Any honest observer would have to say that the long march through the institutions has been successful. The long march through the institutions has changed the practice and perceptions of people. For example, the march has changed the perception and practice of the foundational building blocks of society--marriage and family. The march has brought us to the point where the institutions of lower and higher education have churned out indoctrinated students who hate their own culture, their own history, and, consequently, their own country. This would have been and unbelievable accomplishment not long ago.
The institution of entertainment has been one which has produced a product where immorality becomes the normal morality; a product where language has degenerated to one obscenity after another; a product in which values, tradition, and the heroes of the past are maligned and denigrated until the mobs tear down their statues and pressure city fathers to rename buildings and streets. They attack businesses large and small.
HISTORY AND THE BIBLE SAY, "NO WAY"
So, what can stop the long march through the institutions? One historian is not optimistic; he does not believe that the institutions can ever be taken back now that those institutions have succumbed to the long march. (Sasser)
History has shown us that no single president or a mass movement can stop the long march. Ronald Reagan couldn't stop it. Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority couldn't stop it. The silent majority, as it was called, couldn't stop it. More recent figures trying to lead the charge aren't stopping it.
The march through the institutions has continued, stronger than ever. Once the march owns the cultural institutions, they’re impossible to regain, unless the hearts of the people are changed, The march has them.
We rely on the old bromide: "The truth will always win." But the history of fallen man doesn't show that and the Bible doesn't say that. A study of the history of Israel doesn't bear that out--the Messiah comes, performs miracle after miracle, even raising the dead, yet the nation shouts at Him, curses Him, and declares, "We have no king but Caesar!" Like the poet wrote: "Truth forever on the scaffold; Wrong forever on the throne."
Paul writes, "But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived." The fallen human race in on a march into the Great Tribulation with a government led by the Anti-Christ. "Truth will win?" As of April of this year, 70% of the Russian people now approve of Stalin's mass murders and persecutions.
The truth will one day win, but not because of a candidate, an election or a movement, but because of Second Advent of the King of Kings.
WITHOUT COST
Friday, May 31, 2019
Friday, May 24, 2019
THE LONG MARCH: PART II
The long march through the institutions over many decades has been a soft revolution. Unlike the American, French, and Bolshevik Revolutions, no blood was shed in the streets or on the battlefields during the long march. Those who marched shouldered no muskets, propelled no bullets nor dropped any bombs, yet the long march progressed through city after city and one institution after another surrendered unconditionally to its terms. Some fell voluntarily; others surrendered after a long and ruinous struggle. Nonetheless, they fell.
THE SURRENDER OF THE SERVICE
In a time-honored tradition, graduating seniors from high schools and universities gathered with their parents and grandparents on the Sunday before graduation for something called "The Baccalaureate Service." That service is described as "typically held in a church environment that is quiet, reserved and spiritual. The service focuses on prayers for the future, opportunities to give thanks for the accomplishments in education and quiet reflection about the educational journey students have endured. At the service, a religious leader or faculty member associated with the educational institution typically delivers a sermon tied to Scripture readings and prayer is at the forefront of the service."
It is an event for which there is a proper attire: those attending a baccalaureate service should avoid sneakers, flip flops, tank tops, and other casual attire. The tone of the service is more serious than a graduation exercise; there is no cheering; hands do not applaud.
Over the years, because of the long march, some schools have discontinued the service, but it goes on under another name and in a much different place. One school now calls the event "The Senior Celebration" and the celebration will be in the gym.
WHAT THE SURRENDER MEANS
The surrender of the baccalaureate sends a message: the spiritual isn't important. (If it were important, we wouldn't cancel it, rename it, change its intent, and meet in a gym.) Bleachers don't convey a tone of reverence. More formal attire is out of place in the presence of painted walls that shout, "Go Tigers!" Shot clocks and scoreboards don't encourage a thankful and humble heart.
The long march has sought to promote the message: Christianity is not important. By demanding that message be sent, it has achieved its goal. Yet, it is Christianity that was the foundation of our Western culture, one that saw the value of education.
When the students saw their parents and grandparents dressed in their Sunday best to go to the baccalaureate, it communicated a message: "What we're going to participate in is important to us and has been important to our family for generations." When ushers handed the attendees a program and the families noticed the various speakers who had spent a great deal of time preparing for the occasion, all that combined to say, "Christianity is important for us to gather in this special way."
The long march continues with the cancellation of baccalaureate services, one after the other.
TBC
THE SURRENDER OF THE SERVICE
In a time-honored tradition, graduating seniors from high schools and universities gathered with their parents and grandparents on the Sunday before graduation for something called "The Baccalaureate Service." That service is described as "typically held in a church environment that is quiet, reserved and spiritual. The service focuses on prayers for the future, opportunities to give thanks for the accomplishments in education and quiet reflection about the educational journey students have endured. At the service, a religious leader or faculty member associated with the educational institution typically delivers a sermon tied to Scripture readings and prayer is at the forefront of the service."
It is an event for which there is a proper attire: those attending a baccalaureate service should avoid sneakers, flip flops, tank tops, and other casual attire. The tone of the service is more serious than a graduation exercise; there is no cheering; hands do not applaud.
Over the years, because of the long march, some schools have discontinued the service, but it goes on under another name and in a much different place. One school now calls the event "The Senior Celebration" and the celebration will be in the gym.
WHAT THE SURRENDER MEANS
The surrender of the baccalaureate sends a message: the spiritual isn't important. (If it were important, we wouldn't cancel it, rename it, change its intent, and meet in a gym.) Bleachers don't convey a tone of reverence. More formal attire is out of place in the presence of painted walls that shout, "Go Tigers!" Shot clocks and scoreboards don't encourage a thankful and humble heart.
The long march has sought to promote the message: Christianity is not important. By demanding that message be sent, it has achieved its goal. Yet, it is Christianity that was the foundation of our Western culture, one that saw the value of education.
When the students saw their parents and grandparents dressed in their Sunday best to go to the baccalaureate, it communicated a message: "What we're going to participate in is important to us and has been important to our family for generations." When ushers handed the attendees a program and the families noticed the various speakers who had spent a great deal of time preparing for the occasion, all that combined to say, "Christianity is important for us to gather in this special way."
The long march continues with the cancellation of baccalaureate services, one after the other.
TBC
Friday, May 17, 2019
THE LONG MARCH
It's been a long march and it's apparent: it has reached its goal. The march is over. It began decades ago based on an observation from history: there are such things as violent revolutions such as the French Revolution (18th century) and the Bolshevik Revolution (Russian) in 1917 but then there are non-violent ones.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, hopes were high that its poison would spread to the West, but, no, that didn't happen because the heritage on which Western Civilization was built, Christianity, abhorred socialism/communism.
It was then that a new concept came into existence, a different kind of revolution, but a revolution nonetheless. Student activist Rudi Dutschke (a prominent spokesman of the German student movement of the 1960s) invented a term for a bloodless revolution; he called it, "the long march through the institutions." They would accomplish the revolution in the West through a long march through the institutions of the West, not through seizing power from the state.
They would direct the march through the institutions of the West--through schools, universities, courts, governments and through the media, through newspapers and television. Those who wanted to destroy Western Civilization would, over the long march, take control of those institutions.
Back in 1950, a young William F. Buckley published "God and Man at Yale." Although to my knowledge, he never used the term "the long march through the institutions," his book pointed out that Yale University had undergone a revolution i. e., the departure from the Christian goals of its founders.
Buckley pointed to the fact that the religion department and Yale's religious education was in the hands of atheists and agnostics; one professor proclaimed that he was 80% atheist and 20% agnostic. In his book, Buckley noted how the religion professors either ridiculed and attacked Christianity or ignored it. (In the ignoring, the message to the students came through loud and clear: Christianity is not worth considering.)
He referenced the economics department and its emphasis and support of collectivism and its malignment of capitalism. Whether the courses were in the religion or economics departments, the textbooks and professors more than leaned against Christianity and capitalism, they came against them.
Then Buckley examined the student organizations and found them to be wanting at Yale. In one service organization, purportedly "Christian," its officers and ushers at it services could be atheists and agnostics and many were elected to such posts.
That was 1950, the march was on and advancing. Now, after marching for 70 years, the students who came out of the Yales, the Harvards, and the universities have successfully marched through the institutions. They are in control of our newspapers, our TV networks, our kindergartens, elementary, middle, and high schools. They write the scripts for the movies we watch and the textbooks students study. They control parliaments and political parties. They're sitting on the benches of our judicial system and man the bureaucracies as untouchables in the electoral process. Our children are under their sway for the majority of their waking hours, Monday through Friday and when they watch TV or go to the movies.
The march has been so successful that they're able to tell us whom we are not to criticize and whom we must praise. Their march has been so successful that for anyone to say or write that men and women are different becomes liable for a punishable offense. If one were to point out that there are two genders, he comes under fire. The march has been so well-done that if one uses the pronoun deemed inappropriate, there are fines and possible jail time when the court convenes.
Satan has his strategies. Satan knows the human race. The march has achieved its goals and will continue. What we are seeing has been preplanned. It didn't just happen. It was a strategy. It worked. (Ephesians 6:11)
TO BE CONTINUED
After the Bolshevik Revolution, hopes were high that its poison would spread to the West, but, no, that didn't happen because the heritage on which Western Civilization was built, Christianity, abhorred socialism/communism.
It was then that a new concept came into existence, a different kind of revolution, but a revolution nonetheless. Student activist Rudi Dutschke (a prominent spokesman of the German student movement of the 1960s) invented a term for a bloodless revolution; he called it, "the long march through the institutions." They would accomplish the revolution in the West through a long march through the institutions of the West, not through seizing power from the state.
They would direct the march through the institutions of the West--through schools, universities, courts, governments and through the media, through newspapers and television. Those who wanted to destroy Western Civilization would, over the long march, take control of those institutions.
Back in 1950, a young William F. Buckley published "God and Man at Yale." Although to my knowledge, he never used the term "the long march through the institutions," his book pointed out that Yale University had undergone a revolution i. e., the departure from the Christian goals of its founders.
Buckley pointed to the fact that the religion department and Yale's religious education was in the hands of atheists and agnostics; one professor proclaimed that he was 80% atheist and 20% agnostic. In his book, Buckley noted how the religion professors either ridiculed and attacked Christianity or ignored it. (In the ignoring, the message to the students came through loud and clear: Christianity is not worth considering.)
He referenced the economics department and its emphasis and support of collectivism and its malignment of capitalism. Whether the courses were in the religion or economics departments, the textbooks and professors more than leaned against Christianity and capitalism, they came against them.
Then Buckley examined the student organizations and found them to be wanting at Yale. In one service organization, purportedly "Christian," its officers and ushers at it services could be atheists and agnostics and many were elected to such posts.
That was 1950, the march was on and advancing. Now, after marching for 70 years, the students who came out of the Yales, the Harvards, and the universities have successfully marched through the institutions. They are in control of our newspapers, our TV networks, our kindergartens, elementary, middle, and high schools. They write the scripts for the movies we watch and the textbooks students study. They control parliaments and political parties. They're sitting on the benches of our judicial system and man the bureaucracies as untouchables in the electoral process. Our children are under their sway for the majority of their waking hours, Monday through Friday and when they watch TV or go to the movies.
The march has been so successful that they're able to tell us whom we are not to criticize and whom we must praise. Their march has been so successful that for anyone to say or write that men and women are different becomes liable for a punishable offense. If one were to point out that there are two genders, he comes under fire. The march has been so well-done that if one uses the pronoun deemed inappropriate, there are fines and possible jail time when the court convenes.
Satan has his strategies. Satan knows the human race. The march has achieved its goals and will continue. What we are seeing has been preplanned. It didn't just happen. It was a strategy. It worked. (Ephesians 6:11)
TO BE CONTINUED
Friday, May 10, 2019
A SCARY BUT TRUE STATEMENT
Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990) was a British journalist and one-time editor of "Punch Magazine," published in England, a weekly magazine of humor and satire established in 1841. He was a utopian socialist until he saw the horrors of Stalin. He was renowned for his rapier wit, the power of his language and pen. He wrote: "The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact."
One article he wrote at least 30 years ago is scary for its prophetical insight on our Christian heritage of Western Civilization:
"So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense.
"Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill, scalpel, and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over–a weary, battered old brontosaurus–and became extinct.”
George Will echoed the same sentiment when he wrote, "There is nothing so vulgar left in our experience for which we cannot transport some professor from somewhere to justify it."
The phrase, "having educated himself into imbecility" is striking for many reasons, one of which is that Paul said the same thing, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." (Romans 1:22) To profess oneself to be wise is "speaking with an air of certainty, stating something with a high degree of confidence, even forcefully or aggressively, asserting his or her view without need for proof or regard for evidence." (Stephen C. Weber)
Examples of being educated into imbecility abound as we see in the following statements. "Gender is fluid." A recent news report of a school shooting in Colorado reports that "the perpetrators are an 18-year-old male student and a female student who is transitioning to a male." A person on CNN argues, "When a woman is expecting, that is not a human being inside of her.”
An example of professing oneself to be wise and spoking with that air of certainty and with a high degree of confidence, forcefully and aggressively is furnished by Rabbi Barry Block, writing for Jews on the historicity of the Exodus:
"We invite disaster when we insist that the Bible be treated as a history book. If we require that a good Jew believe that all the stories in the Torah actually happened, we are likely to turn away a good number of our most faithful people.
"Teenagers, in particular, are often skeptical of the accuracy of Bible stories. They are quick to conclude that Judaism is bogus since its central stories do not hold up under the lens of historical scrutiny. May we be blessed with the courage of Rabbi Wolpe, who stood before his congregation and affirmed his faith in the truth of Torah, even as he questioned the historicity of its most important narrative.
"Just like Rabbi Wolpe [head of the largest Jewish congregation in America], we are able to say to our young people: The Torah is not a history book or a science text, but so much more. The Bible communicates the most important lessons known to humanity. May we ever derive meaning from the Exodus, whether it happened or not. May we find revelation in every word of the Torah."
Two Jewish authors, responding to the imbecility of the above wrote: "So the message is: The Bible is not a reliable guide to Jewish history. But because some smart-alecky ancient ancestors fabricated a mythic exodus from Egypt, modern Jews should disrupt their lives cleaning and scrubbing, changing their diets and their dishes, taking time off of work and performing meaningless rituals."
Their point is, "Where did the Passover come from if there was no historical Exodus?" That's a good and unanswerable question. If the Exodus is a myth, so is the Passover. If the Passover is a fable, what's the point? Why invent it?
"The Associates for Biblical Research" stated the issue well:
"The Bible has been under attack in the western world for over 200 years but never more intensely than today. These attacks have taken different forms and have come from many different corners of the academic world, from philosophers to scientists, to textual critics. In the specialized world of archaeology, the attacks have increased dramatically in the past 50 years.
"Once a specialization filled with Bible-believing individuals, the field of archaeology is now overrun with atheists and skeptics, agnostics and those committed to the destruction of the Bible as a source of true historical information.
"These attacks on the Bible are a part of a sweeping movement in western culture. Spearheaded by academic elitists in the university and the public educational system, the news and popular media, and the entertainment industry, these revisionists cloak themselves with supposed objectivity, purity of motives, and the superiority of science over the "uninformed," "unscientific," religious community.
"They regularly mock those who question their world-view and their conclusions by name-calling and the worst forms of anti-Bible and anti-Christian propaganda. They have powerfully infected the church by turning Bible-believing Christians against the very Scripture which is the foundation of truth and life in this world. Instead of contending for the Bible, Christian academics, pastors, and lay-persons are making egregious accommodations to these destroyers of faith and truth."
William F. Buckley sums it up: “The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks, and extremists this side of the giggle house.” And " “I would sooner be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand members of the faculty of Harvard.”
Historian Arnold Toynbee wrote: “An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.”
One article he wrote at least 30 years ago is scary for its prophetical insight on our Christian heritage of Western Civilization:
"So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense.
"Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill, scalpel, and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over–a weary, battered old brontosaurus–and became extinct.”
George Will echoed the same sentiment when he wrote, "There is nothing so vulgar left in our experience for which we cannot transport some professor from somewhere to justify it."
The phrase, "having educated himself into imbecility" is striking for many reasons, one of which is that Paul said the same thing, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." (Romans 1:22) To profess oneself to be wise is "speaking with an air of certainty, stating something with a high degree of confidence, even forcefully or aggressively, asserting his or her view without need for proof or regard for evidence." (Stephen C. Weber)
Examples of being educated into imbecility abound as we see in the following statements. "Gender is fluid." A recent news report of a school shooting in Colorado reports that "the perpetrators are an 18-year-old male student and a female student who is transitioning to a male." A person on CNN argues, "When a woman is expecting, that is not a human being inside of her.”
An example of professing oneself to be wise and spoking with that air of certainty and with a high degree of confidence, forcefully and aggressively is furnished by Rabbi Barry Block, writing for Jews on the historicity of the Exodus:
"We invite disaster when we insist that the Bible be treated as a history book. If we require that a good Jew believe that all the stories in the Torah actually happened, we are likely to turn away a good number of our most faithful people.
"Teenagers, in particular, are often skeptical of the accuracy of Bible stories. They are quick to conclude that Judaism is bogus since its central stories do not hold up under the lens of historical scrutiny. May we be blessed with the courage of Rabbi Wolpe, who stood before his congregation and affirmed his faith in the truth of Torah, even as he questioned the historicity of its most important narrative.
"Just like Rabbi Wolpe [head of the largest Jewish congregation in America], we are able to say to our young people: The Torah is not a history book or a science text, but so much more. The Bible communicates the most important lessons known to humanity. May we ever derive meaning from the Exodus, whether it happened or not. May we find revelation in every word of the Torah."
Two Jewish authors, responding to the imbecility of the above wrote: "So the message is: The Bible is not a reliable guide to Jewish history. But because some smart-alecky ancient ancestors fabricated a mythic exodus from Egypt, modern Jews should disrupt their lives cleaning and scrubbing, changing their diets and their dishes, taking time off of work and performing meaningless rituals."
Their point is, "Where did the Passover come from if there was no historical Exodus?" That's a good and unanswerable question. If the Exodus is a myth, so is the Passover. If the Passover is a fable, what's the point? Why invent it?
"The Associates for Biblical Research" stated the issue well:
"The Bible has been under attack in the western world for over 200 years but never more intensely than today. These attacks have taken different forms and have come from many different corners of the academic world, from philosophers to scientists, to textual critics. In the specialized world of archaeology, the attacks have increased dramatically in the past 50 years.
"Once a specialization filled with Bible-believing individuals, the field of archaeology is now overrun with atheists and skeptics, agnostics and those committed to the destruction of the Bible as a source of true historical information.
"These attacks on the Bible are a part of a sweeping movement in western culture. Spearheaded by academic elitists in the university and the public educational system, the news and popular media, and the entertainment industry, these revisionists cloak themselves with supposed objectivity, purity of motives, and the superiority of science over the "uninformed," "unscientific," religious community.
"They regularly mock those who question their world-view and their conclusions by name-calling and the worst forms of anti-Bible and anti-Christian propaganda. They have powerfully infected the church by turning Bible-believing Christians against the very Scripture which is the foundation of truth and life in this world. Instead of contending for the Bible, Christian academics, pastors, and lay-persons are making egregious accommodations to these destroyers of faith and truth."
William F. Buckley sums it up: “The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks, and extremists this side of the giggle house.” And " “I would sooner be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand members of the faculty of Harvard.”
Historian Arnold Toynbee wrote: “An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.”
Friday, May 3, 2019
THE WORD BANDITS
One of our words has been stolen. The theft didn't happen overnight; the purloining was slow; few noticed. The word morphed from the spiritual to the secular. It's the word "evangelical."
"Evangelical," before the theft, meant "belonging to or designating the Christian churches holding to the teachings and authority of the Bible, especially the New Testament. The evanelical stress the paramount tenet that salvation is achieved by personal conversion to faith in the atonement of Christ." That definition is in the dictionary, but few will look it up to find it. That's because they think they know what it means and, as a result, don't consult the dictionary.
Today, when Joe the Plumber or Everett the Academic think of, hear, or read "evangelical," they think of a voting bloc, a group of people who would vote for Atila the Hun if he were running for office.
Say the word "evangelical" and the Joes and Everetts won't think of our stand on the subject of the inerrancy of the Bible; they won't think of the death of Christ for man's redemption, they think of those who line up at Chick-fil-A and boycott Starbucks. In a word association game, at the mention of "evangelical," "prejudice," "intolerant," "racist," "gun-toter," and "hater" pop into their minds. They can't help it; the word bandits have been working overtime.
The problem is that once the word bandits steal a word, it's impossible to get it back. For example, look at what's happened to our term "born again." Its meaning has been the victim of theft for so long, it's become meaningless to Joe and Everett. An athlete who last season was batting Frank Sinatra's weight but this year is an over .300 slugger has been "born again" according to the sports writers.
The Merimann-Webster Dictionary lists the second meaning of "born again" as "having returned to or newly adopted an activity, a conviction, or a persona especially with a proselytizing zeal." The tragedy is that once "born again" comes to mean that, Joe and Everett will have a problem understanding John 3 because they'll read into it the definition after the theft.
Louisa May Alcott, author of "Little Women" wrote, "I like good strong words that mean something."
Words are important. The precise meanings of words are important.
"Evangelical," before the theft, meant "belonging to or designating the Christian churches holding to the teachings and authority of the Bible, especially the New Testament. The evanelical stress the paramount tenet that salvation is achieved by personal conversion to faith in the atonement of Christ." That definition is in the dictionary, but few will look it up to find it. That's because they think they know what it means and, as a result, don't consult the dictionary.
Today, when Joe the Plumber or Everett the Academic think of, hear, or read "evangelical," they think of a voting bloc, a group of people who would vote for Atila the Hun if he were running for office.
Say the word "evangelical" and the Joes and Everetts won't think of our stand on the subject of the inerrancy of the Bible; they won't think of the death of Christ for man's redemption, they think of those who line up at Chick-fil-A and boycott Starbucks. In a word association game, at the mention of "evangelical," "prejudice," "intolerant," "racist," "gun-toter," and "hater" pop into their minds. They can't help it; the word bandits have been working overtime.
The problem is that once the word bandits steal a word, it's impossible to get it back. For example, look at what's happened to our term "born again." Its meaning has been the victim of theft for so long, it's become meaningless to Joe and Everett. An athlete who last season was batting Frank Sinatra's weight but this year is an over .300 slugger has been "born again" according to the sports writers.
The Merimann-Webster Dictionary lists the second meaning of "born again" as "having returned to or newly adopted an activity, a conviction, or a persona especially with a proselytizing zeal." The tragedy is that once "born again" comes to mean that, Joe and Everett will have a problem understanding John 3 because they'll read into it the definition after the theft.
Louisa May Alcott, author of "Little Women" wrote, "I like good strong words that mean something."
Words are important. The precise meanings of words are important.
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