Stricken

This is the second Sunday in a row where I have been deeply moved by the service at my church. Last week, I was stricken with a brief glimpse of sin that took my breath away. It was almost as if God revealed for a microsecond what He sees as He looks down upon us, His precious children.

It was during Communion and I was one of those people that looks up while everyone has their heads down in deep thought and prayer. I thought back to St. Augustine's Confessions and confrontation with my own sin for that brief moment brought tears to my eyes. I glanced around and knew that everyone in that room was in that same state of sin. I can't articulate it properly, but i could almost 'see' the sin in the air and feel God's Grace, solemnly, and lovingly, wiping it away.

I know. Weird. Crazy even. To think of myself writing this kind of creeps me out. I grew up pretty much an agnostic/atheist, fully immersed in the popular culture. When I first started going to my church, I felt like I had stepped onto the moon...or mars, or even bizzaro world.

If I could have seen into the future 20 years ago, where I would be today, I think I would have had a heart attack, or run screaming, or had a heart attack while i was running away and screaming. I actually listen to country music now. I was a metal freak back then. I have become Ned Flanders. Wow.

Well, this Sunday, was Reformation Sunday, where churches of the Reform Theology bent, celebrate Martin Luther's act of nailing the 95 theses upon that fated Wittenberg church door. The music was divine. I don't even know what it was, but it mixed latin chant type stuff with english and we had the translations and words up on the screen. Our choir is amazing, and I actually wept at the beauty of the sound.

Then our pastor went into the impact to modern culture of the Reformation and the doctrines of Justification by Faith. Jesus has offered you a free gift. All you have to do is reach out and accept His invitation.

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you
rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble
in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and
my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30

Isn't that what we all want and need? Good night and I pray that God Bless you and yours. Truly.

Thou Shalt Not Covet

"You shall not covet your neighbhor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor" - Exodus 20:17

How is socialism any different than an institutionalized disobedience of the Tenth Commandment?

Socialists believe that if only people had enough material wealth, they wouldn't disobey the other commandments. They would be good people. This is the essence of the Communist Manifesto, and secular humanism; the idea that Man is essentially good and the domineering, corrupted culture and population density make them bad.

Christianity says the opposite. Mankind has fallen from Grace by disobedience to God. God laid out the criteria on which Mankind would be judged and how they could maintain holiness and proved repeatedly throughout history than no one can comply with it. Only the salvific blood of Jesus Christ can wash away your sins and make you Holy in the sight of God. No one is without sin. No, not one.

The 10th Commandment is significant here, because, at its root, socialism is its precise and diabolical opposite. How can one even discuss socialism without discussing the property of other people in a covetous manner? You can't. The entire philosophy is founded upon the notion that some people have more stuff and are more fortunate than other people. How can we talk about the salaries of other people without committing this sin? How can we bemoan the fact that some class of people have more stuff than another, without committing the collective sin of coveting our neighbor's house? We can't.

You can dress it up as concern for the less fortunate, and charity all you like, but the entire conversation isn't valid. Charity is done, not to help the poor, but to humble the mighty. The poor have no biblical expectation that they will be taken care of, nor any right to another's time, labor, energy, or love. They can only hope for mercy and deliverance. The commandments and scriptural discussion of these things is for the benefit of the giver. You see Mankind is fallen and sinful and proud, and selfish. To cleanse the heart, one must be rid of one's attachments to material things and find a way to put others ahead of yourself. Without a clean heart, you cannot possibly be in a right relationship with God, and sanctification is impossible. Expecting someone else to give you happiness or money or car payments, is no less selfish and inconsiderate than someone that refuses to help those in need.

God gets in the way of Socialism if anyone actually understands the ends and means of it all. That is why socialism and atheism are so closely allied much of the time. Given its way with society, to run its course, socialism will start with the tenth commandment, but it won't take long to destroy the rest of them as well. In fact, they have made good progress on most of them already, don't you think?

Walkin' the Tightrope

I wrote this back on 9/10/09, and didn't finish it and publish it until tonight.

Prevarication

I have stumbled upon the one word that sums up our current US foreign policy;

Prevarication.

This is especially true in regards to our policy (or lack thereof), towards, about, around and behind, Israel. What are we doing? If I were an Israeli, I would be VERY nervous right now.

I came across a nice speech made by Virginia Congressman, Eric Cantor to AIPAC.

Video is here.

He calls out evil as evil. His story about the Treblinka survivors trying to help the German Jewish workers escape and their response to those Poles, is astounding. It truly is the frog in the pot.

I have read enough history to know that when the proverbial fecal matter hits the centrifugal air-displacement device, the people that are denying this and covering up what is happening will go down in history as villains. And the masses that turned their collective eye away from evil, away from the enemy at the gates?

How would you feel if a very great evil happened, you could have stopped it, and you chose to do nothing? There is evil in this world and it must be confronted. This prevarication on the part of the President is...immoral.

Skin crawling explained...

Check out Alonzo Rachel's explanation as to why Christians and conservatives are so disturbed by what they see as worship of our President. If your skin didn't crawl from my last post, maybe Zo can tell you why it should.

A message to Obama supporters: if you don't want conservatives accusing you of not be respectful of Christians and people of faith, stop taking sacred texts, songs, hymns, and themes and inserting the name of Obama in place of God or Jesus.

To back up Zo's point, I will paste below the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the tune of which those school kids were singing their Obama praise song to. Please note the opening line, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord" and "He died to make men holy, so let's fight to make men free!"

This song is about Jesus, people. Not Obama. Stop taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama. At the lowest level, for those that don't believe in God, it is disrespectful. For others, it's creepy. Why would you want to worship ANY man? Why structure any support material for political persona's to mimic God, and Jesus? At worst, for those of us that do believe in the salvific grace of Jesus Christ, this is nothing other than a spectacularly audaciaous display of blasphemy, encountered in the Bible in only the darkest corners that allude to the devil himself. For observant Jews and Christians, this is serious and scary stuff. It is totally inappropriate and unsettling. Cut it out.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

While God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,

He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,

So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.

Now go back and listen to those school kids singing this song and listen to their words, and tell me that your skin isn't crawling...