The Ron Paul Endorsement that Offended the GLBT Lobby

Personal Endorsement of Pastor Phil Kayser, PhD (Pastor Dominion Covenant Church)

I support Ron Paul as the Republican candidate for president for a number of reasons. 

1) The first reason is that he is the only candidate who holds to a strict constructionist interpretation of the constitution (i.e., that the Feds can only do what is explicitly enumerated in the Constitution) whereas the other candidates hold to a broad constructionist interpretation (i.e., that the Feds may do whatever is not explicitly forbidden in the Constitution). It is broad constructionism that has gotten us into the mess we are in today, and you cannot fight liberal broad constructionism with conservative broad constructionism. Both lack integrity. 

2) The second reason is that he is the only candidate that has a consistent philosophy of economics that will truly resolve America's problems. The economics of each of the other candidates is flawed, and in my opinion grossly unbiblical. 

3) The third reason is that Ron Paul's strictly Constitutional civics is far closer to Biblical civics than any of the other candidate's on a whole range of issues including non-interventionism in international politics, limitations on what can be a crime, limits of jurisdiction, the rights of interposition and civil resistance, inflation, banking cartels, the national identity card, the American Community Survey, the use of torture by the military, etc. 

As a Biblical ethicist I am very concerned about overturning Roe v Wade (something that Ron has sought to do), but I am also extremely concerned about all the areas of lawlessness that have destroyed nations in the past. What candidates take these things seriously? I know of only one candidate who obeys God's clearcut prohibitions against interventionism in politics: "do not meddle with them" (Deut. 2:5), "do not harass them or meddle with them" (Deut. 2:19), but instead "buy food from them" (Deut. 2:6) - in other words, engage in free trade. Biblical issues like this should be as easy to understand as Ron Paul's positions are easy to understand. 

He is by far the best candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America. Even though I strongly disagree with him on some issues, he is the only candidate that I can endorse. Phillip G. Kayser, PhD

( Used by Permission) 

Pastor Kayser's further analysis of Dr. Paul's positions on a sampling of issues is also very helpful for Christians studying the various presidential candidates.




1. Ron Paul is the only candidate who obeys God's clear-cut prohibitions against interventionism in politics: "do not meddle with them" (Deut. 2:5), "do not harass them or meddle with them" (Deut. 2:19), but instead "buy food from them" (Deut. 2:6) - in other words, engage in free trade.

2. Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who has taken a clear stand against torture. Scripture repeatedlyspeaks against such things as secret “haunts of cruelty” (Ps. 74:20) and “instruments of cruelty” (Gen. 49:5-7). The other candidates have been all too quick to take away “inalienable rights” and constitutional principles such as the “due process clause,” “the self-incrimination clause,” and the right to remain silent. But as Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

3. Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who has understood the Bible’s condemnations of inflation (Is. 1:22).

4. Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who has understood the Bible’s condemnation of banking cartels and the way our Federal Reserve System works.

5. Ron Paul is the only candidate who seems to understand the Biblical limits of jurisdiction for family, church, and state. With Washington overstepping those bounds routinely, it will be good to have a president who respects family and church jurisdictions.

6. Ron Paul is the only candidate who has not expanded the list of crimes way beyond what the Bible calls a crime (i.e., a sin that has a specific Biblical penalty attached – Heb. 2:2). Thus, while the use of drugs may be sinful, God does not authorize the state to declare a war on drugs anymore than the state can declare a war on gluttony.

7. Ron Paul seems to understand the distinction between orientation toward sin (which God alone can judge) and actual criminal actions (which the state may judge). He is not seeking to make the state omnipotent in order to “prevent” possible crime.

8. Ron Paul is the only candidate who holds to a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution (that the government may only do what is explicitly permitted in the Constitution). The other candidates have on many issues taken the dangerous road of "broad constructionism" (the belief that the Federal Government may do many things not mentioned in the constitution, so long as they are not forbidden). It is impossible to hold the government accountable to the Constitution on a broad constructionist interpretation.

9. Ron Paul is the only candidate who sees ALL civic power as being severely limited both by Scripture (John 19:11; 2 Cor. 10:13; Rom. 13:1) and the Constitution ("vested," "herein granted," Ninth Amendment, Tenth Amendment, etc). We should not be giving more power to the very government that has been creating the mess we are in.

10. Ron Paul is the only candidate who holds to Austrian economics (what I consider to be the closest system to Biblical economics). Any other approach to solving America’s economic madness will be merely putting a band aid on the cancer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Christian Martyr or Courageous Liberal

Bonhoeffer’s books (e.g. Letters from Prison, Cost of Discipleship, Ethics, Essays from Gen 1-3) are becoming increasingly popular among Christians today. In some ways he sounds like an man of exemplary faith. He believes the law of God should be obeyed. He believes Christians should transform culture. He believes Christianity is not just a private affair of our heart, as did many Germans of his day and Americans of our day; he understood we have to be Christians in the marketplace and not just on Sunday morning. Hence his denunciation of religion (i.e. Christianity) that was only an inner religion. However his Christianity is not the Christianity of the Bible.

He is a liberal – in the technical theological sense of the word. That means he uses the same words as Biblical Christians, but means something very different by them. Because he uses the same words, at times he can sound very orthodox. But as one can see from what he says below, he is anything but orthodox.

Liberals do not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Neither do they believe that Christ’s death was a penal substitutionary atonement that expiated the guilt of our sin and propitiated the wrath of God. That doesn’t stop them from saying many wonderful things about Christ, his resurrection, and our need to cleave to him. But when one parts all the verbiage about what salvation is, the heart of the gospel is completely missing. According to Bonhoeffer,

It is not some religious act that makes a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world.[1]

We might agree that is it not some religious act that makes man a Christian. And we might agree that as Christians we suffer in this world even as Christ did. But we have to vehemently disagree that our sufferings do anything to merit our salvation or in any way are the basis of our salvation. There are a number of martyrs that have died for good causes that won’t be in heaven.

Liberals do to the scriptures what old earth creationists do to the Genesis account of creation. They claim that the scriptures are true, maybe even inerrant (once all the errors are removed from the text), but they do not believe that Jonah was actually swallowed by a fish. They might allow that understanding as one theory of interpretation that a few “less informed” people might hold, but not one that is necessary if one is to believe the Bible. They view the Bible like any other ordinary book, something which is evidenced in Bonhoeffer’s comment to a friend [Eberhard Bethge] about Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane,

I have often wondered how the Evangelist came to record this prayer, which nobody can have heard. The suggestion that it must have been revealed by Jesus during the great forty days is only a subterfuge. Have you any explanation to offer?[2]

Liberals in his day thought we had to separate the myths in the scriptures from the Word of God which was also in the scriptures. Referring to Rudolf Bultmann’s paper on demythologizing the New Testament, Bonhoeffer writes in another letter to the same friend,

My view of it today would be not that he went too far, as most people seem to think, but that he did not go far enough. It is not only the mythological conceptions, such as the miracles, the ascension and the like (which are not in principle separable from the conceptions of God, faith, and so on) that are problematic, but the “religious” conceptions themselves. You cannot as Bultmann imagines, separate God and miracles, but you do have to be able to “interpret” and proclaim both of them in a “non-religious” sense.[3]

He writes in a later letter to the same friend,

Bultmann would seem to have felt Barth’s limitations in some way, but he misconstrues them in the light of liberal theology, and hence goes off into the typical liberal reduction process (the ‘mythological’ elements of Christianity are dropped and Christianity is reduced to its ‘essence’). I am of the view that the full content, including the mythological concepts, must be maintained.

The New Testament is not a mythological garbing of universal truth;[4] this mythology (resurrection and so on) is the thing itself – but the concepts must be interpreted in such a way as not to make religion a precondition of faith (cf. circumcision in St. Paul). Not until then will liberal theology be overcome, and at the same time, the question it raises be genuinely answered – which is not the case in the positivism of revelation maintained by the confessing church. [5][emphasis added]

Positivism of revelation is his language for the Christian and Biblical doctrine that the Scriptures are the word of God. They do not merely contain truth that we have to separate from myth. They are not myths that somehow communicate a “truth.” They are not merely the words of men, but revelation “breathed out” (2 Tim 3:16) by God himself. I think it almost goes without saying that to call the resurrection a myth is to deny Christ and make the gospel meaningless.

Bonhoeffer is rightly critical of liberals for wanting to demythologize the scriptures. He is rightly critical of Christians who make God into nothing more than a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge.[6] But his solution to these errors is just as bad as the errors he’s criticizing. He wants to leave God out entirely because that’s what God wants us to do and that’s what God teaches us to do in the scriptures. He goes on to define “interpret in a religious sense” as meaning, “to speak on one hand metaphysically, and on the other individualistically. Neither of these is relevant to the Bible message or to the man of today. Is it not true to say that individualistic concern for personal salvation has almost completely left us all? Are we not really under the impression that there are more important things than bothering about such a matter? Is there any concern in the Old Testament about saving ones soul at all?" [7]

This more detailed explanation of what he means by "define in a religious sense" adds a whole new dimension to his earlier comment that we have to interpret and proclaim God and miracles in a "non-religious way." Whatever else the scriptures may mean, Bonhoeffer's God has nothing to do with personal salvation. He makes this point again when he writes a little later,

To resume our reflections on the Old Testament. Unlike the other Oriental religions, the faith of the Old Testament is not a religion of salvation.[8]

He goes on to write,

There is no longer any need for God as a working hypothesis, whether in morals, politics, or science. Nor is there any need for such a God in religion or philosophy. In the name of intellectual honesty these working hypotheses should be dropped or dispensed with as far as possible.

At this point nervous souls start asking what room there is left for God now. And being ignorant of the answer they write off the whole development which has brought them to this pass. As I said in an earlier letter, various emergency exits have been devised to deal with this situation. To them must be added the salto mortale back to the Middle Ages, the fundamental principle of which however is heteronomy in the form of clericalism. But that is a counsel of despair, which can be purchased only at the cost of intellectual sincerity. It reminds one of the song:

It’s a long way back to the land of childhood
But if I only knew the way.

There isn’t any such way, at any rate not at the cost of deliberately abandoning our intellectual sincerity. The only way is that of Matthew 18:3, i.e. through repentance, through ultimate honesty. And the only way to be honest is to recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus daretur. And this is just what we do see – before God! So our coming of age forces us to a true recognition of our situation vis a vis God. God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get along very well without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who makes us live in this world without using him as the working hypotheses is the God before whom we are ever standing. Before God and with him we live without God.[9]

God allows himself to be edged out of this world and on to the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us. Matthew 8:17 makes it crystal clear that it is not by his omnipotence that Christ helps us, but by his weakness and suffering.

This is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions. Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world; he uses him as a Deus ex machina. The Bible however directs him to the powerlessness and suffering of God; only a suffering God can help. To this extent we may say that the process we have described by which the world came of age was an abandonment of the false conception of God, and a clearing of the decks for the God of the Bible, who conquers power and space in the world by his weakness. This must be the starting point for our “worldly” interpretation.[10]

His view of Scripture is also closely aligned with classic liberalism. In a book recently translated into English he rejects the Biblical idea that the Scriptures are the Word of God, the self revelation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who became flesh and dwelt among us, suggesting instead that we must glean what truth we can from a fragile and broken book.

As illustrated by the form of the Bible, this procedure means that the concept of the canon must he rejected as meaningless. Text criticism and source analysis are applied, sources are identified, form criticism and history-of-religions approaches fragment the text into its smallest units. After thoroughly reducing the text to rubble, the critics depart from the battlefield, leaving behind debris and shavings, their work apparently done.

In terms of its content, the biblical picture is smoothed out to correspond to the spirit of its time, miracle stories are paralleled, and yes, even the person of Jesus himself is stripped not only of his divine but of his human splendor and disappears without any distinguishing marks into the lists of rabbis, sages, and religious enthusiasts. Of course, the reflective historian will also recognize that this book deals with particularly strange and profound things, that one catches sight of figures of outstanding magnitude, and so forth—otherwise he would surely he a poor historian. But he would be no better a historian if he believed that with such observations he could show that the Bible is the word of God.

There is no historical access to the person of Jesus that would be obligatory for faith. Access to the historical Jesus must come by way of the Resurrected One, by way of the word of the resurrected Christ, who testifies to himself. It is the Risen One who himself creates faith and opens up access to historicity.

From this point of view, the historian’s word, whether it claims to affirm or deny Christ, is irrelevant. In faith, history is seen to be what it actually is from the point of view of eternity, not in terms of itself, from within. At the same time it must he maintained that the testimony of Jesus as the Risen One is nothing else than what is presented to us by the Bible.

We remain also clear headed and objective as believers. We must read this book of hooks with all human methods. But through the fragile and broken Bible, God meets us in the voice of the Risen One.[11]

His death at the hands of Hitler has been called a martyrdom. But I think from the few quotes above, taken from letters written in the last year of his life, it is clear he is not a martyr for the gospel. Many people heap praise on him for his courage and leadership; but many people also heap praise on Dr. Tiller, a prolific murderer of babies murdered by a less prolific murderer. One comment from a NYT article on him at his assassination serves as a representative example.

Thank you for this brilliant article. Of all the pieces I have read about Dr. Tiller and his medical practice, this is the most accurate. He was a decent man and a caring medical professional who cared deeply about his patients. His death is a loss for his city, his state, and our country. We are diminished by this tragic, senseless murder. –Bob Martin

Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Albert Switzer are other examples of people who, though they were outside of Christ, captivated many hearts by their selfless dedication to humanitarian causes.

---

[1] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Letters and Papers from Prision, (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1953), p223
[2] Ibid, p125
[3] Ibid, p 167.
[4] The standard liberal notion
[5] Ibid, p 199-200.
[6] Ibid p 190.
[7] Ibid, p 167-168.
[8] Ibid p 204.
[9] This is classic liberal doublespeak!
[10] Ibid, p 218-220.
[11] Bonhoefer, Dietrich, Reflections on the Bible: Human Word and Word of God. Translated from Dietrich Bonhoefier, Die Antwort auf unsere Fragen: Gedanken zur Bibel, edited by Manfred Weber, © 2002, Gütersloher Verlagshaus GmhH, Gütersloh, Germany by M. Boring. (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc, 2004). p14-15 ISBN 1-56563-988-X , P. O. Box 3473, Peabody, Massachusetts 01961-3473

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Christian Martyr or Courageous Liberal?

Reposted here. 

Should a Christian Vote for Dr. Ron Paul?

The answer to this question rides on whether or not he meets the biblical qualifications for civil office. If he does meet them, then we may vote for him. If he doesn’t meet them, then we should not vote for him. To do so would be to choose a man who is not included in the group from whom God has commanded us to choose our civil magistrates. There are a number of passages that address the necessary qualifications for civil magistrates. A set of passages that provide a relatively complete sample of the qualifications would be Exodus 18:21, Deuteronomy 16:18-19, Deuteronomy 17:15-19, and Proverbs 31:4-5.

From Exodus 18:21 we learn that they must be able men of truth who fear God and hate covetousness. Dr. Paul obviously satisfies the requirement to be male. More importantly, he is a man of truth. He has spoken the truth about the Federal Reserve far longer than many Christians. R. J. Rushdoony is probably one of the first Christians in modern times to publish criticism of the Federal Reserve. But as a federal congressman in the early 1970’s Dr. Paul was not far behind. He understands and boldly proclaims the immorality of fraudulent money, deficit spending, unjust war, and abortion. He proclaims in word and deed that life begins at conception. He has done so from the very beginning of his practice over 40 years ago. A couple of years ago the wife of one of his early partners told me that Dr. Paul told her husband on his first day, “There were two things we do not do in this practice – We do not perform abortions and we do not accept government money.” That was spoken in a day when many reformed Christians did not fully grasp the nature of abortion. Likewise in the area of unjust war, he has been a consistent voice of truth, calling Americans, even many Christians, to reconsider their support for wars in which we have no Biblically valid basis for participation. On the flip side there are areas where Dr. Paul’s testimony is not a clear as I would like, e.g. the use of “the pill” and the proper application of the Old Testament penal code today. This shows up especially when he deals with crimes of adultery, sodomy, or murder. However, even in these weak areas, he is not far from the truth in that he does not condone or support the practice of sodomy.

Dr. Paul is able. He has been tested more than any other current candidate, other than possibly Newt Gingrich. He was not only willing to speak honestly about the mess our nation is in when few others had the courage to speak truthfully about the seriousness of the crises we are facing, but he also published solutions to the problems facing our nation that are real, detailed, and achievable. Few others can even articulate specific and detailed solutions, let alone develop an achievable plan to address them. Dr. Paul actually understands the economic principles behind the solutions he is touting.

Dr. Paul is a man who fears God. Proverbs equates the fear of God with hating and departing from evil. (Proverbs 8:13, 16:6) His life evidences a carefulness not to do unrighteousness. Even his biggest detractors have to acknowledge that Dr. Paul is a man of impeccable character. He has remained faithful to one wife for over 50 years. With over 30 years in office, how many scandals of any kind have been alleged by anyone? All of his 5 children respect and honor him – which is more than can be said of even President Reagan. Some have even followed in his footsteps as an OB/GYN doctor – a testimony to his character in the home as a father. The fact that Dr. Paul hates covetousness is clearly evidenced by the fact that he returns excess money to Congress that was not needed for running his office. He does not covetously search for ways to spend this money simply because he has it to spend. This is not a publicity stunt; he has been doing this for decades, long before he was considered anything more than an eccentric crank.

Deuteronomy 16:18-19 adds the requirement that a civil ruler judge justly and not take bribes or be a respecter of persons. Again Dr. Paul meets this requirements. Lobbyists don’t even bother taking him to lunch. They know he cannot be bought. He does not change his ideas to win endorsements and will even call out fellow republicans where they need to be called out. Because of his unwillingness to go along to get along, the republican party in his own state was unwilling to announce his name and allow him to join the rest of the Texas republican congressional delegation on the stage at a recent state convention. How many other candidates are that principled when it comes to getting party recognition?

Deuteronomy 17:15-19 adds the requirement that civil magistrates be natural born citizens which Dr. Paul is. It also forbids them from multiplying horses – a qualification Dr. Paul, with his plan to close many overseas bases and bring our troops home, uniquely meets.

This passage commands the civil magistrate to have and read a copy of the law of God. Dr. Paul has shown that he has a knowledge of the word of God. He recently gave an address in which he not only quoted at length from scripture (1 Samuel 8), but he also properly explained the passage at some length. It wasn’t a passing reference. He didn’t take it out of context or misapply the passage for rhetorical purposes. I submit this evidences a man who actually reads the scriptures.
Proverbs 31:4-5 adds that wine and strong drink are not for civil magistrates. Again Dr. Paul meets this requirement.

Admittedly there are places Dr. Paul is weak and even wrong. He voted for a bill this session (HR 2267) that authorized internet gambling, contravening valid state laws forbidding it. He should have only voted to repeal the federal ban on internet gambling, allowing state laws to stand. He also voted to repeal the “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy respecting sodomy in the US military. But of what man, other than Christ, could it not be said they were at times weak and, in some places, wrong? King David had some flaws – he committed murder by conspiring against his own army and adultery. King Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah were also at times weak or wrong in their actions. But, nevertheless, scripture calls these men good kings because, despite their sins, they sought the Lord and followed his ways in most of what they did.

The hard question in my mind is not whether Dr. Paul is qualified or even who is the best among the current republican slate of candidates since all of the other republican candidates either don't meet the basic qualifications for civil office or lack both understanding of, and credible solutions to, our national problems. The tough debate will come if he wins the republican nomination. If that is the case, I expect the November 2012 election will offer several Biblically qualified candidates from which to chose, some of whom will be able to articulate biblical solutions better than Dr. Paul. Now we'll have to chose between an Biblically acceptable candidate and a Biblically superior candidate who lacks the experience and popularity of Dr. Ron Paul.That will be a first in my voting life...but one that I am really hoping to experience.

Counterfeiting Gold

UT Endowment Fund buys $1 Billion in gold bullion and takes physical delivery because COMEX does not have enough gold to cover even 5% of their futures contracts.
Futures trader Ralph Preston calls their physically holding what they actually bought, "poor sportsmanship."

The call to take delivery is more of a challenge to the system and it borders on the anarchistic,” said Ralph Preston, a principal at Heritage West Financial Inc., a San Diego company that specializes in futures trading. “It’s like the Republicans trying to overturn President Obama over the birth certificate issue. It’s poor sportsmanship.”

Allowing people to trade contracts to buy and sell gold that does not actually exist creates the appearance that there is more gold than there actually is. This drives down the price of gold. Increasing the margin requirements results in brokerages calling margin accounts forcing people to either sell contracts or add money to their account. Many will sell contracts. This creates the appearance of a contraction and drives prices down. In this way the price of gold can be fraudulently manipulated by a few people. Although this type of manipulation is legal (of the form of law), it is not, in fact, lawful or proper. It allows the transfer of wealth to those who know in advance about the margin changes from those who do not know in advance about the margin changes. Such transfer of wealth constitutes theft by unjust enrichment.

However, the guilt is not all one-sided. It requires the willing participation of those who will trade commodities without taking possession of them. If everyone took control of all commodities they wished to trade (which would require full payment), there could be no margin trading and thus no ability for those who control the brokerages to steal money from those who don't by indirectly manipulating the market. Once again, God is not mocked. Destruction and loss accompany theft. 

Dollar Noncents Seminar: Does Anyone Know What Our Money Is?

Federal Reserve Seminar Preview:

Federal Reserve Promo 2 from Light4America on Vimeo.

Dollar Noncents Seminar: Collapse of Culture

Preview of Coming Attractions

Federal Reserve Promo 1 from Light4America on Vimeo.

Dollar Noncents Seminar

Preview of coming attractions:

How the Federal Reserve is Stealing you Blind - And what the Bible says to do About it. from Light4America on Vimeo.

Outlandish Conspiracy Theories

What’s Wrong with the Trans Texas Corridor and the Concomitant Toll Roads?

A full and satisfactory answer to this question is somewhat complicated. Not that the answer is conceptually complicated, but demonstrating the validity of the answer requires the collation of substantial background information. A relatively easily digestible overview is Barbara’s Minton’s summary published on Natural News in 2008. A detailed, albeit somewhat old, description of what is planned for the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) can be found in the CorridorWatch.org’s description

The roots of the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) are deeply entwined in the North American Union. The motive force driving the TTC is the realization of a political and economic union between Mexico, Canada, and the United States which itself is connected to other global unions. The corridor is part of a greater highway network which bypasses our borders and customs and allows foreign trucks to reach foreign free trade zones throughout the US and into Canada. For example see this CCN story.



The economic purpose is to provide a western Mexican port for Chinese merchandise to be offloaded and transported throughout North America with cheap non-American labor. The political purpose is the subjugation of America.


At a local level, the TTC is literally highway robbery. Public Private Partnerships (aka PPP’s) create private monopolies in roads and infrastructure that are analogous to the Federal Reserve’s fiat money monopoly. Roads that have been paid for by tax dollars on land seized by eminent domain are being sold to private companies along with the right to set tolls. If these companies had bought the land with private capital in voluntary transactions with private land owners and then build roads on their land with private capital, then no one would have problem with them collecting whatever tolls they desired for the privilege of driving on their property.

Even if they had negotiated voluntary road easements through private land on mutually agreeable terms to the landowner, much like pipeline companies do today when they want to build a transnational pipeline, few would be complaining. But this is not at all what is happening. Public infrastructure, acquired with the sheriff’s gun, is being sold to foreigners who are, in effect, being given taxing power over US citizens. How can other companies compete on a fair basis with the sheriff’s gun? To add insult to injury, citizens must still pay the road tax every time they buy gas, effectively paying twice every time they utilize the toll road. If roads are going to be privatized, all land seized by eminent domain must first be offered back to those from whom it was taken for the same price for which it was taken. Yes, the subjugation of America is without doubt God’s judgment on a land that has rejected him and his law, sacrificed their children to Moloch, and committed all sorts of abominations in their pursuit of hedonism. But the right response is repentance, not aiding the rape of America families and the theft of American wealth or voting for those who do.

Are Airport Full Body Scanners A Necessary Infringement of Liberty?

 For the last 9 years we have heard from pulpits and soap boxes, in editorials and Facebook comments, on the air and in print of the need to sacrifice our liberty, excuse me, some of our liberty for the sake of the safety and the stability of our society. 

Well I completely disagree! Nothing could be farther from the truth. Inevitably this leads to being asked something to the effect of: 

“But aren’t speed limits acceptable? Don’t you give up liberty when you submit to the speed limit?” 

No, I don’t and here’s why they are completely different from scanners. 

The law (that’s God's law as revealed in the scriptures of the Old & New Testament) defines what is right and what is not. In that law there are two commands relevant to this situation. 

1. Do not kill (Exodus 20:13), and 
2. Obey every ordinance of man (1 Peter 2:13). 

A good illustration of how the first command is to be applied is found in Deuteronomy 22:8 where the Israelites were commanded to put a parapet around their roof to prevent someone from accidentally falling off the roof during a good belly laugh or other momentary lapse of forgetfulness. 

While this law is not relevant to us today because we do not entertain guests on our roof (it would be if we did), we do drive potentially lethal projectiles through places people live and play. Like the parapet, speed limits guide us in the exercise of Biblical due diligence necessary to prevent loss of life or property. They are lawful civil ordinances, which the second command above requires us to obey, that help us obey the law of God given in the first command by limiting our speed to prevent us from accidentally killing other people. 

This is not a restriction on liberty. Perfect liberty is not doing whatever we want with no restraints. Liberty is the ability of people to obey the law of God. Perfect liberty is perfect obedience to the law of God. 

David said, “I will walk at liberty for I seek thy precepts.” (Psalm 119:45) Paul tells us, “… and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (2 Corinthians 3:17) 

Liberty is found only in obedience to the law of God. Endangering other people’s lives through negligence on our part is not the negligent exercise of liberty. It’s bondage to sin. Likewise obeying the speed limit is not a restriction on our liberty. Rather, obedience of a lawful speed limit is the exercise of liberty. It represents freedom from bondage to sin. 

Tyranny is the subjugation of people to the law of man preventing or hindering them from obeying the law of God. 

Airport scanners, on the other hand, are completely different from speed limits. The purpose of an airport scanner is to disarm me, ensuring I don’t take a gun on board the plane. But taking a gun from me, and every other law abiding citizen, does nothing to make anyone safer. It actually makes everyone less safe because now there are fewer (or even no) people on board who are able to effectively resist hijackers or other criminals. That is why the crime rates are lower where there are more guns (e.g. see More Guns, Less Crime, by John R. Lott, Jr.). 

Not only do airport scanners prevent me from obeying the first command (preserving life), they are also in direct violation of the civil law which scripture requires me to obey. The 4th amendment recognizes the right of people to be secure in their persons against unreasonable searches. Requiring everyone to be photographed essentially naked without any probable cause is an egregious violation of the 4th Amendment – an ordinance which the second command above requires all men to obey. I call it an egregious violation because courts have held that simply using a dog to sniff people where there is no reason to suspect that a crime has been or is about to be committed is an unreasonable search (e.g. B. C. v Plumas Unified School District (9th Cir. 9/20/99). 

The airport scanners go far beyond a dog sniffing people as they walk by. The airport scanner laws hinder people from engaging in lawful activity (carrying a gun to defend themselves and others) and attempt, by threat of punishment, to hinder people from exercising their 4th amendment right. Because they are hindering people from obeying the law of God, they are an infringement of liberty. 

Speeding laws, on the other hand, help people preserve the life of other people and thus are not an infringement on liberty, although I grant they can be tyrannical if the limits are improperly set. But that is a different question. 

Taking people’s cars away, so they don’t kill anyone with them, and requiring everyone to ride a bus would be more analogous to airport scanners than speed limits. To the extent any government infringes liberty, it is tyrannical. 

It is never lawful or moral to infringe liberty. My will may be infringed by righteous laws, but in those instances it is my sinful desires that are being infringed, not my liberty. It makes no more sense to infringe liberty for the sake of security or societal stability than it does to poison your food for the sake of your health. If the “poison” improves your health, it’s not poison. 

Neither are scanners analogous to cutting off a gangrenous toe to preserve the rest of the body. The point of that operation is to cut off gangrene. Airport scanners are like cutting off a good toe so that it doesn’t get gangrene – something no lawful doctor would ever do. 

 Airport screenings were a clever ruse to undermine the 2nd amendment. These scanners are another clever ruse to undermine the 4th amendment.

I've Worked So Hard For This

Maybe she's telling us she needs a break.

Non Representing Representatives

This is good...other than his call to abolish the Electoral College.

His "Non representing representatives" and "sucking from the hind tit of a dead cow" lines are worth the entire view.


Granted, the electoral college needs to be fixed; but it should not be eliminated. It's the winner take all rules, which thwart the very purpose of the Electoral College by allowing the bigger population centers and special interests to control the election, that need to be eliminated.

Under the original Electoral College, electors were chosen from each voting district (be it a county or precinct) who were each to nominate two candidates, one of whom had to be from another state. The intention was that electors were chosen to represent all the people in a state, not just their party. Their job was to nominate the best two people for the office of president. Parties, candidates, and therefore popular votes were seen as harmful and not needed or welcome. However, despite Washington's warnings about the dangers of the party spirit, electors were chosen based on who they would nominate. Parties picked candidates before the electors were chosen. Under the electoral college as modified in 1804, the electors nominated one person for president and one for vice president. The electoral college was further subverted by parties choosing electors (i.e. multiple potential electors for each slot with each potential elector representing his party) and forcing their electors to vote for the party nominee. This significantly subverted the original intent of the electoral college. However even this damaged electoral process is better than a simple popular vote as it allowed the minority voice to have a voice in electing a president and prevented the big population centers from dominating elections. However the current winner take all rules have subverted even this last vestige of the electoral college.

For example, consider a simplified election consisting of California (55), Nevada (5), Utah (5), Texas(34), Oklahoma (7), and Montana (3) where the numbers represent the electoral votes. Under the current winner take all, a candidate could win California by a 51 to 49 margin by carrying a sufficiently large majority in Los Angelos and the Bay Area and win the entire election (55 electoral votes to 54 electoral votes), effectively silencing the rest of the states. This is exactly what the electoral college was designed to prevent - a single faction controlling the election. As this example demonstrates, our current adulterated electoral college even allows a non-representative minority (only 28 out of 109 total votes or 26% of the popular vote) to elect the President. Our current system retains the flaws of the electoral college while eliminating its republic-preserving benefits.

A simple popular vote would be a slight improvement over this electoral college winner-take-all scenario, but such a pure democratic process would still allow a tyranny of the popular majority. The electoral college, even as amended, insures that the winner has support from a broad cross section (i.e. majority) of political regions and not just a simple majority of people. It ensures power is derived from a compound source - not a simple source such as a popular majority. If there was no electoral college, a single faction comprising a majority of voters could elect the president. A single faction with a simple majority of votes could elect anyone they wanted and get any law they wanted.

The modified electoral college also insures that the Presidential choice is not controlled by a pre-existing body whose votes could be prostituted - such as is routine with our current congress. Our congressional candidate has received over $1mm dollars in campaign contributions, far more than previous cycles despite lacking a serious challenger, simply because he is in line to be chairman of a house Ways and Means subcommittee.

Now re-consider the previous election scenario with two changes. First, instead of a winner take all, implement a minimally functioning electoral college (i.e. with parties, candidates, and popular votes) and second, assume the minority faction is now a majority faction with over 50% of the total electorate, but still concentrated in the major urban centers of California. If just one voting precinct in California goes for the other candidate, that one electoral vote when combined with the 54 electoral votes from all the other states will determine the President by a 55 to 54 electoral vote. Even though these 55 electoral voters represent a minority with respect to the popular vote, they represent a majority in terms of voting regions. The effect of even a minimally functioning electoral college, is to turn one big election into thousands of small, regional elections. The winner has to have a majority across all the voting regions over which the electorate are spread. This prevents a single faction, even if they are the majority, from pushing their agenda on everyone else. In that sense, the electoral college makes the presidential power derived from a compound source, not a single source. On that point both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists were agreed.

Of course, even better would be be a return to the electoral college as originally designed - the electors nominate the slate of candidates and the Congress chooses from that list. Voter fraud would be next to impossible and we could save several billion dollars on a meaningless popular campaign.

Why I Left the Navy: The Subversion of the US Military

When I resigned from the nuclear submarine service nearly seventeen years ago, I listed as one of my reasons irreconcilable ethical differences resulting from the Navy’s acceptance of homosexuality. Such impertinence on the part of a US Naval Academy (USNA) faculty member resulted in an informal visit to my office by a senior officer of the engineering division in which I taught, who wondered whether I really wanted a statement like that forwarded to the Pentagon. The unspoken sentiment was that such a bald statement might reflect poorly on the command climate. After all, my visitor reasoned, homosexual conduct was still illegal under the new “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) rules, to which I replied, “For now.”

After a short pause in which he could think of no meaningful reply, he shrugged and walked away. Just a few months earlier General Colin Powell (then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), in a Q&A session following his address to the USNA brigade, had told a midshipman in response to his query regarding the morality of DADT, “If after those decisions are made you still find it completely unacceptable and it strikes to the heart of your moral beliefs, then I think you have to resign.”

...Read More in the July/August 2010 issue of Faith for All of Life.

Straight from the Horses Mouth

This statement by Hillary Clinton is no surprise. James Perloff's book, Shadows of Power documents the influence of the Council on Foreign Relations in the US government. But such sentiments were never well received in politically correct circles. Talk show hosts typically hung up on guests who dared to offer their opinions on these matters and mocked them as CONSPIRACY freaks. What's a surprise is that it glibly rolls off her lips.



Speaking to the CFR, Secrertary of State Hillary Clinton said, "We get a lot of advice from the council and this means we won't have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future."

The Answer to Global Warming Concerns

It's no secret global warming is being used to scare the gullible into dismantling the constitution. But for all the people who wonder if global warming is a real problem with the potential to overturn life on this planet, there is a very simple answer. The Rainbow.

Yes, the rainbow. Every time we see the rainbow, it is a reminder of God's covenant with all flesh not to ever again destroy the world with a flood.

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer
and winter, and day and night shall not cease. Gen 8:22

God has promised the earth will never become too hot to support life or the growth of food necessary to sustain it. We have God's word on it.

Eventually this will become obvious to all.

Scott Brown's Election: Obama's Rescue?

Yes.
It's no secret that most of the nation was strongly opposed to Obamacare and most of the rest thought the government should socialize the US medical industry in a slightly different way. But of course admitting this fact and trying again with another bill would have been an unacceptable defeat and an unmitigated public relations disaster. With cloture proof control of the Senate and a strong majority in the House, failure was unforgivable. So the process and rhetoric marched on, unable to find a turn around point on a increasingly unpassable road. Until now.

With Scott Brown's election

• Obama has a face-saving backdoor escape from the current health care bill, and ... he can blame the obstructionist, filibustering Republicans for its failure;


• The angry tea partiers can feel good about "having thrown the rascals out;"


• The Senate gets a Demoblican who will play the game the next time around.

Pretty clever!

It's classic Marxist progress - two steps forward, one step backward - but all the time maintaining forward progress.

But backwards or forwards, the Lord is working out each step for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Liberals & Conservatives: Winning the Battle for Our Country

In the minds of the ill-informed the political struggle in the United States has always been viewed as a struggle between Republicans and Democrats.
...the idea that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.- Carroll Quiqley (1966), Mentor of President William Jefferson Clinton.

Revered GU Professor Carroll Quigley

I recently received an email (with this article by Bill Burch attached) claiming that third party conservatives benefit liberals and that Jesus was not on the ballot. The implication being that we should not waste our time getting righteous men elected to office because that only benefits liberals. Rather we should work to get "electable" conservatives in office because it is always better to have a conservative than a liberal.

Well, I disagree.

Popular notions notwithstanding, the battle for our country is not a battle between conservative ideals and liberal ideals or between Marxist democrats and liberal democrats. It is a battle over whether we, as a nation, will recognize King Jesus as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords that he is. Isaiah describes the Messiah as a King, saying “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth, even forever.” (Isaiah 9:6-7)

In the New Testament, John adds, “And out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” (Rev 19:15-16).

All kings, not just Christian kings or nations are commanded to acknowledge the kingship of Jesus Christ. King David warns his peers, “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, …” (Psalm 2:10-12)

God humbled Nebuchadnezar, a King of a “non-Christian” nation, until he too acknowledged the Lord’s kingship saying, “And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honored him that lives for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation:” (Dan 4:34). When Pilate asked Jesus if he realized that he had power to either crucify him or let him go, Jesus told Pilate that he could have no power at all against him, except it had been given to him from above. As Romans 13 clearly indicates, the Civil Magistrate is God’s servant who exercises authority entrusted to him by God.

Yet in our day, many Christians want to separate God and State. They are willing to acknowledge his kingdom and his rule in the church, but not in the civil realm. They are willing to recognize his law when it pertains to the government of the church and their individual lives, but not when it pertains to the civil law of our land. But as foreign as such ideas sound to our ears today, this recognition of Jesus Christ as King of Kings is not only Biblical, it is our national heritage. The first state constitution of our land opens with this preamble:

For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God by the wise disposition of his divine providence so to order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the River of Connectecotte and the lands thereunto adjoining; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one Public State or Commonwealth; and do for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also, the discipline of the Churches, which according to the truth of the said Gospel is now practiced amongst us; as also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed according to such Laws, Rules, Orders and Decrees as shall be made, ordered, and decreed as follows…

These people, the founders of our country, set up a government not simply because they thought it was a good idea, but because they understood the Word of God required it. The primary purpose of the civil order they established was to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The second purpose was to maintain the discipline of the churches, and the third purpose was to guide and govern the civil affairs of the land – transactions of property, marriage, trade etc.

We could look to Pennsylvania’s government established by William Penn. His Frame of Government required all civil rulers to possess faith in Jesus Christ. Part XXXIV reads:

That all civil rulers, shall be such as possess faith in Jesus Christ, and that are not convicted of ill fame, or unsober and dishonest conversation, …”

In his commonwealth, free exercise of religion was granted only to those who professed the one Almighty and eternal God to be the Creator, Upholder, and Ruler of the world. That excludes any who hold to evolution, or deny God to the Ruler of the world – most people in America today! In other words, the civil government recognized no right of people to freely practice false religions in violation of the first commandment.

XXXV. That all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God, to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the world; and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall, in no ways, be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion, or practice, in matters of faith and worship, nor shall they be compelled, at any time, to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatever.

After all, worshipping something other than Jehovah is a sin. While righteousness exalts a nation, sin is a reproach to any people [Proverbs 14:34]. That proverb doesn’t limit the sin that brings reproach to just murder, adultery, and theft. Any sin is a reproach to any people. All people, regardless of their faith or lack thereof, Jew, Muslim, or Gentile, were obliged to cease from labor on the Lord’s day.

XXXVI. That, according to the good example of the primitive Christians, and the case of the creation, every first day of the week, called the Lord's day, people shall abstain from their common daily labour, that they may the better dispose themselves to worship God according to their understandings.

Or a hundred years later, the Constitution of Delaware, 1776 in Article 22 required that all civil officers – and that would extend down to notary publics – take the following oath:

ART. 22. Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall take the following oath, or affirmation, if conscientiously scrupulous of taking an oath, to wit:
I, A B. will bear true allegiance to the Delaware State, submit to its constitution and laws, and do no act wittingly whereby the freedom thereof may be prejudiced.
And also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit:
I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.
And all officers shall also take an oath of office.

Saying that all these documents are from another day and that things are different now, misses the point. Yes, things are different today. We live in a nation under judgment and all that that entails. Those people, on the other hand, saw their nation go from a few huts to one of the greatest nations in the world, one that many gave everything to get to. We should be asking Why are things different today? Might their understanding and acknowledgement of the present Kingship of Jesus Christ over all nations have anything to do with it? We should be seeking to determine if God is on our side, or even better, Are we on God’s side?, instead of simply assuming it. Do the views expressed by Bill Burch espouse a God honoring view of political and historical reality? If not, how can we expect God’s blessing on our labor? Without his blessing we labor in vain as David says in Psalm 127.
When examined in this historical and Biblical context, Bill Burch, however influential, politically astute, and strategically adept at winning elections he may be, is fundamentally wrong, historically ignorant, and therefore part of the problem.

A few examples are in order:

Burch Espouses Ideas Based in Darwinian Evolution
The idea that the harsh weather conditions forced the Europeans and North Africans to move from being hunter gatherers to farmers and that because of this shift their cultures prospered and those of Central and South America did not, is pure Darwinian evolution. According to God, farming, domestication of animals, music, and metalworking were advanced skills by 3500 BC , long before Europe was settled [See Genesis 4:20-22]. We know these skills were passed on through the Flood, because Noah not only planted a vineyard, but got drunk on wine from its grapes. Britain was settled by 1104 BC (about the time of King David) by Brutus and his wife, Ignoge, daughter of Greek King Pandrasus who arrived by ship after stopping at a number of other places. Clearly they were not ignorant hunter-gatherers who only know how to swing clubs and throw rocks. They could sail the ocean and navigate by the stars from the day they arrived in England.
Burch also believes the indigenous people of South Americans have been blocked by their environment from reaching their true potential. But once again this is gross historical error. For example, the Lacandon people who live in the modern day Mexican state of Chiapas were indeed, some of the crudest people anywhere on the earth following World War II. But despite recent claims to distance them from the Maya’s, they are most undoubtedly a remnant of the Mayan culture. They dressed like the Mayans, shaped their babies heads like the Mayans, spoke almost the same language, and esteemed the same holy cities.

Far from being a people who never prospered, they are descended from one of the most advanced civilizations the world has known. The ancient Mayan civilizations of Central America were extremely competent in civil engineering, mathematics, and astronomy. The Dresden Codex contains a repeating calendar that could predict solar eclipses over a 23-year cycle. They were able to compute the synodic period of Venus with an error less than 1/400th of a second per day. The celestial mechanics required to do this are beyond the capabilities of most graduates of American colleges. The Mayans developed the concept of zero over a thousand years before European civilizations learned of the idea from the Hindi of India. But also among the records etched in stone are the depictions of great abominations. Brutal human sacrifices mercilessly butchered tens of thousands of people made in God’s image. Why are they the pitiable, ignorant, brutal people we see today? In the light of passages such as Deuteronomy 28, which spell out awful consequences of rejecting God’s ways, one would have to say they fell because their culture was an abomination to God. Cortez arrived to find a decadent society that had crumbled within and, with a handful of men, was able to conquer a vast but rotting empire. Is the Locandon primitive? No, he’s actually a decadent. Their plight today is the result of a long tragic descent from an advanced civilization.

The same can be said of the Chichua, descendants of the Peruvian Incas. They are content to live their lives as little more than cocaine addicted slaves. But at one time the ancestors of these people were able to perform successful brain surgery as evidenced by skulls showing cranial holes with bone regeneration. Similar surgery with the same tools has been successfully duplicated in recent times. They built massive stone structures without mortar by fitting the stones so tightly together that even today, a millennia later, it is still impossible to stick a piece of paper between the stones.

The concept of primitive man is a creation of Darwinian evolution, a pagan religion whose adoption has brought America to her knees with problems remarkably similar to those described in Deuteronomy 28. Granted, there are numerous means that have been instrumental in this collapse, just as there were secondary means in the collapse of the Incas, Mayas, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans. But ultimately, as Job understood , these causes are but the servants of Almighty God, sent by his decree of wrath and withdrawn by his decree of mercy.

Burch Advocates Blind Straight Ticket Voting
Burch writes elsewhere:

Since Republicans believe in freedom, regardless of whether they are liberal, moderate, or conservative, it is best to vote straight ticket than to vote for the individual in a general election.

But for a Christian, our goal cannot be to win elections. Our goal must be to honor and obey the King. Winning an election is useless if we have to compromise the Kingship of Jesus Christ to do it. Our duty is to obey God’s law, to declare his righteousness, and to take every thought captive for his glory, not to promote the less wicked over the more wicked by blindly voting a straight ticket to keep a certain party in power, as Bill Burch claims.

While Jesus may not be on the ballot, he has told us who should be put on the ballot. There are at least 20 such qualifications in Scripture gleaned from 2 or 3 times that many passages (Exodus 18:21, Deuteronomy 16:18-19; 17:15-19; Proverbs 31:4-5 are a few of the more well known). Voting for people without regard for these qualifications is to disobey God and not walk is his ways as surely as surely as ignoring the flashing red and blue lights in your rearview mirror. The logic that rejects third party voting is discussed in more detail at an earlier blog.

Nowhere in scripture does civil restoration depend on getting the right person elected or the right laws passed. In fact, it is just the opposite: electing good rulers requires civil restoration. Civil restoration results from confession and repentance. God told Solomon:

“… If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; 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. … And as for thee, if thou [you singular meaning Solomon] wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked, and do according to all that I have commanded thee, and shall observe my statutes and my judgments; Then will I stablish the throne of thy kingdom, … But if ye [you plural meaning the people] turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them; Then will I pluck them [plural referring to the people] up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified for my name, will I cast out of my sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations. And this house, which is high, shall be an astonishment to every one that passes by it; so that he shall say, Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and unto this house? And it shall be answered, Because they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath he brought all this evil upon them. 2Chronicles 7:12-22.

Good rulers, and the good laws they enact, are the fruit of turning back to God, not the cause of it. William Penn concurred with this concept, saying in his Form of Government: “Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.”

Burch Assumes a Marxist View of Our Nations Origins
The idea that our country was founded by Europeans who moved here because they were not getting their just compensation from the collective could not be more wrong. There may have been such people, but they were not the basis of our culture. More often then not, they were sent packing back to England. Even a cursory reading of any of our founding documents will refute this outrageous assertion. A statement much closer to the truth would be the Europeans who were unwilling to accept anything less than the Kingship of Jesus Christ over all earthly authority came to America. See The Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford or this article on the Collapse of Our Culture for some additional information regarding the purpose and motives of those who first established the law and order in America.

Burch Believes the Marxist Democrats Are Throwing Away America
In a less obvious example of being off base, Burch belittles conservatives who “have been staying home in greater and greater numbers because they could see little difference between the two Parties.” He supposes that now, following the election “everyone can see a difference” between the parties, insinuating the stupidity of those who failed to see the difference before the election.
Well, I for one still don’t see much meaningful difference between Bush’s conservatism and Obama Marxism. One tacks right and the others tacks ninety degrees to the left. But at the end of the day, they are both going the same direction. Wherever they have a chance to really make a difference, they follow the same course. The anti-war Senator Obama has become the pro-war President Obama. The conservative, pro-life Governor Bush became a sodomy-promoting President Bush, as well as a bigger deficit spender than all of his democratic predecessors.

I am not alone in drawing this conclusion. In fact I’m in rather prestigious company. Professor Carroll Quigley, an authority on 20th century history and the only mentor President Clinton recognized by name in accepting his second democratic nomination, asserts that the Eastern Establishment has been the dominant element in both parties since 1900. He claims that this establishment, which he describes as Anglophile, cosmopolitan, Ivy League, and internationalist, is above parties, being more concerned with policies than party victories.

He goes on to say that “in the minds of the ill-informed” the political struggle in the United States “has always been viewed as a struggle between Republicans and Democrats at the ballot box in November.” [Emphasis added.] Given Clinton’s respect for him, it is obvious Quigley is no fan of the Republican right. So this is not some right-wing conspiracy nut. This is liberal scholar who is not at all concerned with the concepts he has just articulated. In fact, in his opinion the idea “that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.” [Quigley, Carroll, Tragedy and Hope: The History of the World In Our Time, (Macmillan Company: New York, 1966) p. 1245-7, Emphasis added.]

Incidentally, many of Obama’s supporters are seeing the same thing. See Maureen Dowd’s recent op-ed in the New York Times, Thanks for the Memories, especially some of the reader comments.

For all these reasons, it’s my opinion that the idea that third party conservatives benefit liberals is itself misguided. I am not advocating third parties or that all Christians should exit the Republican Party. Quite the contrary, we need principled Christians in places of influence. What I am advocating is that we evaluate candidates by the absolute and unchanging standard of God’s Word and have a complete pragmatism in regards to all parties. If Ron Paul is running in the Democratic Party, vote Democratic. If he is running in the Republican Party, vote Republican. If he is running in the Whatever Party, vote in that party.

Our objective must be to uphold the Crown rights of Jesus Christ, to acknowledge his rule, his law, and his authority. We can only do that when we vote for people who are equally committed to upholding the crown rights of Jesus Christ and who meet the scriptural qualifications for civil rulers. If we fudge on obeying these portions of God’s Word in order to help the “better” of two bad candidates win the election, we are no different than Saul, who fudged just a little on obeying God’s commandment to destroy the Amalekites in order to offer more sacrifices to God. The Lord was angry with him and rejected him as King.

And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices (i.e. winning elections), as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king. (1Sa 15:22-23)

If voting for the Ron Paul candidate in the Whatever Party allows Mr. Bad Dude to win the election, than so be it. Obedience is more important than winning because God blesses obedience and judges disobedience. That judgment begins with the house of God. But if we honor God first, who knows, it just might be that through our obedience maintaining the crown rights of Jesus Christ, the Lord is pleased to bring victory. That is, after all, what he has promised.

The Hallelujah Chorus

The Hallelujah Chorus by silent monks....

Putting Christ Back in the Government Schools

I certainly agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of putting Christ or prayer or the Bible back in the government school and the practical recommendation that all Christians remove their children. I would, however, take a slightly different approach in framing the question.

The issue, as I see it, is the legitimacy of the institution itself. If the institution is legitimate, then we must reform it by calling it back to obey the law of God and fulfill its God-ordained function. We can and should participate in such organizations as salt and light in order to restore the institutional acknowledgment and worship of God.

However, if the institution is illegitimate, then we should pray for God to destroy it and labor to dismantle it from without, not within. For example, no Christian would campaign to restore the acknowledgment of Christ to their local brothel. They certainly don’t patronize it in order to be salt and light, nor do they send their children to work there for purposes of evangelization. [Admittedly not an exact analogy, but hopefully close enough to be useful.]

The real question then is: Are government schools a legitimate or an illegitimate institution? Are they a corrupt institution needing to be redeemed by the gospel or a synagogue of Satan to be dismantled? This is the antithesis with our brothers and sisters.

I'm of the opinion that since we don’t find Caesar’s image on any of our children, they don’t belong to Caesar and therefore should not be rendered to Caesar for him to have his way with them. We do, however, find God's image in our children and we find Scripture commanding us to give them to God, to teach them to fear and serve God. (Caesar's kids being the possible exception.)

For this reason coupled with the Biblical teaching concerning the function of civil government (punishment of evil doers, cf Romans 13:1-4)), state schools are not a Biblically legitimate institution.

On the other hand, some Christians view government schools as a legitimate authority. The fact that it’s free babysitting (lol) doesn’t hurt. Corrupt? Yes, but legitimate nonetheless. Showing these people how government schools lead our children in breaking God’s commandments in that they give them another god by teaching that people have made themselves, they blaspheme his name by robbing him of his glory as the Provider and Sustainer, they manipulate children to not honor their parents, they assault their chastity, they encourage them to murder their offspring, they lead them into a life of stealing by blurring the distinctions of private property, and they lead them into a life of lying by denying the existence of Truth, only gives these people more reason to work harder to restore Christ to a corrupt institution.

I believe the reason for not supporting the Restoration of Christ to the government schools lies not in how bad they are, but in how illegitimate they are, no matter how good they otherwise might be. Our mission is not simply to rewind government schools to an earlier day when the Bible was tolerated in them in the hopes that the same movie will end differently, but to discard the entire DVD.

You Trust FOX News?

Here's further proof FOX news is completely unreliable. But don't miss the last line in this clip...Jane Akre's (one of the fired reporters) whistleblower suit was overturned on appeal because there was no law that requires news programs to state the truth! We all knew that, but now the courts have agreed, putting it in writing.

Now in the interests of full disclosure, I run a BGH free goat dairy - well, I fund it, Robert runs it. But it accepts no federal or state subsidies, employs no RFID chips, does not profit from illegal alien labor (James 5:4), gives all animals free range pasture, gets no property tax concessions or small business loans, is not too big too fail nor was it responsible for any increases in Federal Reserve "assets", has no corporate veil of immunity, yet makes the best kefir in Texas.

One Town Hall Meeting

In words of the speaker:

I, David William Hedrick, a member of the silent majority, decided that I was not going to be silent anymore. So, I let U.S. Congressman Brian Baird have it. I was one questioner out of 38, that was called at random from an audience that started at 3,000 earlier in the evening. Not expecting to be called on, I quickly scratched what I wanted to say on a borrowed piece of paper and with a pen that I borrowed from someone else in the audience minutes before I spoke. So much for the planned talking points of the right wing conspiracy.

Cured in the United States

Obama's health care plan will be:

• written by a committee whose head is on sick leave,
• passed by a Congress that hasn't read it,
• signed by a president who smokes,
• funded by a treasury chief who did not pay his taxes,
• overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and
• financed by a country that is so broke they're using debt as money.

And we'll all be treated by government employees working for reduced wages.

The Great Debate - Does God Exist

I first heard this debate between Dr. Gordon Stein and Dr. Greg Bahnsen sometime in the spring of 1985 - probably during spring break of my junior year in college. It was on a tape that was obviously made from the audience. But I had met Greg Bahnsen about 10 years earlier and knew him to be a captivating speaker. So I pushed on. Within 5 min of placing it in the the "walkman" I was hooked. Within 20 minutes I was cheering and doing involuntary arm pumps. That escalated to a standing ovation with Bahnsen's deadpan monotone answer in the following exchange:

Dr. Bahnsen: Do you believe there are laws of logic then?
Dr. Stein: Absolutely.
Dr. Bahnsen: Are they universal?
Dr. Stein: They are agreed upon by human beings. They are not laws that exist out in nature.
Dr. Bahnsen: Are they simply conventions then?
Dr. Stein: They are conventions, but they are conventions that are self–verifying.
Dr. Bahnsen: Are they sociological laws or laws of thought?
Dr. Stein: They are laws of thought which are interpreted by men and promulgated by men.
Dr. Bahnsen: Are they material in nature?
Dr. Stein: How can a law be material?
Dr. Bahnsen: That is the question I am going to ask you.
Dr. Stein: I would say no.


Dr. Stein cross examines Dr. Bahnsen.


Dr. Stein: Dr. Bahnsen would you call God material or immaterial?
Dr. Bahnsen: Immaterial.
Dr. Stein: What is something that is immaterial?
Dr. Bahnsen: Something not extended in space.
Dr. Stein: Can you give me an example of anything other than God that is immaterial?
Dr. Bahnsen: The laws of logic. [Thunderous Uproar]


But you'll have to listen to the tape to appreciate the full crowd dynamics of this exchange.

I was so impressed with this debate that I began to transcribe it by hand. With no computer and a poor quality audio file, it was a tedious task. Eventually it reached 30 single spaced handwritten pages. I hung on to those papers until 1992 when I purchased my first computer and typed them into digital form - another lengthy process for someone who never learned typing or keyboarding. Now 24 years later, on the 13th anniversary of Dr. Stein's death, I am delighted to post this mighty triumph of Jehovah over unbelief. God defeated the Syrians in the plain because they thought Jehovah was just a God of the hills. It's as if God confounded Dr. Stein who thought he was just the God of irrational faith. In a debate that will certainly be studied for centuries, God showed himself to be the God of Faith and Reason, the God of seen and unseen evidence.

Transcript of the Great Debate

The Great Debate - Part 1

The Great Debate - Part 2

It's Conservative! But Is It Biblical?

I ran across this little video made in 1948 (along with a number of similar ones) on Utube. It presents the classic conservative message very well - that freedom to worship where we want, to labor as we see fit, to speak as we please, and so on, made America a great and wealthy nation.



It's very well done, interesting, and even a little entertaining, but is it right? It's right wing, but is it true when measured by the Truth?

Contrast their message with Deuteronomy 8:6-18:

So you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. ...

"Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, ... . Beware lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' [or today...freedom or free enterprise has produced this wealth]

"You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day."

Moses makes it clear that freedom to worship God, freedom to labor for our own benefit, and freedom to speak the truth are not the cause of our prosperity, they are the result of God's blessing.

If 60 years ago the Christian Right was already saying that their hand had gotten them this wealth, is it any surprise that today we find ourselves visited by the curses spelled out in Deuternonomy 27 & 28?

Operation ?

(FYI - The false flag terrorism perpetrated on Cuba was called Operation Northwoods.)
I wonder what this operation is called? Since we'll probably have to wait 25 years to find out, I won't spend much time wondering...but just for a moment, I wonder if it's Eastwood or Knotwood?

Now Operation WouldNot .... that would make my day.

His assertions concerning the historical funding and origins of the Al-Qaeda are discussed in greater detail in George Crile's book, Charlie Wilson's War.

The State of the Nation: The Collapse of Christian America

Another "collapse of culture" presentation by none other than Ken Ham (60 minutes on streaming video).