PRESIDENT BIDEN AND THE PERFECT STORM II

In Finland, a 49 year-old Lutheran pastor described as "unassuming and gentle," will go on trial January 24, 2022, to face charges of  “hate speech” for writing and publishing a 24-page 2004 booklet that explains the Christian theology of marriage, which can only consist of one man and one woman, for life. 

Charges are also being brought against a fellow Lutheran for tweeting a picture of a Bible verse. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Coupled with those outrages is the fact that the police publicly admitted their interpretation of Finland’s law would make publishing the Bible a hate crime. (You read that correctly too.)

Let's turn our attention 5,171 miles from the Finns and look at San Francisco where a Nordstrom store in the San Francisco Bay Area was overrun by 80 looters who tore through the place, grabbed merchandise, and fled in waiting cars. Because of Proposition 47 in California, thefts under $950 will not be prosecuted, so the police won't bother showing up.Because of that law,  two men casually walked out of a Los Angeles TJ Maxx with piles of stolen goods and no one stopped them. 

 What has happened in the US of A and in Finland to cause such insanity? And that brings us to Joe Biden and the perfect storm, the storm which had been developing, but has now hit our country as well as others during his administration. 

 As with any perfect storm, the factors are many and they took a while to build, but build they did and did so right before our very eyes. The atheist German philosopher Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900), of all people, saw the perfect storm as it began to build. 

What he saw as an idea, the idea that human beings could secularize morality, that is, divorce ethics from Christianity and there would be no problems. And with that, the perfect storm began to form. The philosopher wrote, "What these moral fanatics don't realize is how conditional their morality is on the basis of the religion [Christianity] they profess to discard.And it is only because of the persistence of that religion that, for the English, morality is not yet a problem."The word, "persistence" is important.

We can visualize it this way: a country, such as the U. S. has a history of being Bible-soaked. We named our towns with names straight out of the Bible: Salem, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Palestine, Texas, et. al. Our politicians could quote and allude to the Bible without having to explain the reference such as Lincoln who said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." We hear an allusion to "the prodigal son,"" a David and Goliath situation," or "giving the widow's mite," or referring to "a good Samaritan" and we understand the mention immediately. We were a people who read and knew our Bibles and the morality it contained.

But then came the aforementioned divorce: prayer removed; the Bible removed; the Ten Commandments removed. The so-called "separation of church and state" became the standard for by which we systematically removed all references to God and His Word in the public arena. 

So, as the storm built, the divorce papers were served and morality was cut off from its foundation: Christianity. Darwin made his contribution to the storm, and man became one more animal taking up space on the planet. Divorced from the Bible, situation ethics (right and wrong depended on a person's situation at the time) thundered over the land. Not only the situation, but feelings, dictated morality, how each person felt became a standard of right and wrong, so we have the situation of "each man does what's right in his own eyes," a statement of relativism.

We must recognize that the storm we're seeing today took a long time to make landfall, that is, it took a long time for morality to become a problem in a Bible-soaked land. And why is that? Leo Tolstoy said it loud and clear: “The attempts to found a morality apart from religion are like the attempts of children who, wishing to transplant a flower that pleases them, pluck it from the roots that seem to them unpleasing and superfluous, and stick it rootless into the ground. Without religion there can be no real, sincere morality, just as without roots there can be no real flower."

The perfect storm in which we live today, does not have its roots in political parties; our educational system, our mass media; it has it's roots in that idea that we can divorce morality from Christianity and there will be no problems. So, what do we see? Insanity: "The fear of the Lord (a positive response to God and His Word) is the beginning of knowledge."

It takes a while for cut flowers to die, but die they do and then comes the perfect storm. Our leadership, starting at the top, are now part of the continual root pulling. Once the roots are gone, there are no rules and chaos descends upon us.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN AND THE PERFECT STORM PART 1

Let's begin with a question and an answer: what do we mean when we say, "The perfect storm?" The answer is, "The perfect storm is an unusual combination of events or things that produce an unusually bad or powerful result." Therefore, it would be proper to say that we have finally arrived at a perfect storm in the presidency of Joe Biden. It's taken a long, long time to get us where we are, but, the perfect storm has arrived. 

This perfect storm contains that unusual combination of events or things that produce unusually bad or powerful results, as the definition states. Regarding those unusually bad and powerful results, who would have imagined that a local mayor could stop citizens from worshipping while a casino could still operate? Who would have imagined that federal, state, and local leaders could punish Americans for living according to the objective truth that we are created male and female? Who could have imagined that adoption agencies would be punished for living out their belief that marriage is between a man and a woman? Or that a baker, a florist, or a web designer could be ruined for their Christian beliefs and practices? 

Who would have imagined that a New Hampshire high school student was suspended from playing football for one game after a conversation taking place off-campus in which he insisted there are only two genders. Who would have thought that a law in Colorado prohibited Lori Smith from stating her biblical beliefs about marriage on her business website and that law also forced her to design websites promoting same-sex weddings since she promoted traditional weddings. (John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) wrote that to punish a person by depriving him of his livelihood is the same as sending him to prison.)

Who would have thought that this quotation inscribed in the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC would be rendered null and void by any state in the Union: "Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens...are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion...No man . . . shall suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively."

Who would have thought that our Founding Fathers would become controversial, even vilified; who would have thought that "The Star Spangled Banner" would be controversial; who would have thought that an elementary school in Connecticut would require its students to engage in its "Social Justice Lesson Standards," which includes transgender content being exposed to children as early as kindergarten? And who would have thought that libraries would promote a story reading time for children with stories read by men dressed and made up as women? And who would have thought that approving parents would take their children to such perverted events?

Leaders lie. Leaders know they lie. The people to whom they are lying know they lie. The leaders know that people know they lie. They lie anyway. Who would have imagined that a TV news reporter would stand outside with a city being burned in the background and call what we're seeing  "a fiery, but mostly peaceful protest."? 

Enough already. Those are symptoms of the perfect storm, but the question is, what has caused the storm? The perfect storm has been building for a long time; we've observed its thunder and lightning in the distance for decades and now, in the presidential administration of Joe Biden, its fury has hit land and that fury cannot be said to be its full wrath. . 

TO  BE CONTINUED

THE TRUE TO THE TULIP CALVINIST

 There's a famous statement from the 19th century by C. H. Spurgeon, aka "The Prince of Preachers." (No, the prince of preachers isn't Joel Osteen.) C. H. S., in a dogmatic frame of mind, wrote, "Calvinism is the gospel." So, if anyone should doubt that Spurgeon was a five point Calvinist, those four words answer the question. 

OK. Let's weigh that statement on the biblical scale and see if it's found wanting. We'll begin by using the literal meaning of "gospel," i. e. "good news." And, in so doing, we'll let an unembarrassed Calvinist define their hallowed five points aka according Spurgeon as "the gospel." However, since bullet points are boring, let's put them into a narrative, into a conversation in which a follower of Calvin is witnessing to an unbeliever and giving him the "good news." That conversation, based on a summary of Calvinism, should go something like this:

The unembarrassed Calvinist: "The first part of the good news that you need to understand is that you can't independently choose God. You can't can't save yourself. God must intervene to save you. By "intervening," I mean that God must have already chosen you before you were ever born, chosen you to be saved. 

"To further explain the good news, here's what happened in eternity past--God elected certain people to go to heaven. We  call these people the elect. By choosing some to be the elect and bound for heaven, this would mean that God did not choose others and those people, billions ad billions of them, are therefore chosen to be the damned, damned to Hell before they were ever born. They have no choice in the matter of their salvation.   

"Let's go further and hear more of the good news. The good news is that  that Jesus Christ died only for the sins of the elect, those people God chose in eternity past to go to heaven. The flip side of that is that Christ didn't die for the sins of those God chose to go to Hell. And, I must tell you, to be honest, I really don't know if Christ died for your sins or not, I can't say to you, "Christ died for your sins."

"You have to understand that those God chose are powerless to resist the good news. They have no say-so or choice in the matter. They cannot say, "No."

"Now these people called the elect, will be faithful to the end of their lives, but it's not really they who will persevere in faith, God is the One who will. They have no choice in that either."

"In all of this, God gets the glory. He's glorified in sending people to Hell who had no choice in the matter, that is, He created men, women, and children for the purpose of sending them to Hell forever so that He could be glorified. I also admit to you that even John Calvin confessed that this was a horrible and dreadful doctrine. He called it, "God's horrible and terrible decree."

"Now if you ask me, "How in the world could God be glorified by sending men, women, and children to Hell who had no choice in the matter and how could He be glorified by saving people who had no choice either?" We have an answer to that question--it's a mystery. We don't know."

How should the unbeliever respond to such a gospel presentation? The only answer is: "If that's good news, then it's only good news to the elect, but it's bad news to every one else, so how can we call it a gospel for the whole world?"

Does any Calvinist witness to the unbeliever that way? If so, it's a very small percentage, which makes you wonder, are they embarrassed by a God like that?