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:
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
The growing apostasy makes revival risky
More Christians are recognizing the validity of Jonathan Cahn's revelation of God's messages to America about 9/11, which ought to herald a great awakening beginning with the repentance of the churches. That and only that could prevent God's judgments against America that the "harbingers" are all about, and lead to the recovery of God's blessings on the nation. And I'm still doing what I can to promote it simply because this is truly God's own word to us.
At the same time it is so clear that the churches are going off in so many false directions these days my old forbodings about a false revival are coming back in force, and it's becoming hard to welcome any revival at all, even one that would come in response to these uncanny revelations of God's judgments against the nation.
I think it was A. W. Tozer I first heard say something along these lines. There are times when the condition of the churches makes revival a bad idea.
I've been willing to accept that the Brownsville "revival" of a decade or so ago was most likely truly from God despite my initial misgivings, because of a few people who seemed to be having genuine experiences, although I still have to question others, and if the questionable ones were all I'd seen I wouldn't have been so convinced it was from God.
In any case it seems like a "weak" revival, heavy on the physical phenomena that former true revivals always played down. We don't need more of those. We need revival that majors in repentance for the sins of the churches and the sins of the nation and a return to pure doctrine, and a revived national moral conscience that comes as a consequence of the purification of the churches.
But even as I contemplate that as the desired direction I'm aware of all the false movements growing up these days that would be waiting in the wings to co-opt any such move of the Spirit and turn it into a false revival that would be extremely hard to distinguish from the true.
Right now we've got politicians and pundits who preach policies a true conservative Christian wants to hear and yet they are Catholics and Mormons. Two of the Republican candidates are Catholics, one is a Mormon. Then there is Glenn Beck who is a popular and very articulate spokesman for conservative politics, but his Mormonism, and now his Mormonism aligning itself with Catholicism as well, is becoming blatantly obviously his main agenda. He'd turn revival to purposes a true Christian couldn't welcome. And he keeps calling for a revival too, again no revival a Christian could welcome. David Barton, former champion of evangelical hopes for the revival of a supposedly once-Christian nation, has sadly joined with Glenn Beck and dashed all such hopes for anyone who has a solid Biblical basis. Any revival that got co-opted by these false religionists would become a false revival in the service of false religion, mislead people away from Christ and the nation closer to judgment.
There are many supposed evangelicals who have already proved their lack of discernment by embracing both Mormons and Catholics as genuine Christians, evangelicals who denounce the true evangelicals who do have good Biblical discernment and refuse to link with Mormonism and Catholicism, as "haters" who fail at the most basic requirement of Christian love. And there are some who reject Mormonism but accept Catholicism, to make it even more complicated, such as Franklin Graham, following after his father Billy Graham.
With that kind of twistedness out there, my hope for a genuine revival is foundering and I'm beginning to see the "harbinger" revelations, that should be the catalyst to true revival, instead as God's witnesses against America that are going to stand against the nation to the last day. What could have inspired the purification the churches need probably shouldn't happen even if it could at this point, so the nation can only continue to deteriorate under God's judgments while the global-minded church keeps building the platform for the rise of the Antichrist.
Now I'm more inclined in the direction of wanting to see what's left of the true churches and true Christians be strengthened in Biblical foundations, so we can "stand in that evil day" maybe manage to shout truth into the storm as it swirls around us -- if we're still here when it breaks.
At the same time it is so clear that the churches are going off in so many false directions these days my old forbodings about a false revival are coming back in force, and it's becoming hard to welcome any revival at all, even one that would come in response to these uncanny revelations of God's judgments against the nation.
I think it was A. W. Tozer I first heard say something along these lines. There are times when the condition of the churches makes revival a bad idea.
I've been willing to accept that the Brownsville "revival" of a decade or so ago was most likely truly from God despite my initial misgivings, because of a few people who seemed to be having genuine experiences, although I still have to question others, and if the questionable ones were all I'd seen I wouldn't have been so convinced it was from God.
In any case it seems like a "weak" revival, heavy on the physical phenomena that former true revivals always played down. We don't need more of those. We need revival that majors in repentance for the sins of the churches and the sins of the nation and a return to pure doctrine, and a revived national moral conscience that comes as a consequence of the purification of the churches.
But even as I contemplate that as the desired direction I'm aware of all the false movements growing up these days that would be waiting in the wings to co-opt any such move of the Spirit and turn it into a false revival that would be extremely hard to distinguish from the true.
Right now we've got politicians and pundits who preach policies a true conservative Christian wants to hear and yet they are Catholics and Mormons. Two of the Republican candidates are Catholics, one is a Mormon. Then there is Glenn Beck who is a popular and very articulate spokesman for conservative politics, but his Mormonism, and now his Mormonism aligning itself with Catholicism as well, is becoming blatantly obviously his main agenda. He'd turn revival to purposes a true Christian couldn't welcome. And he keeps calling for a revival too, again no revival a Christian could welcome. David Barton, former champion of evangelical hopes for the revival of a supposedly once-Christian nation, has sadly joined with Glenn Beck and dashed all such hopes for anyone who has a solid Biblical basis. Any revival that got co-opted by these false religionists would become a false revival in the service of false religion, mislead people away from Christ and the nation closer to judgment.
There are many supposed evangelicals who have already proved their lack of discernment by embracing both Mormons and Catholics as genuine Christians, evangelicals who denounce the true evangelicals who do have good Biblical discernment and refuse to link with Mormonism and Catholicism, as "haters" who fail at the most basic requirement of Christian love. And there are some who reject Mormonism but accept Catholicism, to make it even more complicated, such as Franklin Graham, following after his father Billy Graham.
With that kind of twistedness out there, my hope for a genuine revival is foundering and I'm beginning to see the "harbinger" revelations, that should be the catalyst to true revival, instead as God's witnesses against America that are going to stand against the nation to the last day. What could have inspired the purification the churches need probably shouldn't happen even if it could at this point, so the nation can only continue to deteriorate under God's judgments while the global-minded church keeps building the platform for the rise of the Antichrist.
Now I'm more inclined in the direction of wanting to see what's left of the true churches and true Christians be strengthened in Biblical foundations, so we can "stand in that evil day" maybe manage to shout truth into the storm as it swirls around us -- if we're still here when it breaks.
Monday, February 20, 2012
The floating tribute to the fallen World Trade Center, USS New York, unfortunately another icon of America's defiance of God
Someone recently sent me an email honoring our American military in which the last part was about the USS New York, the battleship built from steel from the collapsed World Trade Center. I'd seen information about this before, it circulates especially among patriotic conservatives, but this time I had Jonathan Cahn's revelations about 9/11 in mind as I read it, as did the person who sent it to me.
It's one thing to know that 9/11 was God's warning judgment on America, but another to know that God Himself spoke to America through events connected with that day. This He did in such an immediate and personal way that you can almost see its significance reaching into the future, heralding new judgments to come because the nation failed to recognize God's hand in the attack, failed to humble ourselves and repent in response to it. Instead we did the equivalent of shaking our fist at God, though of course we THOUGHT it was only shaking our fist at the terrorists.
It is touching to read about the reverence the steelworkers who molded part of the ship felt about it. The foundry operations manager said that when the trade center steel first arrived he touched it with his hand and the "hair on my neck stood up." "It had a big meaning to it for all of us" he said, "They knocked us down, they can't keep us down. We're going to be back up."
Moving though such patriotic expressions may be, if you know about the harbingers or omens of 9/11 that were discovered by Jonathan Cahn, it must give you a shudder to see this same sentiment expressed again and again like this. "We're going to be back up," not, "God is judging America, we must repent," but "They can't keep us down, we're going to be back up," exactly the same sentiment God Himself pointed to in Isaiah 9:10 through many irrefutable signs to show the identity between ancient Israel's defiance of God and America's after 9/11.
So I worry for the ship and its crew. If the mere steel from the trade center made a man's hair stand on end, surely we know God's hand is on that steel and now it's in that ship and it signifies God's judgment, and how can that ship be safe under such circumstances?
It was the seventh ship to be named after the city of New York, and the number seven strongly figures in certain events since 9/11 that Cahn discovered. The ship was commissioned on November 9 of 2009. What time factor may apply from that date forward I don't know but God's judgments keep ticking away and I can only fear for the future of that icon to 9/11.
"We're going to be back up?" Not according to God, not in any permanent way for sure. The only way back up is down: on our knees in repentance and prayer.
It's one thing to know that 9/11 was God's warning judgment on America, but another to know that God Himself spoke to America through events connected with that day. This He did in such an immediate and personal way that you can almost see its significance reaching into the future, heralding new judgments to come because the nation failed to recognize God's hand in the attack, failed to humble ourselves and repent in response to it. Instead we did the equivalent of shaking our fist at God, though of course we THOUGHT it was only shaking our fist at the terrorists.
It is touching to read about the reverence the steelworkers who molded part of the ship felt about it. The foundry operations manager said that when the trade center steel first arrived he touched it with his hand and the "hair on my neck stood up." "It had a big meaning to it for all of us" he said, "They knocked us down, they can't keep us down. We're going to be back up."
Moving though such patriotic expressions may be, if you know about the harbingers or omens of 9/11 that were discovered by Jonathan Cahn, it must give you a shudder to see this same sentiment expressed again and again like this. "We're going to be back up," not, "God is judging America, we must repent," but "They can't keep us down, we're going to be back up," exactly the same sentiment God Himself pointed to in Isaiah 9:10 through many irrefutable signs to show the identity between ancient Israel's defiance of God and America's after 9/11.
So I worry for the ship and its crew. If the mere steel from the trade center made a man's hair stand on end, surely we know God's hand is on that steel and now it's in that ship and it signifies God's judgment, and how can that ship be safe under such circumstances?
It was the seventh ship to be named after the city of New York, and the number seven strongly figures in certain events since 9/11 that Cahn discovered. The ship was commissioned on November 9 of 2009. What time factor may apply from that date forward I don't know but God's judgments keep ticking away and I can only fear for the future of that icon to 9/11.
"We're going to be back up?" Not according to God, not in any permanent way for sure. The only way back up is down: on our knees in repentance and prayer.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
One man's testimony of Salvation and Life in the Jesus Freaks movement
I hope this brother doesn't mind that I commandeered his post for my blog. If he comes by and sees it and wants me to give his identity and where I got it I'll do that, but for now I just loved this testimony and wanted to put it "out there." It's in the context of a thread about how the church should deal with single mothers who come to faith.
It fits what little I've known about the Jesus movement, much from Keith Green's story, who got saved during that same time and became well known as the author and singer of many Christian songs. Green followed the command to love brothers and sisters in Christ by buying houses in which many homeless hippies who came to the Lord could be sheltered.
This man's story has a similar spirit. His name is "Brother Tom:"
It fits what little I've known about the Jesus movement, much from Keith Green's story, who got saved during that same time and became well known as the author and singer of many Christian songs. Green followed the command to love brothers and sisters in Christ by buying houses in which many homeless hippies who came to the Lord could be sheltered.
This man's story has a similar spirit. His name is "Brother Tom:"
I was saved out of the hippie movement,and all of the entrapment's of it, into the Jesus People movement. There was a day when Salvation happened all around us, every single day. It was a rare day, when someone was not saved. We baptized once a month in the nearby river..[ Russian River ]..and often had 20-30 confessors of faith.
We carried, and read our bibles everywhere, and wore them out. When people got saved, there was nothing in between them and God. The Holy Spirit entered them visibly, and they became radiant with a holy glow, and they smiled with joy and love toward one another. They had really been born again from above the second time.
The depravity in us before our salvation was no less, for sure, than those today, nor the wounds of sin among us no less severe than today. We were a sick mess, and after being born again, we were healed and delivered of our sicknesses.
Issues like this were trivial, and very common...with most all of us coming out of free love ideas that was founded on immorality as a life-style. There were lots and lots of single mothers in our church.
Almost every one, over the years, got married off, and went on as happy Christian moms. I guess what I'm saying, is that we never worried about figuring it out; We just did it in a very normal and common fashion; loved our brothers and sisters...and in a worshipping church...we all got healed up. God provided, it seemed, for everyone.
Back then, there were "Sisters houses", where perhaps 3 or 4 sisters lived , and some with children. Everybody got a job...and paid rent, and chipped in with the kids. I adapted a family of five boys, and one girl, living with their single mother.
I was single, and had a good job, working with my hands. I cared for those boys, took them fishing at the Ocean, took them out about every weekend, and provided extra's for them, in everyday needs. This went on for several years. I never thought twice about it, or that I was doing some special deed..I wanted to.
Today, these men now, still have respect for me..and made it through into manhood without too much craziness. It was always a joy for me to be there.
This was born out of Community. The Church [ local community [ always precedes the Meeting. Otherwise, you have a dysfunctional Body; usually wrapped up into the divisions of a Priest/pulpit ---Pew/congregation type mindset, and never, ever develop a family, a functioning many membered body, that edifies itself in love.
Life flows through this body that meets house to house, and breaks bread together, devoid of the ecclesiastical control , or respect that the religious live by. I have written in my Bible, that RELIGION KILLS!...and the solution to matters like these will never come to us in the current Clergy/Laity model, as neither will Revival...no matter how much you preach about it.
A healed Church, which is what we are talking about here, is one where Faith works by love, and my experiences in this church that brought life all came from a natural flow of loving one another with Christ Jesus in our midst as Lord....not a program or a defining system of ministry.
One day God will pour Himself upon us again, those who really want Him, and we will become a body again, of equal brothers and sisters, unto the very least of the brethren, and again issues like the single mom ministry will just fall in place, naturally, because they are loved, and worth it.....and no man or woman will ever be judged after their old nature or sins...but as New Creatures! Hallelujah!
Friday, February 17, 2012
A Christian Worldview the result of the Christian work of being salt and light
If only the Lord might give us revival across the nation it wouldn't be long before a Christian worldview was reconstructed. There's always a question how much can be accomplished by purely intellectual means -- even through the sanctified intellect of born-again Christians. But we ARE to be salt and light to the culture so it's hard to go along with some who advocate just leaving it all alone while these worldly and pagan views that are dominating the world today are not only bringing about God's judgments on this earth but dragging millions to a hellish eternity. At the very least there are Christians who are saved but who nevertheless accept ideas that contradict a Christian worldview, and it has to be important to shine some light on that problem.
I've been reading in an older book about Christian Worldview, 7 Men Who Rule the World from the Grave by Dave Breese, which discusses the effect of seven thinkers on today's cultural climate: Darwin of course, Marx of course, Julius Wellhausen, Freud, John Dewey, John Maynard Keynes, and Soren Kierkegaard. Brannon Howse of Worldview Weekend has also written a book, Grave Influence, that uses much of Breese's thinking and expands the list of influential anti-Christians to 21, and I suppose more could be added.
Christians just ARE influenced by the thinking of such men as it's been diffused throughout the culture over the last century or so. I don't think we can ignore it and hope to say anything very effective against it. I guess we could take the position that our job is simply to make spiritually strong Christians, hope for revival, and leave the culture to itself. Breese on the other hand wants to see Christians become educated to answer the culture, although in the following example revival played a big part:
I've been reading in an older book about Christian Worldview, 7 Men Who Rule the World from the Grave by Dave Breese, which discusses the effect of seven thinkers on today's cultural climate: Darwin of course, Marx of course, Julius Wellhausen, Freud, John Dewey, John Maynard Keynes, and Soren Kierkegaard. Brannon Howse of Worldview Weekend has also written a book, Grave Influence, that uses much of Breese's thinking and expands the list of influential anti-Christians to 21, and I suppose more could be added.
Christians just ARE influenced by the thinking of such men as it's been diffused throughout the culture over the last century or so. I don't think we can ignore it and hope to say anything very effective against it. I guess we could take the position that our job is simply to make spiritually strong Christians, hope for revival, and leave the culture to itself. Breese on the other hand wants to see Christians become educated to answer the culture, although in the following example revival played a big part:
History teaches us that a single strong voice for God in a leaderless generation can be effective. Historians agree that the revivals of John and Charles Wesley in England did save England from the terrors of the French Revolution. Surely the single voice of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms liberated northern Germany, then England, then major portions of the world from incarceration behind the purple curtain of Rome. Liberalism in America was impeded in some places and stopped outright in others by simple fundamentalist preachers who spoke strongly for the truth of God.[p.230]He believes that all of us need to be educated for this purpose:
Lenin himself, speaking of the Communist revolution in Russia, said that it could have been defeated by a hundred purposeful people in St. Petersburg who knew what they were doing. One effective debater, or even an intelligent Christian conversationalist, might have stopped Rousseau and his nonsensical arguments in one evening in the salons of Paris. By so doing, he might have prevented the French Revolution.And:
Keynesian economics, with its assertion that government is God, might have died aborning had there been a Christian position on government and global economics ready to meet it.[231]And:
Let is also note that the anti-Christian tides of thought prevailed in no small measure because the church had lost even its own message. Across the world Christians are often remiss, not only in not presenting position papers on global problems but also in not presenting the gospel.[231]
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Crash Courses available on Christian Worldview
In the previous post I mention that we've lost our Christian worldview, which means western culture is now laboring under something else, a sort of pagan secular conglomerate with false tones of quasi-Christianity, which is exemplified in the examples I gave. We did once have a coherent consistent Christian worldview, and so did Europe. Not perfect, not unchallenged, but dominant, coherent and consistent. Its loss is part of the judgment western nations are under.
In recent years some ministries have sprung up with the intent of identifying the Christian worldview for the sake of Christians who are also losing it under the onslaught of the world, the flesh and the devil. I just want to point to them in this post and maybe later discuss them.
The Truth Project which is taught by Del Tackett and put out on DVDs by Focus on the Family is a twelve-part seminar style teaching that systematically addresses all the elements of society explaining the Christian view of that element and the pagan worldview that has been supplanting it. My brother who is a fairly new Christian fell in love with this training, found it incredibly eye-opening and hopes to find time to teach it himself when he retires next year. Here's the website
The other major ministry devoted to teaching a Christian worldview that I'm aware of is Brannon Howse's Worldview Weekend. He offers courses that cover the material systematically but on his website you find discussions of separate elements in no particular order, which may fail to get across that there is such a thing as a consistent systematic Christian worldview. Here's the link to the main site.
He does have a Christian Worldview test you can take, however, which may be the most concentrated way to get a sense of what is meant by a Christian worldview, at this link. (I passed with "flying colors" as they say, I don't remember if it was with a perfect score, it's been a while, but near-perfect anyway).
In recent years some ministries have sprung up with the intent of identifying the Christian worldview for the sake of Christians who are also losing it under the onslaught of the world, the flesh and the devil. I just want to point to them in this post and maybe later discuss them.
The Truth Project which is taught by Del Tackett and put out on DVDs by Focus on the Family is a twelve-part seminar style teaching that systematically addresses all the elements of society explaining the Christian view of that element and the pagan worldview that has been supplanting it. My brother who is a fairly new Christian fell in love with this training, found it incredibly eye-opening and hopes to find time to teach it himself when he retires next year. Here's the website
The other major ministry devoted to teaching a Christian worldview that I'm aware of is Brannon Howse's Worldview Weekend. He offers courses that cover the material systematically but on his website you find discussions of separate elements in no particular order, which may fail to get across that there is such a thing as a consistent systematic Christian worldview. Here's the link to the main site.
He does have a Christian Worldview test you can take, however, which may be the most concentrated way to get a sense of what is meant by a Christian worldview, at this link. (I passed with "flying colors" as they say, I don't remember if it was with a perfect score, it's been a while, but near-perfect anyway).
Saturday, February 11, 2012
The sadness of misplaced compassion that is destroying America
Somebody posted this video on one of my "favorite" worldly politically correct websites, a Republican Representative giving her view of the gay marriage issue in very emotional politically correct terms. How she wouldn't want to deprive anyone of the kind of close relationship marriage can bring. Her daughter is a lesbian which must contribute much to her feelings on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CbmbdWK6338
I remember a Christian woman from some years ago who likewise embraced the idea of gay rights when her daughter turned out to be a lesbian.
This kind of thinking is very influential these days. We no longer have a Christian worldview shaping our once-Christian culture, even within the churches. Such questions are often decided based on feelings instead, and feelings such as this woman's are often misconstrued as compassion, even "Christian" compassion.
How are we to answer this? Christian opposition to gay marriage is treated by the world as a simple lack of compassion, even as anti-Christian according to the popular notion of what a Christian is supposed to be, as "mean-spirited," as "hatred against love" as I saw it expressed today. When ill-taught Christians join the chorus it becomes very difficult to get the topic onto a genuinely Christian footing and make sense.
I realize that it does not help to get angry as I did in my previous post because this is a problem of worldviews and understanding and the majority of people have no way to understand WHY a Bible Christian would get angry, all they can do is think we're being mean.
Is there any way to explain this that would help? Probably not, but that's no reason not to make the effort.
First, there is a HUGE confusion these days on many issues between how God deals with individuals and how He deals with nations and government. This is a big problem in talking about how America is under judgment, which I keep trying to deal with on these blogs. If we say that 9/11 was God's judgment on America people get indignant about how we are "blaming the victims" when that is not the point at all. It's not about the victims, it's not about individuals, it's about the NATION.
The same problem comes up in discussing an issue such as the head covering for women as spelled out in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. It's very hard to try to make a case for the head covering that doesn't get people upset thinking you're criticizing individual women for not covering their heads, failing at the most basic task of giving grace to others and generally being a legalistic Pharisee. Over and over you may find yourself having to say "But I DON'T think women who don't cover their heads are spiritually inferior," and "No, I am NOT speaking from my own feelings about this, much of what I'm saying actually contradicts my own personal feelings, I am simply speaking from what I understand the apostle Paul to be teaching." I keep being surprised to keep having to deal with this sort of misunderstanding but I guess I shouldn't be. Maybe there is no way to answer it effectively, but obviously it needs to be expected that people will mishear in this way because of worldly influences on our thinking, and this has to be regarded as a major impediment to getting across a Biblical position on it that needs some focused attention.
I may get more into the head covering issue soon because I've been discussing it on a forum recently, I bring it up here only because it has some features in common with our ongoing battle with the culture at large on issues such as gay marriage. The world thinks it's compassion and fairness toward women to allow them to have abortions. They can't seem to absorb the idea that the pregnancy represents an actual human being whose life must be taken in the service of such "compassion."
Likewise, the world thinks it's compassion toward homosexuals to treat them as exactly the same as heterosexuals and extend the rites of marriage to them. They can't seem to grasp the PURPOSE of marriage, which is to sanctify a union that is naturally or at least on principle able to produce offspring. They constantly misconstrue the objection that gay marriage "would destroy marriage" as a PERSONAL objection, like it's going to destroy MY personal marriage, unable to grasp that it's about marriage as a cultural institution that transcends all personal expressions of it, and that what would be destroyed is its cultural MEANING, a meaning that goes back to Creation through all time and all cultures. Apparently such an idea strikes them as too abstract and trivial to take seriously, compared with the much higher value they place on personal feelings and desires.
I watch all this with my teeth on edge, knowing that the nation is digging itself deeper and deeper into the grave by defying God's laws. So I talk about God's judgment coming against America, hoping that will get something across, only to find that the same kind of misunderstanding immediately clouds the issue. "Our compassionate good God would not do that," they say, "God doesn't cause suffering." This is of course why I think the revelations God gave Jonathan Cahn about 9/11 are so important -- which I've been writing about on Faith's Corner -- because they show in irrefutable literal physical facts that it IS God who brought about 9/11 and they teach WHY He did it -- the attitude of defiant independence from God and arrogant self-sufficiency -- and only if this is understood is there any hope of America seeing the light and repenting and thus avoiding the further horrors of further judgment from God. Now that IS God's compassion, showing us how to escape such sufferings. But so far few are listening that I'm aware of.
But America needs also to recognize the particular sins that have been digging us into the grave over the last few decades, the abortions in the tens of millions -- their blood crying out to God as the blood of Abel did -- the sexual sins of every type imaginable including the horrific notion of "freedom of pornography" and "freedom" for every kind of sin and deviation from God's law imaginable.
Truly the culture is in lemmings-to-the-sea mode, blithely tripping to its doom without a clue, thinking we're all making such "progress" in "freedom" when we're really stumbling around in the dark about to fall into the abyss, about to be consumed by terrible destruction, economic disaster, poverty, even starvation, violence from within and without, encroachment by enemies and aliens, because we're aggressively defying God's laws and putting in their place laws that actually reverse them, putting evil for good and good for evil.
And of course the trump card of the unbeliever is always that they don't believe in God and God's law anyway, that's just "religious" foolishness, any disasters have natural causes. Which may make some Christians feel like sinking back into a corner and covering our eyes while they invite their own destruction. Our wonderful powerhouse church seems to bave been deprived of all its power these days, as if there's a blockage in our fuel line from God.
Repentance does have to start with the church and the church isn't doing much in the direction of repenting either for our own deviations from God's rule. Christians who got saved out of this culture also subscribed to all its insanity before being saved, I certainly did, but once born again all that changes completely and now we ought to be able to say something relevant about it. Unfortunately the churches themselves have been falling for the craziness and need themselves to repent.
Yes, God CAN turn suffering and judgment to good purposes for Christians, opportunities to bring people to salvation, for instance, personal spiritual growth for instance, but let's not be naive -- this is not the easy way to bring that about. Judgment means the destruction of the way of life we've all become accustomed to and it's going to be hard to deal with physically, emotionally and spiritually -- for us for sure but more so for the poor unbelievers who have no way to understand any of it and no trust in God to support them, whom we must help when our own resources are lowest. Yes, we have His strength made stronger by our weakness -- if we have the spiritual sense to draw on it, and at the moment the churches aren't exactly spiritually alert.
So, the compassionate lady in the video is defending a position that can only bring doom to this country, just as those American leaders who pronounced the defiance of Isaiah 9:10 that God revealed to Jonathan Cahn were pronouncing God's sentence against America.
Is there any appeal from God's sentence? Is repentance possible at all? Will the churches finally wake up and repent for the sake of the nation? Is there any cure for this blindness or do we just have to sit back and helplessly watch it happen, watch Americans destroy themselves and the nation that once enjoyed great blessings from God?
=======
Later; Must add that sometimes I write on such subjects as if the most important thing were what is going to happen to the nation and not to individuals. This is due no doubt to what I said I keep encountering, the misreading of what does apply to the nation as applying to individuals instead. But it does also have to be recognized that saving individuals is more imporant than saving the nation. Saving them from an eternity of suffering for their sins, that is. This is all about sin, sins that are bringing the nation to destruction, but they first of all bring individuals to destruction. The misplaced compassion of the woman in the video is actually condemning her own daughter to death. She may have a wonderfully happy "marriage" with her lesbian partner but a miserable eternity because she was kept from the knowledge of salvation by Christ. Same for all the unfortunate women who have had abortions not regarding it as murder. They need to repent and be saved by Christ who died for them. God will judge the nation only on this earth; but He judges individuals for eternity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CbmbdWK6338
I remember a Christian woman from some years ago who likewise embraced the idea of gay rights when her daughter turned out to be a lesbian.
This kind of thinking is very influential these days. We no longer have a Christian worldview shaping our once-Christian culture, even within the churches. Such questions are often decided based on feelings instead, and feelings such as this woman's are often misconstrued as compassion, even "Christian" compassion.
How are we to answer this? Christian opposition to gay marriage is treated by the world as a simple lack of compassion, even as anti-Christian according to the popular notion of what a Christian is supposed to be, as "mean-spirited," as "hatred against love" as I saw it expressed today. When ill-taught Christians join the chorus it becomes very difficult to get the topic onto a genuinely Christian footing and make sense.
I realize that it does not help to get angry as I did in my previous post because this is a problem of worldviews and understanding and the majority of people have no way to understand WHY a Bible Christian would get angry, all they can do is think we're being mean.
Is there any way to explain this that would help? Probably not, but that's no reason not to make the effort.
First, there is a HUGE confusion these days on many issues between how God deals with individuals and how He deals with nations and government. This is a big problem in talking about how America is under judgment, which I keep trying to deal with on these blogs. If we say that 9/11 was God's judgment on America people get indignant about how we are "blaming the victims" when that is not the point at all. It's not about the victims, it's not about individuals, it's about the NATION.
The same problem comes up in discussing an issue such as the head covering for women as spelled out in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. It's very hard to try to make a case for the head covering that doesn't get people upset thinking you're criticizing individual women for not covering their heads, failing at the most basic task of giving grace to others and generally being a legalistic Pharisee. Over and over you may find yourself having to say "But I DON'T think women who don't cover their heads are spiritually inferior," and "No, I am NOT speaking from my own feelings about this, much of what I'm saying actually contradicts my own personal feelings, I am simply speaking from what I understand the apostle Paul to be teaching." I keep being surprised to keep having to deal with this sort of misunderstanding but I guess I shouldn't be. Maybe there is no way to answer it effectively, but obviously it needs to be expected that people will mishear in this way because of worldly influences on our thinking, and this has to be regarded as a major impediment to getting across a Biblical position on it that needs some focused attention.
I may get more into the head covering issue soon because I've been discussing it on a forum recently, I bring it up here only because it has some features in common with our ongoing battle with the culture at large on issues such as gay marriage. The world thinks it's compassion and fairness toward women to allow them to have abortions. They can't seem to absorb the idea that the pregnancy represents an actual human being whose life must be taken in the service of such "compassion."
Likewise, the world thinks it's compassion toward homosexuals to treat them as exactly the same as heterosexuals and extend the rites of marriage to them. They can't seem to grasp the PURPOSE of marriage, which is to sanctify a union that is naturally or at least on principle able to produce offspring. They constantly misconstrue the objection that gay marriage "would destroy marriage" as a PERSONAL objection, like it's going to destroy MY personal marriage, unable to grasp that it's about marriage as a cultural institution that transcends all personal expressions of it, and that what would be destroyed is its cultural MEANING, a meaning that goes back to Creation through all time and all cultures. Apparently such an idea strikes them as too abstract and trivial to take seriously, compared with the much higher value they place on personal feelings and desires.
I watch all this with my teeth on edge, knowing that the nation is digging itself deeper and deeper into the grave by defying God's laws. So I talk about God's judgment coming against America, hoping that will get something across, only to find that the same kind of misunderstanding immediately clouds the issue. "Our compassionate good God would not do that," they say, "God doesn't cause suffering." This is of course why I think the revelations God gave Jonathan Cahn about 9/11 are so important -- which I've been writing about on Faith's Corner -- because they show in irrefutable literal physical facts that it IS God who brought about 9/11 and they teach WHY He did it -- the attitude of defiant independence from God and arrogant self-sufficiency -- and only if this is understood is there any hope of America seeing the light and repenting and thus avoiding the further horrors of further judgment from God. Now that IS God's compassion, showing us how to escape such sufferings. But so far few are listening that I'm aware of.
But America needs also to recognize the particular sins that have been digging us into the grave over the last few decades, the abortions in the tens of millions -- their blood crying out to God as the blood of Abel did -- the sexual sins of every type imaginable including the horrific notion of "freedom of pornography" and "freedom" for every kind of sin and deviation from God's law imaginable.
Truly the culture is in lemmings-to-the-sea mode, blithely tripping to its doom without a clue, thinking we're all making such "progress" in "freedom" when we're really stumbling around in the dark about to fall into the abyss, about to be consumed by terrible destruction, economic disaster, poverty, even starvation, violence from within and without, encroachment by enemies and aliens, because we're aggressively defying God's laws and putting in their place laws that actually reverse them, putting evil for good and good for evil.
And of course the trump card of the unbeliever is always that they don't believe in God and God's law anyway, that's just "religious" foolishness, any disasters have natural causes. Which may make some Christians feel like sinking back into a corner and covering our eyes while they invite their own destruction. Our wonderful powerhouse church seems to bave been deprived of all its power these days, as if there's a blockage in our fuel line from God.
Repentance does have to start with the church and the church isn't doing much in the direction of repenting either for our own deviations from God's rule. Christians who got saved out of this culture also subscribed to all its insanity before being saved, I certainly did, but once born again all that changes completely and now we ought to be able to say something relevant about it. Unfortunately the churches themselves have been falling for the craziness and need themselves to repent.
Yes, God CAN turn suffering and judgment to good purposes for Christians, opportunities to bring people to salvation, for instance, personal spiritual growth for instance, but let's not be naive -- this is not the easy way to bring that about. Judgment means the destruction of the way of life we've all become accustomed to and it's going to be hard to deal with physically, emotionally and spiritually -- for us for sure but more so for the poor unbelievers who have no way to understand any of it and no trust in God to support them, whom we must help when our own resources are lowest. Yes, we have His strength made stronger by our weakness -- if we have the spiritual sense to draw on it, and at the moment the churches aren't exactly spiritually alert.
So, the compassionate lady in the video is defending a position that can only bring doom to this country, just as those American leaders who pronounced the defiance of Isaiah 9:10 that God revealed to Jonathan Cahn were pronouncing God's sentence against America.
Is there any appeal from God's sentence? Is repentance possible at all? Will the churches finally wake up and repent for the sake of the nation? Is there any cure for this blindness or do we just have to sit back and helplessly watch it happen, watch Americans destroy themselves and the nation that once enjoyed great blessings from God?
=======
Later; Must add that sometimes I write on such subjects as if the most important thing were what is going to happen to the nation and not to individuals. This is due no doubt to what I said I keep encountering, the misreading of what does apply to the nation as applying to individuals instead. But it does also have to be recognized that saving individuals is more imporant than saving the nation. Saving them from an eternity of suffering for their sins, that is. This is all about sin, sins that are bringing the nation to destruction, but they first of all bring individuals to destruction. The misplaced compassion of the woman in the video is actually condemning her own daughter to death. She may have a wonderfully happy "marriage" with her lesbian partner but a miserable eternity because she was kept from the knowledge of salvation by Christ. Same for all the unfortunate women who have had abortions not regarding it as murder. They need to repent and be saved by Christ who died for them. God will judge the nation only on this earth; but He judges individuals for eternity.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The gay marriage "right" in California: another nail in the coffin being built for America
I gotta say that after a California court just decided today that a majority of the voters can't ban gay marriage (they forget that MAJORITY RULE is the constitutional standard and simply impose their own godless standard instead), I feel like doing an Elijah and praying for the state to dry up with no rain for three years.
No wonder the nation is under judgment. I still think Jonathan Cahn's revelations of 9/11 as indisputably irrefutably God's warning judgment to America ought to be sufficient to wake enough people up to save the nation (shouldn't take a majority. What was it, ten righteous for whom God said He'd save Sodom?), but it could be we've gone beyond His patience with us and I don't see anybody waking up anyway.
We actually think voting can possibly make a difference at this point? God's in charge of politics too and obviously He isn't in a mood to give us much hope there. Business as usual. All the way down to the grave, or Sharia Law or whatever is going to be our judgment.
No wonder the nation is under judgment. I still think Jonathan Cahn's revelations of 9/11 as indisputably irrefutably God's warning judgment to America ought to be sufficient to wake enough people up to save the nation (shouldn't take a majority. What was it, ten righteous for whom God said He'd save Sodom?), but it could be we've gone beyond His patience with us and I don't see anybody waking up anyway.
We actually think voting can possibly make a difference at this point? God's in charge of politics too and obviously He isn't in a mood to give us much hope there. Business as usual. All the way down to the grave, or Sharia Law or whatever is going to be our judgment.
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