentimental. I wish it was. Not only would it be easier for you to write me off as a whackjob, it'd be easier for me to write myself off. I could stop taking anything seriously and let myself go altogether. But that is not really the truth.
As to the sin of David
David in his anti-Catholic ministry has had the stirrings for some time now as a false minister. If he continues to work from a man-made system such as doctrinal-test, or some other way that reduces men to Calvinistic robots and sees them as products of circumstance or supersovereignty, that is, a politic of division, of trying to divide people out of the camp, I can speak from my own personal observations and my conviction in the faith that you will only succeed in driving yourself out. You will expose yourself as a false prophet. Let me be clear: If your ministry involves sifting the wheat and separating out the chaff, which you're not qualified to do and is not your calling to decide which is chaff or if it is wheat, you will only sift out yourself. It is that way because it is not for man to divide men out of the camp.
Let us all be clear as to what the sin is:
To rebuke someone as not being a Christian, who are believed to identify themselves falsely, under a condition which is not a biblical position, is the work of the adversary.
If I say to this man here, that he does not conform to my opinion of the Trinity, and is therefore unsaved, that is my opinion, and a judgment on something I am not qualified to be judging.
If I say he does not conform to my prejudice of hell and is therefore unsaved, I have no support for that either.
That is a doctrinal test. One thing about bias: if someone were to design a test to measure a person's understanding on certain facts, the answers being sought out would only be answers that conform to the prejudice of the test writer. That is why little of that our faith teaches is salvific.
When a man like David, who holds to a superior and haughty view of right and wrong and true doctrine, supposing that he has the benefit of having many correct answers on many quesions,such that he finds it necessary for him to become a detractor from anyone who disagrees with his theological views, (in other words he cannot accept that others are entitled to their beliefs as well within the context of a healthy Christian life) then he is a wolf, and if he gives in fully to this false system of division, a false prophet.
You do not get to put forth a doctrinal test for the same reason the Jehovah's Witnesses don't, the Baptists, the Church of Christ, or anyone else. Christians should be accepted if that is what they are. In any dispute, fight the idea, not the person. If you choose to fight the person, then know that you are operating under the spirit of those who killed Christ, you are a false prophet, and guilty of murder (Matthew 23:35, Revelation 18:24).
Monday, July 8, 2013
Social Issues II: Racism and black America
On January 20th, 2005, Leann Holden is getting off work at the Wal-Mart she works at. She is just about to get in her truck, the video shows, but then a man comes up behind her, drags her to his vehicle, and drives several hundred miles before dumping her body, driving several hundred more miles then being shot by a clerk after an attempted robbery and arrested in Arizona.
Leann came to my mind tonight and I thought about looking into the case again, since it had been several years since hearing about it. I discovered the perpetrator was black.
___________
The family of this young woman forgave the man. I can be open to the idea that maybe a person can change. It may only be after being taken to the extreme of crime and taken to prison for the rest of their lives or placed on death row before they find God, and while I don't think it's likely, I think it is possible.
But this man committed several sins. One is he killed a young woman. He is forgiven for that. But there is someone else he wronged. He wronged his entire race. You see, he went the way of millions of black men before him. A life of crime over a life dedicated to work. A life stealing rather than giving. Fathering children rather than raising children. Taking lives rather than saving lives. What he has done is that he has perpetuated the racist notions levied against blacks and has also ceded the point over to every white person who says that blacks are an inferior race. Many of you are trained here to say I'm generalizing by singling out one person and generalizing from that. No I'm not. I'm referencing one story out of thousands, or really millions, of people of African descent who have committed heinous crimes as well. It's a shame not only in that it destroys the integrity of an entire race, it lends credibility to racist theories itself. Inasmuch as racism is an injustice, I think it is a grave injustice itself that racial doctrines ARE TRUE, that it is clear from the actions of millions of blacks in America and every other country as well that they are a race committed to violence and murder and bloodshed everywhere on the planet. This man hasn't only killed a woman and destroyed a family, he took part in the murder of the integrity of his entire race.
It is becoming tenuous to suggest, and even more difficult to maintain, that whites should continue to read articles like this of the lives black people have taken from this earth, and to pretend race is not a factor or that 'they are not all like that'. How many stories of their incompetence and violence do we read? It's some sort of fuzzy notion that for every degenerate black in the papers, there are 5 good ones we never heard anything about. It's a legitimate point, up until a certain extent. But blacks, you have financially broken this entire country, you have scared whites out of their neighborhoods and then have the gall to call it "white flight", you mercilessly kill people in the streets and then when one of your own such as Trayvon Martin is killed you threaten civil war, no matter what he did to get shot. Racism is no longer something whites believe in, it's something history sits as testimony too, as to its being a fact. And that is more shameful than any individual racist white, any criminal and indigent black, and a bigger tragedy than any possible victim of crime or the victims left in its wake. It goes against every democratic idea in showing that all decency and honor is lost upon an entire race of people.
What you do is prove that America was founded on a total pretense, that "All men are created equal." You steal from America precisely what it was founded upon and show it to be a lie and destroy all of America in the process.
Leann came to my mind tonight and I thought about looking into the case again, since it had been several years since hearing about it. I discovered the perpetrator was black.
___________
The family of this young woman forgave the man. I can be open to the idea that maybe a person can change. It may only be after being taken to the extreme of crime and taken to prison for the rest of their lives or placed on death row before they find God, and while I don't think it's likely, I think it is possible.
But this man committed several sins. One is he killed a young woman. He is forgiven for that. But there is someone else he wronged. He wronged his entire race. You see, he went the way of millions of black men before him. A life of crime over a life dedicated to work. A life stealing rather than giving. Fathering children rather than raising children. Taking lives rather than saving lives. What he has done is that he has perpetuated the racist notions levied against blacks and has also ceded the point over to every white person who says that blacks are an inferior race. Many of you are trained here to say I'm generalizing by singling out one person and generalizing from that. No I'm not. I'm referencing one story out of thousands, or really millions, of people of African descent who have committed heinous crimes as well. It's a shame not only in that it destroys the integrity of an entire race, it lends credibility to racist theories itself. Inasmuch as racism is an injustice, I think it is a grave injustice itself that racial doctrines ARE TRUE, that it is clear from the actions of millions of blacks in America and every other country as well that they are a race committed to violence and murder and bloodshed everywhere on the planet. This man hasn't only killed a woman and destroyed a family, he took part in the murder of the integrity of his entire race.
It is becoming tenuous to suggest, and even more difficult to maintain, that whites should continue to read articles like this of the lives black people have taken from this earth, and to pretend race is not a factor or that 'they are not all like that'. How many stories of their incompetence and violence do we read? It's some sort of fuzzy notion that for every degenerate black in the papers, there are 5 good ones we never heard anything about. It's a legitimate point, up until a certain extent. But blacks, you have financially broken this entire country, you have scared whites out of their neighborhoods and then have the gall to call it "white flight", you mercilessly kill people in the streets and then when one of your own such as Trayvon Martin is killed you threaten civil war, no matter what he did to get shot. Racism is no longer something whites believe in, it's something history sits as testimony too, as to its being a fact. And that is more shameful than any individual racist white, any criminal and indigent black, and a bigger tragedy than any possible victim of crime or the victims left in its wake. It goes against every democratic idea in showing that all decency and honor is lost upon an entire race of people.
What you do is prove that America was founded on a total pretense, that "All men are created equal." You steal from America precisely what it was founded upon and show it to be a lie and destroy all of America in the process.
Friday, July 5, 2013
Christians in Heavy Metal?
I was a teenager who started playing guitar at 15. I listened to a lot of Metallica and heavy metal and aspired to one day learn those riffs and techniques. Also considering myself nominally Christian before really coming to fully receive the faith, I had a burning question a lot from my age group and of similar musical taste did as to which of my favorite heavy metal artists were Christians themselves. Of course our parents would tell us they all worship the devil, and while I'm still not fully convinced of that, I am convinced that those who claim many of them are Christians are guilty of wishful thinking and tribalism, hoping that some of their own musical heroes are apart of the same tribe they are.
I can give a few examples of those who are said to be Christians:
Killswitch Engage (It's said Jesse the original and current singer is, the others, I've never heard)
All That Remains (Although Oli is openly agnostic, it's been said singer Phil is a committed Christian)
As I Lay Dying (not really sure, but generally are said to be Christian)
^^^ these are the main ones.
Supposedly, this makes it okay to listen to their music. I'd say it's okay to listen to their music but not for these reasons...
I discovered recently Phil Labonte from AtR posted on his Twitter account that he is ABSOLUTELY NOT a Christian. I imagine that pisses someone off after a while having deranged people from this or that religion claiming you're one of them.
As I Lay Dying, their singer Tim Lambesis was arrested on an attempted murder for hire on his wife. Sure, Christians sin and maybe even some of them try to have their wives offed. I mean, if I was married and my wife teed me off, I don't know I'd hire someone to do it.. I might think of easy at home methods...
But his defense is he was high on steroids (he's buff, a bodybuilder). And then you could say Christians do steroids too. But do Christians do steroids and order hits on their family?
Whatever the case is... it might be he's backslid or fallen or he was never right to begin with (more likely). Again I'm not convinced they all worship the devil but I'm more open to the idea that very, very few of them are actually believers. And it doesn't seem like a culture that would attract them.
Jesse David Leach (KsE). I saw them in Houston June 1st. If I had come across Jesse, I might have asked him if he was a Christian and it probably would have pissed him off the same way the deranged Christians have been pissing Phil off all these years claiming he's a Christian when he's not. Some of Jesse's lyrics make me think he actually could be religious, and his father supposedly being a Presbyterian minister does lend credence to the idea... but still, it's heavy metal and they're well known in this genre for selling their souls.
Christians also talk about how Einstein was a Christian and how Darwin recanted on his death bed.
Christians, please STFU. If you don't know what that acronym means and it's dark out, go to bed... You're either too young or too old to be up this late. If it's afternoon or late morning... you're on the wrong website.
Secondly, God told us not to lie. If you want to win people to your cause, maybe lying about Darwin, Einstein, or one of your favorite musical artists being Christian (a total lie) is a major turnoff to people and doesn't actually win anyone to the faith.
It shows them that you're willing to lie and stoop to deceit to accomplish your goals.
You don't get to lie to further a religion that teaches against lying.
You're no better than a guy shooting steroids and ordering hits on his family.
Either get right or get lost..
I can give a few examples of those who are said to be Christians:
Killswitch Engage (It's said Jesse the original and current singer is, the others, I've never heard)
All That Remains (Although Oli is openly agnostic, it's been said singer Phil is a committed Christian)
As I Lay Dying (not really sure, but generally are said to be Christian)
^^^ these are the main ones.
Supposedly, this makes it okay to listen to their music. I'd say it's okay to listen to their music but not for these reasons...
I discovered recently Phil Labonte from AtR posted on his Twitter account that he is ABSOLUTELY NOT a Christian. I imagine that pisses someone off after a while having deranged people from this or that religion claiming you're one of them.
As I Lay Dying, their singer Tim Lambesis was arrested on an attempted murder for hire on his wife. Sure, Christians sin and maybe even some of them try to have their wives offed. I mean, if I was married and my wife teed me off, I don't know I'd hire someone to do it.. I might think of easy at home methods...
But his defense is he was high on steroids (he's buff, a bodybuilder). And then you could say Christians do steroids too. But do Christians do steroids and order hits on their family?
Whatever the case is... it might be he's backslid or fallen or he was never right to begin with (more likely). Again I'm not convinced they all worship the devil but I'm more open to the idea that very, very few of them are actually believers. And it doesn't seem like a culture that would attract them.
Jesse David Leach (KsE). I saw them in Houston June 1st. If I had come across Jesse, I might have asked him if he was a Christian and it probably would have pissed him off the same way the deranged Christians have been pissing Phil off all these years claiming he's a Christian when he's not. Some of Jesse's lyrics make me think he actually could be religious, and his father supposedly being a Presbyterian minister does lend credence to the idea... but still, it's heavy metal and they're well known in this genre for selling their souls.
Christians also talk about how Einstein was a Christian and how Darwin recanted on his death bed.
Christians, please STFU. If you don't know what that acronym means and it's dark out, go to bed... You're either too young or too old to be up this late. If it's afternoon or late morning... you're on the wrong website.
Secondly, God told us not to lie. If you want to win people to your cause, maybe lying about Darwin, Einstein, or one of your favorite musical artists being Christian (a total lie) is a major turnoff to people and doesn't actually win anyone to the faith.
It shows them that you're willing to lie and stoop to deceit to accomplish your goals.
You don't get to lie to further a religion that teaches against lying.
You're no better than a guy shooting steroids and ordering hits on his family.
Either get right or get lost..
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