Jack Hyles Against Dispensationalism?

I was shocked to discover this today.  Notable is that he admits to having believed that salvation was by law during the old covenant “dispensation”.   I say it is notable, for many dispensationalists deny that that doctrine was ever taught. Click or copy/paste:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wPyBsg-bp8

How Great Thou Art (Guitar Instrumental)

Until I can get enough umph in my bones to start writing again, please enjoy this musical selection arranged and performed by your’s truly.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1nFqyVTFjk  How Great Thou Art.  (Well apparently I have to get the paid upgrade now to post a video – please cut and past the link in the text to watch the video.  Thank you.)

Libertarianism Revisited

Libertarianism seems like a powerful political philosophy, but in failing to provide a competing moral philosophy to modern liberalism, one that reflects the truth about the human person and the conditions for human flourishing, it has inadvertently contributed to the triumph of modern liberalism.    –Nathan Schlueter, First Things

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/08/libertarian-delusions

 

I’ve found myself growing skeptical of libertarianism.  The main reason for that is the contrasting reaction of libertarians to two states rights issues:  gay marriage and legalization of marijuana.  On gay marriage, libertarians have been virtually silent, in spite of the fact that the Federal government forced this unwelcome institute on states against the states’ indisputable will, and without constitutional authority to do so.  But on legalizing marijuana, libertarians have been persistent and passionate, insisting that states such as Colorado have the constitutional right to legalize the casual use of the drug in direct defiance of Federal laws.

This contrast awakened me to the knowledge that most libertarians are not interested in states rights, as they profess, nor constitutional government, as they profess; but are only interested in drugs, and all those high celestial principles espoused by the great minds of Hayek, Rothbard, et al, are in the end, just notions – not very important – really, man, take a hit and chill out.

Now don’t get me wrong – there are many tenets of the libertarian school that remain salient and lively in my heart.  But those libertarians that cast all governments as evil, with some even advocating the total elimination of any state government whatsoever, have gravely failed to understand some critical facts:  1)  Man is both an individual AND a social being; 2) the very first act of any gathering of men, whether it is to start a business or to start a town, is to make laws that will govern that society (even the Mises Institute has bylaws).

As soon as the Founders of the United States began to congregate, they drew up laws for themselves, their posterity, and their subjects; they established rules and rulers, as they must establish order.  This was right and profitable.  But as the state became a separate entity, and insulated itself from the people that ought to have been its masters, began to be Lord over the people that birthed it.  Moreover, it became so powerful so as to force the people to submit to it’s will by use of violence.  The people stood up to it in a last ditch effort to save the constitution in 1861, but alas, it was futile, as Abraham Lincoln proved once and for all that cannon fire is more powerful than words written on a formerly sacred document.  And the people have lived in fear of their state-child since that time, until today that child born in 1776 has grown into a spoiled monstrosity, insatiable and uncontrollable, making open mockery of those founding documents, guffawing in derisive laughter at those whose dare to quote from them.

But this terrible outcome, this disregard for law, does not invalidate the law itself.  Laws are reflections of the religion, culture, and social mores of the people; and such was the Constitution of the United States.  But in order for governmental powers to be retained by “the people” (Tenth Amendment), it must be small.  

Inasmuch as libertarians support the idea of small government, then I stand with them.  If the people of Massachusetts want to have gay marriage, then so be it.  But where were the libertarian voices when Laviathon DC *violently forced it on the Christian states?

*The libertarian doctrines are right on this:  everything the government (State) does is coercive, and enforcement by violence is always implied, and sometimes it is actual.  It is carried out by police, and if the police fail, the military will do it.  That’s why all government force is essentially military force.  Reference Ruby Ridge, Kent State, Waco, many others.

  

 

Bloodless Moralism – First Things Magazine

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/02/bloodless-moralism

Helen Andrews writes an interesting article about moral decisions in First Things magazine.  It essentially is a treatise on the current method of justifying moral decisions on the political and social theory level using statistics and heresy, and contrasts it with how the same decisions are made on the personal level. It implies that over-reliance on the statistical method can lead to absurdity. I agree. Here are some of my favorite quotes from it:

“We are hesitant, almost to the point of paralysis, about making moral claims on moral grounds.”

“During the Depression, the problems that government sought to address had mostly been brought to its attention by cries from below, expressed by people who could see the problem with their own eyes. From Kennedy’s presidency onward, bureaucrats armed with national statistics—then a fairly new phenomenon, not coincidentally—began searching their data for problems to solve, whether popular demand for such solutions existed or not.”

“When professionals put such zest and seriousness into persuading people that they have a problem that can be solved, several things can go wrong. It may be that the targets of their attentions have a problem that cannot be solved. It may be that they do not have a problem at all. Or it may be that they do have a problem and it can be solved, but it would be better for them in the meantime to be able to appreciate, relish, draw from, or find the richness in their problem instead of simply deprecating it. The professionals’ response to each of these three possibilities ends in false hope, false despair, or false resentment for the sufferers, yet ever greater self-satisfaction for their would-be saviors.”

“If the governor of New York were to promise to abolish stupidity within ten years, anyone hearing him would think, “Physician, heal thyself.”

“Membership in the lower class, for example, has never been a picnic, but it used to be something that a person could draw from and take pride in. Described in the terms that politics permits us to use today, as “socioeconomic disadvantage” (or worse, “lack of privilege”), it sounds like nothing more than a list of things to complain of.”

“During the Cold War, especially its early stages, the books written in defense of the Soviet model fairly bristled with statistics. Wisely, the West’s more effective defenders did not attempt to refute tractor-production figures from the Ukraine with tractor-production figures from Moline, Illinois. They made more fundamental points, like the difficulty of collecting accurate statistics in a police state, or the conclusiveness with which even accurate statistics are trumped by the brute fact of mass starvation.”

At a more Kirkian level of abstraction, there were such simple observations as: Our people are free, yours are not; we produce poetry, you produce propaganda; our cities are beautiful, yours are hideous. The equivalent arguments in the modern context might be (1) no amount of creative accounting will convince a sane person that you have made a money-saver out of a vast new entitlement like Obamacare; (2) no study could ever refute the fact that character is both a cause and a casualty of government-subsidized poverty; and (3) I will listen to econometricians as soon as you show me one that can write with more fluency than a high school sophomore.”

“…they have an idealized picture of the sciences as a self-policing community of disinterested truth-seekers with laboratories and databases and state-of-the-art modeling programs.”

Does Jesus Care? (An instrumental on guitar)

Having recently lost my father, I thought a hymn of comfort would be a fitting balm. Played on classical guitar. First stanza solo, second stanza on two guitars.  This is what I’ve been doing instead of writing articles.

Independence Day, Flags, and Rainbows

Romans 2:4-5:  Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; 

To help us appreciate the Sacred nature of America’s birth, and the way in which the celebration of her birth was to be commemorated in a Christian society, I offer the words of Founding Father John Adams (emphasis mine):

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epoch, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty (http://www1.american.edu/heintze/Adams.htm.)

This independence Day, July 4, 2015, will be the first in which mourning rather than celebration is the appropriate behavior, as we remember an America that once was, but now is deceased.  Oh, there will be celebrations all right, but many of the celebrants will be committing acts of devotion to Bacchus, not God Almighty.  America has rejected God’s blessings, and now stokes the fires of His Rage. We are but one or two steps from retiring the Stars and Stripes and raising the Rainbow flag in its place.  

The funny thing about that Rainbow flag, representing Sodomy as it does.  When God destroyed all living with a flood of water, saving only Noah and his family, God used the rainbow to symbolize his covenant with a fresh new world, purged of sin and ready to be replenished.   

Genesis 9:13:  I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

But sin found its way into the New Earth soon, with Noah’s son Ham committing an act of sexual perversion on his own father.  It is thought by some that Ham’s son Canaan participated in the evil deed also, or even that the “younger son” referred to in the passage is in fact Canaan, not Ham.

Genesis 9:24:  And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

As to what exactly what was done, it is clearly inferred from the text that a gross act of sin was “done unto him”;  one that warranted one of the most severe curses found in scripture:

Genesis 9:25-27:  And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.  And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.  God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

So God blessed mankind and symbolized the covenant with a rainbow, and man responded by reintroducing sin into the freshly purged world.  And today man takes that sacred symbol and uses it to blaspheme God; to revile Him, to display for all to see their hard and impenitent hearts, their hatred of God, and their love of death. Yet for all their provocations of God’s wrath and abuses of His patience, when they have finally filled full the winepress of His wrath, as He pours out His vials upon them, they will yet again accuse God of cruelty and malice, and will not repent of their blasphemies.

Revelation 16:11:  And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.  

Perhaps the Day of Purification has Arrived

I have done very little posting on this or any of my other blogs since the re-election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States in 2012, due in great part to the overwhelming sense of rejection I feel from my own fellow American citizens.  On 26 June 2015, only two and a half years after that, the final blow to the American version of Western Civilization was delivered.  Somehow, someway, the haters of God have succeeded in turning not only Godliness but the very course of nature on its head, and have twisted the holy relationship of marriage into an unholy deformity of the original meaning of that God-Ordained institution.  The relationship between the Church and American society and its government is now officially broken.  Maybe now Christian Evangelicals and Fundamentalists will cease the blind patriotism that this wicked nation’s politicians has exploited.  The United States and well as modern Israel are wicked nations that have been promoting homosexuality for at least six decades, if not longer; yet even with the homosexualization of the military itself, Christian young people are going into foreign lands to fight wars that have ambiguous goals, to be injured or killed for reasons that are either kept secret or are arbitrary, for a nation that exalts wickedness as a virtue, and shames Godliness as a vice.  The Beast is already mandating its mark; to “buy or sell”, one must bear it.  Can worse things be very far behind?  No.  And shall you and I stand on the day of our trial?  Well, according to scripture, God desires “a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”  Perhaps the day of purification has arrived.

Pray for Me

Although I’ve all but abandoned this site, it continues to receive a dozen or so visits per day.  In view of this, I ask you visitors to pray with me in finding or establishing a church in which to fellowship.  Over time we became exhausted of searching for a place that would be right for us and now we’ve become just plain lazy about it.  Once my conscience has been cleared on that issue, I believe I can get back to posting comments in the Lord’s liberty.  Thank you.  Joel.

The Great Debate: Nye vs Ham: The Outcome

Just a quick note about the debate.  I love Ken Ham.  He is brilliant.  However, he let the debate be about the age of the Earth and other such lesser issues.  He didn’t effectively challenge “The Science Guy” to account for matter, energy, consciousness, or information (DNA).  The closest thing to a challenge was from an audience question about consciousness.  More later.

The Limits of Science and the Bias of Scientists

Scientists cannot explain why the universe is infinite yet expanding. How can infinity expand? And what is space. Nothing, they say. So how can nothing expand? Sometimes scientists should just say “we don’t know” and then be quiet. The problem with scientism is that it presumes, without proof, that “material” (matter) is all there is, and knowledge can only be derived from observing matter. (this is philosophical materialsim) They study the physical sciences and glibly speak of metaphysics (i.e., spiritual matters) as if observing the physical world can tell us something about the spiritual world – they do this while they can’t even provide a reasonable degree of certainty of the nature of the physical world that they allege to know so well. When challenged, they often respond with forceful authority and big words, and use an assortment of offensive names to belittle anyone that disagrees with their inbred philosophies. In reality they are, above all, Malthusians; and the real agenda is to rid the world of religion so that people will stop obeying the Bible’s command to “be fruitful and multiply”, for they are convinced that the Earth is doomed unless people stop breathing and eating (in other words die – except for them, of course). Yet according to past warnings from the-sky-is-falling Malthusians, the world should have already been destroyed, with the Earth’s resources completely exhausted decades ago. But that has not happened. And why is that? Could it be that their philosophical leanings skew their empirical observations of the Earth’s capabilities? Probably.