A Prayer for Independence Day

Sovereign God, You created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is in them in six days.

You created Man in Your Image and cast him out of the Garden when he sinned.

When every thought of man was only evil all of the time, You destroyed the Earth with water.

You delivered Your people from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh.

You brought them through the Sea on dry ground.

When Your people turned away from You, You sent them prophets to warn them.

When they stoned Your holy messengers, You sent the Babylonians to punish Your people for their idolatry and injustice.

When the enemies of Your people destroyed their cities and their land, You preserved the words of your holy prophets.

You sent Your Son to redeem all those who would believe in Him and repent of their sins.

You called apostles and holy prophets to write the words of Your Son Jesus and the words of the New Covenant with Your Children.

When the enemies of God again killed the holy prophets and apostles, the Church grew like wildfire.

When they killed those who translated Your Holy Bible into English, You preserved and multiplied their work and opened the eyes of the people.

The Pilgrims escaped persecution to find a better land and were preserved by Your mighty hand.

You guided them to a great land and made them very prosperous and gave them liberty.

You defeated the armies of the British when they harassed us with swarms of officers. You blessed us with the means of throwing off their oppressive yoke.

When we mistreated the Negroes of our land, you punished us with a bloody war and took away many of our freedoms.

When we again turned further away from You, You allowed more of our freedoms to be taken away.

We have murdered babies, glorified detestable behaviors, stolen from one another, and forgot the words of the Holy Bible which You gave us.

You punished us with more wars by giving us greedy, corrupt and foolish leaders.

We have prayed for the economy in vain.  We have prayed for peace in vain.  Our soldiers die in vain.

You will not hear us because we cherish sin in our hearts and have no regard for Your law.

Dear Lord, please help us to humble ourselves so that we will turn from our wicked ways,

And You will hear Us from Heaven, forgive our sins and heal our land.

Please help us to listen when You speak to us!

America's Abortion Atrocity, Another Decade of Death

Since 1973 America has 'legally' been murdering millions of its innocent, pre-born citizens in the name of 'women's reproductive rights.' The video embedded below, posted on Twitter this morning by FoundationLife.net, provides some of the latest facts and figures relating to the frequency of abortion in the United States.

 

 

FoundationLife.net has more gruesome statistics on its website, abort73.com

Abortion is evil. God will judge America for its slaughter of innocents on the idolatrous altar dedicated to the Satanic god of pleasure and convenience.

I have come to the conclusion that America is an increasingly corrupt and evil nation because it allows abortion, embraces homosexuality, and has rejected prayer, the Judeo-Christian Bible, and the acknowledgement of God in the classroom and increasingly in many other corners of our culture. We are doomed unless we repent and turn from the evil that we've allowed to fester, form, and spread...

America needs Him.

Hell, the Bottomless Pit, and the Lake of Fire

In the New Testament book of Luke, chapter 16 we read a famous story first told by Jesus to his disciples about a rich man. According to tradition this man’s name was Dives (Webster’s New World College Dictionary, p. 419).  This man lived very well every day, dressed well and ate well.  One day he died and he lifted up his eyes in hell, tormented by flames.  He even asked for a drop of water on his tongue to cool him in the flames, but was denied his request.

Jesus said. “Broad is the way that leads to destruction and many there is that find it, but narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that find it.”  How about you, which path are you on?

In Revelation 9 we read of an angel who is given keys to the bottomless pit.  When he opens it, outcome locusts which torment men five months.  We learn that there is an angel of the bottomless pit who is also a king.  His name is ‘Destruction’ or ‘Destroyer’, king over the locusts.  Some believe that this is Satan himself, but I think not.  Satan has many kings under him, Daniel points this out, and he is the god of this world.  Satan is more than a king. 

Satan does not have unlimited power as is shown in the Old Testament Book of Job and eventually Satan comes up against the Lord Jesus Christ and is thrown into the bottomless pit for a millennia.  Some believe his evil angels are also put into the bottomless pit with him.  This may be the case.  I read nowhere that people are ever placed into the bottomless pit.  Some equate the bottomless pit and hell.  I do not believe this, but think they are separate places within the earth.

Some equate hell with the lake of fire and this is not the case.  Hell is thrown into the lake of fire which is also called the second death.  Presently no one is in the lake of fire but the first ones to go will be the antichrist and the false prophet.  They will be thrown alive into the lake of fire.  Satan will be the third person to be thrown into the lake of fire.  At The Great White Thrown Judgment whoevers name is not written in The Book of Life will be cast into the Lake of Fire.  All the angels that followed Satan against God will go to the Lake of Fire.  Death and Hell will be the last ones to be assigned to the Lake of Fire.

Death and Hell are angels that preside over those institutions.  The place of hell will be destroyed when the earth is destroyed.  This destruction will take place, some think, before The Great White Thrown Judgment.  Not only will the earth be destroyed but also the whole universe.  It came from nothing and will return to nothing.

What will be your state at this end of affairs?  If you do not want it to be a sad state, then repent of your sins and invite Jesus into your heart.  A sample payer is, “Lord Jesus Christ forgive of my evil and come into my heart.”          

Still a Liberal and Activist Supreme Court, part 2

Last year, I wrote piece on a Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty is an unconstitutional penalty for the crime of raping a child. Now SCOTUS is considering going even further.

They are now trying to find out where to “draw the line” on life sentences without the possibility of parole. In particular, the question at issue is whether or not a juvenile could be given this sentence and if so at what age. There is a lot at stake as SCOTUS hears Graham v. Florida (08-7412) and Sullivan v. Florida (08-7621).

The eighth amendment states:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

This amendment is the basis for the argument that sentencing juveniles to life in prison without the possibly of parole should not be allowed. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg thinks that it is hypocritical for the state of Florida to have laws against underage drinking, driving and marrying and at the same time give juveniles such harsh sentences. But according to the Bible:

18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: 19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; 20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. 21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (KJV)

Not only is SCOTUS sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong by violating states’ rights, but this also denigrates the Holy Scriptures, our God who wrote it, and further erodes our position as a nation under God. The entire Bible, not just the New Testament, reveals God’s character and sense of justice. Both this current consideration and the previous one regarding the death penalty clearly intimate that God’s choice of punishments is unreasonable, hypocritical and should be held to be unconstitutional. They arrogantly assume that they have the wisdom to determine whether or not someone can be “reformed”. They fail to take into account that it is a person’s soul that is of the utmost importance, and that Our Founding Fathers recognized that the death penalty could sway a lawbreaker to repentance.

When I wrote part 1, seven out of nine Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republican Presidents. Now it is six out of nine.

To read more about these pending cases, click here.

Indivisibility?

(The above display of an upside-down American flag is not a sign of disrespect, but of dire distress.)

http://www.jeffhead.com/liberty/flagdistress.htM

I have one thing in common with Michael Newdow, the ACLU and the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. I hate the Pledge of Allegiance. But the reason why I hate it is very different than their reasons. The reason why I am writing this now is that in one of the town hall meeting videos on this blog, Tim Bishop responded to a question about the unconstitutionality of government-run healthcare (this is because of the 10th amendment) by quoting the part of the Pledge about our nation being “indivisible”. (This mentally impaired hack took this to mean that if one American needs healthcare, all Americans should pay for it.) The Pledge is not in the Constitution and never should be. It is not at all like the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, or the Federalist papers. And if we are really so "indivisible", then why are so many people so angry at their congressman these days?

The original Pledge was written by a Socialist named Francis Bellamy. He claimed to be a Christian, at least at first, but (according some sources) fell away from the church into a godless Socialism. The writing of the Pledge was just an assignment given to him by the magazine he worked for. The purpose was to boost sales. There was no “under God” in the original Pledge. The original accompanying salute to the flag (according to Wikipedia) “involved stretching the arm out towards the flag in a manner that resembled the later Nazi salute.” It had nothing to do with the founding of the Union of states or any of its laws. The Pledge was not written until 1892 and "under God" was not officially added until 1954.

Now let’s examine the text itself. The original wording was:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to* the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

(* 'to' added in October 1892).

I have no problem with “liberty and justice for all”, but these words had, by that time, been distorted, and much as they are today, mean different things to different people. But how can a Christian pledge allegiance to an inanimate object? Is this not idolatry?

Certainly I believe that we should have some sense of pride and patriotism for our country (at least Bellamy acknowledged the correct form of government of our country unlike our modern politicians who say “democracy”), but to pledge allegiance to it under any and all circumstances is dangerous. What better way to precede the daily brainwashing of children in the public school system than to force them to pledge their allegiance to an Obama-controlled, fascist government? If Michelle Obama can say, “for the first time in my life I’m proud of my country”, then maybe we should start saying that we are NOT proud of our country. How is it that it is improper flag etiquette to put the Christian flag above the United States flag when they are flown on the same pole? Why is it that there used to be such a to-do about a Constitutional amendment to put people in jail for burning a U.S. flag, but no one suggested criminalizing the burning of a Bible? Where are our priorities?

The original pledge, having been written after the Civil War, uses the word “indivisible” in a way that is a direct attack on state’s rights. The Declaration of Independence says:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The institution of the Pledge into the schools may also have helped solidify blind loyalty to the United States in the Spanish-American War, which was a war in which we were the aggressor.

If you read the entire Declaration of Independence, you will see that many of the grievances which compelled the Founders to secede from British rule are the same grievances we have today (and most we had even before Obama’s alleged Presidency). We do have a right to secede, and as far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better. We need to stop believing in this idea that the United States must be preserved under any and all circumstances. That is idolatry. We are to put the Bible first. If secession is the only way to abolish this tyrannical system and to restore a republican form of government, that is what we should do. But like disobedient Israel, we may someday be ruled over by another nation and if it is God doing it to punish us, no amount of patriotism or "pulling together" is going to stop it.

Steven Keillor's God's Judgments

I have read several books from intervarsity press and found most of them to be rather disappointing. They all seem to criticize popular “worldviews” or “ideologies” in favor of some wishy-washy moderate position with little or no Bible-based arguments. Dr. Richard Mouw’s Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World makes some good points about how to deal with unbelievers, but the compromising position on abortion undercuts the credibility of it. He seems to fail to see that we are in a war with Satan. The Two Tasks of the Christian Scholar engages in the discussion of how to get Christian values back into “the academy”. The book has a few helpful hints to help professors in their efforts to witness to their students, but most of it is not very instructive and it totally ignores the root of the problem which is that we have allowed government to control our educational institutions in the first place.

But then I read God’s Judgments: Interpreting History and the Christian Faith by Steven J. Keillor. This book is AWESOME!!! I couldn’t put it down! Keillor says in no uncertain terms that God still judges nations (with war, famines, disasters, and such) today. He totally shreds to pieces arguments to the contrary.

I don’t want to give away the whole book, but here some of the main points.

Keillor points out that the Hebrew word for judgment, misphat, has a connotation that goes beyond just punishing evildoers. It implies a “sifting out” or separating of the good from out of the evil. (Remember the refiner’s fire and the separating of the wheat from the chaff.) It is like a light which not only exposes the hypocrites of our day, but also reveals the imperfections in our political systems and ideologies.

Don’t be turned off by his criticism of Pat Robertson’s and Jerry Falwell’s anti-abortion rhetoric at the beginning of the book. He exposes their hypocrisy (a very small portion of it, in my opinion) and harshly criticizes the our current policies on abortion, cloning, human embryonic stem cell research and genetic engineering later on in the book.

He talks about the various viewpoints that were being bandied about in the wake of September 11th, criticizing liberals, conservatives, and moderates alike. Then he goes through the Bible (both OT and NT) and focuses on passages which give the reasons for why God judged the nations the way he did. Then he examines the burning of the White House in 1814 and the Civil War and builds the case that these were examples of God acting in history to punish our nation.

He criticizes the notion that everything we do as a nation is OK with God as long as we do it in a Democratic fashion with free market economics. He criticizes the idea that candidates for offices should use only “worldview” arguments that are based on avoidance of natural consequences of poor policies while remaining silent about the role of God’s judgment. (In his own home state of Minnesota, there is even a law against making “spiritual” threats in a political campaign!) He exposes SOME of the hypocrisies of both the liberals, conservatives, Republicans, and Democrats and shows that they are both to blame for the September 11th attacks. He criticizes their “support ALL of our policies (regardless of whether you agree or disagree)” rhetoric which has caused some many people on both sides to compromise their values.

This book definitely does not say all that needs to be said on the issues he touched on, and I don’t agree with everything he says, but this is a must read for any Christian statesman. This book is AWESOME!!!

http://www.stevekeillor.com/