Dear Jonathan Cahn: Praying for the nation with nonChristians is a sure way to keep us on the road to judgment

I recently heard that Jonathan Cahn, author of The Harbinger, has been invited to speak at a prayer breakfast at the White House on the 21st, the day of President Obama's inauguration.  This event involves some well-known evangelicals but it also sounds ecumenical in spirit: 

While not an official event of the 2013 inaugural ceremonies, the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast brings together faith and conservative leaders  in America to pray for the president and the nation.

Sounds awfully ecumenical to me.  "Faith and conservative leaders?"  What exactly does that mean?  Doesn't sound like they insist on having only saved Christians who believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What good can it possibly do the nation to bring together people who don't all believe the true gospel of Jesus Christ?

"God called us in 1993 to begin to host an event to bring together people of faith to pray for the nation in the office of the presidency," [Merrie] Turner explained in an interview on Friday with Robertson on his CBN program "The 700 Club."

Can this be true?  Would God call together such a vague group of "people of faith" to pray for the nation if this includes believers in religions other than His true gospel?

A few names I found mentioned in various articles about this event appear to be true Christians but the general descriptions given above suggest that they don't feel obliged to limit themselves to these.  Since it's very common these days for evangelicals to treat Roman Catholics as Christians I'd expect at least their inclusion and this would already defeat the whole purpose of such a meeting.

This organization has been in effect since 1993 and it seems to me the nation has only gone from bad to worse since then.  What good has their praying done?  Perhaps in reality it has contributed to the degeneration of the country since God will not honor idolatries and profane prayer.

Jonathan Cahn wrote about signs given to him by the Lord that show that the attack of 9/11 was God's warning judgment on the nation and that worse is to be expected if the nation does not repent.   After 9/11 then-President George Bush called for prayer in the National Cathedral, including a Roman Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim Imam, a perfect example of how to defeat your purpose if ever there was one.  You can't pray for the nation alongside members of false religions.  But that's what they did. 

Did things get better?  Well, Cahn's book details how things have not been getting better since 9/11 but the nation seems to be spiraling further downward to a much more destructive judgment from God.  Why isn't God hearing these prayers from the heart of our government?  Seems to me it's because clearly they are done in the very same spirit Cahn's book showcases that brought us 9/11 and will continue to bring further judgment.

That being the case, it can only be futility in the extreme to get together with a group that includes nonbelievers to pray for the fulfillment of the book's hope for national repentance and revival.  And worse than futility, it can only contribute to the curse on the nation.  What did God tell us?  "I will have no other gods before Me."  We are making the false gods of Catholicism and Islam and other religions equal to the true God by praying with them.  We are INVITING God's judgment in the very act of supposedly praying for repentance and revival.

My prayer can only be that Jonathan Cahn will refuse the invitation for such reasons.  I believe the message of his book WAS given by God but he can defeat it by participating in such an event.  He certainly cannot expect God to bless such an event.  He and the true Christians who participate in such things need to repent of THAT for starters if there could possibly be the slightest hope of national repentance and revival.

What is our call?  To separate from the world, to keep ourselves pure from the influences of the world, the flesh and the devil.  If it really matters it will cost us.  If we are serious about wanting GOD to move and not just indulging our own fleshly ideas about how He should move, it MUST cost.  It's only when the seed falls to the ground and DIES that life is the result.  Revival means resuscitation, a return to Life.  If we want it the first thing we have to do is DIE to ourselves, our own ideas about how to do God's work and everything that God abhors.

Very articulate Ben Shapiro argues with Piers Morgan on Gun Control

You Tube video of Piers Morgan interviewing Ben Shapiro on Gun Control. Shapiro is quick witted and gets his points in.

What I get out of this more than anything else is that Morgan expresses incredulity to the often repeated reason for guns given by my side, that their main purpose is for self defense against GOVERNMENT tyranny.

The usual response is that handguns and rifles couldn't do much if the government really did attack the people, as if removing even those means of self defense would improve that situation.

At least Morgan shows what I think the real attitude is, that we're foolish to think our government would ever do such a thing [giant eye-roll here], which of course strikes at the very heart of the reason for the Second Amendment.

Frankly, I think Brits should have more respect than to comment on our American situation at all. I find it really offensive myself.

Post election sermon by John MacArthur

Eleven-minute sermon right after the election.

 

The message in a nutshell:  

• We are not citizens of this world but of the Kingdom of God. 
• This nation is under God's judgment. 
• Persecution is coming.

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.

===============
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.