Dollar Non¢ents

Is Ron Paul Too Eccentric on the Importance of State Sovereignty?

2012-01-19T18:56:00.000-06:00

This was posted earlier, but has been substantially lengthened.

"It was clear to the framers of our Constitution that the greatest possible liberty of self-government must be given to each State, and that any national administration attempting to make all laws for the whole Nation ... would inevitably result at some future time in a dissolution of the Union itself.Now, to bring about government by oligarchy masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our National Government. The individual sovereignty of our States must first be destroyed, except in mere minor matters of legislation. We are safe from the danger of any such departure from the principles on which this country was founded just so long as the individual home rule of the States is scrupulously preserved and fought for whenever it seems in danger."

Those are the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt in a speech delivered March 2, 1930 while governor of NY as printed on the front page of the NY Times on March 3. He obviously didn't go on to govern by those words once elected President, but that's the message he campaigned on because that is what Americans believed and that's what he had to say to get elected.

Ron Paul's opposition to federal amendments regarding marriage and abortion is consistent with the historic understanding of the proper role of the federal government. Simply put, the federal government has no authority in these matters. The 10th Amendment is very clear that the federal congress has no authority except what is explicitly delegated to it by the states in the constitution. Any power not delegated to the federal government is retained by the states and the people. Clearly, one cannot delegate power to those who are higher in the chain of command. Powers can only be delegated to those who are lower in the chain of command. In both the language and intent, the 10the Amendment clearly establishes that the federal government is UNDER the states.

But in the country in which we live today, this has been completely reversed in most people's thinking. The due process clause of the 14th Amendment has been used to dismantle our republic and the 10th Amendment that guaranteed it and to set up a central government. And as FDR so accurately predicted in 1930, it has brought about a government by oligarchy.

How did the federal government justify blocking enforcement of Texas' anti-abortion statute in Roe v. Wade? 14th Amendment substantive due process. How did it block Texas' anti-sodomy statute in Lawrence? 14th Amendment substantive due process. Why can a child get an abortion without her parents knowledge, but not get her ears pierced without their consent? 14th Amendment substantive due process. Why could they stop all state executions? 14th Amendment substantive due process. Why can't states outlaw pornography? You guessed it - 14th Amendment substantive due process. (See http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/mike-farris-claims-ron-paul-bad-on-homeschooling/ for a much fuller discussion on this point.)

Big government "liberals" have long used the due process of 14th Amendment as a club to force all the states under the tyranny of the federal government. Many conservatives have cried foul, but not because of the abuse of the function of the federal government. They cried foul because they didn't like what they were being forced to do. But when big government "conservatives" have gotten a chance they have used the same club to force states to act according to their wishes. Their actions have had the same disastrous effects on liberty and on the health of our republic as the big government "liberals". The Bill of Rights was meant to secure our liberty by restricting the federal government from imposing it's desires on the states. Notice, the 1st Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion...". States were completely free to pass laws respecting the establishment of a religion, and several, including Massachusetts did. We have allowed the federal government to dictate to the states because we liked the policy they were imposing - black slaves are people too, don't drink alcohol (remember prohibition!), etc - but as soon as they started dictating policies we didn't like we start crying foul! We want the federal government out of our lives.But we can't have it both ways. Concentrated power corrupts. Like fornication, no man can withstand the temptation of concentrated power. The only answer is to flee from it.

Not only is Ron Paul's position regarding an anti-sodomy marriage amendment or federal legislation on prostitution Biblical, his position is also the historical position enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Passing these types of amendments will lead us yet one more step away from a republic of free people and 1 step closer to totalitarian slavery. Offered to a gullible nation in the name of stopping great evils, anti-abortion and anti-sodomy marriage amendments are a Trojan horse offered to the "Conservative Right" to destroy the fabric of our federal republic. Climate change and environmentalism are two Trojan horses offered to the "Liberal Left." It doesn't matter whether the Conservatives win or the Liberals win. As long as one group wins, the complete eradication of state sovereignty is ensured. Once the sovereignty of states has been undermined, there will be nothing standing in the way of the complete overthrow of our freedom and entire way of life.

Nevertheless, conservatives inevitably recoil in horror when they hear Ron Paul speak, thinking he wants to legalize sodomy, prostitution, drugs, and so on. But that misses the point of his argument and position. The point is that the federal government has no jurisdiction in those matters. The states have jurisdiction in those matters and that is where such laws need to be passed. You can think of this way. Suppose your next door neighbors let their children eat candy and drink soda all day, watch unlimited TV every day, and stay up to midnight every night. Big government conservatives are like those who would seek to impose their own "good" rules on their neighbor's lives in order to correct such unhealthy behavior. Small government people like Ron Paul recognize that they have no jurisdiction over their neighbor's lives and don't attempt to regulate them. But refusing to regulate one's neighbors, because one has no jurisdiction to do so, is very different than believing that children ought to eat candy and watch TV all day.

It's a fair question to ask why it makes any difference if, for example, prostitution is legislated at the state or federal level. How does the federal arrangement originally intended in the Constitution preserve freedom in a way that a centralized national government cannot? This was precisely the main issue debated between the federalists and the anti-federalists. (Actually those terms are a bit of a misnomer. The so-called federalist are more accurately described as supporters of a supreme central government over the states while the anti-federalists are more properly called "Federalists" in that they believed in a federal government to whom the states delegated certain limited powers.) This is most clearly seen in the resolution initially laid on the table at the start of the Constitutional Convention. According to Robert Yate's minutes the first resolutions to be discussed were:

1. Resolved, That a union of the states, merely federal, will not accomplish the objects proposed by the Articles of Confederation, namely, common defence, security of liberty, and general welfare.

2. Resolved, That no treaty or treaties among any of the states, as sovereign, will accomplish or secure their common defence, liberty, or welfare.

3. Resolved, That a national government ought to be established, consisting of a supreme judicial, legislative, and executive." (Jonathan Elliot's Debates, Vol 1, 1876. p391)

Thankfully the anti-federalists (who wanted a federal government) carried the day and we got a federal government (mostly) contrary to the wishes of a the Federalists who thought a federal union of sovereign states would not accomplish the objective of peace and security for the country. Their reasoning, which tragically for us, has proven to be correct is that a central government was too far removed from the local region over which it was legislating, that laws need to be tailored to specific situations in order to be fair, and that the representation at a national level was too dilute and thus unable to represent the many contours of the people. They were also concerned that it did not allow for a good division of power. If a state passes tyrannical laws, people can easily move to another state. I moved to Texas because I did not want to live under the draconian homeschool laws of Ohio and Pennsylvania. If we had one national law, I would not have been able to do that.

We have a problem today with a tyrannical out-of-control federal government. Giving it more unconstitutional power, regardless of how well intentioned the supporting policy is, will only make our problems worse. This is what the anti-federalists understood, what FDR understood (although he used that knowledge to defeat freedom), and what Ron Paul understands so well. That's why he has so many enthusiastic supporters among common people, why he is bringing so many people back to the ballot box who had given up on politics years ago, and why he is so hated by the big government power brokers - be they "Conservative" or "Liberal."

Discussions of some of Ron Paul's positions from a Biblical perspective are here and here.

Coulter's Biting Satire Leaves Toothmarks In Her Own Tail

2012-01-05T15:42:00.003-06:00

The main job of liberals like Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman, and Michael Moore is to keep the liberals convinced that knuckle-dragging Republicans are responsible for everything that's wrong with America and that the solution is replacing them with intelligent Democrats. They seem to be doing a good job. Onthe other hand, the main job of Conservatives like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh,Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reily, Mark Levin, and Michelle Malkin is to keep conservatives convinced that evil, God-hating Democrats are responsible for all that's wrong with America and that the solution is to elect good Christian Republicans.[i] Unfortunately for us, they too seem to be doing a snow-white job – or a white snow job depending on one’s perspective. Ann’s recent hit piece on Ron Paul in her Human Events article, Get Rid of Government, But First Make Me President, illustrates the extent to which these disinformers will bend logic and makefools of themselves in order to accomplish their purpose.

Now I don’t think Ann is all bad – she has an unquestionably sharp wit – but she commits a logical blunder of the first order when she attempts to go from Ron Paul’s statement

“I don't think governmentshould give us a license to get married. It should be in the church"

“If state governments stop officially registering marriages, then who gets to adopt? … Who inherits in the absence of a will? Who is entitled to a person's Social Security and Medicarebenefits? How do you know if you're divorced and able to remarry?”

This is a classic non sequitur. Registering a marriage is different than granting a license. You can have a requirement to register a marriage without having a requirement to get a license. It’s just like having a baby. A license is not required to have a baby, but the law does require the birth to be registered after the fact.

By definition, a license grants permission to do something that is otherwise illegal. (Bouvier’s Law dictionary defines a LICENSE as, “A right given by some competent authority to do an act, which without such authority would be illegal. The instrument or writing which secures this right, is also called a license. VideAyl. Parerg, 353; 15 Vin. Ab. 92; Ang. Wat. Co. 61, 85.”)

When a couple requests a marriage license, they are entering into a 3 way contract with the state. This is explicitly stated in some state laws and acknowledged in many other places. For example see the first page of the Family Law manual produced by the Ohio Bar Association below. Or read the anecdotal, and possibly apocryphal, conversation that Virgil Cooper had with a clerk in the Maricopa County courthouse in Arizona that explains the implications of the fact that a marriage license from the state makes the state a party to the marriage.

Published by the Ohio Bar Association

All of the questions Ann Coulter raises about divorce, adoption,inheritance etc. were answered long ago. This country ran just fine for the first 250 years of its existence with the very situation she is mocking. Marriage licenses are relatively recent in history of the US, becoming commonplace only in the early 20^th century. The absence of a state issued marriage license in no way prevents the state from requiring that prospective adoptive parents be a married man and woman. What’s more, eliminating thenecessity of asking the state’s permission to marry in no way diminishes theability of a married couple to establish that they are married. It can beestablished the same way any other contract is established. Below is copy of the 1856 marriage covenant from mygreat, great grandparents. It is not astate issued document and it says nothing about it being a license, but it’sproof based on multiple witnesses that they were married.

In making irrational and ludicrous statements like: “Libertarianswould be better off spearheading a movement to get rid of stop signs than toget rid of officially sanctioned marriage. A world without government stopsigns would be safer than a world without government marriage." Ann is not onlyshowing her us her juvenile reasoning ability, she is also, by implication,calling Blackstone a fool.

According to my 1915 US edition of his Commentary on the Laws of England, Blackstonesaid of marriage, “Our law considers marriage in no other light than as a civilcontract. The holiness of the matrimonial state is left entirely to theecclesiastical law: the temporal courts not having jurisdiction to considerunlawful marriage as a sin, but merely a civil inconvenience. The punishmenttherefore or annulling of incestuous or other unscriptural marriages, is in theprovince of the spiritual courts which act for the welfare of the soul. Andtaking it in this civil light, the law treats it as it does all othercontracts: allowing it to be good and valid in all cases, where the parties asthe time of making it were, in the first place, willing to contract;secondly, able to contract; and lastly, actually did contract, inthe proper forms and solemnities required by law.” [Chapter 15, §533,Vol. 1] Emphasis mine.

The editor of the edition I have ( William Carey Jones, Directorof the School of Jurisprudence, University of California ) says in thefootnotes that “the law gives no action to the wife or child, directly, for anybreach of the husband’s or the parent’s duty,” although it might punish aparent for neglect. In other words the state had no authority to interfere in aprivate contract unless there was a crime being committed.

When Ann states:

Under Rep. Paul's plan, your legalrights pertaining to marriage will be decided on a case-by-case basis by judgesforced to evaluate the legitimacy of your marriage consecrated by a Wiccanpriest -- or your tennis coach.

she is exhibiting a shocking historical ignorance of the way ourlegal system operated for over 100 years. Biblically, marriages occur by theauthority of the father of the bride and the groom. Having a minister officiatea ceremony was simply a reflection of the fact that people considered marriagea very important ceremony, and at important ceremonies it is proper to hear theWord of God (i.e. worship). And who better to bring that word than thepastor? When I marry people, I do not say, “By the authority vested in my bythe state of Texas, I pronounce you husband and wife.” I simply say “I presentto Mr. & Mrs. Jones.” The state of Texas has no Biblical authority totransact a marriage, although they do have authority to recognize people as beingor not being in the state of matrimony.

Who officiates the wedding is completely irrelevant to whethersomeone is married or not. Marriage is determined by two people entering into amarriage covenant on free and unconstrained vows. Of course, given the civil,ecclesiastical, and familiar importance of the union, those vows should bewitnessed by at least 2 people, and preferably several more.

As far as the state is concerned, a license to marry is not theonly way to prove marriage . In Texas, the test for marriage is very simple, did the couple live together anddid one of them ever represent themselves as married. Common law marriages arestill recognized today in Texas. In determining if someone is married the lawreads as follows:

Sec. 2.401. PROOF OF INFORMAL MARRIAGE. (a) In a judicial, administrative, orother proceeding, the marriage of a man and woman may be proved by evidencethat the man and woman agreed to be married and after the agreement theylived together in this state as husband and wife and there represented toothers that they were married.

She asks,

If one spouse decides he doesn'twant to be married anymore, couldn't he just say there never was a marriagebecause the Wiccan wasn't official or the tennis coach wasn't a pro?

According to current Texas law, the answer is No, they can’t. Italways has been no, long before marriage licenses became popular. The Texas lawat this point, and that of most other states, has nothing to do with marriagelicenses. As a lawyer herself, Ann Coulter, Esq., should know this.

Under Paul's plan, siblings couldmarry one another, perhaps intentionally, but also perhaps unaware that theywere fraternal twins separated and sent to different adoptive families at birth-- as actually happened in Britain a few years ago after taking thegovernment-mandated blood test for marriage.

This is merely fear mongering as current government marriagelicense laws could not prevent this from occurring.

There are reasons we have laws governingimportant institutions, such as marriage. As in landscaping, you don't remove awall until you know why it was put there.

I am afraid she’s the one who is historically ignorant aboutmarriage laws. Ron Paul is simply advocating a return to what used to be thelaw. Although marriage licenses existed in the 19^th century for blacks who wanted tomarry, because that was otherwise against the law, the state of Texas did notstart tracking these licenses until 1968. I think it is still safe to say that state marriage licensesare a relatively recent thing. Advocating their elimination can hardly becalled a radical, foolish, or ill-conceived idea. In fact, I rather like theidea. Maybe those Libertarians are so bad after all.

[i]That’s basically the opinion of Cuban Servando Gonzalez as expressed in his recentbook, Psychological Warfare and the NewWorld Order, p255.

The Ron Paul Endorsement that Offended the GLBT Lobby

2012-01-02T23:38:00.001-06:00

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

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

1) The firstreason is that he is the only candidate who holds to a strict constructionistinterpretation of the constitution (i.e., that the Feds can only do what is explicitlyenumerated in the Constitution) whereas the other candidates hold to a broadconstructionist interpretation (i.e., that the Feds may do whatever is notexplicitly forbidden in the Constitution). It is broad constructionism that hasgotten us into the mess we are in today, and you cannot fight liberal broadconstructionism with conservative broad constructionism. Both lack integrity.

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

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

As a Biblical ethicist I am very concerned about overturning Roev Wade (something that Ron has sought to do), but I am also extremely concernedabout all the areas of lawlessness that have destroyed nations in the past.What candidates take these things seriously? I know of only one candidate whoobeys God's clearcut prohibitions against interventionism in politics: "donot meddle with them" (Deut. 2:5), "do not harass them or meddle withthem" (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 aseasy to understand as Ron Paul's positions are easy to understand.

He is by farthe 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?

2011-12-25T09:32:00.000-06:00

Bonhoeffer’s books (e.g. Lettersfrom Prison, Cost of Discipleship, Ethics, Essays from Gen 1-3) are becomingincreasingly popular among Christians today. In some ways he sounds like an manof exemplary faith. He believes the law of God should be obeyed. He believesChristians should transform culture. He believes Christianity is not just aprivate affair of our heart, as did many Germans of his day and Americans ofour day; he understood we have to be Christians in the marketplace and not juston Sunday morning. Hence his denunciation of religion (i.e. Christianity) thatwas only an inner religion.

However his Christianity is not the Christianity ofthe 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 somethingvery different by them. Because he usesthe same words, at times he can sound very orthodox. But as one can see fromwhat he says below, he is anything but orthodox. He is an academic and likeacademics of today, he does not mean the same thing with certain words that wemean. [For example, in a recent survey of Christian college presidents, 89%said they believed in the Genesis account of creation, but only 52% said theybelieved in a young earth. Obviously there is some reinterpretation of termsgoing on to be able to say you believe Genesis and at the same time do notbelieve in a young earth.] Liberals do not believe in the bodily resurrectionof Jesus Christ from the dead. Neither do they believe that Christ’s death wasa penal substitutionary atonement that expiated the guilt of our sin and propitiatedthe wrath of God. That doesn’t stop them from saying many wonderful thingsabout Christ, his resurrection, and our need to cleave to him. But when oneparts all the verbiage about what salvation is, the heart of the gospel iscompletely missing. According to Bonhoeffer,

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

We might agree that is it not somereligious act that makes man a Christian. And we might agree that as Christianswe suffer in this world even as Christ did. But we have to vehemently disagreethat our sufferings do anything to merit our salvation or in any way are thebasis of our salvation. There are a number of martyrs that have died for goodcauses that won’t be in heaven.

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

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

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

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

He writes in a later letter to thesame friend,

Bultmann would seem to have felt Barth’s limitations in someway, but he misconstrues them in the light of liberal theology, and hence goesoff into the typical liberal reduction process (the ‘mythological’ elements ofChristianity are dropped and Christianity is reduced to its ‘essence’). I am ofthe view that the full content, includingthe mythological concepts, must be maintained. The New Testament is not amythological 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 notto make religion a precondition of faith (cf. circumcision in St. Paul). Notuntil then will liberal theology be overcome, and at the same time, thequestion it raises be genuinely answered – which is not the case in thepositivism of revelation maintained by the confessing church.[5][emphasisadded]

Positivism of revelation is hislanguage for the Christian and Biblical doctrine that the Scriptures arethe word of God. They do not merelycontain truth that we have to separate from myth. They are not myths thatsomehow communicate a “truth.” They are not merely the words of men, butrevelation “breathed out” (2 Tim 3:16) by God himself. I think it almost goeswithout saying that to call the resurrection a myth is to deny Christ and makethe gospel meaningless.

Bonhoeffer is rightly critical ofliberals for wanting to "demythologize" the scriptures. He is rightly critical ofChristians who make God into nothing more than a stop-gap for theincompleteness 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 andthat’s what God teaches us to do in the scriptures.

He goes on to define “interpret in areligious sense” as meaning, “to speak on one hand metaphysically, and on the other individualistically. Neither ofthese is relevant to the Bible message or to the man of today. Is it not trueto say that individualistic concern for personal salvation has almostcompletely left us all? Are we not really under the impression that there aremore important things than bothering about such a matter? … Is there anyconcern in the Old Testament about saving ones soul at all?"[7]

A little later he writes,

To resume our reflections on the Old Testament. Unlike theother 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 Godin religion or philosophy. In the name of intellectual honesty these workinghypotheses should be dropped or dispensed with as far as possible. …
At this point nervous souls start asking what room there isleft for God now. And being ignorant of the answer they write off the wholedevelopment 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 themmust be added the saltomortale back to the Middle Ages, the fundamental principle of whichhowever is heteronomy in the form of clericalism. But that is a counsel ofdespair, which can be purchased only at the cost of intellectual sincerity. Itreminds 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 ofdeliberately abandoning our intellectual sincerity. The only way is that ofMatthew 18:3, i.e. through repentance, through ultimate honesty. And the onlyway 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 toa true recognition of our situation vis a vis God. God is teaching us that wemust live as men who can get along very well without him. The God who is withus is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who makes us live in thisworld without using him as the working hypotheses is the God before whom we areever 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 isweak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, inwhich he can be with us and help us. Matthew 8:17 makes it crystal clear thatit is not by his omnipotence that Christ helps us, but by his weakness andsuffering.

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

His death at the hands of Hitler hasbeen called a martyrdom. But I think from the few quotes above, taken fromletters written in the last year of his life, it is clear he is not a martyrfor the gospel. Many people heap praise on him; but many people also heappraise on Dr. Tiller, exemplified by one comment from a NYT article on him 2years ago.

June 5,2009 8:26 am See on NYT Website (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/george-tiller/?src=tp&apage=4#comment-462921)

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

Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and AlbertSwitzer 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 MacMillanCompany, 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.

Should a Christian Vote for Dr. Ron Paul?

2011-11-26T21:35:00.002-06:00

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

2011-09-12T14:16:00.001-05:00

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?

2011-09-04T23:24:00.002-05:00

Federal Reserve Seminar Preview:

Federal Reserve Promo 2 from Light4America on Vimeo.

Dollar Noncents Seminar: Collapse of Culture

2011-09-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

Preview of Coming Attractions

Federal Reserve Promo 1 from Light4America on Vimeo.

Dollar Noncents Seminar

2011-09-04T22:18:00.001-05:00

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.

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

2011-08-05T15:36:00.006-05:00

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 if 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?

2010-11-24T12:21:00.004-06:00

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. 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 probably 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

2010-10-29T15:41:00.003-05:00

Maybe she's telling us she needs a break.

Non Representing Representatives

2010-10-17T22:52:00.034-05:00

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 orginal design of the Electoral College, electors were chosen from each voting district (be it a county or precinct) who were to vote in accordance with the desires of the district they represented. This allowed the minority voice to have a voice in electing a president and prevented the big population centers from dominating elections. However the winner take all rules have subverted the purpose 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 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, as originally implemented, insures that the winner has support from a broad cross sectcion (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 original electoral college also insures that the Presidental 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 properly functioning electoral college and second, assume the minority faction is now a majority faction with 51% 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 a properly functioning electoral collage, 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.

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

2010-09-25T08:53:00.002-05:00

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

Straight from the Horses Mouth

2010-07-27T00:55:00.002-05:00

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

2010-01-24T22:30:00.000-06:00

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?

2010-01-21T11:52:00.004-06:00

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

2010-01-21T01:36:00.009-06:00

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.

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

2009-11-15T21:28:00.000-06:00

The Hallelujah Chorus by silent monks....

Putting Christ Back in the Government Schools

2009-08-29T23:14:00.002-05:00

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?

2009-08-29T23:07:00.003-05:00

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

2009-08-23T23:28:00.002-05:00

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

2009-08-19T22:18:00.004-05:00

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

2009-08-06T22:54:00.002-05:00

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 involutary arm pumps. That escalated to a standing ovation with Bahnsen's deadpan monotone "The Laws of Logic" in answer to Gordon Stein's attempted question trap if he knew of any other immaterial entities besides a soul. If you read this debate you'll learn that a not even a minute earlier Stein had described the laws of logic as immaterial in answer to Bahnsen's question reagarding their nature as being material or immaterial. In fact he had even wondered out loud how a law could be material.

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?

2009-08-02T23:09:00.004-05:00

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 ?

2009-06-30T23:05:00.006-05:00

(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

2009-06-27T23:00:00.003-05:00

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

Did You See This Bit of News In US Media?

2009-06-21T22:56:00.004-05:00

After two smugglers were stopped last week with what at first appeared to be $134bn in US state bonds, the tension and paranoia surrounding the fate of the dollar hit a new high.

For every dollar created by the Federal Reserve to fund the stimulus packages, there is a dollar in US Treasury securities floating around. We may not know where the stimulus money went, but maybe we now know where some of the securities went.

From the UK's Telegraph:

Border guards in Chiasso see plenty of smugglers and plenty of false-bottomed suitcases, but no one in the town, which straddles the Italian-Swiss frontier, had ever seen anything like this. Trussed up in front of the police in the train station were two Japanese men, and beside them a suitcase with a booty unlike any other. Concealed at the bottom of the bag were some rather incredible sheets of paper. The documents were apparently dollar-denominated US government bonds with a face value of a staggering $134bn (£81bn).
How on earth did these two men, who at first refused to identify themselves,come to be there, trying to ride the train into Switzerland carrying bonds worth more than the gross domestic product of Singapore? If the bonds were genuine,the pair would have been America's fourth-biggest creditor, ahead of the UK and just behind Russia.
No sooner had the story leaked out from the Italian lakes region last week than it sparked a panoply of conspiracy tales. But one resounded more than any other: that the men were agents of the Japanese finance ministry, in the country for the G8 meeting, making a surreptitious journey into Switzerland to sell off one small chunk of the massive mountain of US bonds stacked up in the Japanese Treasury vaults.

continue
Of course $134bn is only about 1/20 of the debt the Federal Reserve now holds. Maybe they were Federal Reserve agents ....

Collapse of Culture - Part 2

2009-06-11T01:33:00.013-05:00

Part 1 can be found here.

What about today?
This year celebrates the 150th anniversary of the publication of a book attributing our existence to the power and wisdom of matter. That book has replaced the Bible as the source truth and the theories it teaches have replaced God as Creator. The prevailing faith today is that the earth began with a bang, a BIG bang. The underlying and often unstated assumption of the big bang is that matter is eternal. Few, if any, believe that matter was created in the big bang. The big bang only brought matter into it current form.

The question begging for an answer is, “Where did the matter come from that was reorganized in the big bang?” Some have suggested it came from other universes. But that doesn’t answer anything about how it came into being. Others hold to an irrational belief (that is not at all the same as Biblical faith) that there is some explanation yet to be discovered.

If matter is all there is in this world, then in matter is hid all wisdom and knowledge. The know-how to bring us into existence in our current form resides in matter and is expressed or revealed through the random and chance events of evolution. Since matter has no beginning, matter is eternal. Eternal? Containing all wisdom? These are the attributes of deity. In reality, matter has become the god of our culture. There are very few, if any, respected institutions of higher learning where a biologist or physicist could deny evolution, teaching instead recent creation according to Genesis 1, and be granted either a terminal degree or tenure.

Law Today
The situation is no better when we inspect the laws of our land. Not only is the first commandment no longer a law in our land, most Christians don’t even think that the first commandment should be a law in the land.

No punishments accrue to those who take God's name in vain, and have not in recent memory. In fact, enforcement of the first table was largely abandoned even before the Constitution was written, although it was considered improper to openly deny their truth long after they ceased to be enforced as laws.

Today even the 2nd table of the 10 commandments has been abandoned as the basis of our culture.

The fifth commandment, teaching us to honor those in authority over us, has been completely overturned. If a son was to defiantly tell his father in some isle at the local grocery store, “No, I won’t put that box of crackers back on the shelf” and the father were to lovingly spank his son and patiently admonish him to obey, who’d be in trouble with the law? The obedient father or the disobedient son?

It’s obvious to the most casual observer that the 6th Commandment forbidding murder is no longer upheld as law of our land. If you are unborn, or very old, or unable to speak or move your body, our culture allows you to be murdered at will.

But what about the 7th, 8th, and 9th commandments? Have these been overturned in our culture?

Please bear in mind, I am not talking about people who break these commandments. Cultures have always had to deal with people who commit crimes- murderers who kill other people, thieves who steal from other people, liars who perjure themselves, adulterers, blasphemers, and idolaters. What I want to impress upon you is that these commandments have been overturned not just by criminals, breaking the law, but also in the very laws themselves by which our land is governed.

Seventh Commandment
(Data taken from Judith Reismann's work, Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences)
In 1920 a zoologist specializing in gall wasps joined the faculty of the University of Indiana in Bloomington. He soon tired studying the mating habits of wasps and turned his attention to studying the sexual behavior of a different animal – humans. That zoologist, who you know as Alfred Kinsey, was no small time researcher. He received significant funding from prestigious foundations for his work.

In 1948 he published an academic work called Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. A few years later he published one on female sexuality. Both these books were heavily promoted as scientific studies on the sexual practices of mainstream America by a conventional unassuming American family man and scholar. Both purported to prove that sexual activities most people considered abnormal perversions were really quite common in normal America.

Although Kinsey presented his work as representing a cross section of normal American males, it was anything but that. Of the 5,300 males that comprised his study, 2,446 were convicts, 1,003 were homosexuals, 50 were transvestites, 117 were mentally ill, and 650 admitted to sexually abusing boys. Based on his findings Kinsey claimed that “95% of ‘normal’ American husbands, fathers, uncles and brothers are sex offenders; 69% use prostitutes; 85% ‘fornicate’; 50% are adulterers; and 10-37% are part or full-time homosexuals.” (See footnote 23 at http://www.drjudithreisman.org/how.html ) Findings from a group like this are hardly representative of normal America, let alone a suitable basis for establishing standards of morality.

But that’s not the worst of it. Kinsey’s published research included actual criminal activity of sexual predators. In 1998 Dr. Fritz von Balluseck’s criminal trial records were uncovered in Berlin. According to news reports at the time, von Balluseck was a Nazi pedophile who was allowed to experiment on Polish children in occupied Poland. It turns out from these trial records that his database containing 20 years of criminal sexual activity against children was part of Kinsey’s “data.” Stuck in his diaries are letters from Kinsey encouraging him in his “research.”

Another pro-Kinsey biographer, James Jones, admitted in a British TV interview that Kinsey’s Male volume utilized the work of 9 pedophiles. Now it’s one thing to report on criminal activity. But it’s quite another thing when the research itself constitutes criminal activity. In this case, infant boys as young 2 months were sexually assaulted by stopwatch wielding predators and the results reported in Table 34 (that’s found on page 180 of the Male volume). ( See http://www.drjudithreisman.org/archives/alecreport.doc )

Despite being the work of convicted sex offenders, despite being populated with data from the dregs of society, despite nearly 50% of his sample population being prisoners in jail, the Human Male was billed as a scientific study of normal people. It became a New York Times bestseller. But it did far more. It became the scientific basis for the American Law Institute’s model penal code.

Today, the laws of nearly every state have been radically altered to conform to theories and ideas advanced in his fraudulent work. On the basis of Kinsey’s junk science laws relating to the 7th commandment were eliminated or the penalties drastically reduced under the notion that it can’t be wrong if 95% of the population is doing it. The consequences have been devastating, especially for women and children who have lost the protection God’s law provides. (See http://www.drjudithreisman.org/how.html )

Dr. Judith Reismann, the leading voice uncovering Kinsey’s crimes today, found that this fraudulent work was cited 799 times in major court decisions in a recent 14-year period. His junk science was the basis for Roe v. Wade.

Eighth Commandment
What about the 8th commandment, the one about not stealing?

Suppose you could create money, hundreds of millions of dollars and then loan it to people at interest – even very low interest. You could get rich overnight, without any labor as God commands. If you could create $10 million by just saying that you had the money and loan it, even at 1% interest, you could sit back with a 6 figure annual income just for cashing the interest checks.

Why doesn’t everyone do this?

First, unless you have special permission from Congress, you would rightly go to jail for fraud.
But secondly, if everyone did this, public confidence would be lost and the ponzi scheme would collapse. Nevertheless, the Federal Reserve does exactly this. When their point man goes to Capitol Hill to talk about it, congressman gather around and listen with reverent deference to his every word.

The Federal Reserve act passed in 1913 allows them to earn interest on money for which they did not work, on money that has been created out of thin air as the front page of the NYT proclaimed a few weeks ago.
Theft is getting something for which you did not pay and which has not been given to you. We live in a finite world, if someone is getting something for nothing, someone else is getting nothing for something. That is theft. Just because the two parties don’t see each other doesn’t make it any more right. But this sort of theft has been the law of this land for almost a century. Since 1913 our entire system of money has been built on theft.
Every dollar that is in circulation today, every dollar that is in your bank account, every dollar that is invested in the stock market, is created from debt that will never be repaid. (See The Two Faces of Debt by the Federal Reserve.)
According to the Congressional testimony of Marriner Eccles, if there was no debt in our monetary system, there would be no money (i.e. Federal Reserve Notes) in circulation – everyone’s bank account would be zero! (Marriner Stoddard Eccles, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, 1934-1948, in testimony before the House Committee on Banking & Currency, Congressional Record, September 24, 1941, p 1338.)
How could the 8th commandment be overturned any more than to have an entire economy based on fraudulent money?
Ninth CommandmentWhat about the 9th commandment – the one against lying? Has it too has been overturned as the law of our land?
I have a copy of a document in the National Archives (click on search and enter "Cuba Project Northwoods" to find the whole document. Here is a direct link to one of the pages.) that for many years was top secret. It was written by the Department of Defense in 1962 and personally signed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It’s called the Northwoods report.

Northwoods - Click on image to enlarge.
The purpose of this document was to think of ways to get the US into a war with Cuba. Did you get that? The purpose of this document was to brainstorm on ways to get us into a war with Cuba. It contains all sorts of ideas for deceiving the American people into supporting a war with Cuba. Here are a few ideas presented in the document.

It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack.
a. Approximately 4 or 5 F-101 aircraft will be dispatched in trail from Homestead AFB, Florida, to the vicinity of Cuba. Their mission will be to reverse course and simulate fakir aircraft for an air defense exercise in southern Florida. These aircraft would conduct variations of these flights at frequent intervals. Crews would be briefed to remain at least 12 miles off the Cuban coast; however, they would be required to carry live ammunition in the event that hostile actions were taken by the Cuban MIGs.
b. On one such flight, a pre-briefed pilot would fly tail-end Charley at considerable interval between aircraft. While near the Cuban island this pilot would broadcast that he had been jumped by MIGs and was going down. No other calls would be made. The pilot would then fly directly west at extremely low altitude and land at a secure base, an Elglin auxiliary. The aircraft would be met by the proper people, quickly stored and given a new tail number. The pilot who had performed the mission under an alias, would resume his proper identity and return to his normal place of business. The pilot and aircraft would then have disappeared.
c. At precisely the same time that the aircraft was presumably shot down a submarine or small surface craft would disburse F-101 parts, parachute, etc., at approximately 15 to 20 miles off the Cuban coast and depart. The pilots returning to Homestead would have a true story as far as they knew. Search ships and aircraft could be dispatched and parts of aircraft found.

Or how about:

We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated).
We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement would also be helpful in projecting the idea of Cuban involvement.

Apparently lying is a normal way of conducting business for our Departments of State and Defense. Knowing liars generally lie more than once makes me wonder how many other wars were started under similar pretenses.
The Conclusion of the MatterThe clear, unavoidable teaching of scripture is that righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. There are cultural consequences for cultural disobedience. God judges sin. That judgment has economic consequences.
When the king or the ruler of the land does not acknowledge God as Creator, when His name is blasphemed, His day profaned and ignored, when authority He has ordained is undermined, when murder is not just allowed by the civil magistrate, but promoted, when every sort of sexual perversion is legally protected, when an entire economy is built on fraud, theft and deception, when the civil magistrate is routinely lying to it’s citizens, and when he takes money from those who work and gives it to those who covet, the natural order of things is turned on its ear resulting in broken hearts, broken bodies, broken homes, and broken churches.
God will not be mocked. No nation, not even America with all its wealth and greatness, can laugh in the face of God, blaspheme his Name, and mock his Word as this nation does, and expect God to continue to open the storehouse of heaven and provide food in abundance and the rain in its season.
The inescapable conclusion is that not only has the law of God been set aside and ignored, the exact antithesis of those laws has become the law of our land. The foundation of law on which our culture was founded has been completely demolished. The culture will sooon follow.
But although the symptom of the problem can be found in the laws, the solution to the problem is not. The solution to our murder problem is not a better law restraining abortion and euthanasia. The solution to the theft on which our economy is built is not the abolition of the Fed. Though I would work for both of these, accomplishing them will not by itself solve our problem. The law can not change the desire of people’s hearts. God’s law can only be restored as the law of the land when lives are changed by the Holy Spirit working through the gospel truth and God’s law reigns in people’s hearts.
That won’t be accomplished by putting prayer and the 10 commandments back in government schools. More than any other single thing, the schools themselves are the problem. They need to be abolished.
Jeroboam, the first king of the northern half of Israel, didn’t want his subjects going up to Jerusalem to worship because he feared their hearts might get re-united with their brethren and they might want to rejoin the southern kingdom. If they did, he would lose his kingdom. So he rewrote history (and the Bible) and taught the people a lie. Moses taught the true version of history, that Jehovah delivered them from Egypt. But Jeroboam told the Israelites that a pair of golden calves delivered them from Egypt. Today government education continues in the tradition of Jeroboam. Government education of children is and was the primary means through which the law of God was removed from our culture.
To the young men and women reaching adulthood today, the mantle is now passing to you. Your God given commission is to restore the Law of God as the foundation of society – beginning with yourself and then your home.
Of all the things that you might do with your life – I encourage you to do many things, to climb many mountains, explore many planets, to build great monuments to the glory of God, to study for the rest of your life this world that God made in the Light of the WORD God gave – never forget that the most important task you will ever do and the most significant contribution you could ever make to rebuilding our culture is to raise a generation of young men and women who know Jesus Christ and love the Law of God.
There is nothing more important. There is nothing of more significance; there is nothing more honorable; and there is no job more difficult, more sanctifying, or more rewarding than the faithful completion of the high and noble calling of raising a quiver full of godly children who have not been educated according to Jeroboam’s version of history and redemption. (*)
I charge you this day to be a king, ruling over your own passions bringing them into subjection to the written Law of God.
I charge you this day to be a priest, pleading daily before the throne of grace for the work of the Holy Spirit that you would be enabled to do all that God has commanded.
I charge you this day to be a prophet of the of the Most High, daily bringing to yourself the Word of God that you may be complete thoroughly furnished unto every good work.

(*) If you think that’s overblown, name one other job of which it is said you will be saved if you complete it faithfully. 1 Timothy 2:15

Collapse of Culture - Part 1

2009-06-09T22:23:00.014-05:00

‘Tis the season of graduations and the requisite commencement addresses – the annual ritual of one generation passing its collective wisdom to the next – or in the case of UCLA in 2009, a graduate of the previous year passing his wisdom on to his former classmates. Here’s my version of what the young men and women assuming the mantle of adulthood need to know today. They have a difficult job, to say the least, for they are being handed a country, a culture, and way of life that is in the final days of collapse. Our borders are like sieves through which foreigners pass at will. No one wants our debt because we are deemed poor credit risks (the massive spike in Federal Reserve assets belies their claims to the contrary). After decades of bullying and abusing weaker nations, much of the rest of the world would like nothing better than to see us obliterated. Our military serves under foreign commanders. Our companies are subservient to foreign judges and courts. And The Simpsons are not only considered entertainment, they have actually replaced the Bible and Shakespeare as our culture’s greatest source of idioms, catchphrases and textual allusions. If you have read Deuteronomy 28 recently you’ll remember that each of these things – economic privations, ascendancy of foreigners, and subjection to foreign rule – are given as elements of judgment.

Identifying God
In times like these, it’s easy to make grand sweeping claims about cultures collapsing and the like and it might even be hard to find someone willing to debate the claim. But just because a country’s economy is having a tough year, doesn’t mean their culture is collapsing. There have been many periods of tough economic times, some even worse than our current experience, that have not spelled the end of the culture. To substantiate this claim in a more intellectually satisfying way, we need to make a critical inspection of the foundation that under girds our culture. We need to find clear evidence that the foundation is indeed missing or crumbling before the claim that it’s collapsing can be substantiated. To that task we now turn.

A culture is always defined by the god that they serve. The god of a culture is whoever (or whatever) is acknowledged as the source of life and the source of law. These two, the source of life and law, are inextricably linked because the lawgiver of a culture is the one who by a creator’s right of ownership has the prerogative to define its laws. Conversely, the laws of a society will always reflect who is acknowledged as the source of life by that society.
What about American culture? Who do we acknowledge as the source of life? Let’s look at our culture at the time of its founding in the early to mid 17th century.

I have some copies of almanac covers – about 30 of them spanning the years from about 1650 to about 1750. They are published by different people in different colonies. In typical Almanac fashion, they all have the date prominently displayed. But unlike today’s almanacs with the date discreetly tucked into a corner, these dates are splashed across the entire front page, similar to the example shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - Almanack Cover from 1660 (Click image to enlarge)

This almanac – in many ways the cultural equivalent of the magazines that crowd our check out stands today – clearly acknowledges that the very basis of numbering years is the advent of Christ our Lord and that the Creation of the world occurred some 5,600 years ago. In prominently listing these dates on the front page, the almanac publisher was not putting a controversial statement on the front page of his magazine in order to increase sales. Every one of the 30 almanacs I have puts the date of creation on the front-page in a similar way. Clearly these date assertions are as culturally acceptable as the date on Time magazine is today. Just as clearly, our culture, in its early days, recognized Jehovah to be the Creator and his Creation to be recent.

What about our laws?

Did you know that at one time in this county not only was the entire Decalogue incorporated into the civil law of the land, but the most egregious and heinous forms of all but one or possibly two of the 10 commandments were, at some point and time, considered capital crimes – just as in the scripture. Isn’t that astounding?

Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639), stated that magistrates “shall have the power to administer justice according to the Laws here established, and for want thereof, according to the Rule of the Word of God; ..."

Around 1639 some of the citizens of Connecticut got together to organize the civil government for their land. The minutes and actions that were taken at that early meeting are preserved for us in the Fundamental Agreement of the Colony of New Haven. In there we find this very interesting statement: When asked “WHETHER the scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties which they are to perform to GOD and men, in families and the commonwealth, just as in matters of the church?” all assented by holding up their hands, no man dissenting. The charter goes on to record that “Afterwards it was read over to them, that they might see in what words their vote was expressed. They again expressed their consent by holding up their hands, no man dissenting that scriptures hold forth the perfect law for governing in civil matters.

The Massachusetts Body of Liberties, compiled in 1641, listed 12 capital crimes. The very first was: “If any man after legal conviction shall have or worship any other god, but the Lord God, he shall be put to death. (Deut 13: 6 - 10; Deut 17: 2 - 6. Ex 22:20).” Those references are right in the law. It goes on to enumerate 11 more capital crimes relating to blasphemy, perjury in a capital crime, homosexuality, hardened rebellion, and theft of people, which we call kidnapping.
A synod met in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1640 to discuss the question, “Should the civil magistrate uphold both tables of the 10 commandments? If I distill down the pages and pages of explanation and defense, their answer was an emphatic yes.
Clearly, Jehovah was recognized as our God and acknowledged as our Lawgiver in the church and state alike.

Laws against blasphemy, profanity, and swearing continued all the way into the 1830’s.
Many living today remember the so-called blue laws. Some even exist today regarding the sale of alcohol. Even the constitution acknowledged the sanctity of the Sabbath – the President had 10 days to veto a bill (Sundays excepted). That’s not business days like we have today. Saturday was included in those 10 days. Sunday was excepted because there was a universal understanding that Sunday was the Lord’s Day.

When we examine the early days of our culture, we find a people that acknowledged God as Creator and God’s law as the law of the land.

What about today? That's part 2.

Thanks for the Pick-Me-UP

2009-04-04T22:06:00.004-05:00

According to Roger Wiegand in the above article, the the financial crisis we are currently experiencing is simply the fallout of the Fed's recession avoidance actions in 2000. However, he thinks the unfolding tragedies will be legendary and will threaten the very existence of the America. Some of his predictions include:

G20 initiated trading wars, massive unemployment and state bankruptcy leading to widespread violence and crime, bankruptcy and breakdown of retail and auto industries, Israel attacking Iran and setting off WW III, class warfare, and expansion of dictatorships around the globe.
Of course all this can be solved, preventing a return to the dark ages, by marking down assets to realistic levels and restructuring economies on sound economic footing.

The problem is there are no hints as to how one goes about structuring an economy on a sound economic footing.

It is very true that slavery and social collapse, as Mr. Wiegand describes, often follow economic upheaval. The hyperinflation and resulting financial devastation destroyed the foundation of German culture in the 1920's and created a willingness to accept industrial nationalization, youth brigades, and increased surveillance and regulation, setting the stage for Hitler's dominance in Germany.

Even John Maynard Keynes, the namesake of a perverted economic theory, understood this quite clearly. In 1920, he wrote in Economic Consequences of the Peace,

By a continuous process of inflation governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some… There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.
The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does so in a manner in which not one man in a million can diagnose.[1] [While he understood this, it did not stop him from recommending inflationary policies.]

Now people have been making predictions, like Mr. Wiegand's, for many years. First it was the threat of nuclear war with Russia, then oil shortages resulting in the collapse of the world economy, then holes in the ozone wiping out life on earth, then domestic terrorists, then Islamic terrorists ( Oops, Islam is a peaceful religion, it's just aberrant Islam terrorists), and now finally the global financial crisis that has the potential to knock us back to the dark ages.

However, it should be pointed out that in predicting every conceivable scenario, our friend is really predicting nothing. He's simply setting the stage to be able to make the self-serving marketing claim that "I predicted that."

The truth of the matter is, things are far worse. The roots of these problems go far deeper than the 2000 era manipulations of Mr. Greenspan and his banking colleagues. The solution involves far more than simply getting the economy on a sound footing.

Scripture actually has a great deal to say about the source of economic prosperity. When the children of Israel were preparing to enter the promised land, Moses recounted for them the history lessons that they had learned over the previous 40 years. In Deuteronomy 8, after reciting some of the economic blessings God had sent to them, such as the free food and the shoes that did not wear out, we read:

Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord thy God to walk in his ways, and to fear him. For the Lord thy God brings thee into a good land, ... A land of wheat and barley and vines and fig tress and pomegranates; a land of oil, olive, and honey; A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou may dig brass.

When thou have eaten and are full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which He hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God in not keeping His commandments, and His judgments, which I command thee this day: Lest when thou have eaten and are full, and have built goodly houses and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied and all that thou have is multiplied; Then thine heart be lifted up
and thou forget the Lord thy God …

But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God for it is He that gives to you power to get wealth, that He may establish his covenant which He swore unto thy Fathers as it is this day. And it shall be that if thou at all do forget the Lord thy God and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that you will surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroys before your face, so shall you perish; because you would not be obedient to the voice of the Lord your God. Deuteronomy 8:6-14, 18-20 (KJV).

Clearly, Israel’s economic prosperity would be a direct result of their obedience. So important was this concept that Moses had half of the Israelites stand on one hill and half of the Israelites stand on another and recite the exact consequences of obedience and disobedience to each other. The blessings for obedience that they recited are in Deuteronomy 28. There we read:

And it shall come to pass if you shall hearken diligently to the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all His commandments which I am commanding you this day, that the Lord thy God will set you on high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake you, if you shall hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your cattle and the increase of your kine, and the flocks of your sheep. Blessed shall be your basket and your store.
And the Lord shall make you plenteous in goods, and in the fruit of you body, and in the fruit of your cattle, and in the fruit of your ground, in the land which the Lord swore unto your Fathers to give you. The Lord shall open unto you His good treasure, the heavens to give the rain unto your land in his season, and to bless all the works of thine hand: and you shall lend unto many nations and you shall not borrow. And the Lord shall make you the head and not the tail; and you shall be above only, and you shall not be beneath; if you hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command you this day, to observe and to do them. Deuteronomy 28:1-5, 11-13 (KJV).

Economic prosperity comes from obedience to the Word of God. In other words the first step to economic recovery is

Stop abortion
Stop inflation (which particularly robs the widows and others on fixed incomes)

When Ezekiel (Ezekiel 34:25-29) speaks of the blessings of the Great Shepherd, he does so in economic terms, saying that the rain would come in its season, and as a result, the produce of the land would yield its fruit in abundance. Even on the return of the Israelites from 70 years of exile, Zechariah (Zechariah 7:9-14) repeats the words of Jeremiah in telling the Israelites that their troubles came as a result of their refusal to obey the Lord. Physical, material, economic, and spiritual blessings flow from cultural obedience to the Word of God. The richest man in the world was the son of the man after God’s own heart. Is it any surprise that the unmatched economic prosperity of Israel under Solomon followed one of the most godly kings Israel every had?

Our spiritual condition has economic consequences. Economic disaster is God's doing. Economic blessing is his doing also. We can not expect God's blessing on a nation built on fraud. We cannot expect God blessing on a nation that so systematically kills the helpless and oppresses and impoverishes the poor and the widow with the tax of inflation as this nation does. As a nation that never pays its debts, we can only expect a life of unending servitude.

[1] Keynes, John Maynard, Economic Consequences of the Peace (Penguin USA, 1988), p 235.

An Ancient Solution - Just Cancel the Debt

2009-03-06T22:38:00.007-06:00

There are numerous sins and innumerable follies on which the collapse of the financial world and the global economy could be blamed. None of them, incidentally, have any connection to free enterprise or a shortage of legislation. The solution, on the other hand, has everything to do with the free market and the removal of harmful, monopoly granting legislation.

As it turns out, the free market could solve the crisis without any stimulus from Congress, if it was simply allowed to operate without additional crippling legislation. The situation in a nutshell is that foolish borrowers over-committed themselves, incurring debts that would take the rest of their life to repay. Greedy bankers illegitimately created the principal, hoping to receive interest on money for which they did not labor. Of course, God is not mocked. Only the Creator can create ex nihilo. The money created out of nothing disappeared even faster than it was created, taking with it the hopes and dreams of those whose wealth was built on it.

As Michael Hudson notes, Lehman's mortgages were trading at 22 cents on the dollar before it was nationalized, meaning that people were buying the notes for less than a quarter of what the loan originator paid in funding the loan. So with no intervention, Lehman Brothers loses lots of money, their employees don't get their bonuses and the company goes bankrupt. Yes, investors will lose money; but life and the economy will go on. Enron's bankruptcy, while destroying investor confidence in the veracity of CEO's and accounting firms and wiping out those who were over-invested in its stock, had little negative impact on the overall economy.

The benefit, on the other hand, of allowing the free market to buy these "toxic" notes at steep discounts (i.e. 80% or more) is that the new owners of these notes can go to the foolish borrowers and cut their mortgage by 75% turning a $400,000 mortgage into a $100,000 mortgage or a $100,000 mortgage into a $25,000 mortgage and not have lost a penny doing so. With a much lower loan, many of the foolish borrowers might have a reasonably good chance of paying their mortgage or at least selling their home for the value of the mortgage. Property prices would fall, making home ownership affordable for more people and gradually restoring demand for housing. Since many lenders will have lost their shirt, loans will be much harder to get, thereby slowing the creation of a new bubble. (To prevent a new bubble, existing laws granting monopoly power to some corporations to create new money must be repealed.) This could all happen without any help from Uncle Sam and without further impoverishment of taxpayers. And, it puts the burden on the those who should rightfully bear it- those who unjustly profited by the illicit creation of money in the first place.

This solution is outlined in this delightful interview with Michael Hudson. Thanks Mom for bringing it to my attention.

Astronomical Debt?

2009-02-17T22:39:00.003-06:00

The Federal Reserve has been busy creating money out of debt for well nigh 100 years... well, at least that is what they say they are doing. In the early 1940's they had increased their assets from the measly $140 million, with which they started life, to over $2 billion [Congressional Record, September 24, 1941, page 1342]. In the intervening years their creative efforts have grown their assets to nearly $2 trillion. By the way, that's a 10.7% annual return for 68 years, achieved without ever selling one glass of lemonade, mining one grain of gold, or forming one bead of sweat.

Today, thanks to their efforts, and those of their fellow central bankers around the world, the face value of derivatives in circulation in the global economy is thought to be well over 1 quadrillion dollars. One might be tempted to think that, however fraudulent or useless their product might be, it's at least a prodigious output.

Or is it?

God created some 70 sextillion stars in one day by the word of his power. Of course that is just our best estimate after 6000 years of estimating. But assume it's close. That's 70 million stars for every single virtual dollar in ciculation- all made in just a day's work. And unlike a paper note of the Federal Reserve which couldn't even reach 1 watt in the best of woodstoves, stars are massive thermo-nuclear reactors each producing the equivalent of 700 quadrillion gigawatt power plants year after year.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? Psalm 8:3-4

Moved By Compassion

2009-02-12T21:59:00.005-06:00

I don't know if this is a spoof or for real. But either way it's a good reminder that one's example and character bellow far more loudly than one's words.

Money FAQS

2009-02-04T22:15:00.008-06:00

As an author of a money book, it's no surprise I get asked from time to time about our money.
Here are a few such examples:

How is money 'created' and how does it flow between the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the banks, etc?

Basically, every Monday the Treasury Dept auctions IOU's (i.e. bills) which mature in 13 or 26 weeks. They sell other longer notes at specified intervals throughout the year. Investors buy these pieces of paper (now all digital) on which the government promises to repay a certain amount of money with interest. Most are bought by private investors. To this point everything is legitimate. But if there are not enough investors to raise all the money the government needs, the Federal Reserve Corporation (Fed) gets involved and buys the remainder. This is the part that's the real problem. The Fed writes a check (again all digitally) to the US Government. But there is nothing that represents any labor or capital that is transferred to the US Government when this check clears the bank. Because the Fed is the check clearing agency, no one knows that there was nothing in their checking account when they wrote the check. The Fed increases their assets (they now hold a Treasury Note) and the US Government now has a few more billion dollars (Federal Reserve Notes) in their bank account. This site has a fairly good description of the details- of course it doesn't talk about the ones the Fed buys! http://www.ny.frb.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed41.html

Recently the Fed has had to buy significantly more of this debt which has caused their assets to skyrocket. (See Rescue to the Rescue to the Rescue ). However the percentage of their debt comprised of US Treasury securities has plumetted from the 90's to around 50%. This means they have bought non US Treasury securities at an even greater rate.

Money is also created when individual banks make loans. This part is fairly well explained in Modern Money Mechanics.
When you say the Treasury Dept auctions bills, where do they get the funds backing the bills? Or are the bills nothing more than paper?
The bills are uncollateralized. Another setting may make the audacity of this whole scheme more striking (and clear). If you go the bank for a loan, you give the banker a signed and notarized note and the banker gives you money. In effect, the bank buys your note. They are the creditor, you are the debtor. In this case the Treasury Dept. is the debtor giving people notes and the T-bill investors are the creditors loaning the US their money. Every time a T-bill is sold by the US Treasury, the US debt is going up. T-bills and notes are in reality no different than the note you give the bank when you take a loan.

The big difference, of course, is that banks typically require collateral before giving you money (i.e. buying your note). They won't accept a note from you that is only backed by your faith and credit. Not so with the US Government. Not only do people accept (i.e. invest in) uncollateralized notes from the US Government (Treasury Dept), they stand in lines for the opportunity to do so. Instead of talking about loaning their money to Uncle Sam, people say they are investing in, or buying, T-bills as if they were acquiring the productive output of someone's labor. We buy cars, we buy houses, food or gold that someone mined. In each case we are giving money in exchange for the fruit of someone's labor. When we extend the fruit of our labor to someone and do not receive the fruit of their labor in exchange, this has historically been called a loan, not a purchase. In the case of T-bills, people exchange the fruit of their labor for the IOU's of the US Government and under the linguistic revisionism of the Federal Reserve, they now have a debt-assets - See Two Faces of Debt . I discuss the importance of semantics and strict construction of words in a little more detail in Dollar Noncents.
When you say the Fed buys the left-over’s, who is the Fed? Isn’t this like a little boy making phony lemonade to sell on the street curb and then selling the left-over to his dad?
The Fed is the Federal Reserve Corporation. They are a private non-governmental agency (This is all according to their own documentation.) which has been granted monopoly powers to buy notes of the US Government with nothing - well they use their own notes, but unlike the US Treasury notes, they will never have to pay on their notes. On the other hand, the T-bills and notes issued by the US Treasury Dept are real, they are very real. They are a real as the note you gave the bank when you bought your house - if you have a loan. They represent obligations of the US Government. The notes we use as currency are not notes of the US Government, they are notes of the Federal Reserve Corporation. The process of converting US Treasury notes into Federal Reserve Notes is called monetizing debt - turning debt into money.
Then the Fed writes a check to the U.S. Gov- Isn’t the Treasury Dept who started the process a department of the U.S. Gov?
Yes, it is. The Fed is the check clearing agency - that why Federal Express is called Federal Express. In the old days of paper checks, they moved the checks from the Fed bank where it was cashed to the Fed bank where it was drawn.
According to the Fed,
When a bank receives a check for deposit, it provisionally credits the account of the check depositor and later collects the funds from the bank upon which the check is drawn. Rather than sort all the checks and send each one back to the bank it was drawn upon for settlement, depository institutions transfer many of their checks to Federal Reserve Banks for collection. In turn, Reserve Banks pay the depositing banks for the total amount of the checks, and then collect the funds from the banks on which the checks are drawn. The Federal Reserve processes about one-third of all checks in the United States. (from http://www.ny.frb.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed08.html)

If you were the check clearing entity, you could write a check on your bank account and when it came across your desk in the process of being cleared, you would simply credit the depositing account and no one would ever know that there never was any money in your account or that you never even had an account to begin with. The depositor would be happy because the money showed up in their account. You could buy anything in this way with no labor at all. This is how the Federal Reserve "buys" T-bills and notes or other commercial paper securities.

A little complicated? Absolutely, it's supposed to. By creating an elaborate process of smoke and mirrors involving exchanging each other IOU's, everyone is kept blissfully ignorant, trust is maintained in the faith and credit of the US Government, and no one knows (or cares) that the wizzard is just a fat, balding con man. WHERE"S TOTO??
Frankly, this is so hard to understand because it's too simple, fraudulent, and stupid be believed. But aren't the boldest cons often the most likely to succeed!

The State of the Church Revealed in the Family

2009-01-13T22:35:00.004-06:00

What a telling indictment of the state of the church. The church is the light of the world. If the church is in darkness, it's no wonder the nation is busy trying to marry men to men, create money out of debt (debt money - what an oxymoron!), sell their bridges and roads to their sworn enemies, modify the global temperature of the earth, give away their sovereignty to foreign nations, make men and women equally capable of waging war, and find intelligent communication in the emptiness of deep space.

If we don't believe or won't obey scripture, how can we complain when the world doesn't either?

It's tempting to point our finger at all the problems in our nation today, but in so doing there are 4 fingers pointing back at us, right where they should be pointed according to Jehovah.

When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people [not the world] who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (2Chronicles 7:13-14)

2008 In Pictures - Hosting a Wedding

2008-12-24T20:24:00.006-06:00

The Bride
The earthly witnesses
Warming up the instruments and musicians.
Setting Up

2008 in Pictures - Thanksgiving Football

2008-12-24T18:25:00.004-06:00

Representatives of Mexico and Texas enjoying the football during a break in their deliberations.

Deciding
Going long!

Celebrating the 4th

2008-12-24T18:17:00.004-06:00

2 Mothers Outstanding in their field
Lots of birdies today

2008 in Pictures - Late Night Food Ops

2008-12-24T16:59:00.003-06:00

Checking the Water Temperature

2008 In Pictures - Hurricane Ike

2008-12-24T14:32:00.007-06:00

Dancing in the Rain.
The goat pasture
A weakened Hurricane vs. the Mighty Oak

Understanding the Dollar Crisis

2008-12-24T13:02:00.004-06:00

In the summer of 1969 Percy Graves, a close friend and student of Professor Ludwig von Mises, gave a series of 7 lectures in Buenos Aires to overflow crowds at the Centro de Estudios sobre la Libertad on the dollar crisis. One of those lecutures dealt with the specifics of the 1929 Depression in some detail. Apparently there were Argentinians concerned enough about that crisis that they were willing to invest 7 nights of the life so as not to repeat that economic calamity in their country.

Would that Americans were so inclined.

The great irony is that if one changed 1929 to 2009 and added 80 years to the other dates, Professor Graves could have given the same lecture today word for word and been right on the mark. The only difference at this point is that we don't yet have the diaries and papers of the key players of the 2009 crisis.

The biggest and most dangerous misunderstanding regarding both of these economic crises is that they somehow represent a failure of the free market instead of the failure of government management of the economy.

Mises was once asked by a graduate student at his University of New York seminar what he thought the government should do during a depression. Mises replied in his quiet manner by presenting his free market position in a few well chosen words. Aghast, the student replied, " You mean the government should do nothing?"
Mises leaned back as he frequently did and said, " Yes, but I mean the government should start doing nothing much sooner."

You can download a complete transcript of this lecture here.

Occult Communism

2008-11-06T23:22:00.003-06:00

Okay...for all those who were offended at my classification of McCain's ideology as occult communism or thought it was a bit extreme, listen to this. By the way, I didn't see this clip of Ezra Taft Benson until after writing the previous post.

Now, who would you rather have as President: Someone who openly promises to lead America deeper into socialism and does so or someone who leads America deeper into socialism in the name of capitalism, free enterprise, and freedom?

The Article I Would Have Written

2008-11-06T22:18:00.007-06:00

While waiting to start a teleconference the morning after, the normally staid President of an oil & gas entity enthusiastically informed those of us already online of his eager anticipation of an election celebration at this house this coming weekend. Apparently the thought of Sarah Palin as his President had frightened him. I didn't take the bait, but it did occur to me that this had been the first election night in many years that I had little interest in following. I had gone to bed early and barely even thought about reading an election article when I awoke - no elation, no depression; no rejoicing, no regrets. Well, I must admit some small elation on reviewing the 435 page precinct by precinct digest of our county's election results. Our family accounted for 4 of the 7 votes for Baldwin in our precinct which itself had the largest raw Baldwin vote out of all 85 precincts in the county. I must also admit having a twinge of sadness thinking of all the people (especially in the church) who voted for occult communism (in the sense of hidden) thinking it was better than the overt communism of the other Demoblican candidate. It was almost enough to pull a blog post out of me.

But when I saw Chuck had published this article saying many of the things I was thinking, I figured I'd post it and go to bed early again. It's strikes a slightly angrier tone than I would, but not enough to lose any sleep over.

Conservatives Lost More Than An Election
By Chuck Baldwin November 7, 2008

That Barack Obama trounced John McCain last Tuesday should have surprised no one. In fact, in this column, weeks ago, I stated emphatically that John McCain could no more beat Barack Obama than Bob Dole could beat Bill Clinton. He didn't. (Hence a vote for John McCain was a "wasted" vote, was it not?) I also predicted that Obama would win with an electoral landslide. He did. The real story, however, is not how Barack Obama defeated John McCain. The real story is how John McCain defeated America's conservatives. For all intents and purposes, conservatism--as a national movement--is completely and thoroughly dead. Barack Obama did not destroy it, however. It was George W. Bush and John McCain who destroyed conservatism in America.
Soon after G.W. Bush was elected, it quickly became obvious he was no conservative. On the contrary, George Bush has forever established himself as a Big-Government, warmongering, internationalist neocon. Making matters worse was the way Bush presented himself as a conservative Christian. In fact, Bush's portrayal of himself as a conservative Christian paved the way for the betrayal and ultimate destruction of conservatism (something I also predicted years ago). And the greatest tragedy of this deception is the way that Christian conservatives so thoroughly (and stupidly) swallowed the whole Bush/McCain neocon agenda.
For example, Bush and his fellow neocons like to categorize and promote themselves as being "pro-life," but they have no hesitation or reservation about killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in reckless and unconstitutional foreign wars. By the same token, how many unborn babies were saved by six years of all three branches of the federal government being under the control of these "pro-life" neocons? Not one! Ask the more than eight million unborn babies who were killed in their mothers' wombs during the last eight years how "pro-life" George W. Bush and John McCain are.
As a result of this insanely inconsistent and pixilated punditry, millions of Americans now laugh at the very notion of "pro-life" conservatism. Bush and McCain have made a mockery of the very term.
Consider, too, the way Bush and McCain have allowed the international bankers on Wall Street to bilk America's taxpayers out of trillions of dollars. Yes, I know Obama also supported the Wall Street bailout, but it was the Republican Party that controlled the White House for the last eight years and the entire federal government for six out of the last eight years. In fact, the GOP has won seven out of the previous ten Presidential elections. They have controlled Supreme Court appointments for the past thirty-plus years. They have appointed the majority of Treasury secretaries and Federal Reserve chairmen. They have presided over the greatest trade imbalances, the biggest deficits, the biggest spending increases, and now the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression.
Again, the American people look at these so-called "conservatives" and laugh. No wonder such a sizable majority of voters yawned when John McCain tried to scare them by accusing Barack Obama of being a "big taxer." How can one possibly scare people with a charge like that after the GOP has made a total mockery of fiscal conservatism? That's like trying to scare someone coming out from a swim in the Gulf of Mexico with a squirt gun.
Then there was the pathetic attempt by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to scare gun owners regarding an Obama White House. Remember that John McCain is the same guy that the NRA rightly condemned for proposing his blatantly unconstitutional McCain/Feingold bill. McCain is also the same guy that tried to close down gun shows. He even made a personal campaign appearance for a pro-gun control liberal in the State of Oregon a few short years ago. In fact, the Gun Owners of America (GOA) gave McCain a grade of "F" for his dismal record on Second Amendment issues. Once again, Chicken Little-style paranoia over Barack Obama rang hollow when the alternative was someone as liberal as John McCain.
But the worst calamity of this election was the way conservatives--especially Christian conservatives--surrendered their principles for the sake of political partisanship. The James Dobsons of this country should hang their heads in shame! Not only did they lose an election, they lost their integrity!
In South Carolina, for example, pro-life Christians and conservatives had an opportunity to vote for a principled conservative-constitutionalist for the U.S. Senate. He is pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, and pro-traditional marriage. He believes in securing our borders against illegal immigration. He is against the bailout for the Wall Street banksters. His conservative credentials are unassailable. But the vast majority of Christian conservatives (including those at Bob Jones University) voted for his liberal opponent instead.
The man that the vast majority of Christian conservatives voted for in South Carolina is a Big-Government neocon. He supported the bailout of the Wall Street banksters. He is a rabid supporter of granting amnesty and a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens. In fact, this man has a conservative rating of only 29% in the current Freedom Index of the New American Magazine.
Why did Christian conservatives support the liberal neocon and not the solid pro-life conservative? Because the conservative ran as a Democrat and the neocon is a Republican. I'm talking about the race between Bob Conley and Lindsey Graham, of course.
Had South Carolina's pastors, Christians, evangelicals, and pro-life conservatives voted for Bob Conley, he would be the new senator-elect from that state. In fact, Bob was so conservative that the Democratic leadership in South Carolina endorsed the Republican, Lindsey Graham! No matter. A majority of evangelical Christians in South Carolina stupidly rejected Bob Conley and voted for Graham.
Across the country, rather than stand on principle, hundreds of thousands of pastors, Christians, and pro-life conservatives capitulated and groveled before John McCain's neocon agenda. In doing so, they forfeited any claim to truth, and they abandoned any and all fidelity to constitutional government. They should rip the stories of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego out of their Bibles. They should never again tell their children, parishioners, and radio audiences the importance of standing for truth and principle. They have made a mockery of Christian virtue. No wonder a majority of the voting electorate laughs at us Christians. No wonder the GOP crashed and burned last Tuesday.
Again, it wasn't Barack Obama who destroyed conservatism; it was George W. Bush, John McCain, and the millions of evangelical Christians who supported them. And until conservatives find their backbone and their convictions, they deserve to remain a burnt-out, has-been political force. They have no one to blame but themselves.
And since it is unlikely that the Republican Party has enough sense to understand any of this and will, therefore, do little to reestablish genuine conservative principles, it is probably best to just go ahead and bury the scoundrels now and move on to something else. Without a sincere commitment to constitutional government, the GOP has no justifiable reason to ever govern again. Therefore, put a fork in them. They are done. Let a new entity arise from the ashes: one that will stand for something more than just "the lesser of two evils." As we say in the South, That dog just won't hunt anymore.

In case you're wondering, Chuck Baldwin's commentaries are copyrighted and may be republished,reposted, or emailed providing the person or organization doing so does not charge for subscriptions or advertising and that the column is copied intact
and that full credit is given and that Chuck's web site address is included- which is here:

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com

The title is a direct link to this article.

Correction Please

2008-10-14T11:14:00.004-05:00

The New York Times today (in Intervention is Bold But Has A Basis In History ) quoted Nancy Koehn, a historian at the Harvard Business School, saying,"'The goal [referring to bailout activity -PA] is to get the engine of capitalism going as productively as possible, ... Ideology is a luxury good in times of crisis.'”

Ideology according to my Random House Dictionary is "the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group."

Far from being a luxury to be reliquished, ideology is absolutely vital in a crisis. In hard times people are forced to make hard choices between A or B that reveal their true priorities and values. A crisis simply reveals ones true ideology.

What Nancy Koehn has just revealed is that she does not believe in the constitution, liberty, or the free market. To her these are luxuries. Her ideology is socialism, statism, and government managed lives. Far from being relinquished as a luxury in this crisis, it is being followed exactly.

Neither should the phenomenon on Wall Street today be confused with a free market economy. It much more closely resembles a government sponsored monopoly in debt tokens that also happen to be the government mandated medium of exchange.

Wasted Third Party Votes

2008-10-11T22:37:00.003-05:00

The intramural debate among Christians over third party candidates is underway once again. When I first voted outside the Demoblican party, I don’t remember any serious discussions about such things among Christians. Their response to my third party comments, if there was any at all, was simply, “Huh ???”

But over the 6 intervening presidential election cycles the debate has matured considerably. Now I hear Christians contemplating complicated electioneering strategies (like switching parties to vote for the other party’s worst candidate in the primary in the hope they will win the nomination and set up an easier race in the fall) or asserting that a vote for a good third party candidate is really a vote for the worst candidate. To which my response was, “Huh???”

So in an effort to catch up to my more articulate brothers and sisters on this quadrenially important topic, I sat down tonight, after spending the day painting a large sign for my favorite candidate which will be mounted on the main traffic artery through our town, and tried to improve my contribution to this discussion.
On voting for the candidate who can’t win …

Elections are not a horse race where voters try to pick the winning ticket.

Elections are a wheelbarrow race where voters make the winner.

Not voting for a good candidate because he is not expected to win is giving up before the wheelbarrow race is over.

Choosing the lesser-of-two-evils over a good candidate because no else is voting for him is being controlled by peer pressure like a junior high socialite.

On voting for the lesser of two evils …

If you vote for the lesser of two evils for President, you’ll always have an evil President.
You can’t expect God to provide you with a good President when you vote for an evil one any more than you can expect God to provide you with daily bread when you sleep all day instead of working.

Voting for the lesser of two evils disobeys the admonition in Exodus 18:21 to choose good men (i.e. able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness) to exercise civil rule.
A vote for the lesser of two evils is doing evil in the hope of stopping evil.
A vote for the lesser of two evils is a wasted vote in getting a good candidate elected.
Voting for the lesser of two evils in the hope of avoiding a greater evil is like stealing food in order not to starve.
Defining an election in terms of the lesser of two evils is like falling for the false dilemma of values clarification exercises where 5 people are stranded in a lifeboat with supplies for 4 and thinking that one person should be thrown overboard (regrettably, of course) in order to keep the other 4 alive.
Voting for a good candidate instead of the lesser of two evils is not a vote for the greater of two evils, anymore than keeping 5 stranded people on a lifeboat for 4 is choosing to kill 5 people.

A vote for a good candidate is, as should be obvious, simply a vote for a good candidate.

Of course, I suspect the real issue is that lesser-of-two-evil voters do not really believe they are choosing the lesser to two evils. They believe they are choosing a basically good candidate who, while qualified for office, is simply not everything they might desire in an ideal candidate.
Whether someone is a qualified candidate (i.e. good) or an unqualified candidate (i.e. evil) who is simply less evil than another depends on the positions and records of each candidate and can‘t be answered by armchair logic. It requires digging into the gritty details. Let's look at main party options.
One option in this election is Barrack Hussein Obama.
There are some professing Christians who think Obama is the best choice for Pro Lifers (e.g., the Matthew 25 Network endorsed by Douglas W. Kmiec, a former assistant attorney general under President Reagen) because under an Obama presidency there would be fewer abortions than under a McCain presidency. The reasoning of these people is that free government health care would reduce the number of unsupported mothers who abort their babies because they are able to properly care for them. In addition better access to birth control would reduce the number of unwanted babies and thus reduce the number of abortions. This sounds a lot like the “A vote for a good third party candidate is a vote for Obama” logic. I don’t think I buy it here either.
A vote for Obama is a vote for someone who believes it’s okay to murder unborn babies.
Another self-professed pro-life, pro-Obama Christian is Frank Schaeffer, son of the late Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer. He thinks Obama is the best candidate for pro-lifers because he would lead the nation to where life is actually valued not just talked about. (See his article Pro-Life and Pro-Obama.) However, that seems hard to reconcile with Obama’s well known voting record on abortion legislation and his comments on the floor of the Illinois Senate against the Illinois born alive legislation that mandated caring for babies born alive despite efforts to kill them in utero (Transcript of Obama's verbal opposition to Born Alive on the IL Senate floor).
What ever else this man believes, he clearly condones the practice of murder and that alone disqualifies him from being a civil magistrate according to Exodus 18:21.
Another option is John McCain, regarded by many as the lesser of two evils.
Some Christians argue that we should vote for him, despite his many weaknesses, because he will appoint better judges. With McCain appointed judges, the argument goes, we’re more likely to maintain our freedom to homeschool, own guns, and evangelize, and there is a better chance Roe v. Wade could be overturned. People can say that our freedoms are safer with a McCain presidency just like Frank Schaeffer can say fewer babies would be aborted under Barrack Obama. But the question is, “What are the facts?”
Here are a few for your consideration:
Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by presidential candidates who were deemed the lesser of two evils (Ford, Reagen, Bush, and Bush). It hasn’t resulted in overturning Roe v. Wade. In fact, some of their appointees are even considered “Liberals.”
Under lesser of two evil presidents we have continued to fight unconstitutional and unbiblical wars, preemptively invading other countries for various reasons like possession of weapons of mass destruction. Of course, we have weapons of mass destruction too. Does that mean China is entitled to invade us because they feel threatened by our weapons of mass destruction? If not, then why is it any more right for us to invade Iraq simply because we feel threatened by their weapons?
War involves killing other people. This is Biblical when it is in self-defense. To say a war is not justified is to say we are intentionally killing people without Biblical justification to do so. That’s murder. If the invasion of Iraq was a response to 9/11, why had the President (a lesser of two evils candidate) completed plans for an Iraqi regime change 8 months before September 11, 2001? (See The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind, p75, 160.) Obviously the purpose for the war had nothing to with terrorists flying planes into American buildings.
Since McCain has the same foreign policy advisors as President Bush ( See Pat Buchanan's article None Dare Call It Treason ), there is every indication he intends to continue fighting unconstitutional wars.
Under lesser of two evil presidents the absorption of the US military, economy, and legal system into the global military, economy, and legal system has progressed at the same pace as under the “avoid at all cost” Presidents. In fact, if anything, it has proceeded at a faster pace under the Bush regimes than under the Clinton Presidency.

Lesser-of-two-evil presidents have increased the national debt faster than our avoid-at-all-cost President with Reagan and G.W. Bush being the worst offenders. (Graph courtesy of zfacts.com accessed October 11, 2008.)

What expectation is there that McCain will be any different?

A sampling of McCain’s senate votes shows:

March 6, 2003 – Roll Call 43. Voted to support the continuation of the decades-old U.S. program for “general and complete disarmament” originally proposed in the well known 1961 State Department document Freedom From War (Department of State Publication 7277). The ongoing goal of that plan is to disarm all countries, including the U.S., to “a point where no state would have the military power to challenge the progressively strengthened U.N. Peace Force.” You can read the complete document at the state department archives: Freedom From War.
May 23, 2003 – Roll Call 196. Voted against the tax cuts in the Conference Report of HR 2.
May 23, 2003 – Roll Call 203. Voted to raise the debt ceiling by $984 billion in H. J. Res. 51.
July 31, 2003 – Roll Call 318 & 319. Voted to support free trade agreements with Singapore and Chile, laying stepping-stones to full implementation of FTAA and the complete relinquishment of economic sovereignty (H.R. 2738 & H.R. 2739). For example, see Why say no to FTAA or John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
October 30, 2003 – Roll Call 420. Voted to impose restrictions on emissions of greenhouse gases under the mistaken notion that global warming is the result of man-made carbon dioxide emissions. Not only is this bad science (See http://www.iceagenow.com/Ocean_Warming.htm ), it is also contrary to the constitution as such authority is not granted to the Congress anywhere in Article 1, Section 8.
November 6, 2003 – Roll Call 444. Voted to appropriate $80 billion for aid to farmers, rural development and nutrition programs. Essentially this is giving money to people for not working. It is not biblical (2 Thessalonians 3:10-12), it’s not constitutional, and it’s not fiscally responsible.
March 16, 2005 – Roll Call 52. Voted to remove language in S. Con. Res. 18 that would allow leases for oil & gas exploration in ANWR effectively preventing development of domestic energy resources. In November he voted a second time to prevent drilling in ANWR (Roll Call 288) .
June 30, 2005 – Roll Call 170. Voted for CAFTA. The goal of the Central America Free Trade Agreement is to create a EU style economic union in the Americas, bringing American people under foreign courts and trade rulings.
March 2, 2006 – Roll Call 29. Supported the continuation of the Patriot Act (H.R. 3199). See Wikipedia's Controversial Invocations of the USA PATRIOT Act for a few examples of the abuses allowed under this act. To be fair, many of these abuses could have happened before this act. The Act simply woke people up to the existing state of affairs. But that doesn't make his vote any better.

According to the Congressional Quarterly, Senator McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time. (see CG Voting Study)
Thinking McCain will be any different than Bush, is like Frank Shaeffer thinking that Obama will lead the nation to where life is valued not just talked about.
His senate voting grade, as best I can gather, is about 45-50%. So obviously he’s made a few good votes as well. But that’s not saying much. The same could probably be said of almost all felons. They’ve probably obeyed as many laws as they have broken. Students that are wrong 50% of the time are considered bad students and are flunked at most schools. Why is it any different for senators?
How about voting for a good candidate? Thankfully we still have that option.

Need Some Ideas for a Letter to Your Congressman?

2008-10-02T22:06:00.003-05:00

Here's a letter I sent to my Congressman, who voted for the bailout the first time. He obviously won't be getting my vote in November. This is that big of an issue to me.

Right click here to download the pdf file. Sample letter to congressman

Rescue to the "Rescue to the Rescue"

2008-10-02T13:17:00.006-05:00

Stirred enough about the bailout to fire off a few letters editors and congressman? I was and here's one of them I wrote to Thomas Friedman after reading his op-ed in the New York Times, Rescue to the Rescue.

Dear Mr. Friedman,

My stocks and 401k are down tens of thousands of dollars, my stock options are so far under water I expect they will take up permanent residence in Davy Jones' locker, and, according to many of your fellow journalists at the Times (Trying to Avoid Economic Calamity, Lawmakers Grope for Resolution, In Bailout Vote, a Leadership Breakdown, Revolt of the Nihilists), the House leadership of both parties is stunned, but for me Monday was a good day in America. In fact, I can't remember a day I've had as much fun and as many spontaneous, knee-slapping "Hoorays" reading the news as I had the following morning. But I agree with you that it was an unprecedented moment - at least I'd have to go back quite a ways to find a similar time.

Now we are both reasonable, articulate, well-traveled people - I've read The World is Flat - why are we seeing this from such opposite viewpoints?

You think this is a confidence crisis ("This is a credit crisis. It’s all about confidence. What you can’t see is how bank A will no longer lend to good company B or mortgage company C. Because no one is sure the other guy’s assets and collateral are worth anything, which is why the government needs to come in and put a floor under them. Otherwise, the system will be choked of credit, like a body being choked of oxygen and turning blue." Rescue to the Rescue) and I agree.

What we disagree on is whether this liquidity crisis and loss of confidence is a good or bad thing. You are assuming a loss of confidence is a bad thing. I think this loss of confidence is a good thing because you can't fix a problem until you recognize that you have a problem. This loss of confidence is the first step in recognizing that "Houston, we have a problem."

I have no particular desire to see the "fat cats" of Wall Street turn blue. But I do have a desire to see the Main Street economy put on the right footing. The question thinking people should be asking is "Where did the Federal Reserve get the $85 billion for the last bailout?" and "Where are they planning to get the $700 billion for this bailout?" According to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors they had $905.7 billion in assets as of September 3, 2008. By the end of the month it had increased by $308.2 billion dollars. That's an increase of 34% in less than a month! Where did that capital come from if there is a liquidity crisis and the capital market is frozen? Even if there was no liquidity crisis, that is more than the market capitalization of all but the largest Fortune 500 company. How could it be raised in only 1 month?

Obviously, as you and I know, they don't raise it by capital campaigns, as do other companies. They create it from nothing. Every dollar they create is debt - debt on which US taxpayers will have to pay interest. At least this is what Mr. Eccles of the Federal Reserve told Congressman Wright Patman according to the Congressional Record, 77th Congress, House Committee on Banking and Currency, September 24, 1941, page 1338, 1342. There are many other Federal Reserve publications, e.g. "Two Faces of Debt" or "Modern Money Mechanics," one could cite which say similar things.

This isn't just theory. The $308 billion dollars the Federal Reserve created out of nothing last month will cause real harm to our economy. It provides the capital on which all these derivatives that everyone is talking about are based. The Federal Reserve, with their ability to create dollars out of nothing through the creation of debt, created the excess funds that made the housing bubble possible in the first place.

According to the Bank for International Settlements, the estimated face value of derivatives floating around the world is 1.144 Quadrillion dollars (BIS Newsletter Released June 8 Accessed Oct 2, 2008 - I added the $548 Trillion notational value of listed derivatives to the $596 Trillion OTC as of Dec 2007 ). The combined GDP of the world's economies is just under $70 Trillion. With all that extra money swirling around, no wonder property values were rising so fast.

America is high on Federal Reserve Notes. Allowing the Federal Reserve to inject $700 billion of new debt into our economy to prevent pain from the collapse of the housing bubble is like giving massive doses of cocaine to a crack addict to prevent withdrawal symptoms. Federal Reserve Notes are not the solution to the problem; they are not oxygen to a choking patient. Federal Reserve Notes themselves are the problem. They are like cocaine to a crack addict. To fix the problem we need to remove them from the economy just as one would remove cocaine from the addict.

Yes, it is and will be painful. No doubt about it. I'll suffer from the losses like everyone else. But I'd rather be "addiction free" than high on the Federal Reserve's notes - and so would all the other thinking, liberty-loving Americans who have been pouring their letters and calls into Washington.

The real leaders in the House were the members of both sides of the isle who, despite intense arm twisting from party leadership, voted in the best interests of main street and just said, "NO!"

I think they deserve a standing ovation.

Sincerely,
Peter Allison
Houston, TX

Revised Oct 2, 2008

King Jesus

2008-05-03T12:43:00.010-05:00

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Matthew 28:18 (KJV)

Jesus answered him, "You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin." John 19:11 (ESV)

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. Psalm 2:2-3 (KJV)

We often sing about Christ being the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Do we think as often about the institutions and agents through which he rules: the family, the church, and the state or civil magistrate?

The civil magistrate is God's servant, ordained by God to reward those that do well and to carry out God's vengeance on those that do evil (magistrate comes from the Latin meaning greater servant). [Romans 13:1-7]

The pastor is God's Shepherd ordained to teach and to feed Christ's flock (pastor is Latin for shepherd which itself comes from the Latin word to "feed") . The great commission given to the church is to go through out the world teaching people all that the Lord has commanded and baptizing them into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Parents are also God's servants, ordained to teach the next generation the fear of the Lord. Each of these three institutions are strategic strongholds in the establishment of Christ's kingdom and the propagation of the gospel, and each, as a consequence, are subject to Satan's most desperate attacks.

The authority of parents to train their children in the fear and admonition of Lord is the means by which the gospel is propagated from generation to generation. If Satan can nullify the authority of parents to train their children it will destroy the family as effectively as Pharaoh's murder of the male infants in Israel.

If Satan can induce the nations of the earth to blunt and pervert the civil magistrate so that those who do well are punished and those that do evil are rewarded, he will lead many people into sin as effectively as King Ahab led Israel into idolatry.

If Satan can stop the church from preaching the gospel in its entirety and constrain her to preach it only as it applies to some areas, he will corrupt the pure milk of the word as surely as the Pharisees perverted scripture and thereby kept many out of the kingdom of heaven.

Indeed this is exactly what we do see when we look all around us. The church is prohibited from applying scripture to every area of life. She is told she can preach all she wants about Christ, just don't apply His word to the civil magistrate. In 1992 The Church at Pierce Creek in Binghamton, NY lost its tax exempt status for applying the scriptural qualifications for civil rulers to the presidential candidates (see When A King Speaks Of God; When God Speaks To A King: Faith, Politics, Tax Exempt Status, And The Constitution In The Clinton Administration).

The attack on the family is even more fierce.

In May 1949, the Bureau of Educational Research for Ohio State University published a test for children in grades 4 to 7 titled The Wishing Well. It contained statements in the form of wishes. The students were to check the ones that applied to them. This test contained wishes such as:

I wish I did not feel so different from my parents.
I wish I knew how you can believe that God is always right and at the same time believe that you should think for yourself.

A few months earlier the United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization, often referred to by its initials as UNESCO, published a series of booklets titled, Towards World Understanding, in which we read, "Kindergarten has a significant part to play in the child's education … not only can it correct many of the errors of home training, it can prepare the child for membership in the world society."

A few years earlier in 1946 the director of the World Health Organization (Brock Chisholm) published an article in which he said that "For many generations we have bowed our necks to the yoke of the conviction of sin. We have swallowed all manner of poisonous certainties fed us by our parents, our Sunday and day school teachers ... our priests ... and others with a vested interest in controlling us. " He went on to say that one of the objectives of the new education was the eradication of the concept of right and wrong as the basis for training children. (The Reestablishment of the Peacetime Society in Psychiatry, Vol. 9, No. 1, Feb 1946)

This man conspired against the Lord's Anointed. All the people who follow in his footsteps (they seem to congregate at places like the World Health Organization, the various child protective agencies, and the local government school systems) are also among those in Psalm 2 who are attacking the Messianic reign of King Jesus and seeking overthrow the Kingdom of God.

Today Christian parents are the point of attack by those who are fighting against King Jesus. These conspirators (in the words of Psalm 2) realize the supreme importance of who controls the training of the next generation. In the words of the same author:

The most important thing in the world of today is the bringing up of children.

On that point Dr. Chisholm and I agree. Herein lies the incredible irony of feminism which on one hand claims that intelligent woman can't reach their full potential by a life spent bearing and raising children and yet at the same time honors those who direct the rearing of other peoples' children - especially parents who are teaching their children Moses' version of history and not Jeroboam's (i.e. these golden calves delivered you from Eygpt).

So when you see and hear stories like the Utube video above or the attempts to outlaw homeschooling and Biblical spanking in California, just remember the rest of the story:

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. 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, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. (Psalm 2:4-12)

Who do we fear more? The wrath and sore displease of the CPS or that of the Almighty God and King of Kings?

In whose hands are we truly safe? The hand of the One who has overcome the world (John 16:33) and from whose palm no one can snatch us, or the hands of those who will be smashed in pieces like pottery before an iron bar?

At Last, Some Facts!

2008-04-22T22:57:00.006-05:00

We hear many opinions about media bias or lack thereof, but often see precious little data to prove anything one way or the other. Here is an interesting commentary based on a very large sample.

(Utube Link)

Roger Williams - Hero of Religious Liberty? Or...

2008-02-02T22:16:00.002-06:00

For many, Roger Williams is regarded as the hero of religious freedom resulting in frequent articles that portray him as an exemplary leader. After reading yet one more such article by an articulate young homeschool alumna, I was moved to respond. In my opinion, far from being the father of religious liberty, Roger Williams was the spiritual father of pluralism in America– the idea that God does not speak authoritatively in the civil arena. He denied that God’s law should be the basis of our civil order. In so doing, he undermined objective truth (despite claiming to support it) because one can’t argue for an objective truth without an objective standard of right and wrong. The only absolute standard of truth (and hence right and wrong) is God’s law. Once God’s Word is discarded as the objective basis of civil law, we are left with only man’s ideas –natural law (in the French enlightenment sense), diversity, equality, majority opinion, or some other manmade standard.

Roger Williams wasn’t arguing simply for the right of Christians to differ; they already had that. Neither was he arguing that the church and state should be separate institutions; they already were. He was arguing against the authority and responsibility of the civil magistrate to enforce the law of God in society.

Today we are reaping the mature fruit of Roger William’s ideas when the Supreme Court strikes down sodomy laws, restricts states ability to outlaw abortion, or refuses to allow prayer at official functions. A nation either upholds God’s law or it upholds man’s law. There is no middle ground. It is not possible to separate the State from religion. It will always be religious. It will always enforce some standard of law. The question is: whose law will it uphold, God’s law or man’s law? Let me illustrate this from Roger Williams himself.

Roger Williams wrote a private letter to Pastor John Cotton asking for his opinion on a matter respecting freedom of conscience. When Mr. Cotton answered his questions in a private reply, Mr. Williams published Cotton’s response along with a counter-response attacking him as a man of blood. In the preface to his book, The Bloody Tenant Washed White In The Blood Of The Lamb, Mr. Cotton wonders how this is consistent with his position. If his private letter was full of errors, why punish him by publishing it along with a scathing attack? Doesn’t he [Cotton] have liberty of conscience to believe as he sees fit? Also, why publish something so unedifying? On the other hand if his letter was true, why attack him as a man of blood? Roger Williams had as little toleration for those who disagreed with him as the Puritans had for his erroneous ideas. Isn’t this the same sort of intolerance masquerading as tolerance that we see today?

Mr. Williams was not a consistent theologian or even an exemplary person.
· He fled England in 1630 because be could not tolerate the Anglican practice of open communion.
· He was offered a pastorate in Boston by the Puritans, which he turned down because he could not tolerate their non-separatist congregationalism.
· He was critical of the Plymouth church for not being separatist enough.
· He returned to England and was critical of the Anglican Church for being too lenient.
· He returned to Salem where he accepted a pastorate. From his pulpit be began attacking the validity of the King’s land patents. He accused the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay authorities of essentially stealing the land from the Indians.
· He attacked the Anglican church for not being a true church
· He refused to take an oath, along with all the other residents of Massachusetts, to defend the land against enemies because that was an act of worship and would involve him in worship with unregenerate people. He essentially was denying that the civil magistrate was God’s servant, ordained to execute God’s vengeance on those that do evil (defined as breaking the law of God) and possessing the power to administer judicially binding oaths.
· He taught that regenerate and unregenerate people should not pray together – including spouses and children.
· He believed there should, therefore, be no prayer of thanks before meals.
· He nearly split the church with these ideas, committing the sin of schism. The church was saved when he went on to claim that Massachusetts’s churches (of which he was a part) were not true churches, causing people to leave him.
· He fled the state, with a few disciples, to avoid deportation to England by Massachusetts’s authorities. There he was joined by the renegade antinomian, Mrs. Hutchinson.
· From Rhode Island he reversed his position on infant baptism rejecting pædo-baptism.
· He had all his followers re-baptized and then concluded that this baptism was not valid and they would have to wait for another apostolic power.
· He withdrew from the church and decided that he could only take communion with his wife. Then he reversed himself again, deciding that it was not possible for the church to achieve purity in this life and renouncing his extreme separatism.
· He couldn’t agree with anyone, moving from England to Boston, to Salem, to Plymouth, to England, back to Salem, and then to Rhode Island within a space of 6 years.

A better analogy for this man might be Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. They both rejected lawful authority, led gullible disciples into exile, changed their beliefs with the weather, and rejected the historic faith practiced by the church universal. I would note that this is very different from the reformers who corrected serious errors in the church by going back to the historic faith, not inventing new ideas. From the judicial safety of Rhode Island he wrote of Massachusetts, “My end is to discover and proclaim the dying and horrible guilt of the bloody doctrine, one of the most seditious, destructive, blasphemous, and bloodiest in any or all the nations of the world…” You would think he was writing about the Spanish Inquisition drawing and quartering dissidents instead of Governor Winthrop and his fellow pilgrims who had merely excommunicated him for heresy and sought to deport him to England.

His book, the Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, spells out in detail his rejection of God’s law as the civil law of the land. It was directly answered at the time by John Cotton and by several church councils. (See the Cambridge Synod of 1640) Thankfully, for nearly 150 years, most Christians in America rejected his ideas. States required all officers, from Notary Publics to legislators, to take religious test oaths affirming the deity of Jesus Christ as the second person of the Godhead, and the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the Word of God. It wasn’t until the constitution was written that religious test oaths were removed from America.

One of the Anti-Federalists from Connecticut using the pseudo-name David, wrote, as his state was about to imitate Rhode Island by adopting the US Constitution:

“We have now seen what have been the principles generally adopted by mankind and to what degree they have been adopted in our own state. Before we decide in favor of our practice, let us see what has been the success of those who have made no public provision for religion. Unluckily, we only have to consult our next neighbors. Taught from their infancy to ridicule our formality as the effect of hypocrisy, they have no principle of restraint but laws of their own making; and from such laws may heaven defend us. If this is the success that attends leaving religion to shift wholly for itself, we shall be at no loss to determine, that it is not more difficult to build an elegant house without tools to work with than it is to establish a durable government without the public protection of religion. What the system is which is most proper for our
circumstances will not take long to determine. It must be that which has adopted
the purest moral principles, and which is interwoven in the laws and constitution of our country, and upon which are founded the habits of our people. Upon this foundation we have established a government of influence and opinion, and therefore secured by the affections of the people; and when this foundation is removed, a government of mere force must arise.”

Letter by David in the Complete Anti-Federalist.

In American jurisprudence, the 10 commandments were seen as the basis for all civil law. In many cases the statutes directly quoted or cited scripture as part of the law. Although the laws varied a little from state to state, egregious violations of all the commandments (except the 4th and 10th) were capital crimes. Gradually the capital sentence was dropped from some of the commandments and then some of the commandments themselves were dropped from our civil laws. The usual pattern has been to cease prosecuting the violation of the law and then after years of disuse, to remove it. This pattern continues to this day. Most recently states have repealed all laws regarding the 4th commandment. Violations of laws regarding the 7th commandment are rarely prosecuted and in many cases have been repealed. About all we really have left today are laws respecting the 6th and 8th commandments- except that it’s OK to murder people if they are not yet born! Such is the legacy of rejecting God’s law as the civil law of the land.

So Mr. Farah Doesn't Like Ron Paul

2008-01-18T23:28:00.001-06:00

Seems Mr. Farah has lost any respect he might have had for Ron Paul because the Gentleman From Texas (as they refer to each other on the floor) adds earmarks for pork spending to bills that he then votes against, knowing that enough other congressman will vote for it to ensure its passing into law. This, according to Mr. Farah, is immoral politics at its worst and reduces Congressman Ron Paul to being no less guilty of picking taxpayer pockets than the rest of the beltway bandits.

Well, all I can say is, "I wish every congressman would follow Ron Paul's terrible example." I think it would end the unconstitutional practice of earmarks. Don't you?

Seems to me that Ron Paul has once again found an extremely clever solution to a very difficult problem: how to return the fruit of excessive taxation to its rightful owners without voting for unconstitutional government spending. My hat's off to you, Doctor. Bravo!

The day that there are insufficient votes to pass unconstitutional earmarks is the day there will be enough votes to repeal unconstitutional taxes and fiat money.

HSLDA and Mike Huckabee

2007-12-20T19:24:00.003-06:00

For over a generation HSLDA has been a standard bearer in the Christian homeschool community, shining a beacon of hope and encouragement to many families seeking to honor the Lord in the education of their children. They have worked tirelessly and very successfully in the federal and state legistatures and judicatories to remove legal impediments to homeschooling.

However, their leadership with respect to the executive branch has been less helpful and even downright dissapointing. I was disappointed when they so strongly supported President Bush in the 2004 election instead of the much more qualified Michael Perouka. The disasterous presidency of George Bush in waging an unbiblical (unjust) war, promoting and signing secret unconstitutional laws in the name of preserving the very constitution he's destroying, and in significantly increasing the already astronomical debt has justified that concern and disappointment. According to Jesus, "...wisdom is justified of all her children." (Luke 7:35)

Recently their PAC endorsed Huckabee on the pragmatic grounds that he is the only candidate that can beat Clinton. However Huckabee has a number of troubling deficiencies in his positions and record as Governor.

As governor, he worked to get a convicted rapist freed 25 years early. When the rapist continued to do what rapists do, he denied meeting with the state parole board in executive session contrary to state law. His denial is contradicted by 4 board members: Suttlar, Chastain, Pondexter on record and an additional member off record. See Dumond case revisited: A reminder of Huckabee's role in his freedom or The Complete Huckabee-Drumond Files or Documents Reveal Huckabee's Role in Serial Rapist's Release
As governor he presided over tax increases that exceeded all his tax decreases to the tune of $500MM according a recent New York Times article earning him a lifetime grade of D from the free market CATO institute.
As governor he criticized an Arkansas bill (Senate Bill 206) which would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote and forced state agencies to report suspected cases of people living in the country illegally as being un-Christian, un-American, irresponsible and anti-life.
Now he has received the endorsement of the NEA by a state board who appreciated his "strong views on public education."
He believes every child regardless of their parents immigration status should receive a government education paid for by you and me.

These are not the sorts of positions that comport with either a constitutional or biblical understanding of civil government. The Club for Growth sums it up well in their overall assement of Huckabee saying,

Governor Huckabee’s record on pro-growth, free-market policies is a mixed bag, with pro-growth positions on trade and tort reform, mixed positions on school choice, political speech, and entitlement reform, and profoundly anti-growth positions on taxes, spending, and government regulation.

The best spin one could put on this mixed bag is that in trying to be all things to all people he has lost his bearings and ceased to be a man of principle and integrity. This is not the character of a man I would like to see in the White House. How else could one claim to be a friend of homeschooling and a friend of the NEA? The NEA attempted to shutdown homeschooling nationwide in 1994 by forcing all teachers (including parents ) to be certified. Thankfully HSLDA was instrumental in getting those provisions of HR6 removed.

He doesn't even believe in the Genesis account of God creating the world in 6 days some 6000 years ago. If he wasn't an ordained gospel minister, I might not mention this. But his lack of belief undermines the gospel of which he claims to be a minister. If one doesn't accept a relatively young age for the earth, there are two choices and neither of them good. If he believes there were long ages before Adam, then he has death before the fall. This undermines the integrity of the gospel message that death is the result of sin. If he believes there were long ages after Adam then he undermines the integrity of the Genesis account of history. If you tell me I can't trust the Bible to be 100% accurate in Genesis, how do you expect me to believe that the NT message of Christ's death and resurrection is 100% accurate?

Some might ask, "Wouldn't you rather have him over Clinton?" Well, I'm no fan of Hillary; but if I were to compare 12 years under the Bushes to the 8 years under Bill Clinton, I'd take Bill. Why? Because Christians realized they had a man in the house they needed to keep an eye on and they did. It was under Clinton's watch that republicans finally regained control of the house after 40 consecutive years under Democratic control. Clinton did a number of bad things; many people associated with him mysteriously die. But the cumulative damage he did to America's economy and national sovereignty pale compared with the damage done by the Bush team.

Thus the following open letter to HSLDA:

December 20, 2007

Michael Smith
President, Home School Legal Defense
One Patrick Henry Circle
Purcellville, VA 20132

Dear Mr. Smith:

As a long time member of HSLDA and former CAP volunteer who was part of the defeat of HR6, I was very disappointed to receive the HSLDA PAC endorsement of Mike Huckabee for President. I grant he is a better candidate than some. But as one who has lobbied senators regarding the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and authored a homeschooling polemic from the field of money, it is clear to me that of all the candidates, Ron Paul has both the best understanding of the issues facing our nation and the best solutions to those issues.

While Governor Huckabee appointed a home-schooling father to the Arkansas Board of Education, he also signed legislation that lowered the compulsory age from 6 to 5, as well as HB 1724, a bill which even HSLDA opposed (Court Report V15N3). While his supporters argue that signing the bill was necessary to prevent a worse bill from passing, I disagree. He could have vetoed it or let it become law without signing it. His signature on that bill demonstrates an unwillingness to stand on principles or an inability to stand up to those who don't. Even more troubling, the NEA, an organization inimical to homeschooling, has endorsed Governor Huckabee. Dr. Paul, on the other hand, wants to dismantle the federal Department of Education. He will never get an NEA endorsement because that desire is not an empty campaign promise. He consistently votes in accordance with his principles and has never voted for a tax hike. Such unwavering integrity has earned the respect of even those colleagues who disagree with him.

It's encouraging to know that Governor Huckabee is opposed to the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child, but I prefer Dr. Paul's constitutional stance rejecting all UN resolutions and getting us out of the UN. And while Governor Huckabee believes that the Fair Tax would be better for homeschooling families in comparison to our current tax system, Dr. Paul's plan to abolish the IRS and repeal the fraudulently ratified 16th amendment would do even more to decrease our tax burden.

As a graduate of the Naval Academy, a former submarine officer, and student of military ethics, I appreciate Dr. Paul's clear understanding of just war and his willingness to apply this Biblical doctrine to our foreign policy. The depth of his thinking in this area stands in sharp contrast to Mr. Huckabee’s inability to give a constitutionally correct answer when asked about initiation of war during a recent debate. While Dr. Paul may not wear his Christian faith on his sleeve, I think many of his positions are far more Biblical than Mr. Huckabee's. In addition, Dr. Paul's family represents the fruit of a godly man.

Pragmatic support of a candidate with significant deficiencies because he is the best “electable” candidate is not the type of thinking that threw off British tyranny and won our independence. "Give me liberty or give me death" type of thinking rallied Americans to the cause of freedom. As Patrick Henry College’s namesake said, “It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentleman may cry peace, peace – but there is no peace. The war has actually begun. ... Is life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery [aka The Patriot Act]?”[1]
But far from being unelectable, Ron Paul is a top tier candidate. He recently raised more actual money in one day than any other primary candidate in US history, he has more grass roots support than any other candidate (what other candidate can raise $6MM in one day from small individual donations), he has motivated more unregistered citizens to register than any other candidate, he has more meet-up groups than any other candidate, and has such strong support that he places on political polls in which he is not even listed. Ron Paul is uniting a divided country.

I have followed Ron Paul's voting record since his first Congressional term in the mid 1970's. His consistent principled voting won my admiration then; his unwavering commitment to those same principles 30 years later has only increased my enthusiastic support, and made him the first political candidate to whom I have ever donated. Dr. Paul is a upright man who fears God, hates covetousness (big government), and speaks the truth regardless of what the polls might be saying. I will vote for Dr. Ron Paul for President of the United States knowing this is one man I can depend on to do after the election exactly what he promised before the election.

I ask the HSLDA PAC to reconsider their endorsement in favor of Dr. Ron Paul.

Thank you for your time.
For Christ’s Crown & Covenant,

Peter S. Allison

[1] Henry Wirt, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence, and Speeches, Vol. 1. , [Charles Scribner & Sons, 1891], p 266.

The Cambridge Synod on the Civil Magistrate's Duty to Enforce the First Table

2006-07-16T22:59:00.002-05:00

At Last! The full Disputation translated from the English of then to the English of now...

The Results of the Disputations of the Synod or Assembly

at Cambridge, New-England

Regarding The Power of the Civil Magistrate in Matters of the First Table

On July 1, 1646 a Synod met at Cambridge, Massachusetts to discuss the question:

Does the Civil Magistrate have power to
1. Command or forbid things respecting the outward man in matters of religion, or the first table, which are clearly commanded and forbidden in the word, and to
2. Inflict suitable punishments according to the nature of the transgression against the same [the first table transgressions], and all this with reference to godly peace?

Their answer and the arguments behind it are found here.

Lilliputians on Atheist Civil Magistrates

2006-07-06T22:45:00.001-05:00

Lemuel Gulliver on the Lilliputian views regarding the civil magistrate:

In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority under which he acts. [Swift, 1726]

It's pretty hard to disagree with those Lilliputians.

An Honest Bank

2006-03-09T05:42:00.001-06:00

Amidst the usual news of ongoing torture in communist China ( Tiananmen dissident Yu Dongyue was recently released from prison physically scarred and suffering from a complete mental breakdown) and ominous credible comparisons of the EU commission to the Soviet Politburo (Former Soviet Dissident Warns For EU Dictatorship by Paul Belien, The Brussels Journal Tuesday, February28, 2006) I came across some very encouraging news, an honest bank.

Prosper.com, a San Francisco start-up began operations recently combining e-bay auctions and bank lending to bring borrowers and lenders together with minimal risk.

It's honest because the act of loaning does not create money resulting in payments being received for which no work was performed or no capital invested.

It will be interesting to see how long this challenge to the financial monopoly is allowed to exist and how big it becomes. But while it lasts, if one needs to become a servant, at least one can enslave himself to an honest master.

Taxes Not Needed For Revenue!

2006-02-05T21:36:00.001-06:00

(Full article published in 1946 can be downloaded from above link)

According to Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the federal government no longer needs to tax its citizens in order to generate revenue. At least that is what he told the American Bar Association during the last year of WWII.
And you thought the Federal Government taxed us in order to raise the funds necessary to conduct the business of government.
Silly you?
Well, hardly. That is, after all, not an illogical thought.
But as unbelievable as it may sound, the government has apparently not had to tax the citizens for over 70 years. This begs the question, if they don’t need our money to operate the government, why do they go through the hassle and trouble of collecting billions of dollars from millions of citizens who really could use the money for their families? Mr. Ruml answers this question, telling the lawyers of his day:

The necessity for a government to tax in order to maintain both its independence and its solvency is true for state and local governments, but it is not true for a national government. Two changes of the greatest consequence have occurred in the last twenty-five years which have substantially altered the position of the national state with respect to the financing of its current requirements. The first of these changes is the gaining o f vast new experience in the management o f central banks. The second change is the elimination, for domestic purposes, of the convertibility of the currency into gold.
The United States is a national state which has a central banking system, the Federal Reserve System, and whose currency, for domestic purposes, is not convertible into any commodity. It follows that our Federal Government has final freedom from the money market in meeting its financial requirements.

He goes on to explain the real purpose of taxation. In so doing he removes all doubt about the existence of a free market economy in these United States.

He says:
What Taxes Are Really For
Federal taxes can be made to serve four principal purposes of a social and economic character. These purposes are:

1. As an instrument of fiscal policy to help stabilize the purchasing power of the dollar;
2. To express public policy in the distribution of wealth and of income, as in the case of the progressive income and estate taxes;
3. To express public policy in subsidizing or in penalizing various industries and economic groups;
4. To isolate and assess directly the costs of certain national benefits, such as highways and social security.

As we knew all along, the real purpose of taxation is to manipulate our economy to discourage productive labor by taking money from those who have earned it and giving it to those who won't work.
This doesn't sound too far removed from God's pomises in Deuteronomy 28.

Deu 28:15 But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee:
Deu 28:31 Thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof: thine ass shall be violently taken away from before thy face, and shall not be restored to thee: thy sheep shall be given unto thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue them.
Deu 28:33 The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway:

Rutherford Proven Right

2006-01-03T23:06:00.001-06:00

(External pdf file from Lt Klingerschmitt can be downloaded from above link)

Chaplain Klingenschmitt's recent battles with the Navy over not being allowed to pray "in Jesus Name" are proving that pluralism is not really about tolerating other relgions. It's more accurately characterized as nothing less than a direct attack on Christ and his disciples.

How right Rutherford was when he noted: "man should remember, there is a Christian external peace, which, in an ordinary providence, can not be kept where there be divers religions, and sundry ways of worshipping Christ."

This seems downright harsh to us today. What, we exclaim! Isn't America proof that this is not so? Well, I would point to our country as proof that it is so. During the first 185 or so years of our country's existence, the culture was dominated by Christian thought. I realize that over those years many political and religious leaders may not have been Christian, but they had to act like Christians if they wanted to stay in power. Even today, despite the fraility of the American church, no President has yet dared to swear their oath of office on anything other than the Word of God -although that day is probably not far away. It is only in the last two generations that our cultural framework has become explicitly non-Christian. True to Rutherford's words, it is in this time frame that we have seen the concurrent rise of "culture wars" over Christianity.

This is no surprise. Christ claims to be the Only Way, not just a way to the Father. No man comes to the Father except through him. That is saying there is no life outside of Christ. That is saying that every other religion is wrong.

Given Rutherford's position, it should be no surprise that the Westminster Divines, of whom Rutherford was one , considered tolerating a false religion to be a greivous sin for a civil magistrate.

According to the Westminster Larger Catechism, one of the sins forbidden in the 2nd Commandment is "tolerating a false religion".

Question 109: What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment?

Answer: The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and anywise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature: Whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense: Whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God has appointed.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I should add that since not all people exercise the same authority, the culpability in tolerating a false religion does depend on one's position.

Lt. Klingenschmitt, an episcopal chaplain in the US Navy, merely wants to pray as scripture commands him to pray, In Jesus Name. He is quite willing to allow others to pray to their heathen gods in place of his prayer, as long as he has a turn to pray to the true God. As much as I admire Lt. Klingenschmitt, such a notion would have be considered a transgression of the 2nd commandment. This is to consider it acceptable for people to incur God's wrath on themselves. While we may not be in a position to stop other people from so doing, we should never be on record as considering it acceptable for them to do so. We wouldn't stand idly by, if we could do otherwise, while someone broke the 6th Commandment against their own body. Why would we think and act any differently in regard to the 1st and 2nd Commandments?

The Church of Jesus Christ has to start believing their King is what he says he is, King above all other kings and Lord above all other lords. All men born of Adam are responsible to worship the Jehovah and sin when they fail to do so. There is no true law by which to regulate society apart from God's law.

Pluralism? Not for Samuel Rutherford

2005-12-27T00:19:00.002-06:00

Samuel Rutherford Refutes Roger Williams Regarding Toleration, Sectarianism and Peace

(The original spelling, from the 1649 edition of Rutherford's Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, has been retained.)

Mr. Roger Williams writes in his book, The Bloody Tenet:

Whether peace of civill societies be sure, where there is toleration of all Religions, and what peace Christians can have in Toleration.

Civill peace is pax civitatis, the peace of the citie, Jer.29.7. Pray for the peace of the Citie, which [or so that the ] peace of the citie or citizens so compacted in a civill way of union, may be intire, unbroken, and safe. Notwithstanding [the] many thousands of Gods people, the Jewes, [who] were there in bondage, and would neither be constrained to the worship of the City of Babell, nor restrained from so much of the worship of the true God, as they could practise, as is plain in Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who would rather suffer, then desist from true worship, or practice false: So the Amoricans and wildest Papists keep the peace of their Townes and Cities safe and distinct, where there is no spirituall and heavenly peace. (Bloody Tenet, cap. 6. p.24,25.)

Rutherford replies, answering his charge that the Americans and papists have opressive governments that lack true peace because they do not tolerate other faiths.

[Begin Quote]
Peace is commanded in the new Testament. [But] no word of toleration of divers Religions, which are the Seminaries of discords between the seed of the woman and the Serpents seed, in all the New Testament, is to be found by precept, promise, or practice, nor any ground of repealing judicial Lawes for punishing seducing teachers.

Answer. All this is to prove that there may be no breach of Citie peace, or civil peace, where there are multitudes of sundry Religions. But 1. the man should remember, there is a Christian externall peace, which in an ordinarie providence can not be kept, where there be divers Religions, and sundry waies of worshipping Christ, & we beleeve our Saviour intendeth so much, Mat.10:34. Thinke not that I am come to send peace on earth, I came not to send peace, but the sword. v.35. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother. Luke 21.16. And ye shall be betrayed both by your parents, brethren, kinsfolks, and friends, and some of you they shall cause to be put to death.

And what is the quarrell, but divers Religions and waies of worship about Christ. So Paul exhorteth to Christian peace, Ephes.4:3. Indeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, not because of contrary Religions, and many Sectaries called the holy partie that are to bee tolerated in meeknesse and mutuall forbearance: But v.5. Because there is but one Lord, one faith, one baptisme, and but one Religion whether Presbyteriall or Independent, and since the Apostles and Christ in the New Testament so often recommend peace, and never once insinuate forbearance in diversitie of Religion, and all the Apostles and Apostolike Church had but one Religion, toleration of many Religions not being a part of the New Testament liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, as is the libertie from Ceremonies, and righteousness by the Law, that the foolish Galathians affected, Gal.5.1,2, We conclude there is a Law against Toleration of many Religions, not any repealing of that Law in the New Testament, but divers Religions expressely forbidden as contrary to peace, and foretold to fall out as sad judgements, Mat.10.35. Mat.24.24. Luke 21.14,15,16,17,18. I Tim.4.1,2,3,4. 2 Tim.3.5,6,7,8. 2 Joh.10.

Our Adversaries are obliged to give us precept, promise, or godly practice, why a moral sin forbidden and severely punished in the Old Testament, should yet remain a moral sin in the New Testament, and yet not be punishable by men or churches. Did not Solomons toleration of the Idolatrous worship, I Kings 11, provoke the Lord to anger? How can one then maintain that his wives consciences' should not have been compelled to leave off the worshipping of the Gods of the Moabites and Ammonites by appealing to Rom. 14.19? Let us follow after the thing that makes for peace (saith Paul) but toleration of many Religions is contrary to peace, if one of them be the only true way, the rest are all false ways. The mixture of the two contrary seeds, the seed of the Serpent, and the seed of the woman must be against peace; and Paul exhorting to union and Christian peace, thinks many Religions, many Sects and opinions tolerated, 1 Cor.1.10. to be just contrary to peace. Now I beseech you brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that here be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joyned together in the same minde, and in the same judgement.

Hence he seriously exhorts from Schismes and Sects, whereas upon supposition of divers Sects, all being godly, we should have some charitable precepts commanding men of divers Religions to bear with one another. But where is that written? and if they dwell together peaceably, why but they may marry together, Achab then in marrying the King of the Zidonians daughter, failed not, and he married her wicked Religion. Clotildis the daughter of Clodoveus married Almaricus the Arrian, King of the Wisigots, the Maid being educated in the sound faith, but Procopius, l. 1. Bell. Gothorum said, there was never peace between them.

As for Mr. Williams Chaldean and Heathenish or American peace, we leave it to himself; the peace the people of God was to pray for, Jer.29. was onely outward prosperity, freedome from the Sword of Egypt, and from other Nations, that the captive Church might also partake of that peace. But I hope Jeremiah bade not the people of God in Judea, under the Babylonish captivity, follow an Heathenish peace, with toleration of divers Religions, or yet a Religious peace, or a Church peace, that standeth well with many Religions. Actually they [the Jews] are to denounce wrath against the Chaldee Religion, Jer.10.11. and would he have Christians all keeping such an Heathenish unity and peace, as Babylonians and Americans have, and in the mean time tolerate all Religions? Christians who have one God, and one faith, and one hope are to follow more then a Civill and Heathenish peace.

Libertines give us heathenish, not Christians peace under many Religions. It is therefore in vaine for Libertines to tell us, that Abraham lived long amongst the Canaanites, who were contrary to him in Religion, Gen.13. and Isaac with them, Gen.26. and Jacob twenty years with Laban an Idolater, Gen.31. Israel in Egypt 430 years, in Babylon 70. Israel under the Romans with Herodians, Pharisees. What of all these? the godly Rulers and Church, sometimes Pilgrims, sometimes servants, sometimes captives, never having the Sword nor power of it as Magistrates to take order with false Teachers, did peaceably dwell with them, ergo, godly Magistrates armed with the Sword, must now suffer the Sheep of Christ, to be worried and preyed upon by Wolves? this consequence is nothing, this is a facto ad jus, and to argue from the controverted practice of Heathen.
Excerpted from: A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience by Samuel Rutherford, pp. 331-334