By Larry Miller

It’s been said that if someone thinks he’s a leader and no one is following, it’s just some guy walking around. Today, we have a whole group of religious “leaders” wandering across the political landscape trying to convince the people under their charge that it is perfectly alright for people with limited skills to illegally sneak into our country and push many Americans out of their jobs by providing lower cost and more compliant labor. They most likely, hopefully at least, would say it was wrong for these same people to break into your home and remove your property or even begin living there… yet they would not object to someone stealing your job and livelihood.

It is not surprising that the usual suspects in the main line denominations that have been loosing members for decades are preaching the gospel of social justice which is no gospel at all… but the rantings godless manipulators seeking to control the masses in the name of redistributionist philosophies. What is surprising is that people in leadership positions of traditionally conservative Bible believing groups like the Assemblies of God and Southern Baptists have fallen for the siren song of being relevant to today’s issues.

They are the denominational elites who have taken the Christian virtue of caring for the poor to the point where concern for one group of people… the ones who have disregarded the laws intended to keep us safe and secure… has caused them to overlook the harm that comes to families where jobs are lost and who fall victim to the violence of the lawless intruders. John 10:10 tells us “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (NIV)

Many illegals sneaking across he border have come to steal, kill and destroy. They have made, once beautiful and peaceful places like Arizona, New Mexico and Texas a living hell for many Americans who just want to mind their own business and take care of their families. Crime rates have soared. People are terrorized in their own communities. Somehow, my reading of the scriptures does not show this to be the intended result of Christian charity. These plagues on any society are generally the result of falling away from godly virtues such as loving your neighbor and caring for the downtrodden.

I realize that many are here because the think the USA is the promised land, flowing with milk and honey. For many it is, as they take advantage of the many ways the national and state governments strip away the resources of hard working Americans to fund all sorts of give-aways to those whose net contribution to our society is somewhere south of zero. While my Bible tells me much about charity… how it helps those in need as well as those who give, I have never found any passage that gives virtue to taking from one and giving to another… no matter what the need. On the other hand, I Timothy 5:18 says “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”

In their desire to buy votes, in the case of politicians or appear compassionate, in the case of religious leaders, these elites have forgotten compassion to the guy working to feed his family and make his house payment. They have been egged on by unscrupulous business men and women seeking to lower costs and keep more for themselves, despite what their actions do to their friends and neighbor. Illegal immigration is a bonanza for businessmen, like those in construction and agriculture, who can’t outsource overseas… they bring the third world country right home to the USA.

Unless he belongs to a union, the Obama administration sees the American worker as overpaid and greedy in wanting to keep what he has earned and better his families life. Followers of Christ will already be giving away ten percent, and more, of their income – much of which is used to house the poor and feed the hungry. These people are not the bad guys!

Compassion is one of the wonderful Christian virtues that makes the world a better place to live. However, when the object of compassion is misplaced, it results in waste of resources and the encouragement of behaviors outside the scope of Christian values… and leading someone to sin is one of the last things we want to be found guilty of. If we are truly concerned about the hardships of our fellow residents on the planet, the just and compassionate approach would be help them bloom where they are planted and lead their fellow citizens to the peace, prosperity and freedom they are seeking rather than giving them license to steal someone else’s.

Originally posted at Political Christian © Larry Miller

 

WesternFront America

I received an email from a fellow blogger. As soon as I opened it, I clicked the second link and became disgusted.

The Enemies Within… watch the video

See also “I am a Muslim,” Obama Tells Egyptian Foreign Minister Gheit
Islamic Coup on the White House at Atlas Shrugs

I visited Atlas Shrugs and discovered a long blog post which quoted an article which alleges that President Obama told Egypt’s Foreign Minister that he remains a Musim, in sympathy with the Muslim agenda. The President  allegedly asked for patience on the part of Muslims until he gets certain domestic agenda items cleared up, then he would put the screws to Israel.    Here is the red hot quote.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said he had a one-on-one meeting with Obama, in which President Obama told him that he was still a Muslim, the son of a Muslim father, the stepson of Muslim stepfather, that his half brothers in Kenya are Muslims, and that he was sympathetic towards the Muslim agenda.

`Atlas Shrugs listed two sources for the quote: Web Today, in which the quote is the 6^th item in an enumerated list and Israel Today, in which it appears on page 12, in an article entitled Obama and the Muslim Agenda. The two sources are essentially identical.

Several possibilities come to mind immediately.

1. The quote might be forged.  Assuming that the initial source is Arabic language media, it would be difficult to track down and verify.
2. The quote might be valid, but Aboul Gheit might have lied.  Why? Was he trying to get President Obama in domestic hot water?  Was he trying to boost his own status?  Or was he seeking to reduce international pressure applied to an ally?
3. Obama said it,  Aboul Gheit repeated it, without considering the possible consequences or assuming that we would never hear of it.

I rate our chances of determining the truth with any real resolve as extremely poor. We need to evaluate this quote in the light of  previously obtained evidence.  Atlas Shrugs follows up with a long list of statements and events which point toward the most disturbing conclusion.

Recently, someone posted on Facebook a link to this video, which assembles several critical  Obama quotes which point toward the obvious conclusion.

OBAMA the Muslim – HIS OWN WORDS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE9mZCRX2mg

So what?

If President Obama is a closet Muslim, then he exploited a false claim of Christian conversion in order to win votes. In that case, nothing he says or does can be trusted.  Did we elect a Nazi to lead us in the second world war? Why not, what would be wrong with that?  Did we elect a Communist to lead us in the cold war?   How is electing a Muslim after we were attacked by Muslims, motivated by the doctrines of Islam and chanting  takbir as they slit the throats of flight crews any different?  Our elected leaders can not bring themselves to acknowledge the fact that Islam is at war against us.  Instead, they arrogantly deny the obvious.  The Islamic agenda is total world conquest.  Can we entrust our national security to someone in sympathy with that agenda?

If President Obama is a Christian, did he or did he not tell the Foreign Minister of Egypt  that he is a Muslim? If he did, why did he lie, risking exposure and resulting anger and resentment among Muslims who he is trying to co-opt as supporters?  If not, why did Aboul Gheit  lie about it?

The following blog post was first published October 14 ’08. I reproduce it now because it contains vital logic which has no less validity now than it had when first published.

Obama: Muslim or Christian; What’s the Difference?

Is he or ain’t he? Only Barack Hussein Obama knows for sure. Whats the difference?

If he is a genuine convert to Christianity, the threats he poses are limited to the consequences of his:

• Communist ideology
• alliances:
  • terrorists
    • Ayers
    • Khalidi
  • racists
    • Wright
  • racketeers
  • vote fraud practitioners
    • Acorn
• inexperience
• incompetence.

If his conversion from Islam to Christianity was a scam perpetrated for political expediency, then electing him is, in effect installing an enemy agent as Commander in Chief.   Abysmal ignorance of the doctrines of Islam recorded in the Qur’an & Hadith prevents many members of the American Electorate from comprehending the adverse consequences of electing a Muslim to high office.

22:41. Those (Muslim rulers) who, if We give them power in the land, (they) order for Iqamat-as-Salât. [i.e. to perform the five compulsory congregational Salât (prayers) (the males in mosques)], to pay the Zakât and they enjoin Al-Ma’rûf (i.e. Islâmic Monotheism and all that Islâm orders one to do), and forbid Al-Munkar (i.e. disbelief, polytheism and all that Islâm has forbidden) [i.e. they make the Qur'ân as the law of their country in all the spheres of life]. And with Allâh rests the end of (all) matters (of creatures).

The phrases highlighted in red above basically mean that a Muslim who obtains power will  impose Sharia. The translator’s comment, highlighted in purple, confirms that fact.  Do you really want to give that power to the enemy?  A Muslim President would pack the court system with Muslims & Dhimmis, life time appointments that can not be rescinded.

24:55. Allâh has promised those among you who believe, and do righteous good deeds, that He will certainly grant them succession to (the present rulers) in the earth, as He granted it to those before them, and that He will grant them the authority to practise their religion, that which He has chosen for them (i.e. Islâm). And He will surely give them in exchange a safe security after their fear (provided) they (believers) worship Me and do not associate anything (in worship) with Me. But whoever disbelieved after this, they are the Fâsiqûn (rebellious, disobedient to Allâh).

(And those who believe and do righteous good deeds,) meaning, their hearts were truthful and their limbs obedient with the righteous acts they were commanded, [The Reward of Righteous Believers]

Righteous good deeds: code words for Jihad. What righteous acts were they commanded to perform? 8:39, 9:29. They intend to take power, by force or by stealth; why should we give it to them? Why should we yield our hard won liberties? How will we ever recover our hard won liberties when the enemy has taken control of our armed forces?

12:40. “You do not worship besides Him but only names which you have named (forged), you and your fathers, for which Allâh has sent down no authority. The command (or the judgement) is for none but Allâh. He has commanded that you worship none but Him (i.e. His Monotheism), that is the (true) straight religion, but most men know not.

Only Islam’s demon has the right to rule. Legislation contrary to his Qur’an or Moe’s sunnah is not allowed.

33:36 It is not for a believer, man or woman, when Allâh and His Messenger have decreed a matter that they should have any option in their decision. And whoever disobeys Allâh and His Messenger, he has indeed strayed in a plain error.

Allah rules. His Messenger and his Caliphs decide and that is the end of the matter.  That is not how our Constitution works. Why do you want to risk losing our Constitution?  Why are you willing to risk imposition of Islamic theocratic tyranny?

Under Islamic law, any child born to a Muslim father is Muslim.  Renouncing Islam and converting to a real religion is a capital offense.  Apostates must be killed if they do not recant & revert.  Why then do Muslims; even Islamic terrorists, want Barack Hussein Obama to be elected? Why aren’t they issuing and attempting to carry out fatwas against him?  Obviously, they believe that his conversion was a sham. Obviously, they believe that his policies will be favorable to them.

They may be right. We can’t take that chance.       If Barack Hussein Obama truly abandoned Islam and converted to Christianity, let him curse and condemn the damnable doctrines of Islam which sanctify & mandate aggressive conquest against Pagans & ‘people of the book’, genocide & terrorism.

If he is a closet Muslim, he won’t abjure those doctrines because he believes them.  In that case, we don’t want him.  If he is a Christian, but unwilling to offend Muslims by telling the truth about their curse worthy doctrines & practices, then he has no salt or savor, and is unworthy of high office.

In either case, Barack Hussein Obama must be rejected because he can not be trusted with the high office he seeks.

The following blog post was first published January 12 ’08. It challenged Senator Barack Hussein Obama, then a candidate for the democrat Presidential nomination, to  abjure the damnable doctrines which make Islam intolerable. To the best of my knowledge, he has never responded to this challenge.

Specifically Senator

According to Newsmax, Senator Barack Obama declares himself to be a Christian, not a Muslim.

“I’ve been to the same church — the same Christian church — for almost 20 years,” Obama said, stressing the word Christian and drawing cheers from the faithful in reply. “I was sworn in with my hand on the family Bible. Whenever I’m in the United States Senate, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. So if you get some silly e-mail . . . send it back to whoever sent it and tell them this is all crazy. Educate.”

Senator, do you, as a Christian, endorse the Nicene Creed, specifically the clauses reproduced below?

[...]And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven[...]

Do you specifically & explicitly reject & renounce the following listed Islamic doctrines concerning Jesus Christ?

1. Jesus was not crucified, did not die and was not resurrected:
   

   4:157. And because of their saying (in boast), “We killed Messiah ‘Iesa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary), the Messenger of Allâh,” – but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but the resemblance of ‘Iesa (Jesus) was put over another man (and they killed that man), and those who differ therein are full of doubts. They have no (certain) knowledge, they follow nothing but conjecture. For surely; they killed him not [i.e. 'Iesa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary) ]:

   4:158. But Allâh raised him ['Iesa (Jesus)] up (with his body and soul) unto Himself (and he is in the heavens). And Allâh is Ever All­Powerful, All­Wise.

2. Jesus is not the son of God.
   

   4:159. And there is none of the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), but must believe in him ['Iesa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary), as only a Messenger of Allâh and a human being], before his ['Iesa (Jesus) or a Jew's or a Christian's] death (at the time of the appearance of the angel of death). And on the Day of Resurrection, he ['Iesa (Jesus)] will be a witness against them.

   23:91. No son (or offspring or children) did Allâh beget, nor is there any ilâh (god) along with Him; (if there had been many gods), behold, each god would have taken away what he had created, and some would have tried to overcome others! Glorified be Allâh above all that they attribute to Him!

3. Jesus is inferior to Muhammad.
   

   Sahih Bukhari Volume 6, Book 60, Number 3:
   [...]Jesus will say, ‘I am not fit for this undertaking, go to Muhammad the Slave of Allah whose past and future sins were forgiven by Allah.’[...]

Do you specifically & explicitly reject & renounce the following listed Islamic doctrines concerning conquest, terrorism & genocide?

1. Muslims are obligated to fight, Jihad is mandatory, not optional.
   

   2:216. Jihâd (holy fighting in Allâh’s Cause) is ordained for you (Muslims) though you dislike it, and it may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allâh knows but you do not know.

2. Muslims are commanded to fight Pagans until only Allah is worshiped.
   

   8:39. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allâh) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allâh Alone [in the whole of the world ]. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allâh), then certainly, Allâh is All-Seer of what they do.

3. Muslims are commanded to fight  ”people of the book” until they are subjugated and pay extortion.
   

   9:29. Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allâh, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allâh and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islâm) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

4. Our lives and property are not sacred to Muslims until we become Muslims.
   

   Sahih Bukhari Volume 1, Book 8, Number 387:
   Narrated Anas bin Malik:
   Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.’ And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah.“[...]

5. Muslims obtain salvation; escape from Hellfire and obtain admission to Paradise by participating in Jihad.
   

   61:10. O You who believe! Shall I guide you to a commerce that will save you from a painful torment.

   61:11.  That you believe in Allâh and His Messenger (Muhammad ), and that you strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allâh with your wealth and your lives, that will be better for you, if you but know!

   61:12. (If you do so) He will forgive you your sins, and admit you into Gardens under which rivers flow, and pleasant dwelling in Gardens of ‘Adn ­ Eternity ['Adn (Edn) Paradise], that is indeed the great success.

6. Muhammad’s admission to Paradise was dependent on genocide: making a great slaughter.
   

   8:67. It is not for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war (and free them with ransom) until he had made a great slaughter (among his enemies) in the land. You desire the good of this world (i.e. the money of ransom for freeing the captives), but Allâh desires (for you) the Hereafter. And Allâh is All-Mighty, All-Wise.

7. Allah sanctified, commanded and Muhammad practiced and bragged about terrorism.
   

   3:151. We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve, because they joined others in worship with Allâh, for which He had sent no authority; their abode will be the Fire and how evil is the abode of the Zâlimûn (polytheists and wrong­doers).

   8:12. (Remember) when your Lord inspired the angels, “Verily, I am with you, so keep firm those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who have disbelieved, so strike them over the necks, and smite over all their fingers and toes.”

   33:26. And those of the people of the Scripture who backed them (the disbelievers) Allâh brought them down from their forts and cast terror into their hearts, (so that) a group (of them) you killed, and a group (of them) you made captives.

   Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220:

   Narrated Abu Huraira:

   Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings,C and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy)
   [...]

When we assemble the evidence of pro-Islamic sentiment on Obama’s part, the statements  he has made, his policies, and the report of his alleged statement to Aboul Gheit, the balance swings heavily to the side of Mekkan candidate.  Because Obama refuses to abjure the damnable doctrines which sanctify jihad against us, we are forced to assume the obvious.  In this case, we have no recourse but to  demand his immediate resignation as Major General Paul Vallely has done.

While the retired General calls for a new election, I believe that Article 2, Section 1 as amended by the  Amendments 20 & 25 appear to rule out that option.  I regard such a resignation as highly unlikely and a special election impossible.  Our recourse is to purge the House & Senate of persons likely to approve Obama’s agenda.  We can begin that process November 2, ’10. by replacing the House and one third of the Senate.

Originally posted at Ben’s Blog © Dajjal

 

WesternFront America

The National Day of Prayer will be a glorious one in spite of all the controversy that blows with today’s political winds.

From every state in the USA, there will be prayers offered up unto the Almighty God, for He alone is worthy to be praised. Prayer is a powerful force, and those who understand its effects approach prayer with humility.

Growing contempt for religious expression.

Although a U.S. district judge recently declared the National Day of Prayer to be unconstitutional, Christians are not hindered by this latest display of judicial tyranny. Because we hold a deep abiding love of God, we’re above the fray. Our lives are guided by a peace that “passes all understanding.” And that same abiding love keeps us centered when faced with trials.

This year’s National Day of Prayer will be remembered for its trials. Below are excerpts from ChristianNewsToday.com — “National Day of Prayer Task Force Defends Honorable Chairman Franklin Graham’s Involvement in Washington D.C. Observance on May 6th”:

“COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO — The National Day of Prayer is part of America’s heritage and belongs to all Americans. It provides an opportunity for citizens to pray voluntarily, according to their own faith — and it does not promote any particular religion or form of religious observance. As a non-profit organization, the National Day of Prayer Task Force has held an event at the Capitol for many years.

“The time of prayer is usually held in a room of the Cannon House Office Building that is used by many other organizations for various occasions. A number of public figures have taken part in these gatherings through the years, and it is ridiculous for a small faction of detractors to contend that a group like the National Day of Prayer Task Force cannot invite an individual such as Franklin Graham, who is a well-respected public figure and humanitarian, to participate in such an event. We are grateful that Representative Robert Aderholt and other members of Congress are standing firm on this issue and have stated that the invitation will not be rescinded.

“National Day of Prayer Task Force (NDPTF) Chairman Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson, said, “Suggesting Mr. Graham should be removed from a National Day of Prayer event because of his religious opinions is absurd. No one understands better the need for prayer at this critical juncture in our nation’s history.” Full Article

Let your light so shine…

Reflecting upon this very special observance, Christians are encouraged to celebrate the National Day of Prayer while upholding their biblical perspectives. We’re a resilient and good people who understand that the Lord has already redeemed us for a higher calling. We’re holding up His light unto the world.
According to our religious calling, we hold a special mission. We are obliged to preach the gospel to every nation, tribe, language, and people.

As we prepare for the event, many of us have noticed that this year’s National Day of Prayer seems to be making a departure from what our forefathers thought important. Many are using the day as an opportunity to stir up needless controversy.

From its inception, our country’s history is clear. We began as a Christian nation. Today, most Americans profess to be Christian. People of other faiths are granted freedom of religion because of the brilliance of the American Constitution, with its biblical, Christian premises. And to be perfectly blunt, people of other faiths had nothing to do with the founding of America.

As Christians formed this country, they understood the necessity of upholding the foundation of religious liberty. After all, they themselves were persecuted. In 2010, God-fearing Americans want those of every faith to feel welcome and free to participate in our country’s heritage of religious freedom. However, those seeking to demean or diminish our Judeo-Christian faith are causing needless tension. What happened to freedom of speech? — View YouTube: “Franklin Graham: Obama ‘Giving Islam a Pass,’ Warns of Persecution.”

Liberal-minded ‘correctness’ rules our nation.

There is an uneasy and uncomfortable feeling as to why Rev. Franklin Graham was removed from the Pentagon prayer service. The snub appears tactless and disrespectful. Graham has a son serving our country in Afghanistan. Why are we allowing the National Day of Prayer to turn into a day of political and religious “correctness”?

It is most disturbing to see Rev. Graham, this year’s honorary chairman, being unnecessarily demonized and maligned. Graham said that no judge can stop Americans from praying for their country, and he expects millions to join him in praying for the president and other elected leaders, as well as “this unjust judge” — that God would give them wisdom.

Many feel this unfortunate issue is political badgering emanating from President Barack Obama, who closed his doors last year and took no part in the National Day of Prayer. His actions caused a great deal of concern. This was the first time that any president has behaved in this fashion. The president set a poor example before the entire country.

It is not surprising that an activist judge felt comfortable condemning a non-binding proclamation that exhorts Americans to pray. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb claimed that the National Day of Prayer proclamation violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In doing so, she ignored the clear words of the amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting [that is, regarding] an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

According to these words, government has no business restricting religious expression — provided that no sect or tradition is favored by law above another. The judge ignored the plain language of the First Amendment, mistakenly assuming that government (that is, the people) cannot publicly display explicit religious commitment.

In light of the First Amendment, it’s obvious that Judge Crabb’s extreme interpretation has little constitutional validity.

The National Day of Prayer Task Force.

In support of the National Day of Prayer, the National Day of Prayer Task Force — a nonprofit Christian organization — encourages participation in this day of fasting and supplication. Below are excerpts from the organization’s website, NationalDayofPrayer.org:

Mission.

“The National Day of Prayer Task Force’s mission is to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer, mobilizing the Christian community to intercede for America and its leadership in the seven centers of power: Government, Military, Media, Business, Education, Church and Family.”

Our Vision and Values.

“In accordance with biblical truth, the National Day of Prayer Task Force seeks to:

• Foster unity within the Christian Church.
• Protect America’s Constitutional Freedoms to gather, worship, pray and speak freely.
• Publicize and preserve America’s Christian heritage.
• Encourage and emphasize prayer, regardless of current issues and positions.
• Respect all people, regardless of denomination or creed.
• Be wise stewards of God’s resources and provision.
• Glorify the Lord in word and deed.”

Who We Are and What We Do.

“The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance held on the first Thursday of May, inviting people of all faiths to pray for the nation. It was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. Our Task Force is a privately funded organization whose purpose is to encourage participation on the National Day of Prayer. It exists to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer, to create appropriate materials, and to mobilize the Christian community to intercede for America’s leaders and its families. The Task Force represents a Judeo Christian expression of the national observance, based on our understanding that this country was birthed in prayer and in reverence for the God of the Bible.”

History of the National Day of Prayer.

“Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the time for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and right can never be safer than in their hands, where the Constitution has deposited it.” Thomas Jefferson, 1808.

“Because of the faith of many of our founding fathers, public prayer and national days of prayer have a long-standing and significant history in American tradition. The Supreme Court affirmed the right of state legislatures to open their sessions with prayer in Marsh vs. Chambers (1983).

“The National Day of Prayer is a vital part of our heritage. Since the first call to prayer in 1775, when the Continental Congress asked the colonies to pray for wisdom in forming a nation, the call to prayer has continued through our history, including President Lincoln’s proclamation of a day of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer” in 1863. In 1952, a joint resolution by Congress, signed by President Truman, declared an annual, national day of prayer. In 1988, the law was amended and signed by President Reagan, permanently setting the day as the first Thursday of every May. Each year, the president signs a proclamation, encouraging all Americans to pray on this day. Last year, all 50 state governors plus the governors of several U.S. territories signed similar proclamations.” (Click for more).

A time for renewal.

With everything taking place in our country, Christian clergy would do well to place priority on the need to reclaim our nation with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Rev. Billy Graham did so for almost all of his life. Though he is no longer as active as in the past, he does what he can to present the everlasting gospel. Who can ever forget his crusades? They are famous and remembered all over the world. Millions of souls have been won for the Lord because of one man’s faithfulness and ministry.

Pastors, preachers, and evangelists, as well as lay people, need to make America their focus and turn it into a mission field of renewal. With fervent prayer, begin to hold revival meetings and regenerate the believers’ enthusiasm. Prepare them to walk the road to Emmaus. Do you not understand that the fields are ripe and ready for harvest? There is urgency. “Today is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).
Indeed, the Great Commission can and should be overflowing with God’s anointing. If given a chance, the Holy Spirit could lead many people to renew their own personal lives, and at the very same time, restore their country as well.

There is not one living soul who can take away the joy within the believer’s heart. So hold onto that sweet hour of prayer and let it envelop your entire being. Breeze right through the misguided thinking of an activist judge. With righteous boldness, take a lawful stand. Allow God to have His day in court. He will undo this unconstitutional ruling. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

‘Adding to the church daily such as should be saved’.

Judge Crabb’s decision is very unpopular with the American people. Those in political power already know that they have done enough harm to the American psyche. The upcoming elections have consequences. And as for the courts of heaven, well, the battle was won a very long time ago.
The Lord has laid out His promises for the Church. Go forth and claim God’s promise, “praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved” (Acts 2:47).

RenewAmerica.com is dedicated to join with those of like-mindedness. There is a clarion call for a spiritual renewal. Never forget that we are still, at heart, a Christian nation. We must grow up in the faith, and become all that God wants us to be. We have a country that is in great peril and needs the Lord’s mighty intervention.

Music: YouTube — Instrumental Hymn Sweet Hour of Prayer.

Marie Jon is a political/religious-based writer and founder of www.DrawingClose.org — a sister website to RenewAmerica. Marie extends her hand of welcome; visit DrawingClose and receive your free gift of salvation by taking an online Bible study.
Marie’s writings have appeared on many sites, including ABCNews.com, USATODAY.com,The Huffington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.com, to name a few. Marie brings a refreshing and spirited point of view that is reflected in her writings. Marie is a nurse, a lay student of the Bible, and a patriot. She is an advocate for American troops serving abroad, as well as the Blue and Gold Star Mothers of America and their families. Marie enjoys Townhall.com radio, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Bruce Elliott Saturdays 5AM-9AM EST.

 

WesternFront America

by Larry Miller

Last night was one of the rare occasions that I watched the local news. This is a great source of information about the robberies, rapes and murders in my home town… and it’s kind of depressing since there is not a lot that I can do about most of these personal tragedies. What upset me most, though, was the news feed about the “Christian militia” arrests that took place over the weekend. There was an almost gleeful tone to the story about how the feds took down these religious zealots intent on overthrowing the government. Folks, this is just the beginning.

To put the story into perspective, all we know is what the formerly main stream media has told us… and all they know is what they’ve gotten from the authorities involved. It may be that these nine or so people in custody presented a real threat to life as we know it, however our government, over many administrations has lied to us so often that it’s difficult to know truth from fiction – and our media watchdogs have turned into lapdogs so we can’t look to them for help in ferreting out the straight story.

Even FoxNews ran an uncritical story about arrests of “Christian” militia members, so what can we really expect from the likes of CNN and MSNBC. Not knowing these people, I have no idea of what brand of theology they adhere to, so I am unable to decide if they are persecuted brothers or nut case heretics. I mean, this is the same media that calls Jeremiah Wright and Jim Wallis Christian, and I certainly am not willing to claim any spiritual kinship to them.

This labeling has to be seen in stark contrast to the outright unwillingness to tag Nadal Malik Hasan as a Muslim and call him a terrorist, even though actually gunned down thirty soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas a few months back. This media are loath to dispense any negative information about our Islamic neighbors, but are only too happy to say all manner of evil against the Christians in their presence.

To make matters worse, the only non-governmental source cited in the story of the arrests was statistics and opinions of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Consistent with their racist message, these statistics painted a picture of crazy white Christians attempting to keep the country pure. This kind of thinking is give currency because it aligns with the thinking of the media elites… and it aligns with the thinking of the current administration.

If indeed those arrested had plans to kill a police officer, than attack many more at the funeral, they needed to be stopped. Most police officers are good people doing their best to insure public safety. They are not responsible for the foolish laws they are sometimes called upon to enforce. It is those at the upper levels of our government that set the agenda that these men and women have to follow. There are times, however, when it may be necessary for them to follow their own consciences and keep the oaths they have taken, as members members of Oathkeepers have promised to do if anything really wrong is asked of them.

The police are like our military, sometimes directed to do things that may not be right by those with political agendas and schemes. The police should not be the target since the worst they do to most of us is harass “innocent” motorists with speeding tickets and the like.

Immediately after the piece ended I sent a email to the news director of the local station, explaining why the piece was wrong on so many levels. I did not, however, threaten to remove his head from his body, like some other groups do when their religion is offended. This is necessary as we have willingly followed the directions to stay hiding behind our church doors for far too long. The secular statists like it that way. We can have our beliefs as long as it does not interfere with their plans for world dominance. They are patient people, they understand that if we are pushed out of the market place of ideas, our numbers will shrink as we shrivel to an ineffective chorus of whiners.

We need to point out that the violence they supposedly fear is coming from within their own ranks as Sarah Palin’s church was torched, someone shot into Eric Cantor’s office and another voiced threats to his life on the internet. It might be noted that the man talking of doing violence to the Republican whip is reportedly an Obama contributor and a Muslim. I’ll bet you don’t see that on CNN or MCNBC. One could go on with stories about SEIU thugs beating a man giving out Gadsden flags, eggs thrown at tea party busses and the Albemarle County VA Republican headquarters vandalized. Those things are OK since Cantor is Jewish and the rest are just some of those evil people trying to stop “progress”.

I saw a bumper sticker a few days ago that said in bold letters, “PACIFISM WORKS” followed by “if your opponent has morals”. That summed it up beautifully as I have seen no evidence of a moral compass in the Obama administration or any of its minions.

We don’t all have to go out and buy an AK-47 along with a couple of Glocks, then go out and run around in the woods. What we do have to do is speak up when we see this kind of prejudice. In one sense, what they think about us doesn’t matter. But in another, we need to be at the forefront of defending the gospel and standing for the values that brought our country to greatness.

With a mindset that is antithetical to that of Barack Hussein Obama, we need to understand that this battle is not about us and our comfort. We are in a fight for the soul of our country and the souls of our fellow citizens. We cannot let them down.

We have two powerful weapons the other side knows nothing about. The first is prayer to the creator of the universe who takes a personal interest in each one of us. The second is the truth. Scripture says the truth will set us free. It works for us and it works for those blinded by their Obamessiah… but they will never hear it if sit down and be quiet as we have been told to do.

We cannot let the actions of a few people who go off the deep end make us back out of the fight… if indeed, that is what happened. They need our prayers as well. We are all under attack and it is going to get worse. We have no choice but to join the battle – or surrender. Somehow, I don’t think our Father in heaven would be pleased if we shrunk back from the task at hand.

Originally posted at Political Christian © Larry Miller

 

WesternFront America

The latest story making the rounds of the liberal press is the news that Trijicon, a civilian manufacturer of optical sights based in Wixom, Michigan, have for sometime imprinted Bible reference codes at the ends of their device serial numbers.  In the above photograph you should be able to make out JN8:12 at the end of a longer number.   That would signify John chapter 8 verse 12 to any alert Christian.

“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world.   Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12

Other verses that have been reported imprinted on the Trijicon sights include the following:

2PE1:19;  “And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in you hearts.”  2nd Peter 1:19

2COR4:6; “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of the darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  2nd Corinthians 4:6

Note that all of these Biblical quotations speak about “the light” which is pretty clever considering that Trijicon produces both thermal and light enhancing optical sights that increase target acquisition and hit probability in low light conditions.

The story first broke in the mains stream press at ABC news in a on line article dated January 18, 2010, “U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’  Bible Codes“.    The original story showed up first at a blog dedicated to shooting, Accurate Shooter, in a short blurb with photos entitled, “Trijicon’s Subtle Christian Messages“.   Who say liberals don’t enjoy shooting sports?  Whoever let the cat out of the bag must have been a follower of Accurate Shooter.  Most good Christian’s, who would have been the ones most likely to spot the inscribed Bible passages, would probably have felt fortunate to have the word of God imprinted on their sight and have clearly kept this knowledge pretty quiet or it would have come out years ago.  (Accurate shooter is a pretty good shooting blog by the way and I am glad to find it.)   Anyway this whole encoded bible message thing begs the question is it a good thing or a bad thing to have your weapon’s optical sight sanctified with  references to Biblical quotations?

I myself consider myself something of a militant Christian and would personally be comforted to have a sight with one of these Bible codes inscribed on it.   Other Christians, atheist, and believers of other religions would probably be horrified that a weapon of war is marked such.   This of course is an echo of the culture war, which by the way the Christians pretty much lost in America decades ago, as to the very nature of our United States.  President Obama has certainly let everyone know in no uncertain terms that the USA is no longer a Christian Euro-centric nation.   Thanks to the 1965 Immigration Act and our governments complete refusal to enforce our borders we will never be a majority white Christian nation ever again.

One thing I can tell you with certainty, regardless of my personal feelings, is that it is a very bad thing for the US military to have allowed these hidden Bible citations to be inscribed on any of their equipment.   Like it or not the United States is riding a tiger trying to maintain order across the planet.   Our military men and women are stationed in over 130 countries and only a few dozen of these countries are majority Christian.   Our Islamic enemies already recruit foot soldiers and appeal to popular opinion by portraying the US involvement in the Middle East as a Christian Crusade against all Muslims.   The knowledge now that the sights our Marines use to make kill shots to the heads of our Muslim opponents at ranges of 300 meters and better will certainly be used by our enemies to further inflame the populations of the countries we are occupying against us.   This latest revelation will without a doubt cause the deaths and injuries of more of our troops.

Also it must be taken into consideration that we are probably equipping some of our Muslim allies with these sights which is an incredibly stupid thing to do.  The spark that set off the great Indian Mutiny of 1857 that caused the deaths of thousands of British colonialist and their allies was the issuance of greased cartridges that the Indian troopers had to bite the ends off of to allow the gunpowder and bullet in the paper cartridge to be loaded in their guns.  As with any colonial enterprise there were many other issues behind the greater mutiny but the enemies of the British colonial regime were quick to see the propaganda value of the greased cartridges.

The enemies of the British told the Muslim soldiers that the paper cartridges were greased with lard made of pig fat.   The Hindus soldiers were told that the cartridges were greased with tallow or beef fat.  Early incidents were reportedly started by unidentified Indian laborers who were taunting soldiers that by biting the cartridges they were losing their caste and defiling themselves.  These “laborers” were probably “agents provocateur” of the conspirators who were attempting to ignite a rebellion.

The British claimed at first that the cartridges were greased with vegetable oil and later tried to issue ungreased cartridges with the instructions that the Indian soldiers could grease them with whatever substance they found suitable.  Their very willingness to change to ungreased cartridges seemed to the Sepoys to be confirmation that their fears of “polluted” cartridges were true.   The government’s reaction was too little too late and soon they found that the very colonial troops on whom they depended to enforce their rule over the Indian sub-continent were in armed revolt against them.   Ironically the new cartridges for a newly issued rifle, the Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle, made locally at the Dum Dum arsenal near Calcutta had not even been issued yet.

How prevalent are these sights?  Currently Trijicon’s largest single contract with the U.S. military is a $660 million dollar contract with the US Marine Corps to produce 800,000 optical sights.  Trijicon also has some smaller contracts to produce thermal sights for Navy weapons systems.   How many there are actually out there is almost immaterial as at this point much of the damage has already been done.  Even the rumor if it were completely untrue would be enough to give the Islamists new ammunition to use to stir up hatred, dissent and violence against our military forces.  Trijicon was dishonest to mark these Bible citations at the ends of their device identification numbers and their contract with the military should be canceled and they should also be fined.

One of the first general orders to all of our military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is that there is to be absolutely no proselytizing of any religion.  This unnecessary news event will spread rapidly across the world and will make what is already a hard job harder.  Trijicon makes excellent optical sights that are a tactical asset to our troops who are lucky enough to be supplied with them but their decision to mark these pieces of equipment with hidden Bible citations is inexcusably stupid.   Counter-insurgency 101 FAIL.

 

WesternFront America

It is one thing to judge, and another to excuse. The Manhattan Declaration does neither. I found this to be a rather profound statement by a large number of Christian leaders taking a stand for the foundations of civilization, the family, and the sanctity of human life. People of faith have to work together to preserve and protect the fundamental principles of morality from those who seek to destroy them. This declaration brings together numerous Catholic bishops, Orthodox clergy, and Evangelical leaders and as an evangelical Christian I will gladly partner with other types of Christians on the common concepts that form the backbone of Christianity.

From ManhattanDeclaration.org:

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life

2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife

3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Even now the whispers of “hate speech,” “ignorance,” “bigotry,” “intolerance,” and “insensitivity” await those who now champion the sanctity of life or who fail to cheerlead homosexuality and sexual deviancy. Some have even gone so far as to label the Manhattan Declaration “hateful” or a call for civil disobedience. They are wrong. If anything, it is in fact a rather benign, formal declaration of what a great many believe. It is also a clear warning shot across the bow of the U.S.S. liberal agenda that Christians will not compromise their fundamental religious beliefs no matter what the state may attempt to dictate.

Those who seek to mock, disparage, and even persecute those who fail to march lockstep with the agenda of secular humanism need to understand that a line has been drawn in the sand and a wide spectrum of the Christian community is joining together in a common cause to proclaim God’s truth, as they understand it, as outlined in the Bible. These are clear cut and unambiguous issues for Bible-believing people of faith and compromise is not an option when it comes to these basic principles.

The suspension of judgment and the concept that there is no true right or wrong is a devious lie and one that often fools even otherwise educated and intelligent people. If you are willing to suspend judgment and the concept of right and wrong, then you will eventually accept anything. The “if-it-feels-good-do-it” mindset produces only heartache and disaster in the end. It is the wise man who rejects such childlike idiocy and expects adults to think and act like adults. With maturity should come responsibility, self-restraint, discernment, and wisdom. It stands in stark contrast to an ideology of dependency, irresponsibility, the inability to practice self-restraint and accept the consequences of one’s actions, and the continued childlike dependency on others to fix one’s own mistakes.

Popular culture may sneer at such ideas as morals and values, sexual restraint, and personal responsibility, at patriotism and good citizenship, and at honesty, decency, and respect. Those are the failings of secularists and liberals. They should not be of Christians and conservatives. Part and parcel of both Christianity and conservatism is the simple concept that actions have consequences. The concept of the prohibition of sin was not to somehow squash your “fun” but to warn one about the repercussions of certain actions. It was to protect us, not to be “mean” to us.

There may come a time when a declaration like this is labeled “hate speech” or contrary to the public good and banned from dissemination. One may think that is far-fetched but we currently stand at the edge of the abyss when it comes to thought-control, censorship, and even the persecution of those that don’t march lock step with the powers-that-be and the dictates of a corrupt, popular culture.

As our society and culture embraces decadence and earnestly seeks to fulfill the Prophet Isaiah’s warning that “good shall be called evil, and evil good” it is increasingly important for people of faith to stand up and be counted. It is time to draw a stark distinction between those who have sold out to situational morality and don’t believe in right or wrong, only “different.” Eleven of the twelve disciples achieved martyrdom by refusing to heed those who sought to silence them. It is incumbent upon Christians to stand up for what is right, no matter the cost. It is an essential element of the faith, and at the core of the teachings of Christ. To not call sin “sin” is to be dishonest and contrary to the teachings of the gospels.

The last paragraph of the Declaration reads:

”Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.”

There is something noble and honorable about standing for truth, as uncomfortable or inconvenient that may be for some on occasion. You can join the over 300,000 people of faith who have followed the example and lead of the initial 170 leaders of the Christian community who presented the world with the Manhattan Declaration. Dare to take a stand. Join what has gone far beyond a mere statement in defense of faith and principle, and is now becoming a movement of people of conscience taking a stand for the whole world to see.

Start the New Year by recommitting yourself to what is right and true. The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience can be read in its entirity at www.ManhattanDeclaration.org. I signed this powerful declaration and so should you. I like the spectrum and caliber of the signers and am proud to join my smallest of voices with theirs.The goal is for one million Christians to sign the declaration. Will you join me in doing so?

For more information on the thinking behind the Manhattan Declaration I would suggest the article by Dr. Timothy George, Dean of the Beeson Divinity School of Samford University, senior editor of Christianity Today, and one of the original architects of The Manhattan Declaration: The Manhattan Declaration:  A Growing, Grassroots Movement of the Spirit (http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/call-response)

David Huntwork is a conservative activist and freelance columnist in Northern Colorado where he lives with his wife and three young daughters. He is the author of the book No Apologies: In Defense of Common Sense and the Conservative Ideology which is available at http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=3576295.

Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions at DaveHuntwork@juno.com.

You may also view his bio and past columns at: http://DavidHuntwork.tripod.com.

 

WesternFront America

The Tears of Jihad refers to the deaths of 270 million people over a 1400 year period. They were all killed for the same reason. They did not believe that Mohammed was the prophet of Allah.

After Mohammed died, Abu Bakr was elected caliph, Supreme Ruler of all Islam. This included both a spiritual guidance and a political guidance. So he was a combination of pope and king. Abu Bakr spent his three years in office making sure that Muslim Arabs did not leave Islam. The apostasy wars continued during his entire time in office. An apostate is one who wants to leave his religion and it is a killing offense in Islam.

Umar was the second caliph after Abu Bakr died. He picked up where Mohammed left off because Mohammed’s last efforts were all directed towards attacking the Christians north of Arabia. They were kafirs. They had not submitted to Islam.

At this time, the Middle East was not remotely what we think of now. It was basically a Greek culture. What had happened was the Greeks were sailors and businessmen and so the Greek culture spread all around the rim of the Mediterranean, including Syria, and Northern Egypt. North Africa was a Greek culture. And, of course, all of Anatolia (Turkey) was Greek. It was highly sophisticated culture but it had overwhelming problems and those probems were: Age, degeneracy and decay.

The Greeks had been at war with the Persians for a long time. This continual war left both the Persians weak and the Greeks weak, so the 900 year rule of Greek culture in the Mediterranean was coming to an end. The Greeks were also very divided along religious lines. Christianity had several variations and the Greeks in Constantinople had a different kind of Christianity than was held in Jerusalem, Syria and Egypt. These divisions were strong enough to cause ill will. So this was the world that Umar invaded and conquered.

The conquest went so fast that Umar was not really left able to govern what he had, but he now had enormous wealth because Syria fell, Persia fell, Iraq, Egypt and North Africa. In thirty years time all of the Greek culture except that that was in Anatolia was destroyed. An entire new world order came about.

At first the Christians were left pretty much to govern themselves and only send taxes to Medina. After the consolidation of the empire under Uthman, things began to change. Islam was no longer conquering more territory, Instead it was consolidating. The age of the dhimmi had arrived. Being a dhimmi involved paying heavy taxes, but it also began to involve being a second class citizen in your own home country. In Egypt, for instance, the Coptic culture was especially despised. Now the Copts, the descendants of the Egypt of the Pharaohs, had become Christians. The Coptic language was thousands of years old. If as a Christian you spoke the Coptic language in front of your new Arab masters, your tongue was cut out. That was the life of the dhimmi.
North Africa became Islamic. 600 years of Christianity disappeared. The culture of the Greeks, the Romans, the Europeans, was annihilated. Then the pressure started up against Greek Anatolia.

The Arab Muslims despised the Christians with a special fervor. You may say ‘But in the Koran it speaks well of the Christian.’ Religiously that may be true but that was written when Mohammed was in Arabia.

Now then everywhere the Muslims looked, they saw Christians who were wealthy, educated and very sophisticated. The Arabs were none of these things. They just wanted to crush the Christian kafirs. The 900 year old world of the Middle East completely changed. And notice something, it has not changed in the last 1400 years except to become even more Islamic.

The Christians had no idea what hit them. They never called the invaders Muslims, instead they called them Arabs or Saracens. Here are some of the words they left behind.

The sword of the Saracen, beastly and demonic savages. Evil God-hating Saracens destroyed crops, burned cities and drove the survivors before them.

This was the world that was created by Islam and would later cry out to the Christians in Europe “Help us!” Indeed the treatment of the Christians was a little better than slaves.

After the Middle East was conquered, Arabia looked towards Constantinople in Anatolia. This became a long term goal which took a few hundred years to accomplish. Their first step was to kill Armenians. In one town they brought together all of the Armenian leaders, took them down to the church and burned the church and it fell in on top of them.

In another town in Anatolia, when you came to pay your dhimmi tax, you got a special brand from a hot iron on your arm. If you were found and you did not have a brand, the first thing they did was to cut off the arm that should have held the brand. It didn’t hurt very long because the next thing they did was to cut off your head.

There was one Greek Bishop who offered to debate the Muslims with regards to Islam and Christianity. The Muslims listened to his debate for two hours then they cut off his head.

Another Bishop invited them to a debate so they too, debated for the afternoon. When the debate was over the Muslims took the bishop, cut out his tongue, hauled him out to the desert and left him to die.

Needless to say acts like this began to teach the Christians what their place was in this new order. It was a place of the dhimmi, a semi-slave. They could still have their church buildings, those that were left. Christianity could not be seen or spoken of beyond the church or the home. For a Christian to try to convert a Muslim was a death sentence.

Christians were actually forbidden to read the Koran. This element is important because it helps to ensure an ignorance of the Christian by his Islamic rulers. This has had a 1,400 year effect. Christians or other kafirs still do not study either the history or the doctrine of Islam. To not study the history or doctrine of Islam makes anyone including a Christian, a dhimmi.

Dhimmitude starts with ignorance. The cure for dhimmitude is knowledge. Once a dhimmi becomes aware of the doctrine of persecution and the history of persecution, the dhimmi’s eyes are opened and the dhimmi becomes a kafir.

The destruction in Anatolia took several hundred years. We have one accounting from a Muslim historian who gladly reports the figure of the destruction of 30,000 church buildings. Now some of the better church buildings had a special fate reserved for them. Those sites became mosques. When it conquers, Islam has built its mosques on top of where the best church building or temple was. It is ever thus because this is the way of Mohammed or Sunna.

Destroying religious art is also the way of Mohammed. As soon as Islam conquered any town, the churches were desecrated. The Christians could move back into them later if Islam decided to let them stand. Art, in particular religious art, is an affront to Islam. Mohammed’s first act on returning to Mecca, after he prayed, was to destroy all the religious art. We see this in Egypt for instance where the nose of the Sphinx has been knocked off. We see this along the silk route where all of the Buddhist murals in caves have had the eyes pecked out and the mouth taken out. It was Islam who invented the word deface.

There was an interesting side effect for those who had already been conquered as the conquest ebbed and flowed in Constantinople. If the Arabs lost a battle in Constantinople, back in Egypt, for example, there would be riots of anger that the Christians had beat the Muslims and the Christians would be killed.

This persecution was what set the stage for the Christians in the Middle East to cry out to their brothers in Europe, please help us, and the response of the Europeans in crusade was to try to help them. So the history of the crusades is one of the few times where Christians tried to help other Christians in the Middle East. The crusades should be a point of pride and should be studied to see what can be done to help Christians against Islam.

In the East, jihad was not just against the Christians, it was against everyone. The Persian Empire at this time had already been crushed. Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Persians was annihilated. It was annihilated to such a degree today historians are not really sure of the true nature of the Zorastrian religion because so many of their sacred texts, were destroyed.
Islam moved towards Hindustan. Due to jihad, what we think of as India today is about half of its original territory. But on the way to Hindustan, Islam stopped off in Afghanistan and destroyed the Buddhism that was there.

They then turned to the Hindus. The attack against the Hindus was similar to the ones against the Christians, Buddhists and Persians. When Islam started attacking the Persians, there was a parlay, a conference before the battle and the Persian general asked “who are you and why are you here?” because the Persians had never really fought the Arabs. And here, in a hadith, is what Islam told him. “Our prophet, the messenger of our Lord has ordered us to fight you until you worship Allah alone or pay the jizyah, the dhimmi tax, and our prophet has informed us that our Lord says whoever amongst us is killed shall go to paradise and lead a life of great luxury. Whoever amongst us remain alive will become your master.” This is the perfect statement of Jihad.

Now here is a statement by one of the conquering Muslim generals of India, Tamerlane. “My principle aim in coming to Hindustan has been to accomplish two aims. The first is to war with the kafirs, the enemies of Mohammed, and by this holy war, be able to claim a reward in paradise. The other was that the army of Islam may gain by plundering the wealth of the kafirs. Plunder in war is as lawful as a mother’s milk to a Muslim.”

You can see that the reason for invading Hindustan was exactly the same reason as invading Persia and it was the same reason for invading Anatolia and the Middle East. It’s important to realize this because many times people think that when the Muslims invaded maybe the people there got what was coming to them in some way. No, the only way you had to be, the only fault you had to have was to be a kafir and the Hindus were kafirs.

Just as the culture of the Middle East was crushed, the culture of the Hindu was crushed. You need to know that the Hindu that we see of today is not the Hindu as of before Islam. Islam changed the Hindu. Before Islam the Hindus had been a proud culture. They were a leader in intellectual theory, mathematics and philosophy. And they were very wealthy.

Hindustan had been an Empire for a thousand years and it had been relatively peaceful. In times of peace you accumulate a great treasure. That was one of the things that happened in Afghanistan with the Buddhists. They were very prosperous because they had given up war. It turns out that the Buddhist show what happens when you deal with Islam on the basis of we are peaceful people, we will do whatever you want. What happened to the peaceful Buddhist was that the pacifists were annihilated. Witness the fact that half of the Hindu culture still remains behind because it had a warrior caste. None of the Buddhist culture remains in Afghanistan.

Here is a typical story. 20,000 Jihadists and thousands of mercenaries laid siege to a city in Hindustan. A traitor in the city for money gave them a clue as to how they could place ladders up against one particular portion of the wall and penetrate the city. The Muslims poured into the city. For three days they did nothing but kill. They didn’t even rob the bodies. It’s very interesting. The General gave the job of killing the Hindus to only his most religious men and after three days they stopped the killing and then began to rob the bodies. While the killing was going on, the women, children, were raped, because rape always accompanies Jihad.

In the end the Hindus were crushed. Half their territory was gone. They were sold into slavery. There are some remnants of this in the geography books. There is in Afghanistan a mountain range called the Hindu Kush. Hindu Kush means the funeral pyre of the Hindu.

What we now call Pakistan was an original part of India. Of course the petition of Pakistan so that it would become purely Islamic and this happened under the British. It led to the destruction of about a million Hindus in the partition that led to the creation of the state of Pakistan.

It was Ghandi, the secular saint, whose pacificm and dhimmitude lead to the deaths of the million Hindus. It was Ghandi, who said that although all of the Hindus had to leave Pakistan, none of the Muslims in India had to leave. Today, those Muslims are devoring India from the inside. Ghandi was the great betrayer of Hindu culture.

Both Ghandi and the Buddhists of Afghanistan show how pacificm leads to total annihilation in the shortest time.

At the other end of India in Bangladesh the Islamization goes on today. In 1947 Bangladesh was still about a third Hindu. Today it is about 10% Hindu. And that reduction of the Hindu has come at a terrible cost. Women and men who are left in Bangladesh are persecuted on a daily basis, dreadfully, and the police turn a blind eye when some Muslim throws acid in a Hindu woman’s face. Why does he throw the acid? Her face isn’t veiled. The police will not investigate because the police are Muslim.

We do not have time in this brief accounting to tell the terrible story of the conversion of Anatolia to Turkey. Nor do we have time to tell the terrible persecution of the Orthodox Christians in Eastern Europe. Their persecution was dreadful but they fought on and on to their credit.

The first September 11th was in 1683 when the Europeans drove the Muslims from the gates of Vienna. Of course some years later we would have another September 11th. Now what is important about that is this. Islam never forgot that on September 11th they had been turned back from the gates of Vienna and the proud Turkish Army defeated. They never forgot.

Here’s what’s important. On September 11th in America we had no idea why that date was chosen. We were clueless and in that we see the nature of Islam and the kafir. The kafir never remembers the history that went with the expansion of Islam. Islam never forgets.

Since 9/11 nearly 58,000 people around the world died in 9,000 attacks. 87,000 have been injured in 39 countries. All of this suffering goes on around the world and you never hear about it because our press does not want to report the terror of what is happening politically around the world with Islam.

But we can’t blame our press because none of our schools teach this history, not even the Christian schools teach the dreadful history of the destruction of 60 million Christians. No schools teach the deaths of 10 million Buddhists, 80 million Hindus and 120 million Africans.

And since we don’t know the history we are doomed to repeat it. Islam continues to kill the kafir and the kafir just says “oh well, we’ll take care of that problem by pretending it is not there. And the reason we won’t turn our attention to it is complicated but part of it has to do with the shame of the history because the kafir has been defeated time and again by Islam. We absolutely refuse to admit that this is a culture that is devoted to the annihilation of kafir culture. Because now when you go to Iraq, you don’t find a Christian Iraq. When you go to Egypt, you don’t find a Christian Egypt. It is Islamic.

There’s only one way to stop this. The history of the Tears of Jihad must be taught in kafir schools. How can it be that the history of the expansion of the empire of Islam is treated as a glorious history and the history of suffering, the suffering of the dhimmi and the death of 270 million, is never reported. Until this changes we’re doomed to continual annihilation both here in America and abroad.

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WesternFront America

Recently I have had to listen too and read several emails that honestly upset me. I understand the angst by some people against Islam in general, however, if someone truly believes that Islam is evil they have not studied it or they are simply projecting their own brand of hate and bigotry, which makes them no different from those who kill for their religion.

It is important to understand that saying things like, “this is a Christian nation,” is patently false. It may sound good and if we reach back 35-55 years, sure we can find “Acts of Congress” that forced the inclusion of “Under God” into the money and pledge of allegiance. In 1892, a Baptist minister who professed socialism originally penned the Pledge! In 1954, the United States Congress passed the Oakman-Ferguson resolution, which included the phrase, “Under God” into our pledge. Than in 1955 “in God we trust” was included on the paper money. (1896 for Coinage) Sadly, what many good Americans do not understand or neglect to attempt to understand is that this “Act” by Congress was and remains Unconstitutional. However, do not believe me; let us research a bit further back in time.

“Spiritual freedom is the root of political liberty…As the union between spiritual freedom and political liberty seems nearly inseparable, it is our duty to defend both.” Thomas Paine, Thoughts on a Defensive War 1775. Thomas Paine understood the difference between calling this a nation of this religion or that versus allowing “spiritual freedom.” Having seen what happened in England and France personally both he and Thomas Jefferson were well aware of the problems posed by theocratic or similar governments. In France, thousands of Catholics were slaughtered during the latest of their “revolutions.” In England anyone who did not belong to the Church of England was persecuted, murdered, or driven off their lands and could potentially have everything taken from them simply for not believing as others did. As Thomas Jefferson said, “The opinions of man are NOT the object of civil government, or under its jurisdiction,” Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom 1779.

Our very own Declaration of Independence states the following, “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…” and the following as well.” We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Yes, that’s right read it again, it says NATURES God – not the Christian God, and it says THEIR Creator, not the Christian Creator. Of course, we should also look at the Constitution itself; the First Amendment states the following. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” When Congress passed the Oakman-Ferguson resolution, they were in fact passing an illegal resolution.

It should be noted that the author does not believe that the Freedom of Religion should be abridged in any fashion, the free exercise of religion, or non-practice of it should be allowed no matter what one “majority” religious persuasion believes or not. Why should we as a Nation of free men and women be subject to any one definition of what “should” or “should not” be? I have found it incredibly irritating to listen to the hard Right and its constant attack verbally, visually, and otherwise on ANY other belief that is not EXACTLY in line with its own. (Of course, the Hard Left does the same…) Therefore, do not take this personally but “Can a good Muslim be a good American?” is not an American thing to ask- after all for very similar reasons the question can be asked, “Can a good Christian be a good American…”

Every religion has certain areas of their Supreme religious texts, the Bible, Q’uran, Torah and more all have passages that state clearly that no other god should be worshipped. The Ten Commandments clearly states the following, “you shall have no other gods before me…” The Q’uran states, “They were all commanded to worship only one god. There is no god except He.” Therefore, when I hear someone say, “Them dang Muslims, or them damn Christians etc.” I usually shake my head in disgust; because of the ignorance of men, they cannot see that all say the same thing.

To be perfectly honest and logical ONLY atheists can be loyal to a country. We have no religious loyalty that supersedes all else. We are morally driven to follow the laws of the land, (and while we may wish to change them, the law is the law.) We are able to logically look at every terrible moral based law or Act of Congress and see it for what it really is…I.E. Patriot Act, Harrison Act, Marijuana Tax Stamp Act, RICO Act, IRS Act, etc. All of these acts were directly influenced by one or more of the following reasons, religious outrage, moral based arguments, greed or a quest for power- NONE of them have been legal, or Constitutional hence the reason they were put through as Acts and not Amendments or Laws.

Again, please do not misunderstand what I am saying- everyone MUST be allowed the freedom to practice his or her religion, or non-religion. In addition, more of an effort should be made by those of us sane and logical enough to see through the propaganda to keep people from playing into the goals of our “leadership.”

Remember, a people divided and fearful are much easier to control.
Freedom first then personal disagreements, remember why this country was originally founded and remember what our first fore-Fathers fought for in the Revolutionary War. They fought or freedom and that includes what is written clearly in the Constitution of this great nation.

Originally posted at Examiner.com © Jesse Mathewson

 

WesternFront America

Preamble
Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide.  We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture.  It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16^th and 17^th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country.  Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible.  And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement.  The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes – from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good.  In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Declaration

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We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities.   We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image.  We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person.  We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense.  In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right – and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation - to speak and act in defense of these truths.  We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.  It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season.   May God help us not to fail in that duty.

Life
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10
Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government.  The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense.  Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views.  The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion.  The President says that he wants to reduce the “need” for abortion – a commendable goal.  But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors.  The elimination of these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth.  Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as “the culture of death.”  We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.

A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable.  As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized.  For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries.  The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo-research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called “therapeutic cloning.”  This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues.  At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and “voluntary” euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons.  Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”) were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe.  Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20^th century, they have returned from the grave.  The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of “liberty,” “autonomy,” and “choice.”

We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion.  We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children.  Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination.  The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak.  And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent.  What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear.  We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation.  Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS.  We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research.  And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.

Marriage
The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.”  For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24

This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.  However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:32-33

In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God’s creation.  In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners with God Himself.   Marriage then, is the first institution of human society – indeed it is the institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation.  In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as “holy matrimony” to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by God, and blessed by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.  In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in the highest esteem.

Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society.  Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits – the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live.  Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves.  Unfortunately, we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the marriage culture in our own country.   Perhaps the most telling – and alarming – indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate.  Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent.  Today it is over 40 percent.  Our society – and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the national average – is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair.  Other indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly high rate of divorce.

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage.  Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.
To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love.  We must reform ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce.  We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make.

The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture.  It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law.  Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture.  It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life.  In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of their parents’ marital love), we discover the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct.  We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward.  We stand with them, even when they falter.  We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives.  We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness.  We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it.  Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners.  For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts.  Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to “a more excellent way.”  As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.

We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage.  Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital.  They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit.  This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being.  Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies.  The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit.  Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being – the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual – on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation.  That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.

We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights.  They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being “married.”  It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it?  On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand.  Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships.  Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships?  No.  The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential.

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage.  Marriage is an objective reality – a covenantal union of husband and wife – that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good.  If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow.  First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized.  Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as “marriages” sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non-marital and immoral.  Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends.  Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture.  But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.

And so it is out of love (not “animus”) and prudent concern for the common good (not “prejudice”), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture.  How could we, as Christians, do otherwise?  The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God’s creation covenant.  Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church.  And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.

Religious Liberty
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. Matthew 22:21
The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development.  The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ.  Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: “Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror?  Not so, but in gentleness and meekness…, for compulsion is no attribute of God” (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4).  Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God – a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason.
Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience.  Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience.  No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions.  What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law – such persons claiming these “rights” are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions.  We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business.  After the judicial imposition of “same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching.  In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital “civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions.  In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality.  New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion.  We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded.  Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one’s own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of.¹ Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.

As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority.  We believe in law and in the rule of law.  We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral.  The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust – and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust – undermine the common good, rather than serve it.

Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel.  In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching.  Their answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”  Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required.  There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself.  Unjust laws degrade human beings.  Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience.  King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.  We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.  But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

¹Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

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WesternFront America

Often the classics rank among the best.  Even though time passes and intellectual fashions change, certain insights and perspectives address something so profound they forever earn a place as a steadfast pillar among sifting seas of opinion.  Much of what comes after such a point simply serves as either confirmation, renunciation, clarification, or criticism.  Though he lived and labored during the Middle Ages in the 1200‘s, the cosmological argument of Thomas Aquinas has withstood the test of time as one of those stalwart pillars of the mind pointing to a rational basis for belief in God.

Though the term “cosmological argument” sounds intimidating and the concept  it strives to convey seems profound, this series of propositions endeavors to express a most elementary idea in a highly rational form.  The thrust of the cosmological argument seeks to prove that the universe must have a cause and that only God can serve as an adequate explanation for the existence of the universe.  Norman Geisler in Introduction To Christian Philosophy states the basic argument in the following manner:  “(1) Finite changing things exist. (2) Every finite, changing thing must be caused by another. (3) There cannot be an infinite regress of causes. (4) Therefore, there must be a first uncaused cause of every finite changing thing that exists (page 267).”  From here, Aquinas proceeds to argue that only God is powerful enough to serve as an explanation behind this uncaused cause.

This assertion is buttressed by Aquinas’ notion of contingency and the need for a necessary being.  A contingent being, according to Ronald Nash in Faith & Reason: Searching For A Rational Faith, is one whose existence depends upon another and whose nonexistence is possible; likewise, a necessary being is one that must exist, does not depend on another being for its existence, and whose nonexistence is an impossibility (128).  The necessary being ultimately serves as the sufficient reason for all contingent beings.

Despite the power of the cosmological argument, it has not escaped its share of scrutiny throughout the course of its distinguished existence.  For while the conclusions of the cosmological argument seem to flow naturally within the framework of traditional Judeo-Christian theism, they are not quite as obvious to adherents of other philosophies and systems of thought or to those seeking to undermine them through a process of intense rationalistic analysis.  Skeptics and opponents of the Judeo-Christian assumptions that the cosmological argument seeks to prove can call upon a number of criticisms and counterclaims in support of their contrarian position.

The first brand of criticism stems from those advocating worldviews hostile to Christian presuppositions that possess a considerable stake in finding an explanation for the origins of the universe through causes other than an instant of divine creation.  Foremost among the systems opposing the premises of the cosmological argument stand the various strands of naturalism.

According to James Sire in The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, the naturalist says matter is all there is and God does not exist (54).  Or as Carl Sagan use to say, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”  Corliss Lamont, the 1977 Humanist of the Year, writes, “Humanism…believes in a naturalistic cosmology…that rules out all forms of the supernatural … that regards nature as the totality of being and as a constantly changing system of events existing independently of any mind or consciousness (Understanding The Times, 117).”

Thus, as David Noeble of Summit Ministries responds in Understanding The Times,  “For the Humanist, no personal First Cause exists; only the cosmos…. There was no beginning and there can be no end.  Of course, there is no need for a God to explain a beginning that did not happen (120).”  Naturalists, therefore, find their explanation for the universe elsewhere   Whereas theists such as Thomas Aquinas posit the answer to this important question with God, naturalists find it in a complex interaction of matter, physical laws, and a healthy sprinkling of chance.

David Nobel writes of the naturalist perspective, “Nature…cannot create but she can eternally transform (120). “  Naturalists attempt to abolish the so-called Thomist arguments for a creator denying the very concept of creation itself.

While it is not too difficult to confront the opponents of theism over those points where such glaring differences exist, the criticism couched in the careful formulations of sophisticated philosophical analysis can be somewhat more difficult to counter.  For example, John Gerstner writes in Reasons For Faith that objections could be raised that the cosmological argument hinges upon the conclusion drawn from our own observation that all things have a cause (53).

The thrust of the cosmological argument hinges upon the conclusion drawn from our observations that all things have a cause.  This proposition is put forward to prove the need for a so-called first “uncaused cause”.  As the nitpicky skeptic might point out, if it is deduced through observation that all things have causes, is it not unreasonable to call upon an uncaused first cause?  After all, would not something have to have caused it also.  Such a deadlock leads to one of Kant’s antimonies of reason where debaters of equal rationality come to two semmingly reasonable conclusions: namely either the need of an uncaused first cause or the validity of an infinitely regressing eternal series of causes and effects.

Despite this apparent loggerheads between proponents and detractors of the cosmological proof, additional lines of argumentation and evidence exist tipping the scales in favor of justifiable theism.  From the time of the Enlightenment onward, practitioners of what Francis Schaeffer referred to as “modern modern science” have endeavored to establish a conceptual framework for explaining the operations of the universe capable of standing without the need for an appeal to divine support.   When asked by Napoleon where God fit into his system of celestial mechanics, Laplace is said to have responded, “I have no need for that hypothesis (Barbour, 42).”  But ironically, the very system of airtight physical laws many scientists approach with an almost religious devotion ultimately point to and must at least be jumpstarted if not actively maintained by the very Creator these lab-coated agnostics are scurrying to get away from.

Despite possible variations in their extraneous details, there are only a limited number of cosmologies accounting for the existence of the universe, each with its own advantages and shortcomings depending upon where one lines up in the debate regarding this theistic argument.  Astrophysicist and Professor of New Testament Robert Newman describes each of these possibilities in the article “The Evidence Of Cosmology” appearing in the anthology Evidence For Faith: these systems are the Steady-State Universe, the Oscillating Cosmology, and the so-called “Big Bang” (Newman, 83-85).

The Steady-State model added a scientific veneer to the philosophical assumptions of naturalism by hypothesizing a universe eternally existing in a dynamic state of equilibrium whereby the density and energy levels of the cosmos remain constant as new matter is added as the boundaries of the system expand.  Oscillating Cosmology pictures an ongoing cycle of universal birth, death, and rebirth as the universe continually expands outward in a burst of energy only to contract under the forces of its own gravity only to explode outward once again in an unending repetitive cosmic rhythm.  The so-called “Big Bang”, at its most basic, postulates a singular specific moment when the universe expanded outward from a particular point at a definite moment in time.

These theories may all be well and good in terms of allowing the curious to speculate until their heart’s content.  Yet ultimately they must correspond to actual reality if they are to be of any value beyond mere academic amusement.

It is against the cold hard wall of truth that these systems are forced to measure up against.  These unavoidable truths eliminate the faulty explanations for the origins of the universe and point us back to the conclusions of the cosmological argument.

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that the sum total of matter and energy in the universe can neither be created nor destroyed; it remains constant. This is appended by the Second Law of Thermodynamics stating that the amount of energy available for useful work constantly decreases and the amount of entropy or disorder increases.

Any theory of origins seeking to undermine the need for a Creator by positing an everlasting cosmos is by definition scientifically impossible as one deduces from these physical laws. For every system that possesses a finite amount of useful energy must have a definite startup point.

If the universe is infinitely old as speculated by steady-state cosmologists, the universe would have wound down already. As D. James Kennedy notes in How I Know There Is A God, “…everything is running down; … everything is wearing out; everything is growing old. So if the universe were eternal, it would have already wound down (6).”

Like it or not, the mechanics of the universe, as they exist as unvarnished facts, point to a theoretically specifiable beginning and cannot be compelled to testify against their designer. Dr. Kennedy further notes, “There was a time when there were men who believed that it [the universe] was [eternal] but with modern scientific discoveries it is no longer possible to believe that… For the last 150 years, scientists have been scurrying around trying to avoid the implications of the laws they have discovered (5).”

Despite harkening unto the exhortations of science when it is believed this manner of inquiry might prove a valuable ally in the ongoing struggle to dethrone the God of all space and time, this epistemological method is conveniently overlooked when it points in the direction of conclusions standing in opposition to cherished preconceived assumptions. Astronomer Fred Hoyle, a developer of the Steady -State Model, himself admitted that his affinity for this particular system was not so much born out of pure science but rather because this particular variety of cosmology was more philosophically satisfying than those characterized with a beginning (Newman, 83). Thus, the unvarnished facts may have little initial impact upon those holding such a viewpoint who feel seemingly remote matters such as the origins of the universe have little bearing upon their average workaday lives.

The Christian thinker must proceed by showing how one’s position regarding the data pointing to the divine origins of the universe impacts one’s relation to the remaining branches of knowledge and how one cannot ignore the issue without felling the entire noetic tree. The laws of objective physical science clearly teach that the universe came into existence at a particular point in time.

This leaves the cogitator with two possible explanations: either the universe came into existence of its own accord or was brought into existence by some entity greater and more complete in and of itself. Diehard agnostics will continue to insist upon the alternative excluding the influence of deity, which means they would select the alternative suggesting the universe came into existence on its own. Yet reason dictates that only nothing can come from nothing.

As an experiment, take a first-full of nothing and plant it in a flowerpot and see how long it takes to grow a plant from it. Now how much longer will it take for an entire developed universe with complex organisms and sophisticated civilizations to sprout from it? John Frame in Apologetics “To The Glory Of God: An Introduction”, argues that those refusing to assent to the theistic conclusions in light of such compelling logic and evidence must concede to the madness of irrationalism since it flies in the face of common sense to hold that everything in the physical universe requires a cause but the finite contingent universe itself (111).

While advocates of the cosmological argument will spend much of their time trying to convince their nontheistic counterparts as to its validity, they might be surprised to learn significant suspicion of it lurks within certain corners of the Christian camp. Ronald Nash examines a number of these Christian criticisms and concerns in his analysis of the cosmological argument as detailed in “Faith & Reason: Searching For A Rational Faith“.

Foremost among the cautions raised by Christians skeptical as to the value of the cosmological argument ranks the realization that the God attested to by this renowned theistic proof could very well fall short of the Lord boldly proclaimed in the pages of the Bible and could very easily resemble something more akin to deism (Nash, 122-124). For example, the purpose of the cosmological argument is to postulate a God that gets the proverbial ball rolling. However, on its own it does not initially provide enough argumentative steam to establish argumentively a God who actively sustains the universe, to say nothing of one that loves and cares for that part of the creation molded in his own image.

Furthermore, since the world and the universe are a composite of a number of complex interactive systems, one could argue that each was set in motion by its own unique first cause. According to Norman Geisler in Introduction To Philosophjy: A Christian Perspective, Aristotle himself believed in between forty-seven and fifty-five of these entities, each responsible for a particular sphere of the heavens (172). At best, such an arrangement would give one a situation something akin to polytheism where one god ruled the sky and another the sea. And in bringing the Greek and other ancient pantheons into the mix, Ronald Nash points out that the cosmological argument fails to address the moral and redemptive natures of God so central to the message of Scripture that sets the Christian message apart from other world religions. One could very well maneuver the most vile reprobates into acknowledging the existence of such a God without having it make the slightest impact on such a libertine lifestyle.

Of the cosmological argument, Ronald Nash writes, “…if we reject special revelation and attempt to reason our way from what we know about the world to the existence of a supposed First Cause, the most we can establish still leaves us a long way from…(the) God of the Bible (124).” Thus the Christian following in the footsteps of Aquinas comes to a very important fork in the road. On the one hand, the intellectually engaged believer finds that the given of the universe needing a creator is not quite universally assumed as they originally thought it to be; on the other, there are those within the Christian’s own camp who insightfully warn as to the potential dangers and shortcomings of this hallowed argument. What is the Christian to do?

The good news is that the cosmological argument does not need to be tossed aside with the rest of the philosophical rubbish. Just as an army cannot rely on any one weapon system if it hopes to carry out a successful military campaign, if they are going to utilize the cosmological argument as part of their apologetic arsenal, they must incorporate it into the framework of a comprehensive strategy of evangelization. It might be best to look at the cosmological argument not so much as some epiphanial revelation silencing all opposition from then on out but rather as a tool to extract knowledge already buried in the deep recesses of the soul.

Romans 2:14-15 reads, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law…since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them (NIV).” Likewise, Psalms 14:1 reads, “The fool says in his hear, ‘There is no God.’.” Thus, whether they choose to admit it or not, a primordial knowledge of God exists somewhere within the human soul. The trick is getting the individual to assent to this as they are being guided down along the path to belief in Christ. The problem is that man has gone out of his way in the attempt to shake free from the truth of God’s existence that weighs down the sin-laden conscience.

Romans 1:20-21 says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities…have been clearly seen, being understood for what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened (NIV).” The task of the Christian becomes to show the unbeliever how it is untenable to live in a theistic Christian world with non-Christian, atheistic assumptions.

In Van Tillian terminology, this is the point of contact (Frame, 82-83). The cosmological argument is best used as one of these conversation starters rather than as the be-all and end-all of the discussion. In essence, the cosmological argument is more a defense of already held belief rather than a foundation upon which belief in the true God is built upon.

Ronald Nash writes, “Suppose…that we regard it [natural theology] as an inquiry into whether the Christian world-view fits what we know about the outer and inner worlds (Nash, 96).” Nash continues, “…instead of seeking coercive proofs for conclusions that all right-minded and open-minded persons would accept, we view our task as the more modest one of seeing if the Christian worldview does what we expect any worldview to do (97).”

The cosmological argument has enjoyed a robust history throughout the course of Western intellectual and ecclesiastical history. It has sparked considerable discussion and debate as its advocates herald it as a tool through which to apprehend a slice of the infinite while its detractors dismiss it as the leftover mental baggage of a less rational era. But regardless of where one lines up along this ongoing debate, one cannot help but admit that the discussion will continue until the Lord Himself decides to intervene and settle the issue on His own once and for all before then.

 

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