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Posts Tagged ‘Scripturalism’

The Empire Strikes Back: The Capitol Hill Riot and the End of MAGA

Posted in Politics, Presidential Campaign 2020, tagged , , , , , on January 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Rioters wearing Trump paraphernalia breached the Capitol Wednesday as lawmakers met to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win
PHOTO: MANUEL BALCE CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” 

  • President Donald J. Trump, Washington D.C., January 6, 2021

As was the case with most kids who grew up in the late ‘70’s and early 80’s, I was a huge Star Wars fan.  The original film, released in 1977, was such a huge hit that everyone knew it would be followed by a sequel. 

The eagerly anticipated follow up, The Empire Strikes Back, debuted in 1980.  Unlike so many movie sequels, this one was worthy of the original.  In fact, many critics consider The Empire Strikes Back to be the best of the original Star Wars trilogy.

A lot of the things that forty years later we think of a quintessentially Star Wars were not in the first film.  The Imperial Walkers, the Darth Vader theme music, Boba Fett, and Yoda all mode their debut in The Empire Strikes Back, not in the first 1977 movie. 

Now you may be wondering why I’m talking about The Empire Strikes Back, a movie that came out over forty years ago, in the context of a piece about last week’s Capitol Hill riot.  

My reason is this, just as The Empire Strikes Back was a movie, as the title tells us, of the Empire going on the offensive to once and for all crush the resistance of the Rebel Alliance that had blown up the Death Star, the Empire’s super weapon, so too the events of the past year, including the events of January 6, 2021, seem to be aimed at brining to a quick end the populist uprising that began in Great Britain and in America back in 2016.

After years of discussion, in June of 2016 Great Britain held a vote on Brexit, which was the popular name given to the movement to take the UK out of the European Union.  The vote turned out, to the shock and horror of globalists everywhere, in favor of Brexit. 

Across the pond, we here in America were faced with a similar choice in that year’s presidential election.  We could support Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, who, we were told by all the experts, was and unstoppable electoral juggernaut, more than capable of crushing all resistance in her path, or we could support a very bad orange man named Donald John Trump. 

Hillary supporters were the blessed, the righteous, the very elect of the Lord.  The Donald’s backers?  Well, we all know they were just a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic basket of toothless, uneducated, irredeemably deplorable rednecks, who, just like their leader Donald Trump, were very bad people who deserved very bad things to happen to them.      

But, as was the case with Brexit, much to the shock and horror of the Masters of the Universe crowd, Queen Hillary lost and the Donald and his merry band of deplorables won. 

It was at this point that the Empire – by “Empire” I mean the whole rotten basket of Deep Staters, establishment types, Clintonistas, RINO’s, Obamites, Bushies, crony capitalist billionaires, banksters, Vaticanites, Wall Streeters, globalists, etc. – began to plot how they were going to strike back, oust Donald Trump, and permanently return themselves to power.

In a nutshell, I believe this explains the last four years of nonstop shrieking from, and relentless attacks by, the establishment on Donald Trump, his supporters and about every single thing they have said and done. 

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Radio Lux Lucet Ep.43: Conservatism: An Autopsy

Posted in Radio Lux Lucet, tagged , , , , , , on January 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »

RLL Ep.43: Conservatism: An Autopsy

“What’s Really Behind the Capitol Hill Chaos?,” The Ron Paul Liberty Report, 1/7/2021.

“Evidence Mounts of a Capitol Hill False Flag,” by Stephen Lendman, 1/8/2021.

“Media & Democrats are launching second ‘war on terror’ – against Americans – Glenn Greenwald warns,” RT, 1/8/2021.

“Conservatism: An Autopsy,” by John W. Robbins, The Trinity Review, March/April 1992.

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The Bible and Covid Lockdowns

Posted in Politics, Scripturalism, tagged , , , , , , , on January 3, 2021| 1 Comment »

Credit: AP
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, center, smiles with his mask pulled down as he watches an opening day baseball game between the Washington Nationals and the New York Yankees at Nationals Park, Thursday, July 23, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

“New year, same old virus.  Masks on, Ohio.”  That was the cheery New Year’s greeting on the electronic message boards on the interstates around Cincinnati yesterday.

How is it that the government has managed to turn “fifteen days to flatten the curve” into over nine months of lockdowns, mask requirements, and social distancing with no end in sight?

From the very first time I heard about Covid and all the attendant liberty and economy destroying measures the experts insisted we follow lest we die the death, this entire so-called pandemic has struck this author as a psyop designed to allow wanna be tyrants the opportunity to enact measures they otherwise could never get away with.

From the standpoint of the authoritarians and globalists, Covid certainly has been a far better tool for restricting freedom and bolstering their own power than climate change. 

Compared to the threat of a supposedly killer virus which could strike you dead without warning while driving to work, climate change seemed downright boring.

Two years ago, socialist con-artist and Congress critter Alexandria Ocasio Cortez tried to scare people with her Green New Deal, eloquently warning people that, “like, the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”    

Queue the collective public yawn.    

But a killer virus, one that’s not merely an epidemic, but a pandemic?  Now that’s just the sort of thing to make people sit up and pay attention!  And pay attention they did.

Nearly the entire developed world went into lockdown mode in February and March of 2020.  When I first heard about lockdowns, I thought the whole idea was so absurd, so clearly a violation of people’s liberties, and so obviously destructive of the economy, that I really didn’t think governors would actually go through with them.

Obviously, I was wrong. 

Not only have public officials – including Ohio Governor Mike DeWine – embraced lockdowns, mask requirements, business closures, etc., but they have done so with great gusto and with relatively little effective pushback from citizens who are daily having their lives destroyed by their policies.

And it’s the pretty much the same wherever you go in the formerly free West.  Some places are a better, some are worse. But with very few exceptions, not only has Covid been used as an excuse to destroy liberty, but the level of destruction is continually ratcheted up.

Just today, CNBC ran the headline “Tougher lockdown restrictions likely on the way, says UK PM Boris Johnson.” 

The beatings will continue until moral improves!

It was only in November that headlines were declaring that the UK economy had suffered the worst recession in more than 300 years. 

Now, Boris Johnson wants to do more of the same thing that’s already substantially destroyed the economy of his country and the liberties of his people.

This is madness.

It’s also sinful.

But, sadly, it’s also typical of the sort of thinking that has gripped the minds of civil magistrates throughout the West.

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Reformation Day 2020

Posted in The Reformation, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2020| 3 Comments »

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. 

  • John 8:36

Perhaps it’s trite to say this, but 2020 has been a very dark year in the formerly Christian West.  Here in the United States, we’ve experienced months of violent rioting. 

Marxist and racist rhetoric targeting white Americans pours forth from government, academia, churches, the mainstream media and businesses.  Indeed, such rhetoric has become a commonplace in 2020 America. And those who advance such ideas, far from being condemned in the public square, are lauded as courageous truth tellers.

Aggressive homosexuals have managed to push their agenda to the point that simply denying there’s such a thing as same-sex marriage, or that a man can become a woman, can get a person in a world of trouble both politicly and professionally.  A recent story in New York Magazine reveals how normalized homosexual practice has become in the United States. The story claims that, “roughly 30 percent of American women under 25 identify as LGBT.” If true, then a large minority of American young women have “chang[ed] the natural use into that which is against nature.” Can such a civilization long survive?

In their response to Covid, federal, state and local governments have routinely trodden underfoot what were, until very recently, thought inviolable personal liberties.  No let up to the lockdowns is in sight either.  In fact, governments throughout the West seem prepared to crank up their violations of personal freedom and property rights with ever more stringent lockdowns.  These lockdowns, supposedly designed to fight the spread of Covid, represent, in the view of this author, the imposition of arbitrary government on the formerly free nations of the West.  If those who have imposed these lawless restrictions get their way, arbitrary lockdowns, mask requirements, travel restrictions, immunity passports and forced vaccinations will become a permanent way of life.

Then there’s the matter of the presidential election, just nine days away as of this writing.  Americans are faced with choosing between two leading candidates. One, the corrupt, semi-senile, Roman Catholic Joe Biden – Biden most likely is a Trojan Horse for the Democrats to smuggle in the Monstrous Regiment in the person of the radical progressive and highly immoral Kamala Harris – and two, Donald Trump, who, for all his imperfections, manages to get some things right, holding to something like a traditional American understanding of personal liberty and economic freedom. Naturally, the corrupt national media blindly supports Biden and shows open disdain for Trump and his supporters. The winner for most exceptionally egregious example of media bias is NPR, which has, so far, refused to cover the explosive Hunter Biden email story linking Joe and his son Hunter to shady foreign dealings in Ukraine and China.  NPR’s Managing Editor for News  dismissed the Hunter Biden story, writing, “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.”             

Indeed, America, and the West more broadly, seem to be at a major inflection point.  If present trends continue, it’s hard to see how Western Civilization survives much longer, if it isn’t already dead, except in remnant form. 

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A Few Thoughts on the Arrest of George Floyd, Part 3

Posted in Politics, tagged , , on June 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »

George Floyd, back row holding a Bible.

This represents the third post in this series, a series which I no plans to write in the first place, and one which, at least in part, I would rather not continue today. 

I could say that events compel me to write on this subject again, but that would be inaccurate.  Events compel not such thing from me. I am entirely free to write on whatever subject I choose, the events of the day notwithstanding.   

But given that the entirety of American society, including the professed Evangelical/Protestant church, seems bound and determined to draw all the wrong lessons from the recent racial tension in the United States,  I would be remiss as a blogger and as a Christian were I to pass over these extraordinary errors in silence. 

With that said, let’s get down to business.

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This is Going to Hurt, Part 2: The Central Banking Monopoly

Posted in Central Banking, Financial Markets, Financial News, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 17, 2020| Leave a Comment »

The_Phillip_Medhurst_Picture_Torah_122._Abraham_purchasing_Ephron._Genesis_cap_22_v_16._Hoet (2)
Abraham purchasing the cave of Machpelah from Ephron by Phillip Medhurst. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Abraham weighed out the silver for Ephron which he had named in the hearing of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, currency of the merchants.

  • Genesis 23:16

In his lecture “Money, Freedom and the Bible,” John Robbins argued that the manufacturing of money was not a proper function of government, because there is no warrant for this in Scripture.  The Bible charges the civil magistrate with the duty to punish evildoers and reward the good.  There is no mention of anywhere in Scripture of God granting civil governments the right to manufacture money.

The first time I heard this many years ago, I was shocked by this idea.  “But all governments manufacture money,” I thought to myself.  “If the government didn’t supply money, who would?” I continued.

Of course, my initial objection can be answered by pointing out that simply because a thing is done does not logically imply that it ought to be done.  In the 18th century, David Hume famously made this point.

Secondly, concerning who would supply money in the absence of governments, the answer to this is the market would take care of this.  As Robbins noted in his lecture, there is such an example of this in Genesis 23, where Abraham pays for the field to bury Sarah by weighing 400 shekels of silver, “currency of the merchant.”  Note that it was not the currency of Pharaoh, nor the currency of the King of the Hittites that Abraham weighed out.  It was the currency of the merchants.  That is to say, it was a unit of money that arose from the common practice of the free market.  Importantly, it was not a government issued currency, neither was it the product of a government licensed central bank.

For that reason, that it arose in the marketplace and was privately managed by the merchants who used it, the shekel weighed out by Abraham was an honest unit of money.  The same cannot be said for sovereign currencies of our day.  Not only do they fail to maintain purchasing power, but they are deliberately designed to lose value over time.  To this author’s knowledge, there is not one honest currency in use today, including, and perhaps especially, the U.S. Dollar.

Last week’s post titled “This is Going to Hurt, Part 1: Honestly Facing our National Bankruptcy,” discussed the disastrous economic numbers coming out as a result of the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.  Please note, I did not write, “the disastrous economic numbers coming out as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,” but, “the disastrous economic numbers coming out as a result of the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.” It is not the Chinese coronavirus that caused over 30 million Americans to lose their jobs in the past six weeks, it is decision, more accurately decisions, of various government officials that have led to this disaster.

But oddly, as I also noted, the stock market has rebounded even as economic activity has made record declines.  How can this be?  The short answer to this question is money printing on a mind-blowing scale by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States.

My purpose in this post is to lay out in non-technical language what a central bank is and what it does.  In subsequent posts, I shall illustrate the unbiblical, immoral nature of central banking by looking in detail at the origin, the workings and the disastrous effects Federal Reserve (the Fed) policy has had on our nation.

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Coronavirus Quarantines, Are They Biblical?

Posted in Politics, Scripturalism, tagged , , , on March 29, 2020| 1 Comment »

New York_Times Square_2020_03_23

An almost empty street is seen at Times Square in Manhattan on Monday in New York City. On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo dismissed rumors that a quarantine would be in place for the state after days of rumors of New York City being put on lockdown. JJOHANNES EISELE/AFP/GETTY

All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean:  he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.

  • Leviticus 13:46

“We haven’t faced an enemy like we are facing today in 102 years – we are at war. In the time of war, we must make sacrifices, and I thank all of our Ohio citizens for what they are doing and what they aren’t doing. You are making a huge difference, and this difference will save lives,” said Governor DeWine. “Right now, we are in a crucial time in this battle. What we do now will slow this invader so that our healthcare system will have time to treat those who have contracted COVID-19 and also have time to treat those who have other medical problems. Time is of the essence.” Thus reads the announcement on the Ohio.gov website where the state’s Stay At Home Order is also listed.

Clearly, Governor DeWine takes the coronavirus [the Ohio.gov website calls it COVID-19] outbreak very seriously.  Note the repeated use of military terminology in the quote above.  We are told that “We haven’t faced an enemy like we are facing today in 102 years” [apparently, this is a reference to the 1918 outbreak of the Spanish Flu]…“we are at war”…“In time of war”…”we are in a crucial time in this battle”…”What we do now will slow this invader.”

With all this military terminology, one wonders when the Governor plans to institute a draft.  Then on second thought, in a way, he already has.  As the website notes, beginning March 23, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. Ohioans are under a Stay At Home Order.  This order is effective until 11:59 p.m. on April 6, 2020 “unless the order is rescinded or modified.”  This order applies to everyone, and as of this writing on March 29, no recension or modification of this order has been announced.  So in a way, all Ohioans already have been drafted into the Governor’s war.

One question that seems not to have been asked in the wake of Governor DeWine’s announcement is, on what authority does he give this order?  Reading through the order, one finds that it contains provisions that shutter a not insignificant portion of the businesses within the state.  What is the legal basis for the Governor’s order?

One possible answer is that Ohio has adopted some form of “Medical Martial Law” legislation that was propagated in the wake of the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009.  Researcher James Corbett produced a video back in 2009 related to the Swine Flu pandemic which he titled Medical Martial Law and which dealt with the legislative response that followed the outbreak of that pandemic.  In his video, Corbett states that something called “The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act” was drafted by the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at Georgetown University (Jesuits) and Johns Hopkins University.  According to the website of The Centers for Law & the Public’s Health, the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA) “grants public health powers to state and local public health authorities to ensure a strong, effective, and timely planning, prevention, and response mechanisms to public health emergencies (including bioterrorism) while also respecting individual rights.”

The website boasts that forty-four states have adopted MSEHPA in whole or in part, but, curiously, Ohio is not listed among them.  Neither was I able to find anything on other websites linking MSEHPA to Ohio.  That being the case, this model legislation, as dangerous as it is, apparently is not the basis for the Governor’s actions.

According to the language in the Order itself, the basis for the Order is R.C. [Revised Code] 3701.13 which allows the Director of the Ohio Department of Health to “make special orders…for preventing the spread of contagious or infectious diseases.”

That said, although he doesn’t come out and say it directly, Governor DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton (Ohio’s Director of Health) seem eager for the public to see the Stay At Home Order as some form of Medical Martial Law.  This can be seen from the Governor’s own words, laden as they are with military terminology.

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Coronavirus, Financial Collapse, and the One Thing Needed

Posted in Scripturalism, Theology, tagged , , , on March 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Costco

Signs hanging inside a Costco store notified customers that they were out of supplies on Monday, March 2. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.  But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”

  • Luke 10:24

What’s my topic?  That’s the first question every writer must answer before starting. Sometimes topics suggest themselves easily.  Other times, coming up with an appropriate subject can be a bit daunting.

With all the events of last week – coronavirus, and the stock market crash to name two – you’d think that finding a topic would be easy.  But it’s been more of a challenge than may seem at first.

I had a number of ideas coming into today and had even written an outline for a possible series addressing ways in which entrenched vested interested manipulate events and the reporting on those events, giving people a false sense of reality and allowing them to surreptitiously advance their own hidden agendas.

Lord willing, I hope to be able to write that series.  But today, it just didn’t seem right.

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Believe the Bible? Then Shut Your Deplorable, Science Denying Mouth!

Posted in Politics, Scripturalism, Theology, tagged , , , , , , on March 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Coronavirus_Trump Pence

“Mike Pence literally does not believe in science.  It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of US coronavirus response as the world sits on the cusp of a pandemic.”

Believe the Bible?  Then shut your deplorable, science denying mouth!  That’s what our friends on the progressive left think.  Of course, these also are the same folks who will tell you with a straight face that men can become women, that women can become men, and that there are more genders than Heinz has varieties of ketchup, all which flies in the face of science, the very thing they claim as their source of truth.  But in the minds of the Marxists like Ocasio-Cortez, Christians are science denying Luddites, while they are paragons of scientific rigor.

Not that the secular left’s intolerance is at all surprising.  They’ve made clear their hatred of Christians for years, decades really.  Maybe even longer.

But while one would expect those whose god is government to dislike and hate those who worship the Lord, what this author finds somewhat surprising is the crushing confidence they have in the rightness, and righteousness, of their arguments.

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The Bible, Foreign Policy and the Middle East: Part 2, The Very Pernicious Doctrine of Preemptive War

Posted in Foreign Policy, Scripturalism, tagged , , , , , on January 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Soleimani_Car Remains

Credit…Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office, via Associated Press

“[B]ecause of our foreign policy of interventionism developed in the twentieth century, and because of our more recent policy of pre-emptive war, the United States has become the primary target of militant Muslims worldwide.”

 

“U.S. Strike in Iraq Kills Qassim Suleimani, Commander of Iranian Forces,” ran the New York Times headline.  Why did the US take this drastic action?  The article’s subheadline explaines, “Suleimani was planning attacks on Americans across the region, leading to an airstrike in Baghdad, the Pentagon statement said.”

This explanation is not something made up by the New York Times.  Rather, it is the same explanation given by official Washington for the deadly January 3 drone strike in Baghdad.

In his remarks from Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump, after asserting that his highest and most solemn duty was the defense of our nation, claimed that, “Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him…We took action last night to stop a war.  We did not take action to start a war.”

PBS reports Secretary of State Mike Pompeo giving similar justification in an interview he did with CNN.  According to PBS, Pompeo said that Gen. Qassem Soleimani “was actively plotting in the region to take actions, the big action as he described it, that would have put dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk.  We know it was imminent.   This was an intelligence-based assessment that drove our decision-making process.”

Reuters reported Pompeo’s remarks from January 3 thus, “last night was the time that we needed to strike to make sure that this imminent attack  that he was working actively was disrupted.”

Finally, the National Review quoted Brian Hook, U.S. Special Representative for Iran, saying, “The President’s first responsibility is the safety of the American people.  Qasem Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks in the region against Americans in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon that could have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people.”

One common thread that links all four quotes above is the word “imminent.”  We are told by all three gentlemen that General Soleimani was not merely plotting to harm Americans, but that his attack or attacks were “imminent.” Therefore, they argue, the President’s decision to drone Soleimani – in his January 3 statement quoted above, President Trump said “Last night, at my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike” thus taking responsibility for the decision – ought not be viewed as an act of aggression, but rather as one of self-defense.

The term “imminent” is key to understanding the reasoning behind the killing of Soleimani as well as determining whether the President’s decision was a moral one.  The reason “imminent” is such a key term relative to Soleimani’s death is that it’s the tip-off, the big tell, that this attack was carried out using the doctrine of preemptive war as the theoretical framework to justify the decision by the President to kill the Iranian general.

So what is the doctrine of preemptive war?  Let’s take a look.

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