Category: religion

Don’t Play the Guilt Game REPRINT

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From June 9, 2021

One way to enslave people is to shackle them with guilt–guilt for this, guilt for that, blame people living today for slavery that ended 150 years ago, or 300 years ago, whatever. Mark Rushdoony calls it “An Old Strategy.”

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/an-old-strategy

The important thing to remember, Mark points out, is that “manipulation by guilt… is anti-Christian to the core.” Why? Because Jesus Christ is our salvation. Because Jesus Christ removes our guilt. He has already atoned for our sins. We do not have to obey The Party or Dear Leader to pay for what we’ve done. Christ sets us at liberty; the sentence has been lifted.

P.S.–Now I’ve got to re-read R.J. Rushdoony’s The Politics of Guilt and Pity, published in 1970–but reads like he’d written it today. Well, you can say that about a lot of his work, can’t you?

Bless the Lord O My Soul Psalm Chant Lovely

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Wonderful Words of Life

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Why Man Cannot Be God (Reason No. 214,989,112 ) REPRINT

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From August 19, 2016

Robert Fulton’s design for the world’s first steam-powered warship. The thing in the very middle of the ship is the paddle wheel.

Robert Fulton was a genius–right? He invented the steamboat. They called it “Fulton’s Folly,” but they were wrong: Fulton had just revolutionized transportation.

Nevertheless, Fulton did come up with one real folly, and it was the last project he did in his life.

In 1814 Fulton got Congress to appropriate $500,000–a staggering sum, in those days–to build a steam-powered warship that would sweep the British Navy from the seas. The War of 1812 was ongoing, the British had sailed into Chesapeake Bay and burned Washington, and it was feared they would do the same to New York. The young nation looked to Fulton to prevent that.

Fulton knew that the obvious problem for any steamboat entering a naval battle was the paddle-wheel: it would be shot to bits in a matter of minutes, leaving the ship dead in the water. So Fulton put the paddle-wheel inside the ship (see drawing, above), smack-dab in the middle, where no enemy could damage it without sinking the ship outright. And to make sure that wouldn’t happen, Fulton built the hull extra-thick and armed the vessel to the teeth with heavy guns.

As he designed it, so they built it. They finished the job a few months before the war ended.

Two things turned out to be wrong.

First, the design didn’t leave room for an engine big enough to move this monster into anything like a battle speed. It was slooooow.

But worst–you won’t believe this, but it’s true–Fulton’s design did not provide any way to steer the vessel! Again, look at the drawing: with the paddle-wheel in the middle of the boat, the boat could only go in one direction. If you really did have to turn it, you had to send men out in rowboats, with lots of strong rope, to drag the ship into another course. Not the most practical expedient during the hubbub of a battle.

How could Robert Fulton–Robert Fulton!–design and build a ship that could only go in one direction, very slowly? And given the hundreds of Navy men and shipbuilders involved in the project, why did no one ever speak up and say, “Uh, er, how are we supposed to steer this ship?”

The moral of the story: Before granting godlike powers to any moral man or woman, we do well to remember that even the wisest of us occasionally comes up with a plan that wouldn’t do credit to a monkey. The Bible tells us that “In a multitude of  counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14)–and even a multitude of counselors is unsafe, once they get to thinking that they’re wise. Let the Bible and King Solomon have the last word:

“Seest thou a man who is wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him.” (Proverbs 26:12)

Three Men: Four Presences REPRINT

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From November 18, 2013

I would like to share with you something that happened 100 years ago to Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer.

Their ship having been crushed in the ice and sunk, Shackleton left most of his crew on a desert island while he and a few men went for help. After crossing 800 miles of stormy ocean in a patched-up longboat, and landing on South Georgia Island, Shackleton and two men had to slog across the mountainous, heavily-glaciated island to reach a whaling station.

After incredible hardships and against seemingly insurmountable odds, they made it. All the men were rescued. The following is from Shackleton’s own memoir:

“When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snow-fields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing-place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, ‘Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.’ Crean confessed to the same idea. One feels ‘the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech’ in trying to describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near our hearts.”

Compare this to the experience of another three men, farther back in time. It’s from Chapter 3 of the Book of Daniel.

“Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury… and he commanded the most mighty men… to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace… Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and said unto the counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they have no hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.”

Sophisticated modern pinheads reject the Bible story out of hand: miracles simply do not happen. But no one has dared to question the story told by Shackleton and his two companions.

Then again, what do I know? There are probably academics who say that never happened, either.

 

Say Bye-bye to Religious Liberty REPRINT

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From  December 7, 2015

Next step–church gets bulldozed for refusing to obey homosexuals

Should the government have the power to tell the church what to teach and what not to teach?

Hell, yeah. And that’s just what the “human rights” industry in Australia intends to do . (I had to remove the link as it no longer worked. PD)

In fairness it must be pointed out that some members of the government say this is going way, way too far and that the Tasmania Anti-Discrimination Law must be amended to keep far-out wackiness like this from happening.

You see, a single man who insists he is a woman–he’s also a Green Party candidate for Parliament, surprise, surprise–says church teaching offends him, so it must be changed. His target is the Roman Catholic Church, which earlier this year issued a pastoral letter entitled “Don’t Mess With Marriage.”

The church’s teachings on marriage, an institution ordained by God Himself, have remained the same for thousands of years.

Now they are to be changed because some lost soul demands it.

Here in America many individuals have been ruined, destroyed, not because of anything they did, but because they didn’t take part in a same-sex “wedding.”

Organized Sodomy has become powerful enough to do that. And it seeks more power still.

So far in Australia, attempts to rein in the “human rights” gang have been defeated by a coalition of left-wing members of Parliament, surprise, surprise.

Believe this: The secular tribe will never rest until the Christian religion is destroyed. That is their goal. They wish to remove Christianity as the biggest obstacle between them and total domination of the human race. Their pushes for “gay rights” and transgender nonsense are only tactics.

Had enough yet, folks? There’s more coming.

This is a judgment from God, but we have not yet learned to recognize it as such; and we are very, very far from the repentance that will save us.

Just a Closer Walk With Thee

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A Nooze-Free Sunday REPRINT

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Image result for images of sleeping lizard

 

From August 26, 2018

 

God has set aside one day in seven as a day of rest. For some of us, that’s Sunday; for others, Saturday.

By now I’m frazzled by a week’s worth of really bad news. By Friday opening the Drudge Report is like opening a dumpster left out on the sun too long.

So let’s do no nooze today. Rest, and let the seed planted by God germinate and grow, we know not how. Let’s have a bit of Memory Lane, Oy, Rodney, cat video, and another hymn if anyone requests one.

God uses things that don’t exist to bring to nothing things that do (I Corinthians 1:28). So let’s step out of the way and let Him do it. He commanded a day of rest for a reason.

Tomorrow we can crank it up again.