Very Experienced and Knowledgeable Blogger on Everything to do with Gun Control

Found this blog post An Opinion on Gun Control by a guy who obviously knows what he's talking about, Larry Correia.  It's a very lengthy article but well worth reading in my opinion.  I've been finding it too hard to single out particular statements to post here but I'm working on it and may eventually get it down to a reasonable enough size for that.

Meanwhile I'll just say that this guy has extensive knowledge and experience with guns, having owned a gun store that sold to law enforcement and having given instruction in concealed-carry, including to teachers in the state of Utah.  He's done a lot of research into all aspects of the questions people keep asking about the gun control issues and in my opinion gives the most thorough and trustworthy information and opinion on the subject I've run across so far.

OK, here's a section of the article I do want to post here, where he talks about how prevention of crime by guns doesn't get registered in the statistics:

It doesn’t really make sense to ban guns, because in reality what that means is that you are actually banning effective self-defense. Despite the constant hammering by a news media with an agenda, guns are used in America far more to stop crime than to cause crime.

I’ve seen several different sets of numbers about how many times guns are used in self-defense every year. The problem with keeping track of this stat is that the vast majority of the time when a gun is produced in a legal self-defense situation no shots are fired. The mere presence of the gun is enough to cause the criminal to stop.

Clint Smith once said if you look like food, you will be eaten. Criminals are looking for prey. They are looking for easy victims. If they wanted to work hard for a living they’d get a job. So when you pull a gun, you are no longer prey, you are work, so they are going to go find somebody else to pick on.

So many defensive gun uses never get tracked as such. From personal experience, I have pulled a gun exactly one time in my entire life. I was legally justified and the bad guy stopped, put his gun away, and left. (15 years later the same son of a bitch would end up murdering a local sheriff’s deputy). My defensive gun use was never recorded anywhere as far as I know. My wife has pulled a gun twice in her life. Once on somebody who was acting very rapey who suddenly found a better place to be when she stuck a Ruger in his face, and again many years later on a German Shepherd which was attacking my one year old son. (amazingly enough a dog can recognize a 9mm coming out of a fanny pack and run for its life, go figure) No police report at all on the second one, and I don’t believe the first one ever turned up as any sort of defensive use statistic, all because no shots were fired.

So how often are guns actually used in self-defense in America? http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

On the high side the estimate runs around 2.5 million defensive gun uses a year, which dwarfs our approximately 16,000 homicides in any recent year, only 10k of which are with guns.  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

Of those with guns, only a couple hundred are with rifles. So basically, the guns that the anti-gunners are the most spun up about only account for a tiny fraction of all our murders.

But let’s not go with the high estimate. Let’s go with some smaller ones instead. Let’s use the far more conservative 800,000 number which is arrived at in multiple studies. That still dwarfs the number of illegal shootings. Heck, let’s even run with the number once put out by the people who want to ban guns, the Brady Center, which was still around 108,000, which still is an awesome ratio of good vs. bad.

So even if you use the worst number provided by people who are just as biased as me but in the opposite direction, gun use is a huge net positive. Or to put it another way, the Brady Center hates guns so much that they are totally cool with the population of a decent sized city getting raped and murdered every year as collateral damage in order to get what they want.

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Dec 31:  Hey, finally a major media statement against further gun control, citing the UK and Australia as NOT good examples of positive results of strict gun control, in The Wall Street Journal


http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=684038

http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=684020

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1791/did-hitler-ban-gun-ownership

All the links from Chris Pinto's site:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6438601/Gun-crime-doubles-in-a-decade.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-153817/Gun-crime-doubled-figures-set-show.html

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/12/11/gun-crime-soars-in-england-where-guns-are-banned-n1464528

http://www.gunssavelife.com/?p=3937

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2640817.stm

http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/gun-crime

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKdBxpKqUvs

http://www.military.com/video/guns/small-arms/australias-gun-ban-not-working-so-well/1775480805001/

Suzanna Gratia Hupp, Defender of Second Amendment Gun Rights

Thank You, Lord, that we are hearing from some good defenders of our gun rights in the wake of this latest horrendous murder spree. That is a mercy from God. We could be hearing nothing but the gun control mob who are trying to set us up for the final destruction of this country. Oh I'm still convinced it's coming, I don't see signs of any turning back, but thank You, Lord, for mercies along the way.

So here's Suzanna Gratia Hupp who was with her parents in a cafeteria in Texas twenty years ago when one of these crazy guys came in shooting and killed them along with over twenty others.

First an interview by a CNN reporter who gets weirdly defensive at Suzanna's attempt to explain that typical media terms like "assault weapons" are made up.

Then we see Suzanna at a congressional hearing on gun control only a couple years after her parents were gunned down.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBLWLUEnRl0

One Picture Makes the Best Argument against Banning Guns

. . Been wanting to mention Israel in connection with this gun ban talk here and today I got the picture in email that makes the point for me. . . .

SECOND AMENDMENT AGAIN

The horrific tragedy of the school shooting that occurred today has again brought up the question of gun control.  It always comes up at these times, but if someone raises the question Where were our armed citizens when this happened, who might have stopped this rampage in its tracks?, you are likely to be accused of callously taking the opportunity to make a political point, as if that isn't what the gun control people are doing. 

As a matter of fact whenever one of these tragedies occurs it breaks my heart and that IS the first question I ask these days:  WHERE IS OUR ARMED CITIZENRY at these times.  Where was an armed teacher or an armed parent or ANYBODY who could have ended this insanity before it killed people?

And you often hear how these murders occur in an area where there is extreme gun control or at least an underarmed population.  But the obvious conclusion is not drawn, that we need MORE, not fewer, armed citizens, especially in these crazy days of murdering individuals.  

I must admit I've been wondering if there is some kind of conspiracy behind these guys, some kind of influence that picks out emotionally unstrung people and influences them in this direction -- they often kill themselves or get killed so you can't interrogate them.  I know it sounds nuts, and maybe it IS just unstable individuals getting "inspired" by similar crazy acts, but I wonder nevertheless.  There's good reason to think that the murder in the Batman movie premier not long ago involved another person who disappeared during the shooting.  It just makes me wonder. 

So as usual you immediately hear that the Second Amendment was about an organized militia, and not citizen possession of firearms.  On the face of it this seems ludicrous because it's exactly an organized militia that can become the sort of threat an armed citizenry is protection against. 

But there is a history to this that is overlooked by these gun control fanatics who want to take the amendment away from us.  The concept of an armed citizenry goes way back in England long before the second amendment was written, and it was built on that history.  The point was for individual citizens to have the means of self defense and they WERE the army that protected the nation. 

The intention of the Second Amendment was to preserve us from foreign enemies and make a standing army unnecessary, which historically easily becomes a threat to the people, but obviously an armed citizenry can coexist with a national army and be a deterrent to its becoming that sort of menace, and it should be effective for these crazy individual enemies as well who kill innocent people in schools and malls and theaters.

Here are some quotes from men of the founding era:

James Madison:
http://www.constitution.org/jm/jm_quotes.htm

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.  

Patrick Henry:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/361839.Patrick_Henry

 “The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun.”

George Mason,
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Mason

Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British parliament was advised by an artful man, [Sir William Keith] who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people. That it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.  

 http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/george+mason

Who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country...? I ask, who are the militia?  They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers. 

Samuel Adams
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/samuel+adams

And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress … to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms…

It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them.

Alexander Hamilton
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton

The militia is a voluntary force not associated or under the control of the States except when called out; a permanent or long standing force would be entirely different in make-up and call.

Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.  

Richard Henry Lee
 https://www.facebook.com/unorganizedmilitia/notes

A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms...To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms...The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Henry_Lee

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."[3] Here's an interesting scholarly article on the concept:

History of the Second Amendment
David E Vandercoy
1994
http://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1956&context=vulr

This study gives the history of the “citizen army” in England, which is the same thing as the “militia” intended by the Second Amendment,  that goes back centuries.  I’m just going to quote from The Conclusion:

English history made two things clear to the American revolutionaries:  force of arms was the only effective check on government, and standing armies threatened liberty. Recognition of these premises meant that the force of arms necessary to check government had to be placed in the hands of citizens. The English theorists Blackstone and Harrington advocated these tenants. [sic] Because the public purpose of the right to keep arms was to check government, the right necessarily belonged to the individual and, as a matter of theory, was thought to be absolute in that it could not be abrogated by the prevailing rulers.

These views were adopted by the framers, both Federalists and Antifederalists. Neither group trusted government. Both believed the greatest danger to the new republic was tyrannical government and that the ultimate check on tyranny was an armed population. It is beyond dispute that the second amendment right was to serve the same public purpose as advocated by the English theorists.

Seems to me I've run across discussions that include protection against criminals as well, but I didn't find them on this run.

Fraud Fraud Fraud and More Fraud (but remember, God's allowing it as judgment)

Good post by one of the bloggers at Geeeez on the various reasons to suspect that the election of Obama was "engineered" shall we say, both this election and the 2008 election and that in fact Obama's entire career was engineered. Fraud fraud fraud.

I personally know of some people who are involved in the investigations of the most recent voter fraud in this election, but also the election that kept Harry Reid in office when Sharron Angle had the votes. Can it be proved? Well, even if it can be the proof will be attacked, twisted, smeared and "discredited" by more fraud. A few of us will know it for what it is, but is it going to matter?

Chris Pinto's radio show for the 19th dealt with the film made BY DEMOCRATS after Obama's election in '08 about voter fraud then that disenfranchised Hillary Clinton who by their reckoning rightly won the nomination.

This is terrible judgment indeed, Lord, will you never have mercy on us again, is it all over for good?

On this note, Geeez also has a post from yesterday quoting from Foursquare pastor and president Jack Hayford on how the Church is to blame for all this, and while I believe he's right in general I don't think he's seen the whole problem, about Christians who don't keep separate from the world and from false teachers which I've posted on recently.  In fact his own denomination is highly questionable in itself as well as in its acceptance of Catholicism, the likes of Benny Hinn and other apostate groups.

We're dead

This says it for the conservative side
Nov. 10: More good stuff from Geeeeez on this subject

Why is the Nation so Polarized? (No real mystery)

That's what the headline at Yahoo asks. And we ARE that polarized. There is just about NO agreement between the two sides and there is plenty of rancor on both sides toward the other. Here's the story at Yahoo, It's a 50-50 Nation Give or Take

There are about 20 thousand comments there already but I can't wade through that lot.  Lot of opinion that the media has caused the divide.

I think it's pretty obvious myself.  The country has been getting more and more polarized by the push against Christian and traditional values that were held by a majority from the founding, the push that picked up big momentum in the sixties and keeps on going, fueled by propaganda that characterizes us as "haters" rather than the defenders of truth we are -- defenders of truth, social order, righteousness, which scripture says "exalts a nation" and certainly protects a nation against God's wrath;  the "salt" that keeps a nation from succumbing to rot through the fallen nature.  Now the nation is wide open for God's wrath.

The form of it that got up such a head of steam in the sixties, with all the "liberation" movements, should really be characterized as The Sin Liberation Movement as a whole.   We're now "liberated" to commit sexual sins with impunity that were opposed by ALL societies throughout history, though most strongly in Christian societies, until the last few decades, and "liberated" to murder our unborn babies, calling it "choice," etc.  "Liberated" BY THE GOVERNMENT you know.  If gay marriage becomes law it will be the GOVERNMENT sanctioning it, and it's primarily what the leadership does that calls down God's judgment against a nation. 

Opposition to this trend is what they are calling "hate" on the other side.  They'd kill us for our "hate."

A Christian absolutely CANNOT give in on these things and there are apparently quite a few nonbeliever traditionalists who feel the same way so far. That includes socialism versus free enterprise because socialism is basically theft by the government which is a violation of God's law. Name it, it's along these lines we are polarized. Good versus evil I call it.

The Nation Voted for Judgment

In response to another conservative, whose opinion you can figure out from the response:

I agree the nation chose judgment, but in my opinion Romney would at best have been Judgment Lite anyway, a slower road to judgment. 

At one point he voted for late term abortion himself and for gay marriage.   The man changed with the wind.  Overall it seems he would have been better for the country, that his election would mean God was blessing us at least to some extent, but we have to remember that Romney also represents rejection of God and apostasy of the Church simply by being a Mormon.  One might say Obama's closet Muslim beliefs are worse but I'm not completely sure, in God's eyes.  Mormonism is a false representation of God, of Jesus Christ, of the gospel of salvation, even in a more direct and blasphemous way than Islam is, or at least AS bad.  (By the way there is an old book called Mormonism, America's Islam, sorry don't remember much about it I'll have to look it up). 

Our merely being stuck with the choice between Obama and Romney already demonstrates that the nation IS under judgment, or it could be said that in itself the choice IS judgment, both candidates representing God's displeasure with this nation.  In many ways Romney looked a lot better to conservative eyes, but I wonder if conservative eyes see much the way God's eyes do.

BUT I have to admit that we haven't had a President in many many years that could be said to have been in God's will anyway.  I won't speculate how far back.  We've been under judgment a long time. 

Again, the best Romney would have been is a slower approach to an increasingly horrible Judgment.

And then there's the further proof that we're on the slide to oblivion in the fact that Colorado and Washington legalized RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA.  Well, they don't know what they are doing, poor blind fallen people, but how fast we've slid toward the abode of demons!   Oh once-Christian America. 

I've got to admit I would have felt relieved if Romney had won but I'm not sure why or, to be more accurate, given what I've said above, it couldn't be a rational response.

==========
3 PM Everybody I've heard from today has said, almost in the same words, "we're done, it's over."  America is gone forever.  The Obama people have no clue.  it's going to hit them too eventually.

More evidence from the "birthers"

This was at the political blog Geeeez recently. I'd seen this information before but never got around to posting it so here it is, another bit of the evidence that something is definitely being hidden about Obama's birth.

Two films: The Firefighters of 9/11 and the Boatlift of 9/11

Sometimes it's good to be reminded of the human side of 9/11 while getting so absorbed in the fact of its being God's judgment on the nation. This is a film I saw fairly soon after the attack, done by two French brothers who just happened to be filming a documentary about the training of firefighters when 9/11 came along. They were filming at the fire station closest to the WTC when the towers were hit and the event became the focus of the film as the firefighters were of course called to the scene.

When I first saw the film, certain noises from within the burning tower were so clearly and depressingly identified as the sound of bodies hitting the ground outside, having fallen from a great height above, I've never been the slightest bit tempted to interpret those noises as the controlled demolition explosions the "inside job" conspiracy thinkers try to make of it. But I'm watching it again so I'll see if I still agree with my first impression.

And it's very clear: They all know it's falling bodies. It starts about 35:50 on the counter.



And here's another great film about the people involved in 9/11, the very touching story of the enormous variety of boats and their captains who came to rescue people stranded at the south end of Manhattan island as the WTC burned.

The Illogic of the "Right" to Abortion: Do Women REALLY Want the "Choice" to Kill Their Own Babies?

"But it's a human being" says the show host. "So is the woman," says the "pro-choice" guest. And she wants to be sure that THIS human being's "rights" are protected. It's considered a great evil and something women will vote against, to deny them this "right" to abortion.

Obviously they just aren't thinking this through. Even some on the "pro-choice" side will admit that yes, we're talking about a living human being in the womb here, but they go right on past that to assert that the woman is ALSO a living human being and HER rights count TOO, or even MORE, and so on and so forth, just sailing right on past the implication that they are advocating KILLING that OTHER human being in order to protect the woman's "rights" (and often these days killing it in viciously brutal ways too, even when the child is near to being born).

Do women REALLY want the right to commit MURDER? I don't think so. I think we've been sold a lie, and a great ideological fog has descended over this issue.

Do we have such murdering hearts? There was a time, and in fact it may still go on in some parts of the world, when unwanted infants were put out to die after birth. If they'd had safe means of abortion they'd no doubt have killed their babies that way, but infanticide was the option at the time. I think it's hard today, even for the most committed "pro-choice" advocate, to imagine doing that with a clear conscience, one has to imagine a completely other mental set than we have grown up with today in a western society, to commit out and out murder of an infant. Don't most of us want to rush to the abandoned infant and save it and protect it? I think we do. Yes, even the "pro-choicers" do.

We can SEE the humanness of the born infant and can be moved by its plight. But we are committing that same murder in abortion nevertheless, only we're hiding it from ourselves because the unborn baby isn't visible. Truly it must be "visible" in a certain sense to our "mind's eye," but ideology has twisted things so that we ignore that picture. We keep the focus on the woman and her "rights" and manage to fog over the fact that this "right," this "choice" that is being advocated in such tones of righteous indignation is in fact a right and a choice to commit the killing of another human being -- and not just some anonymous human being either, whose life we should want to protect anyway, but your own flesh and blood, your own child. Even when they seem to acknowledge this fact they run right past it showing they haven't really let themselves think about its implications. We don't dare stop and think too hard about that these days, we must preserve it as a "woman's" issue, a "right" or a "choice."

Sometimes you'll hear someone say in serious or even mournful tones that whether or not to abort a baby is a very "private" and "personal" decision, and a very "difficult" choice that people must make, not something to be done lightly. Which superficially seems to acknowledge the moral dimension of the problem, but if you REALLY think it through, it's like saying "It's a very difficult personal choice to kill a human being, and we should respect people's privacy about such an important decision."

Why is it this is not recognized as what is really being said? Because we're not allowed to think it. Ideological fog.

Even the child of rape or incest is a human being. If you know that how can you grant the "right" to kill THAT child either?

Again, knowing that, recognizing that, is what doesn't happen because the propaganda, the ideology, operates to prevent it.

It's sad when an unwanted child is conceived, whatever the reason for its not being wanted. It's sad for the child and it's sad for the parent or parents. It is a hardship for some women when that happens, although face it, for most these days it's not really a hardship, it's more an inconvenience, and yet murdering it is considered the "righteous" thing to do.

The whole thing goes back to the promotion of "sexual freedom" of course, but that's another topic for another time --but I'll mention that you might want to see Chris Pinto's film The Kinsey Syndrome for some insight into that evil movement that is destroying America. A stable prosperous society requires traditional marriage and traditional laws that confine sex to marriage.

But right now I just want to keep the fact up front that abortion kills a human being, and that women are NOT being done any favors by being given the "right" or the "choice" to commit murder. There are plenty of stories of women who later regretted having had an abortion, to the point of deep depression over it, when the truth of it got through to them. This is the TRUE heart of most women.

We've been sold a lie.

Righteousness Exalteth a Nation: Hang in there on the social issues, Republicans

The Republican platform is on the right track:

ABORTION:
The party states that "the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed." It opposes using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or to fund organizations that perform or advocate abortions. It says the party will not fund or subsidize health care that includes abortion coverage.

Since abortion, euphemistically referred to as "the right to choose" ---(since when is murder a "choice" in any civilized country?)-- is popular --(remember, that's MURDER that's popular),-- the pragmatists are likely to feel this is suicide for the party.

By that reasoning a nation would always be promoting sin and unrighteousness until it is utterly destroyed. Which does seem to have been happening in America over the last half century.

Abortion is certainly a major reason this nation is in disfavor with God, so that a Republican win could begin to turn the tide and bring His blessings back to us. The beginning of the needed repentance.

No, it's not the Economy, dear Church

Or it is but focusing on the economy is useless. God's in charge of the economy. God's in charge of all of it but so many Christians are only looking at the specifics, how to deal with this or that problem, not consulting God. This is what's wrong with the nation. It's why we are where we are, facing the problems we're facing, given the undesirable options we have. It's why we have a wannabe Hitler running against a Mormon with a Catholic running mate (and let me be clear, I think Ryan is a GREAT guy), having passed over the evangelical he could have had instead.

You want to change the economy? You want God to bless our "basket and our store" instead of allowing a drought to destroy it?

Read Deuteronomy 28. Sure, it's to Israel as a special covenant nation but do you really think its principles don't also apply to all nations including America? Do you really think that stuff "just happens" for no good reason? Well, I suppose most people do. But Christians shouldn't. A nation that obeys God will be blessed, but cursed for disobedience.

Proverbs 14:34: Righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people.

We need to stop trying to solve problems exclusively from the human perspective. The nation is under judgment. If there's any hope of turning it back we need to turn the nation back to God. That's called "repentance."

Back to the God of the Bible, of course, not the God of the Mormons, not the God of Rome, not the God of Islam, not the God of the Deists or the Unitarians or the Universalists or the Liberal churches, but the God of the uncompromised Bible. He's the true God, the others are counterfeits.

Drought reports: No Relief In Sight but is God considered?

No references to God in the headlines, just the bad news with no hint of hope for a way to make it better.

Where is the America that would have known this is God's judgment and whose leaders would have called for days of fasting and repenting for the nation's sins?

Light on the Treaty of Tripoli and the Christian nature of America

For all the clear signs of our being under God's judgment there are moments these days when it seems God's hand of blessing is upon us in extraordinary ways too, bringing cause for hope His mercy will triumph over judgment in the end, or at least mitigate it, maybe bring us revival here and there. There's a small army of Christians out there working to straighten us out and working to bring the truth to light. We're sometimes at odds with each other, which is sad, which must be for God like herding cats at times, but if anyone can herd cats God can.

Anyway, the latest harbinger of hope I'm seeing comes from Chris Pinto's ministry, as it often does these days. On today's broadcast he reports his recent discovery of a Christian voice from the time of America's founders, objecting to Congress' passage of the Treaty of Tripoli which contains the controversial statement that confuses and horrifies so many Christians, the statement that "the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

This is another of those ghosts from the past that can be dispelled by having a stronger light from history shone on it than we usually have available, like the quote from Richard Henry Lee I reported on in the previous post. Lee was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and his statement that Chris Pinto also found recently goes a long way to clearing up an important dispute about the original intent of the Second Amendment: He affirms that the "militia" referred to in the amendment means ALL the people, trained in how to handle guns, from which people a separated army may be drawn without in any way infringing on the whole people's right (and obligation) to possess arms.

Today the ghost of the supposedly nonChristian nature of the United States as defined by the Treaty of Tripoli is finally brought into question by Chris Pinto's discovery of one Christian from the founding generation who opposed Article 11 which declared that the American government was in no sense Christian. It was hiding in plain sight:

From Wikipedia on the Treaty of Tripoli:

The treaty was a routine diplomatic agreement but has attracted later attention because the English version included a clause about religion in the United States.

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
The treaty is cited as historical evidence in the modern day controversy over whether there was religious intent by the founders of the United States government. Article 11 of the treaty has been interpreted as an official denial of a Christian basis for the U.S. government.[3]

At least one member of Adams' cabinet, Secretary of War James McHenry, is known to have protested the language of article 11, prior to its ratification.[5]

And here's the footnote to the above quoting McHenry on his objection to Article 11:

5.^ James McHenry to Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Jr., September 26, 1800:“The Senate, my good friend, and I said so at the time, ought never to have ratified the treaty alluded to, with the declaration that 'the government of the United States, is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.' What else is it founded on? This act always appeared to me like trampling upon the cross. I do not recollect that Barlow was even reprimanded for this outrage upon the government and religion.”[4]

And here is the Wikipedia article on James McHenry He was

a signer of the United States Constitution from Maryland and the namesake of Fort McHenry. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress from Maryland, and the third United States Secretary of War (1796–1800), under presidents George Washington and John Adams.

It helps a great deal to know that there was some Christian dissent to that article among the leaders of the day, which otherwise gives the impression that it spoke for the entire founding generation.

===
August 1, 2012: Today's show continues this subject of the Treaty of Tripoli and the founding generation in general, what freedom of religion meant and so on.

DEFENDING THE SECOND AMENDMENT Pt 2

Dr. A who is a regular poster at EvC forums, whose Course in Geology is often quite good but whose other posts are usually not worth reading in my opinion, has just posted a really amazing piece of sophistry on the thread about Gun Control.

Don't arguments about overthrowing the government cut both ways? I mean, if it is possible for a bunch of private citizens with guns to overthrow a tyranny and replace it with a democratic republic, then wouldn't it also be possible for an armed citizenry to overthrow a democratic republic and replace it with a tyranny? There is, after all, nothing particularly bullet-proof about democrats.

Uh yeah, but there would be no MOTIVE to overthrow a nontyrannical government. When there is such tyranny you can be sure there will be plenty of buzz leading up to any sort of action, such as was the case before the American Revolution. Where there is no popular motive to overthrow a government the people's possession of guns nevertheless acts as a deterrent to the development of such tyranny, and in any case provides protection against garden-variety criminality which is going to be a problem in any society, less in one where more guns are owned by citizens.

And in this context I might as well respond to a statistic that keeps coming up on that thread to the effect that America has more guns per capita than any other nation on earth and YET we have more homicides too, so that the guns are not acting as a deterrent. Well, consider the fact that there were NO guns in the possession of audience members when the theater in Aurora Colorado was invaded by a homicidal maniac. Had there been even one or two he might have been stopped in his tracks and many lives might have been saved. Same with all the mass murder scenarios we've been plagued with over the last couple of decades, such as at schools. There should be armed teachers, armed members of churches, just more armed citizens out there in the world in general, if the homicide statistic is to be reduced.

Case in point is the situation of the internet cafe in Florida where just a couple weeks ago a 71-year-old man in possession of a legal concealed gun DID rout a couple of robbers, one of them armed, who might have done harm to many except for him. Moral of the story: It doesn't matter what the statistics say, obviously we need MORE upright citizens carrying guns.

So, yes, it might be a good idea if the Chinese had more guns, but what about the USA? If our citizens have enough weaponry to overthrow the government (which I doubt, but for the sake of argument let's say they do) then since we are currently a democratic republic, what they would be doing would be overthrowing democracy in favor of tyranny. Since we currently have liberty, guns can not currently be used to give us liberty, but to take it away; if it is possible to use them to overthrow the government, they are not a bulwark of liberty but rather a threat to it.

Sure, we may not have enough citizen-owned guns to pull that off, but again, why would anyone want to if we are truly the democratic republic he says we are, that provides that we "currently have liberty?" Of course there are those who would dispute that characterization of our current situation, but obviously there isn't enough motivation OR citizen gun power, either one, to do anything about it. But again, it is only if enough recognize that the government is NOT "a bulwark of liberty" that any such use of citizen firepower would be attempted. It would probably have to reach the level that even Dr. A himself would agree that tyranny is indeed the proper word for the situation at hand.

To conceive of guns defending our liberties, we have to be thinking two revolutions ahead. Once someone has taken our liberty away, then maybe we could use guns to put it back. But right now, since we have liberty, they can only be used to take it away.

On this basis, whether or not guns are good would depend on the state of the particular nation in question. In China, perhaps they could be a force for liberty; in the USA, they imperil it.

Silly sophistic distinctions, Dr. A, just word games. It's possible to be under government tyranny and it not be recognized by a majority because it hasn't yet reached a certain level, but the most likely scenario is that it WILL be recognized if it reaches a level that pinches the majority, and then it would be very sad if we'd already succumbed to government confiscation of the people's guns or laws that violate the second amendment by imposing extreme restrictions. Overthrowing the government is of course the remotest of all the reasons for an armed citizenry when you HAVE an armed citizenry, but it could rapidly become urgent and immediate if guns were taken away.

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The common feeling is that the more guns the more danger, the opposite of course of the reasoning behind the second amendment that the more guns the less danger. Here onifre at EvC is arguing that in New York city jar's position that guns should be carried openly would be extremely dangerous.

Have you seen the subways? Have you seen the amount of people in those things daily? Can you not see how maybe in this particular case, unlimited open carry (like in a holster) is a terrible idea?

Unlimited Open Carry does not mean that there must be no limitation.

Hmmm...

but it does mean that if someone carries it should be open, displayed

. Again, that's a terrible idea where I live.

The more guns the more fear of danger, but is the fear realistic? The founding fathers apparently thought the opposite and in fact statistics that I've heard of seem to bear them out. When guns are confiscated crime goes up, not down, and when guns are owned by a majority the reverse occurs. This makes sense. Criminals generally are not going to want to risk being shot.

I haven't given it thought before now, but I don't think I'd want guns to be carried openly as a matter of course. Better that the criminals have no idea how many guns might be drawn against them than be able to make their plans around the ones they can see and possibly avoid the danger. Keep them in the dark.

So, are there no upright citizens that ride the subways, Onifre? If everybody is a potential homicidal maniac wouldn't there still be a deterrent to their inclinations in the fact of more guns versus less?

But if you specifically have openly visible guns in mind, as I say above I probably wouldn't think that the best situation, but still, if most people had them I would think it would have some deterrent effect rather than be the danger you think it is.

DEFENDING THE SECOND AMENDMENT

THE TRUE CONTEXT OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT SHOWN IN QUOTES BY EARLY AMERICAN LEADERS:

Chris Pinto is continuing the subject of gun control in today's (July 27) broadcast The Second Amendment Some topics covered: UN aim to disarm the world, means the average citizen. + Pinto believes it's basically Rome's attempt to reinstate a worldwide Inqusition. + He gives quotes from American leaders that make clear what the Second Amendment was really all about, which contradicts today's attempt to disarm the people.

Quotes Blackstone on the law. + quotes Jefferson on necessity of armed citizens for protection against criminal acts. + Mentions a video at You Tube How to stop a massacre which shows a recent real-life incident in which an armed citizen routs a couple of robbers who were threatening people in an internet cafe. +

Quotes Patrick Henry on need for force to protect liberty, advocating that every citizen have a gun. + Quotes Noah Webster on how the tyranny of state armies is thwarted by the arming of the citizens. + Quotes a journal in Boston in 1769 calling for citizens to be armed against British military abuses of power. English Bill of Rights invoked as authority. Mentions Blackstone's commentary on the law. Natural right of self defense. + Bible references +

Quotes George Mason 1775 militia plan, pledge to keep arms in readiness + Patrick Henry on protection of liberty by all citizens being armed + Sam Adams natural rights to life liberty and property and right to defend them. + John Adams arms for defense of country, ovethrow of tyranny or private self defense. +

As Pinto says "It's so clear what the second amendment was intended to mean" if you read the writings of these early Americans, "its purpose clearly extended to private citizens", and yet the second amendment has been "twisted and manipulated and lied about" by people trying to find a way to destroy it. + He ends with a quote from Richard Henry Lee in 1788 which ought to put to rest all the anti-second-amendment stuff about what a militia was supposed to be:

"Militias, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves and include all men capable of bearing arms. To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

The importance of knowing history is demonstrated in this quote. I've been in all kinds of discussions about what the second amendment means and nothing like this came up, which should have silenced all that nonsense about a militia being an organization or an army. The idea always seemed to contradict the very soul of the second amendment which is the right of the PEOPLE to defend themselves, but without proof of the original intent of the founding generation the gun control people were always winning the debates. We need more Chris Pintos.
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Later edit:
Typical "liberal" view of the second amendment:

... what you CAN construe is that the National Guards of the various states are the modern militias in question, organized and trained by state, armed, organized and disciplined by congress ... and the place where civilians can enroll to get proper training and then keep and bear arms. The second amendment is curiously silent on whether or not these arms can be taken home, presumably leaving that up to the states that are running the National Guards ( militias), and it is also silent on regulation of general gun ownership, again, presumably leaving that up to the states, a position that is upheld in the supreme court.

In light of the quote of Richard Henry Lee given above, such an opinion is completely out of tune with the original intent of the founding generation. Any official army, even the National Guard, is an entity that can become a force of tyranny on behalf of the state against the people, the very people the second amendment was intended to protect against that very kind of tyranny.

The second amendment is not "curiously silent on whether these arms can be taken home" since it accords to "the People" the right to keep and bear arms.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution was what inspired the interpretation quoted above:

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

If this section is intended to define or qualify the "militia" as set forth in the second amendment, then it must refer to the totality of the People that Congress is called to organize, arm and discipline, as opposed to "such Part of them" as a separate unit to be employed in the service of the United States... The singling out of such a Part implies a much greater totality which is not so employed -- that is, of course, ALL THE PEOPLE.

Threats to America: Gun Control, Mormonism (Ecumenism)

Two separate issues that were recently talked about on internet radio programs I listen to frequently, both current, both real threats to the foundations of America.

1. THE GLOBALIST THREAT TO AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY THROUGH GUN CONTROL:

Chris Pinto is talking about the shooting in Aurora Colorado at the opening of the film The Dark Knight, and how this could play into the globalist agenda to restrict gun ownership in America. He gives historical background and statistics.

Scott Johnson, talking about the same event in Colorado, brings in the possibility that it was staged. He gives evidence of the participation of a second party that the mainstream media aren't talking about.

2. THE TROJAN HORSE OF CONSERVATISM IN TODAY'S CHURCHES:

Brannon Howse's program on Worldview Weekend for July 25th is covering Glenn Beck's Restoring Love Rally coming up on the 28th, as well as a separate event that features some well-known evangelical leaders along with various wolves in sheep's clothing that is billed as somehow connected with though not part of Glenn Beck's rally.

Of particular interest to me in this discussion is the clip of former Mormon leader and US political leader Ezra Taft Benson speaking to a Mormon gathering back in 1965 (Howse keeps putting it up in the 70s), an impassioned patriotic talk that denounces "godless communism" and quotes Mormon documents as equal to scripture. He calls the American Constitution divinely inspired and invokes the prophecy of Joseph Smith that says the Mormon Church is going to save the endangered Constition. Well, there's no doubt it's endangered now and has been for a long time, but do we want it saved by Mormonism? Are evangelicals today that corrupted and misled?

The Worldview Weekend talk will be available without charge for only two weeks as usual, but parts of the talk by Benson can be found at You Tube and a fuller version here.

As I listened to this I just kept thinking Why did I have to wait until 2012 when we have a Mormon running for President and a very popular Mormon talk show host speaking for conservatism, to begin to grasp the connection between conservatism and Mormonism and what a threat it is to America? Every day it seems I learn something new that I should have heard of years ago if the Church had been doing its work of warning us. I did learn about the false teaching of Mormonism in general, but not its political agenda.

I had an email relationship for years with a Mormon with whom I could agree on political issues just about totally, but we battled to the death (of our friendship) about the nature of the gospel. Same with an orthodox Jew I'd also met online. I liked both of these men a great deal and agreed with both of them politically, but my determined defense of the gospel finally brought our friendship to an end in both cases. It was a great opportunity to hone my biblical skills and I only wish the Lord had seen fit to use my efforts to save these men but it wasn't to be -- at that time anyway.

There is a huge Catholic presence in conservatism these days as well, and the same situation applies. We can join on political issues but we must part company when it comes to the gospel.

MUST. And what Glenn Beck has been doing is promoting not just a political coalition of conservatives but a religious and spiritual coalition in which he aggressively asserts unity between Mormons and Catholics and true Christians, and Christians are falling for it, some of them joining with him in his aggressive ecumenicism.

Brannon Howse's discussion focuses on the compromises within the evangelical church in the service of patriotism and conservatism.

There is no hope for America unless the Church is strong and true to the gospel, politics is useless without this. A compromised ecumenical Church is useless, even just another cause for God to bring punishment against the nation.

Romanism and "Religious Tolerance" in the State of Maryland

This post from JAR at EvC reminds me that I'm getting behind in my project to explore the history of Roman Catholicism as I've been learning so much about it over the last few months, even starting a new blog for the purpose.

I did understand that the state of Maryland was founded as a Catholic state, obvious enough from the name if you think about it, though I didn't know anything about its history beyond that. JAR gives the history as follows:

The second colony to pass laws requiring religious tolerance was Maryland, formed initially as refuge for persecuted Roman Catholics under the Church of England, it passed a Religious Tolerance Act in 1649.

The act was repealed by Governor Claiborne, and appointee of the Puritan Oliver Cromwell but reinstated when the Calvert family regained control of the colony.

But in 1689 though there was a Puritan led Protestant Revolution in Maryland that overthrew the government and set up a Theocracy. One of their first acts was to outlaw Roman Catholicism.

I would like to know more about this but assuming these facts are basically true there's already plenty enough to say:

For starters, the idea of "persecuted Roman Catholics" is ridiculous, Romanist spin right there. They were prevented from having political influence in England and in the Protestant colonies, yes, because whenever they got enough political influence they brought the people under the power of the Pope and became the persecutors in the true meaning of the term of Protestants and others --bloody persecutors, putting people to death at the stake, and under the Inquisition torturing them while keeping them alive as long as possible to suffer the most possible and so on.

The laws prohibiting them from taking part in the political life of England and the colonies were in self-defense, and when they are opposed, as in Ireland when Cromwell sent troops to quell the violence caused by the Romanists, and given just punishment for their rebellions, that is not persecution, that is either the defense of the innocents or simply the rule of law and order. Not that Protestants are completely above committing violence themselves but the fact of the matter is that in the majority of the instances Rome is the instigator and their cruelty is beyond belief in many cases -- which I hope to be able to document eventually. (Meanwhile you can get a lot of it from Chris Pinto or any of the sources I've listed in the margin at my other blog).

Rome of course cries persecution, the vicious wolf complaining about being muzzled and tied up, but today the fanged one is likely to get a sympathetic ear from those who have lost all sense of history or abandoned the Protestantism of their forefathers.

Religious tolerance is not just an open door to powerful people with evil intentions on a political level, it's also a violation of the Commandment against having other gods. A Christian nation must uphold that Commandment and not allow other religions with their other gods to be treated as equal to the one true God -- not persecuted and not deprived of ordinary means of living a peaceful life of course. The Puritans and other Protestants established colonies in America for the purpose of honoring God and it doesn't honor God to give equal place to the religions that deny Him, certainly not to the Antichrist religion of Rome (or of Islam).

What I have been learning about religious tolerance in America is that it was imposed deceitfully on the people by Roman agents trying to regain the power lost in England, and it succeeded here for a number of reasons, the Protestants having let down their guard or not seeing the wolf making its stealthy approach again. There was a time when Protestantism really WAS Protestantism because it recognized the real threat of the Roman false church's designs to put itself in power over all people. There are few true Protestants left these days, and it looks like Europe is shaping up to become another Holy Roman Empire with the Pope pulling the strings behind the scenes. Poor Europe. Poor America.

But they did their work well, convincing people that "religious tolerance" is just freedom for all so that it's the Protestants and Puritans who are hated for "intolerance" while it's the wolf that kills and tortures people for "heresy" that's allowed the freedom.

The Roman Church is the Harlot Church described in the book of Revelation, which used to be recognized widely among Protestants, and the papacy the seat of the Antichrist. They lost much of their power in the Protestant Reformation, and England did manage to keep beating them back as well, but now they're regaining their lost power, and when it's at its full expression it's no less evil than that of Islam -- and Islam used to be recognized as one of the two legs of the Roman Empire too, ponder that as the Holy Roman Empire starts shaping up again!

God help Europe, God help America, God help the world. [But of course this takes me back to what WOULD bring us God's help: Repentance for our falling away from Him. This is all God's judgment, as I've pointed out at all my blogs from the beginning.]

[I did a related post on this subject on Faith's Corner a while back, Poor Poor England. ]

Just Another In-Your-Face Obama Birthplace Smoking Gun, Ho Hum

Yeah, I heard a few days ago about the latest evidence of Obama's having been born in Kenya -- that blurb for a book he was writing back in 1991. Quite flatly declared him Kenya-born. Didn't really make much of a blip on my radar screen. So what else is new? We've known this a long time. There have been many smoking gun revelations already, stuff we'd hear about that would then just disappear, immediately buried, aggressively denied. The Kenyan grandmother who said she'd seen him in the hospital when he was born, the Kenyan memorial to his birth out of pride that a son of theirs had achieved so much in America, the mailman who was told by a young foreign student named Obama that he expected to be President one day, the Hawaiian birth certificate that even I could see was forged (I put it up somewhere on this blog. Yawn.) One proof after another makes the news and then just dies.

Truth does not stand a chance in these last days. And all this IS evidence that the last days is exactly where we are.

So Scott Johnson did a report on it this week, and he's covered all those past proofs going back years, it's all there. He's got his PDF document on it as well as his audio report, so you can print it out if you want to have it all at your fingertips just to convince yourself you're not crazy after all, something to have after they take down the internet and execute Scott Johnson just as they did Andrew Breitbart, then Sheriff Arpaio, and so on, or whatever, there it is. Go for it.

I'm glad there are people fighting this stuff but obviously it's a lost cause. Powerful interests either don't care or they want it this way. There are people who are actually happy to think we have a President from a foreign country, happy to see our Constitution blatantly violated, globalists who can't wait for American sovereignty to collapse altogether. Like the American dollar, soon after the collapse of the Euro, coming up soon on the agenda.

Then Obama's Muslim Kenyan cousin politician (Odinga or something like that?) who murdered Christians by burning them alive in their church building, can come to America and do the same, and Obama will light the torch himself.

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5/25: And, of course, nothing is being made of the new revelation. In any other time this would be an outrage. In these days of putting good for evil and evil for good it's just business as usual.

Monumental mistakes, understandable motives

So Kirk Cameron's film Monumental, is out now, and you can find a lot of positive reviews through Google. I first heard about it, however, through Brannon Howse and Chris Pinto and Ed Decker who see some important problems with it. For one thing the movie apparently treats Glenn Beck as a Christian, and accepts David Barton's view of American history, both serious problems for a movie that is supposed to be Christian in inspiration. For a second thing, apparently Cameron chose as a symbol for his message a statue known as "Monument to the Forefathers" which celebrates the Pilgrim settlers of America, but does it with Masonic pagan imagery, which in fact negates the Pilgrim mentality it purports to represent. That's a pretty big error too.

But in defense of Kirk Cameron's take on the monument, I have to wonder why anyone would expect him to have thought of doing research on a monument which so clearly expresses the values that a Christian would hope to see celebrated as foundational to America. Very few Americans would have any idea that this monument was anything but the celebration of the original Pilgrim settlers it purports to be.

Wikipedia has:

On the main pedestal stands the heroic figure of "Faith" with her right hand pointing toward heaven and her left hand clutching the Bible. Upon the four buttresses also are seated figures emblematical of the principles upon which the Pilgrims founded their Commonwealth, each having a symbol referring to the Bible that "Faith" possesses; counter-clockwise from the east are Freedom, Morality, Law and Education.

Who is going to argue with Faith, Freedom, Morality, Law and Education? Justice and Mercy? Who is going to recognize these as PAGAN ideals rather than Christian ideals? Who is going to recognize these as MASONIC ideals rather than Christian ideals? Who is going to recognize the design of the monument itself as "Greco-Roman" and pagan and Masonic?

Answer: Only those who have as carefully studied these things as have Chris Pinto and Ed Decker and Brannon Howse. NOT the average American Christian.

I understand that those in the know want to head off a bad mistake, an embarrassing mistake, for Kirk Cameron, but also a mistake on the order of choosing a representative of the exact opposite of what he wants to celebrate, in fact the very mistake that most of us have been making for decades about the supposed Christian foundations of America. If there's one thing I have learned from both Pinto and Howse over the last month or two it's that Americans have been deceived by a Masonic conspiracy into mistaking their pagan values for Christian values. The discovery of the depth of this deception has been for me, as I've said, breathtaking, or more graphically, like a punch in the stomach.

I can hardly look at anything American any more -- pictures of the Founders, pictures of national architecture, the American flag, the dollar bill, without a sick feeling that I am looking at something alien, representative not of the nation I once loved but of an enemy. That's how I must now also look at the monument to the Pilgrim forefathers that Kirk Cameron makes the emblem of his film. Not what he found in it and hoped to give to his audiences, something they could embrace as representing the Christian beginnings of America, but instead a chilling reminder that America was stolen from the Christians by evil conspirators.

Something in me wishes I didn't know what I now know about all these things. But of course that is simply a momentary irrational feeling, and truly I am grateful that I know it. But again, I remember Charles Thomson (did I get that right?) at the beginning of Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers and I understand his decision to allow the American people to believe in the heroic qualities of the generation of the Revolutionary War, instead of burdening them with the truth about their character as he knew them, and I wonder if maybe that isn't the nobler concern, the better and more generous mindset. I can't wonder too long, though, before coming to my senses again. We need this knowledge and we need it particularly now as all the secret undercurrents that I've been learning about are right on the verge of exploding over the world, and if we remain in ignorance about them we will only be the victims of exactly what the plotters have been designing for us down the centuries.

But perhaps simply by having that wish I may understand something of the power of Kirk Cameron's naive take on that monument, such that he is not going to be easily persuaded to see it according to its true historical significance. When he first discovered it he fully embraced it as the embodiment of the Christian nation he desires to see restored. It sounds like he fell in love with it in some sense. Faith as its crowning figure, pointing to God, holding the Bible. Why would it occur to him at all that it has a "real" meaning that utterly opposes what he first saw in it? Why would he want to consider giving up its first impact on him since it makes the point he wants to make in his film, and since 99% of his film's audience isn't going to have any more of a clue about its meaning than he had anyway?

It's even possible that the explanations given by those in the know couldn't quite penetrate his mind because his initial impression was so strong and so interwoven with the message of his film. You can explain to him that the figure of Faith is *really* the embodiment of a Masonic notion, or that they could just as well have put a Koran in her hand as a Bible -- but he reads the word "faith" in a Christian context and sees the Bible in her hand and your words are just going to sound too hypothetical to take seriously.

I feel for him. I hope he does eventually open his mind to the truth, but for now I understand why he prefers the message of his film that holds out hope that America could possibly be brought back to a Christian perspective. Let's not get too down on him for having a moralistic perspective. Being salt and light in the world does allow for an emphasis on morality. It isn't going to work in the present context, we're too far gone, but I don't see anything in principle opposed to a Christian mindset in that emphasis. True, it's the gospel, or really, it's the Holy Spirit empowering the gospel, or in other words revival, that is the only way the changes he wants could be brought about, but there's nothing wrong with his desire to see the nation turned around. Perhaps he should change his focus to praying for revival.

He's wrong about the monument but it takes a sophistication to see what's wrong in it that we can't expect him to have had, or even now to want to acquire. As I said, this knowledge is a punch in the stomach, an icy hand gripping the heart. Some take longer than others to accept such a jolt to the system. Meanwhile I don't see anything terribly wrong with allowing him to imagine Christian meanings into those words on that statue. But maybe I'm going too far trying to see things from his point of view.

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Update: Listening to Chris Pinto today the 29th in which he's responding to some emails he received on this film, it becomes clear that the problems with the film are way beyond the meaning of the monument itself. I would still argue that Cameron should be given some slack about his take on the monument at least for now, but there's no way his apparent endorsement of the Mormon Glenn Beck's religious opinions can be accepted.

It is positively scary how many formerly apparently solid Christians have been either turning in the direction of apostasy or simply showing their true colors as their apostate views are coming out. Some formerly trustworthy Christian's allowing a false gospel to be blurred with the true as in the case of Glenn Beck's Mormon religiosity, or embracing Catholicism, is becoming all too common. It's startling.

THAT's the big problem with Kirk Cameron's film from what I know about it. Even his wrongheaded endorsement of David Barton's false history of the founders as Christians is somewhat tolerable because we could assume he could be educated out of that, just as he could be educated out of his rapture over this monument he misinterprets. But you don't align with a Mormon as if his religious views are the equivalent of the Christian gospel.

Glenn Beck has got to be one of the devil's most ingenious creations.

The pagan underworld revealed

UPDATE: Hey, go listen to Chris Pinto's radio broadcast for today 3/12/12, Who Are They Hiding It From? This is the third part of a series he's doing to answer a critic of his analysis of the American founders as not Christian, all of which is worth listening to, but the reason I'm saying this here is that after the halfway point he gets into how he believes that the Constitution was cleverly designed to accomplish just what we are facing in this country -- the disenfranchisement of Christianity. That has certainly seemed possible to me, either that or the founders stupidly didn't anticipate that effect, didn't know that's what they were doing. But now I'm convinced they did, they sold out the Christian foundations of this country and we are now suffering the consequences of their ANTI-Christian machinations. And I have to add that if the secularists and atheists think that's a good thing THEY need to learn something about the BASIS on which they did this because it was far more occultic than secularist, and we're also now getting all the satanic occultic religions demanding rights. Wait till they finally experience what that REALLY means.

March 13th broadcast continues the same subject. In this one he focuses on an article by David Barton about how Obama is the most anti-Biblical President we've ever had. The evidence against Obama is certainly enormous, but Pinto objects to the fact that Barton has fed us seriously out-of-context quotes that ignore the outrageous blasphemies of the most prominent Founding Fathers, making the focus on Obama well, perhaps a tad hypocritical. Jefferson and Adams were both American Presidents who aggressively and blasphemously denied the foundations of the Christian faith. Obama is if anything following in their footsteps at least by his actions if not his actual statements which he tries to keep vague enough not to step too hard on Christian toes.

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March 11:
Gotta say, the revelations coming out about the pagan origins of America are breathtaking, and not just America but we're talking worldwide influence. Stuff you've heard about all your life that's been off on the fringes of experience, that you didn't understand and didn't have much curiosity about either, are suddenly coming into acute focus for me (AMORC?). All the pagan symbolism connected with America, gods and goddesses, characters placed alongside Moses on the Supreme Court building frieze as if equal to the great Biblical lawgiver -- Mohammed? -- even the architecture, Greek, Egyptian, the symbolism on our money.

Then when you do get a glimmer of the implications you still don't really get it because you think it's ancient and dead and now has ONLY symbolic value. But recently it has all been coming into focus as this huge REAL expression of what the Fall was all about -- the ownership of the human race by Satan, the worship of Satan, the attempt to make the world in Satan's image. Historical figures you had come to believe were Christian, based on solid Biblical quotations from them, turn out to be something else, people who combined Biblical knowledge with ancient pagan lore and were basically committed followers of Satan.

Atlantis?? Never in my wildest dreams would that ancient legend have turned out to have a reality pertinent to my own time. Actually it had occurred to me that it might reflect a memory of the pre-Flood world, and it turns out it was that in spades, way beyond anything I could have begun to think. But it also turns out there have been serious occult attempts to revive the ancient kingdom -- in America!

Well, if we already knew we were in the end times, now we ought to have no doubt whatever, as these threads of human "wisdom" are revealed to have had passionate advocates and adepts all along, involved in all of human history, right up to the present.

Seems to me this stuff did have to start being revealed on the very threshold of the revelation of the Antichrist. Hidden lore, the demonic source of the supernatural tricks the evil one will be capable of, and all packaged in high-flown rhetoric about bringing peace on earth, uniting the human race under a global ideal social structure, celebrating all the highest achievements of mankind culturally and intellectually and socially and scientifically. What a package! It will seduce many.

Unless they look to Christ for salvation from the bondage to Satan it's really all about.

I'm referring mostly to information I've been gleaning from talks and productions by Chris Pinto. He's an unusually trustworthy and thorough researcher in my experience, reading complete documents instead of just excerpts, some pretty heavy-going stuff too, checking many sources to be sure he isn't missing anything, finding out-of-the-way expert information more superficial researchers would miss, doesn't take first impressions for gospel truth as I've found too many do.

I found a lot of his work at You Tube and I did embed it here, but now realize that's illegal. He sells his material. Unfortunately I can't afford it, but I also shouldn't display it here. I'll leave a couple of the links up at least but they probably won't stay live for long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU24fJ4NQxo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zYM-unUeNY&feature=related

Is it Judgment OR Revival, or could it be Judgment AND Revival?

I keep hearing some ideas that strike me as very odd that I can't yet organize into a coherent point of view, which was also the case in my previous post. It's not getting much clearer yet. Some questions out of the incoherence occur:

Why does it matter that America isn't in the Bible as far as hopes for a revival go? Revival is God's coming down and imparting fresh spiritual life to His people This could happen in Timbuktoo as well as America and I don't think Timbuktoo is in the Bible either.

What does it have to do with the origins of America whether we have revival or not? Why should it matter whether the Founders were Enlightenment Deists or Christians for us to desire to wake up the churches and strengthen believers in the Holy Spirit? For whatever reason America as a whole HAS been historically characterized by Christian culture and if the churches get revived the whole culture will get renewed with a Christian outlook. What any of this has to do with specifics about the Founding generation completely escapes me.

Why should there be a problem with desiring and seeking revival whether or not the very last days are upon us and the Antichrist is just around the corner? Why would we need to find such a revival in the Bible in order to justify seeking it? We seek it because we need it. If it should come before the Evil Empire descends on us at least we will have had a wonderful awakening, the strengthening of God's people and the ushering in of many converts who won't be prey for that regime.

They seem to talk at times as if revival or desire for revival could interfere with the end times plan, even as if that would be working against God. Strengthening His church would be working against God? What if it did put off the timing of the coming of the final Evil Empire? God's going to object to that?

They also seem to talk as if Well fine if God brings revival well and good but if not well and good, as if revival simply drops out of the sky at God's bidding and has nothing to do with human effort. I've read quite a bit about revivals and one thing that is true of all of them is that there was deep desire and seeking for the revival and much much prayer. If that isn't happening there will not be revival.

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LATER: The people who seem to be saying these things seem to have "moralizing" in mind as the problem, attempts to "reclaim" "Christian America" with politics and moral reformation, which tends to seek alignment with nonChristian groups that share the same moral perspective, meaning Christians aligning with Mormons and Catholics and the like in an ecumenical coalition. However, this does manage to get confused with long-established hopes for revival among true Christians such as Leonard Ravenhill never ceased calling for, and sites such as Sermon Index are dedicated to.

I get the feeling that these critics aren't really aware of these revival hopes and that may be why I'm having such a hard time grasping their position. I have certainly vacillated a great deal on whether or not such a revival is even possible at this time, or could even be risky considering all the false "Christian" groups that keep springing up like poisonous mushrooms these days that would do their best to interfere with it.

And now Glenn Beck the Mormon has been calling for "revival" which is another red flag. BUT: True revival is not possible within Mormonism, true Holy Spirit revival, because it's a false religion. The best they could do IS some attempt at moralistic reformation -- or some demonic manifestations perhaps, and we ARE getting near the time when "signs and wonders" are prophesied to start appearing. Same with Catholicism and all the growing bodies of apostate "Christianity" out there as well. Rick Warren's church, Joel Osteen's, the Emergent Church etc. etc.

But is it possible to have a true revival among true Christians without all the rest of that interfering? Again, I vacillate. I might not have worried about it except that I remember A W Tozer warning that there are times, and his own time was one, when revival would not be a good idea because of the backslidden or watered-down condition of the churches -- and he wasn't even talking about all the FALSE churches, just weak true churches. So the question about true revival really is: Is there enough of a true church now that God COULD revive us in true supernatural power and convert some of the apostates as well? Or not?

Is there a Christian America at all that could be reclaimed and even if so what methods are God-honoring?

As I say in my last post I have come around from the popular view of America's Founders as Christians to recognizing that they were often outright anti-Christian. Nevertheless I continue to see America as having been highly blessed by God over its two plus centuries of existence, and predominantly Christian in its population, and Christian also from its original settling by true Christians. How all this works together is open to discussion but I haven't yet come to the conclusion that America should simply be abandoned because the Founders weren't Christians.

I get the impression that something along those lines may be the opinion of Brannon Howse if not also Chris Pinto -- but maybe him too. As if there is no point in hoping to "reclaim" the lost Christian worldview of America because it never was Christian. Well, but it was and it wasn't. We are under God's judgment now because we've fallen from the Christian worldview the nation really did mostly live by until the last few decades. Nations must live by the Law of God to be protected. When they abandon that Law God brings judgment against them. And as Jonathan Cahn's study reveals, America really was dedicated to God in a very real sense despite all these new revelations about the anti-Christian beliefs of the Founders.

Toward the end of yesterday's Worldview Weekend broadcast, Part 3 of the discussion about Kirk Cameron's soon to be released film, Monumental, there is an exchange I find puzzling and still need to think more about. Howse and Pinto see Cameron as pursuing what is essentially an ecumenical approach to reclaiming the "Christian foundations" of America, which they don't agree existed anyway, by joining hands with nonChristians on political and moral issues that Christians share with them. Cameron's side of the argument is presented as desiring to save the nation for his children and future generations. They accuse Howse of sitting around waiting for the Antichrist in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Howse responds that this is is to be a God-fulfilled prophecy if so, not self-fulfilling. A caller chimes in that it seems that Cameron is rejecting God's own revelation. See, I do have trouble keeping this issue clear in my mind. I'm going to have to listen to that part of the discussion again to see if I can sort it out better.

But something like this appears to be the way the two sides fall out. I certainly can't agree with the ecumenical approach to "reclaiming" anything, even if the nation WERE clearly Christian from its founding. I do believe, however, that there is a sense in which the nation WAS essentially Christian despite the views of the Founders. I may have to modify this. Perhaps we were more "Judeo-Christian" in that there was a basic respect to God's Laws even in the Founding generation, as they warned that the nation needed to adhere to God's laws to prosper. That's not quite Christianity but it is compatible with Christianity, which must be part of the confusion here.

I've been vacillating a great deal myself about "reclaiming the nation" in the sense of yearning for a great revival to turn us back to Christ. Versus thinking we've gone beyond any point where we could hope for such a revival, or that it would be too risky considering the state of apostasy of the churches. I go back and forth on this a great deal. True revival can make inroads in apostasy, can bring liberal Christians to recognize the truth of the Bible. God CAN turn things completely around in revival. I know that is so. The Great Awakening just before the American Revolution did revitalize the Christian mentality of the nation. However, that was also followed by the generation of the Deists and Enlightenment-influenced anti-Christians which is the subject here.

It COULD happen but the churches would need to be praying in huge numbers with huge intensity and without ecumenical interference. That's not happening.

Although I believe we're right at the threshold of the coming of the Antichrist myself I don't see that in itself as a reason to give up hope that God might yet give us a temporary reprieve. We don't KNOW the Antichrist is right around the corner after all, although it certainly does seem imminent. But while we are to believe that prophecy is certainly going to be fulfilled I don't see that we are to cease all efforts to revive the churches and the nation, especially since we don't know for sure when it's going to happen anyway.

I certainly agree that we can't reclaim America in any way at all by ecumenical means, that's a lost cause. Politics is useless, even worldview training is probably useless. The problem is supernatural. There may also be many reasons we can't reclaim America even through a God-sent revival, however, including the imminence of the reign of the Antichrist, but all that is God's own sovereign timing. But I don't see anything in he growing apostasy or the imminence of the final evil empire as a reason to abandon the hope for revival. It COULD even be an argument FOR it. But again, we'd have to be praying our hearts out for it.

So there's my current state of rather muddled thought on this subject that I've needed to get put down in some form. It will probably be modified as I learn more and think more about it. But the main point is that I can't agree wholly with Howse and Pinto on this insofar as I understand their position -- which, again, I may not understand all that well.

Revelations about the ANTI-Christian beliefs of the Founders and deceptions about Christian America that many are falling for these days

Revelations about the anti-Christian beliefs of the American founding fathers, that I first discovered through a film by Chris Pinto at You Tube, are very disturbing to a conservative patriotic American Christian. But I'm now convinced that these revelations are really as important as Jonathan Cahn's about God's message to America in events surrounding 9/11. The deceptions that contemporary Christians fall into come at us from every direction these days, and unfortunately they are so utterly unexpected and Christians so woefully unprepared to stand against them, that most of us fall into at least some of them.

I certainly fell for the patriotic Christian view of the founding fathers that has been promoted particularly by David Barton over the last couple of decades. You must be convinced, if you watch Chris Pinto's revelations, that Barton was not playing with a full deck in his claims that America's founders were true Christians. Whether he fooled himself as well isn't clear, but now he's supporting Glenn Beck the Mormon as a "Christian" and has become thoroughly untrustworthy whether his misguided views are intentional or he is deceived himself.

Barton's claims are trusted and propagated still by most Christians, and Glenn Beck himself is also a strong propagator of the "Christian" basis of America, which I too accepted as true, although knowing Beck is a Mormon ought to be a warning in itself that something may not be quite right about what he's promoting. Beck is a very talented and convincing spokesman for American conservatism and patriotism. It really kind of takes the wind out of you to begin to see through such apparently righteous opinions to hidden deceptions. The whole Christian-Founders position needs to be exposed as deception. Truly Satan presents himself as "an angel of light."

Need to add here that this doesn't mean that America is not Christian in a very basic sense nevertheless, as the original settlers were genuine Christians, the Pilgrims and Puritans. But their Christian beliefs were betrayed by the generation of the Revolution and the Founding of the nation. These revelations have got me wondering why it is that God has so clearly blessed America, as He truly has, up until fairly recently, and it must be because of the Christian beliefs and lives of the original settlers as well as the majority of the population.

There is also the fact that the founders DID insist on prayer for the nation, recognizing the sovereign power of God and the need to trust Him for the nation's success. Even Benjamin Franklin called for prayer in Congress to assure God's favor on the proceedings, and he was among the least Christian of the founders. That prayer was so prominent on their agenda is puzzling after you realize just how anti-Christian the main leaders were -- which is revealed in Pinto's films on the subject. But the Deists of those days apparently believed in a God who hears prayer, they just didn't believe in Christ as God Himself and salvation through His death and resurrection, which is made only too clear in Pinto's films. It does seem to be the case that God heard George Washington's inaugural prayers for the nation that were made from that little chapel at the corner of Ground Zero that is a big part of Jonathan Cahn's revelations about 9/11, and that the blessings that God had bestowed on this nation dedicated to God in so many ways were rescinded by God at the very same place on 9/11.

Puzzling. Uncanny. Disturbing. Breath-taking really.

As far as I know, the revelations originated with Chris Pinto, but they have recently been taken up by Brannon Howse of Worldview Weekend as well. He is doing a three-part radio series -- the second aired today and the third will air tomorrow -- on a film made by Kirk Cameron that is to come out at the end of March titled Monumental, which is about a little-known monument to the founding fathers of America that claims to reflect the beliefs of the Pilgrim settlers of America. As Howse, Pinto and Decker make clear, that monument is utterly pagan in all its imagery, and was established by Masons, reflecting Masonic beliefs about "God" and has nothing Christian about it at all. An open Bible is part of it but "God" is presented as the generic "higher power" rather than the God of the Bible, and the Masons could just as easily have put a Koran in its place. If the Pilgrims had been around when this monument was created they would have denounced it as a work of Satan.

They would also most likely have denounced the generation of the Revolution and the Founders as followers of Satan.

Sobering stuff. Important stuff.

Chris Pinto also discusses this on his radio show for 2/29/11, titled Council of Trent And More, which is an interesting subject in itself, but most of the broadcast he spends discussing Kirk Cameron's film he'd also been discussing on the Worldview Weekend broadcast I've linked above.

This is a perfect, a classic, example of how Christians can be deceived. It's important to know about this.

Brannon Howse's broadcasts are only available free to the public for 14 days after airing, and then they become part of his archives that you have to subscribe to. Pinto's broadcasts I believe are free at any time.

There are plenty of "watchmen" or "discernment" type ministries out there that have also aimed to "expose" such Masonic and pagan roots of the American founding, but in my experience some of them are themselves so untrustworthy I have trouble taking them seriously even though some of what they say may be true. Their "evidence" is often incomplete, sometimes little more than circumstantial, often accusing people of guilt by association. They jump to conclusions without really proving the conclusions justified by the facts, although they themselves are thoroughly convinced by what seem to them to be sufficient facts, even saying things like "it's a no-brainer to me." Seems to me there is plenty of reason to think they are just being carried away, and worse, accusing true Christians of intentional deception that is not warranted. They show little concern that by trusting in their own personal grasp of the facts they may be accusing a true brother in Christ of intentional deception who is himself merely led away by a deception -- which any of us can be these days. I've heard too many true Christians denounced by such incautious "ministries" even as "devils" to the point I can barely take any of it seriously any more and just have to pray for the teacher who is behaving like a bull in a china shop, and possibly dangerously worse than that, letting himself be overcome by emotion through lack of complete knowledge and in fact setting himself up against God without knowing it.

But Chris Pinto's revelations about the founding fathers just blew me away with his careful mustering of evidence and objective attitude. Brannon Howse also has the same attitude and is very careful to acknowledge that Kirk Cameron is a true brother in Christ although he is trying to show that he is deceived about the meaning of this monument he has been championing in the film about it.

Here's a page on the program at Worldview Weekend: