Lux Lucet

Better late than never, or so goes the old saying. I’d hoped to get this 2018 wrap up posted last week but, as usual, my ambition was greater than my reach. But late or not, it still seems good to me to take a little time and reflect on the year in blogging that was as well as to look ahead to 2019.

As always, I’d like to give a big thank you to my readers and commenters. It has been my prayer that you’ve found the work on this blog edifying in your Christian walk. We live in an age where it seems that almost everything is fake. But the words of Jesus Christ and the words of all Scripture are as real and true today as when they first were written down so long ago. It has been my endeavor to apply those words to the events of our own time, not only to help readers see the world through the lens of Scripture, but also to encourage.

Sometimes it can seem as if our problems are such that no one in any previous age ever saw their like. And yet as the Apostle Paul wrote, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man.” Yes, it’s true that we face a world of problems, but God has not left us in darkness without hope in the world.

If there is one idea that I hope to impart to readers of this blog, it’s this: No matter how great the struggles we face in our personal lives, no matter how great the crises we face as a nation, the Word of God makes us complete and thoroughly equipped to address them. As Gordon Clark and John Robbins rightly taught, the 66 books of the Bible have a systematic monopoly on truth. Further, it is the ignorance, perhaps even knowing rejection, of this simple idea that had led the formerly Christian West to the brink of disaster.

2018 by the Numbers

Here are a few of the stats for 2018

• Total Posts: 70: This includes 57 written posts, 8 YouTube vlogs and Radio Lux Lucet podcasts
  
• Total Views: 11,915, a 30% increase over 2017
  
• Views by country, top 5: United States, Australia, Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada
  
• Total Comments: 272
  
• Total Likes: 88
  

Lord willing, I plan to up my podcasting activity in 2019 and hope to get back to doing videos as well. I still tend to think of myself more as a writer than a podcaster or YouTuber. That said, there are some things you can do with voice and video media that you can’t do as well in blog posts. Likewise, blogging has strengths that vlogging and podcasting don’t.

I guess what it comes down to is that I just need to quit my day job already and do this full-time! Well, that’s probably not going to happen, at least anytime soon. But you never know…

Major Themes of 2018

Immigration continued to be a major theme on Lux Lucet during 2018. I completed one series on immigration – Immigration, Citizenship and the Bible – in February and promptly started a new one in July – Mexico, Mass Migration, and the Example of Moses – which is still ongoing.

So just why is it that I write so much about immigration? A few reasons. First, the related crises of immigration, migration and refugee resettlement in Western nations are, perhaps, the clearest manifestation of the ongoing collapse of Western Civilization. Second, the vast majority of what is written on immigration is written either out of ignorance or represents a deliberate attempt to deceive. Sadly, this is true even from writers who claim to be Christian. Third, to borrow a term from the SJWs, there’s the whole intersectionality thing. What do I mean by this? Simply this, any discussion of immigration, if it is to be at all helpful, must consider the interaction of economics, politics, Scripture, and the teachings of Antichrist and his henchmen in the hierarchy of the Roman Church-State. Since individually these are four of my favorite topics, an opportunity to combine them into a single area of study proves too hard to resist.

Another major theme from 2018 was that of social media censorship. The first hints of the coming attacks came in the fall of 2016 when outgoing President Barak Obama decried the “wild west” media environment swirling about the 2016 presidential campaign and the need for “some sort of curating function that people agree to.”

But what Obama saw as the “wild, wild west” of social media goes by another name, freedom of speech, a right guaranteed in the First Amendment of our Constitution. And just who are the “people” whose agreement Obama seemed to think was needed? Well, in 2018 we got our answer: the Deep State.

From the fall of 2016 to August 2018, all was (relatively) quite on the social media front. Oh, there were shadow bannings and the occasional video deleted during the period, but freedom of speech was, for the most part, still respected by the major tech companies.

That all changed on August 6, 2018 when Facebook saw fit to remove four pages belonging to Alex Jones claiming that their action was taken due to Jones “repeatedly posting content over the past several days that breaks those Community Standards.”

What did Jones say that violated Facebook’s sacred “Community Standards?” No one knows for sure. Facebook was pretty vague about its reasoning.

And that was just the beginning. That same day, Jones was deplatformed by YouTube, Apple and Spotify. The liberal webzine Vox ran a story on August 6 with the headline “YouTube, Facebook, and Apple’s ban on Alex Jones, explained And why some on the right are calling it ‘collusion.’ ” Yeah, you’d have to be a complete conspiracy theory whackadoo to suppose that the simultaneous banning of Alex Jones from four major social media platforms was anything other than pure coincidence. No collusion here, folks, now move along…

The social media bloodletting didn’t end there, either. There have been countless examples of the same in the intervening five months, and it’s entirely reasonable to think this will continue.

Some, such as David French, have attempted to explain the banning of Alex Jones and others as private companies doing what they want with their own property. “You can’t complain, this is capitalism!,” he says in effect.

While this stance sounds plausible and is attractive to libertarians and conservatives who loath government regulation of private businesses, at best this line of reasoning is naive and at worst is actually intended to deceive.

The truth is, government has been deeply involved with big tech for many years. Some have even argued that Facebook’s involvement with the CIA goes back nearly to the beginning of the company. That the company now is deeply involved with the Deep State cannot be denied now that it has “partnered” with the Atlantic Council, the think tank of Deep State darling NATO.

Facebook’s partnering with the Atlantic Council, which began on May 17, 2018, preceded by just a few months the August 6 social media massacre. In the opinion of this author, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that it was also the cause of it.

This, of course, does not exhaust the examples of groups attempting to silence dissenting voices on the internet. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League both are working with major tech companies to stifle free speech on the big internet platforms. Since these groups both are heavily liberal leaning, is it any wonder that conservatives and libertarians are banned, while liberal/leftist/progressive groups can say pretty much what they want?

A Look Ahead to 2019

While I have no crystal ball to tell me what 2019 has in store, that won’t stop me from at least making a few predictions about upcoming major issues.

First, the impeachment of Donald Trump. It seems likely at this point that the new Democratic Congress will attempt at some point, probably sooner rather than later, to introduce articles of impeachment against Donald Trump. Just today, the New York Times ran an op-ed titled “The People v. Donald Trump,” According to the NYT, Trump is “demonstrably unfit for office” and deserving of the bum’s rush yesterday.

So full of herself was one new Muslim Congresswoman from Michigan that she publicly proclaimed that she and her colleagues were “going to impeach that…” well, you can look it up for yourself if you really want to know. This is a G-rated blog.

Second, immigration, immigration, immigration. The current question, will they or won’t they build that wall?, is only part of the picture. Even if the wall is built, there are still massive problems with immigration, legal and illegal, that need to be addressed. Migrants, asylum seekers refugees are also part of the picture and there are serious problems with the laws governing the categories.

Birthright citizenship falls within the overarching umbrella of immigration issues, too. Only rarely mentioned, properly addressing this issue is key to solving America’s immigration problem. In fact, it is this author’s opinion that stopping the application of birthright citizenship to the children of all but American citizens and legal residents would be a greater step in fixing America’s current immigration mess than any border wall. There is no compelling moral reason for granting birthright citizenship to the children of non-citizens. But any change to the application of the 14th Amendment (birthright citizenship) would require the expenditure of huge amounts of political capital, not to mention political will, and Trump appears to have neither sufficient capital nor sufficient interest to pursue this issue with the force needed to revise this ongoing disaster.

And problems of immigration are not limited to the United States. In some ways, it seems as if Western Europe is in worse shape than America, at least in this respect. Just today, the Gatestone Institute published an article “France in Free Fall” which is enough to make one wonder whether France will exist as anything other than a legacy place name in a few decades’, or even few years’, time.

Third, the ongoing financial crisis. The frequent plunges and miraculous, record setting recoveries of the Dow Jones and S&P 500 indices should give all of us cause for concern. Healthy, stable systems simply do not behave this way.

So why are markets so unstable? Look no further than the Fed. Back in January 2016, recently retired head of the Dallas Fed Richard Fischer fessed up to the Feds financial shenanigans, saying, “What The Fed did, and I was part of it, was front-loaded an enormous rally (sic) market rally in order to create a wealth effect…and an uncomfortable digestive period is likely now…The Fed is a giant weapon that has no ammunition left.”

Please note, this was three years ago, and the financial bubbles have gotten nothing but bigger in the meantime. At some point the bubble markets – here I’m talking about stocks, bonds, housing – are going to correct to fair market value, and this correction will feel like the mother of all crashes.

Am I saying the markets are going to tank big time in 2019? I don’t know that this will happen, but it’s a possibility. I strongly suspect that before the end of 2019, I’ll have written at least a few posts on the travails of the ongoing train wreck known as our financial system.

Fourth, foreign policy. As we enter 2019, there are several potential flashpoints that could trigger the next major war. There’s Syria, the South China Sea, Ukraine for starters all which have the potential to draw the US into a war with Russia, or China or both. Just last week, Chinese president Xi Jinping ordered the Chinese army to “prepare for war” over Taiwan. This is not the first time a Chinese official has spoken this way in recent months. Whether this situation will remain a war of words for now or escalate into a hot war, I do not know, but the rhetoric out of Beijing certainly is becoming more and more shrill.

In Closing

Come what may in 2019, as Christians we do not need to live our lives in fear, worrying each day about some real or imagined danger lurking just over the horizon.

As was noted above, the Apostle Paul reminded his readers 2,000 years ago that no temptation had overtaken them but such as was common to man. The same is true in our day. There are wars and rumors of wars, and such will be the case until Christ comes again.

It has been my great privilege to serve you, the reader, in 2018, and I look forward to doing so again in the new year.

Finally, I wish you all heath, peace and joy in the Lord this coming year. May the Lord bless and keep you, make his face to shine upon you, be gracious to you, lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.