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Posts Tagged ‘John Robbins’

WikiLeaks and the Word of God

Posted in Politics, tagged , , on March 12, 2017| 2 Comments »

CIA“Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WiiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named ‘Vault 7’ by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.” Thus begins the press release on the Wikileaks website.

In light of the “Vault 7” release, and in light of the many other revelations from WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, and others, it seemed good to evaluate the covert activities of the US federal government in light of the Word of God.

This is a pressing issue, because more and more it is becoming obvious that we’re living Orwell’s 1984 in real time. What once was the stuff of dystopian fiction is now our day to day experience. According to the Vault 7 release,

  • “Weeping Angel” a hack developed by the CIA and the UK’s MI5/BTSS is targeted at Samsung Smart TVs, placing “the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode” while recording conversations in the room.
  • The CIA can hack your Android or Apple smart phone. According to WikiLeaks, “Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.”
  • The CIA can make their hacks appear as the work of foreign intelligence agencies.
  • The CIA has hoarded, rather than disclosing, knowledge of serious vulnerabilities to US-based tech manufacturers as was agreed upon in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations.
  • “The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware.
  • The U.S. consulate in Frankfurt Germany is a covert CIA hacker base.

For my part, none of this seems terribly surprising. There long have been rumors that the CIA and other government agencies had capabilities of this sort. But now we have reliable confirmation of it.

But Government spying doesn’t end here. For example, in 2013 Glenn Greenwald penned an article that appeared in the Guardian, in which it was revealed that the US government is capturing “every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant.”

In that same article, Greenwald quoted a 2010 Washington Post piece stating, “Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency [NSA] intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.”

Greenwald also quotes former NSA official William Binney to the effect that the US government has “assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US citizens with other US citizens” and that “the data that’s being assembled is about everybody. And from that data, then they can target anyone they want.”

Ah, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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The Week In Review 3/4/2017 – It’s the Stupid Economy

Posted in The Week In Review, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 4, 2017| 6 Comments »

 

david-stockman

David Stockman

This time last week it was 75 degrees and sunny. Today? Well, let’s just icy roads and accidents made the morning commute a little more exciting than usual. How can the weather change so much in seven days?!

 

Well at least one thing hasn’t changed over the last week, and that’s the dicey state of the nation’s economy. With the stock market hitting records level, that may seem like an odd thing to say. But the economy is not the same things as the stock market.

In fact, the past several years have seen an almost inverse relationship take hold between the performance of the Dow Jones and S&P indices and important economic indicators. In a normal, rational economy, if corporate earnings decline or unemployment spikes signaling a economic slowdown, the stock market should decline.

But in today’s Keynesian casino markets, bad economic news is good news from the markets perspective. Why is this? It all has to do with the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy. You see, bad economic news means big money speculators believe the Fed will continue its policy of suppressing interest rates to near zero to stimulate economic growth. On the other hand, if the economy appears to be doing well, the market starts to think the Fed may hike interest rates, making stocks a less attractive opportunity. Thus the stock market goes down.

In short, it’s a stupid economy that rewards fraud and punishes success.

And after over eight years of stupidity such as near zero percent interest rates, we are now faced with simultaneous Fed created bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate, which will all at some point burst. And that leads me into today’s story…

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Separation of Church and State

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , on February 26, 2017| 2 Comments »

separation-church-and-state

“We have the same vocabulary, but a different dictionary,” was a saying coined a hundred years or so back. It was used by Bible believing Christians to describe liberals who were surreptitiously working to undermine the churches of the day.

The liberals didn’t like a fair fight. Instead of openly declaring their unbelief in the Bible, liberal ministers and scholars were wont to cloak their liberalism in the language of Scripture. The social gospelers would speak of the “divinity of Christ” and for all the world appear to be sound Christians. But instead meaning that Jesus was fully God, they meant only that Jesus, as do all men, had a spark of divinity within him. This is not Christianity. It is a humanist lie.

But old-school social gospelers are not the only people to redefine words to suit their agenda. One prominent example of this is what some atheists and liberals have done to the term “separation of church and state.”

If you’re like me, you probably grew up thinking that 1) these words are found in the Constitution and 2) they mean Christian ideas are legally prohibited from having even the smallest influence in matters of government. Both ideas are false.

But their falsity doesn’t stop many people from passionately believing them. Take a look at this video of a recent Town Hall held by Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.


When minister steps up to pray, some in the audience scream “Prayer? Prayer?” A man can be heard loudly repeating “separation of church and state, separation of church and state.” Another says, “He’s [the minister] not supposed to be up there [at the lectern].”

When the minister ends the prayer in Jesus’ name, the crowd again explodes.

Now for all I know, the loud mouthed protesters may have been dupes paid by George Soros. Perhaps they were expressing an honest, albeit mistaken, opinion. At any rate, they would be better served taking time to learn a thing or two about the Constitution before getting so worked up a minister doing his job.

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The Week In Review 2/24/2017 – Stockholm Syndrome

Posted in The Week In Review, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2017| 2 Comments »

 

rinkeby-riots

A policeman inspects a burned out vehicle following the riots in Rinkeby, Stockholm.

Some things seem to naturally go together. Peanut butter and jelly come to mind as a natural pairing. Baseball and summertime? I’m in. Even the terms “blowhard” and “politician” evoke a certain warmth of familiarity within me.

 

But riots and Sweden??!! Surely, you jest! Nevertheless, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction…

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Immigration, Citizenship, and the Bible Part 11: The Islamization of Germany

Posted in Immigration, tagged , , , , , , , on February 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

Ruth_and_Naomi_Leave_Moab

Ruth and Naomi Leave Moab, 1860, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872).

Having observed the ongoing European migrant crisis from afar for these past several years, I’ve been tempted to think that even government officials whose policies caused the disaster in the first place would have by now woken up to the fact that things are not working out, admitted the error of their ways, and sought to change course. But such is not the case.

 

In an apparent attempt to secure her reputation as the second worst leader in German history, on Saturday, with US Vice President Mike Pence in attendance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her refugee policy that has allowed 1.1 million migrants into Germany since 2015, argued that Islam is not a source of terrorism and indicated that the European Union (EU) has an obligation to accept even more refugees.

These are astonishing claims, and one wonders how anyone with even a passing acquaintance with events throughout Europe in recent years could make them, let alone the Chancellor of Germany, whose nation has been among the hardest hit by the migrant crisis.

Consider the following headlines related to migrant issues in Germany taken from over just the past year.

It would take a strange definition indeed of “Islam”, “source” and “terrorism” for anyone to deny the connection between the religion of the Prophet and these horrifying acts of Islamic terrorism in Germany.  What part of “Allahu Akbar” do they not understand?

Is it not just obvious that letting millions of Muslims into your country, at taxpayer expense to boot, is a bad idea? The ideas held by the people of a nation determine the course of that nation. When you import a million Islamizes, you’re going to get Islamization on an industrial scale. Commenting on the United States, John Robbins wrote,

When we apply these insights to the United States, we notice several things. In the beginning all America was Protestant – 98 percent of the people. The numbers we have for church affiliation in seventeenth and eighteenth century America show that three-fourths of Americans were Calvinists of one flavor or another: Puritan, Pilgrim, Presbyterian, Baptist, German Reformed, Lutheran, Congregationalist, and Episcopal. There were few Catholics, almost no Jews or Methodists, and no Muslims, Mormons, Moonies, Buddhists, Confucianists, Hindus, or atheists. Had there been any large numbers of these groups, there would have been no America as we have known it, not because the people who hold these views are somehow inferior, but because the views themselves are inferior: They are logically incapable of creating and sustaining a free society (Rebuilding American Freedom in the Twenty-First Century, emphasis added).

Rejecting mass, taxpayer subsidized Muslim immigration is not, as some have charged, racism. Islam is not a race, it’s a religion. And as a religion, it is accompanied by certain tenants, certain doctrines. And if those doctrines conflict with the maintenance of a free society, and they do, Westerners have very good reason to be concerned about the Islamization of their countries and are well within their right to oppose it.

But if Islamization is so obviously a problem, why is it that Merkel and others cannot see this? Apparently they lack the discernment necessary to grasp the fact that their policies are destroying the very nations they were elected to serve.

And why do they lack discernment? “The fundamental answer” to why men lack discernment, as John Robbins reminds us, is “the will of God.” Robbins quotes several Biblical passages in support of this idea. Citing just one as an example, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Behold I will fill all the inhabitants of this land – even the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem – with drunkenness! And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together,’ says the Lord. ‘I will no more spare nor have mercy, but will destroy them’ ” (Jeremiah 13:13-14).

It is God who both gives and withholds discernment from the hearts of men. And given the extreme state of ignorance of even basic politics in the West – according to the Bible, the task of the government is to punish evildoers, not invite them into your country to prey on your citizens and then tax the people for the privilege of being shot, bombed, and raped – it is fair to wonder whether it is God’s intention to destroy the West.

It is my prayer that this is not the case. But if he does intend to bring an end to Germany and other Western nations, it’s not as if he would be without good reason.

What we call Western Civilization is the result of the widespread preaching of,, and belief in, the Gospel of Jesus Christ beginning at the time of the 16th century Reformation. Yet for the past 200 years, the West has been in the process of rejecting Christ and embracing secular philosophy. As a result, the West is in the process of collapse. And the ongoing Islamization of the nations that were the cradle of the Reformation is one of the consequences of that collapse.

But perhaps God isn’t done with the West. Perhaps he is graciously warning us of what may happen if we stay on our current course. But if the West is to be saved, it will not happen as a result of political activity, but once again as the result of the widespread preaching of, and belief in, the Gospel of Justification by Faith Alone.

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He Gives Knowledge to Those Who Understand

Posted in Philosophy, Scripturalism, tagged , on December 11, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

daniel-and-neb

Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.

One of the key points of Gordon Clark’s Scripturalism is that we are just as dependent on God for knowledge as we are for salvation.

 

Those in the Reformed community, at least those who are actually Christians, will readily admit that salvation is by grace alone, through belief alone, in Christ alone.

But oddly, many of the same people are sound on the doctrine of salvation at the same time hold to a theory of knowledge (epistemology) that is at odds with their view of salvation.

It is not uncommon to hear some Christians talk as though there are two sources of knowledge, revelation in the 66 books of the Bible and sense experience (empiricism).

This admixture of revelation and sense experience in Christian thought can be traced back to Thomas Aquinas. John Robbins explains,

Thomas Aquinas, the great thirteenth-century Roman Catholic theologian, tried to combine two axioms in his system: the secular axiom of sense experience, which he obtained from Aristotle, and the Christian axiom of revelation, which he obtained from the Bible. His synthesis was unsuccessful. The subsequent career of western philosophy is the story of the collapse of Thomas’ unstable Aristotelian-Christian condominium (An Introduction to Gordon H. Clark)

One of the problems with Protestantism over the centuries is that it never produced a philosopher who challenged Aquinas’ theory of knowledge. As a result, Aquinas’ erroneous synthesis of “the secular axiom of sense experience…and the Christian axiom of revelation” was accepted by large segments of the Christian church.

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Collapse, Sovereignty, Salt and Light

Posted in Theology, tagged , , , , on November 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

zedekiah_is_chained_and_brought_before_nebuchadnezzar

Zedekiah is chained and brought before Nebuchadnezzar, from Petrus Comestor’s “Bible Historiale.”  

Traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, Lamentations recounts the author’s reflections on the ruins of Jerusalem in the aftermath of the city’s fall to the Babylonians.

 

When a city, when a nation, falls, it is natural for people to ask why it happened. Chapter One of Lamentations provides the following succinct summary of the sorry state of Jerusalem.

Her uncleanness is in her skirts;

She did not consider her destiny;

Therefore her collapse was awesome.

Now that’s what I call getting right to the point. Jerusalem, which was really a part standing for the whole of Judah, had become morally unclean. God sent prophets to warn the people, but they did not heed, they, they did not consider their end, therefore judgment befell them.

Now I’ve always been a history buff. And, in particular, I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of civilizational collapse. That sounds pretty depressing, I know. But I don’t say that, because I’m rooting to see a contemporary collapse myself.

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Reformation Day 2016

Posted in Theology, tagged , , , , , , , on October 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

Wittenberg-1536.jpg

Wittenberg as seen from the Elbe, 1536.

October 31 is known to much of the world as the pagan holiday of Halloween. But for Christians, October 31 represents something quite different. It’s what we call Reformation Day.

 

For it was on that date in 1517 that Martin Luther’s nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door and forever changed the world for the better.

The Gospel of Justification By Faith Alone – the idea that sinful men are saved, not by doing good works, but solely by faith in Christ Jesus – once again shone forth in all its brilliance after a millennium of suppression by the Roman Church-State and millions were saved as a result.

But Luther’s rejection of church tradition in favor of the objective, written Word of God did not revolutionize the church only. It resulted in a whole new civilization, what we now call the West, coming into existence.

Ideas such as the sanctity of private property, honesty in exchange, the rule of law, capitalism, written constitutions, secular work as pleasing to God all found their origin in the Protestant Reformation that began with Luther.

Though it is not commonly understood by Americans, our nation owes its very existence to the Biblical ideas recovered at the time of the Reformation.

Most of us are taught to trace the foundations of our republic to Greece and Rome. But limited, constitutional government did not begin with Greco-Roman civilization. It began with the Hebrew Republic as recorded for us in the Old Testament. Thus the Bible is foundational to our political system.

In like manner, our economic system of capitalism or free enterprise finds its origins, not in the writings of pagan philosophers, nor in the thought of medieval scholastics, nor in the principles of the Renaissance, but in the propositions of the Word of God, the 66 books of the Bible.

To put it another way: No Protestant Reformation, no United States of America. To quote John Robbins,

One of Luther’s most brilliant followers, John Calvin, systematized the theology of the Reformation. The seventeenth-century Calvinists laid the foundations for both English and American civil rights and liberties: freedom of speech, pres, and religion, the privilege against self-incrimination, the independence of juries, and right of habeas corpus, the right not to be imprisoned without cause. The nineteenth-century German historian Leopold von Ranke referred to Calvin as the “virtual founder of America” (Civilization and the Protestant Reformation).

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The Week In Review 9/30/2016

Posted in The Week In Review, tagged , , , , , , , on October 1, 2016| 2 Comments »

 

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Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton at the first Presidential Debate, 9/26/16.

As is usually the case, there were more interesting headlines this past week than I could hope to write about. But even though there were a plethora of interesting stories, there were three that really stood out to me: the kickoff to the presidential debate season, new charges that the US is supporting terrorists in the Syrian civil war, and removal of Roy Moore from Alabama’s Supreme Court. Let’s take a look at them.

 

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