THE POWER OF ONE DAY

There's one day of the year that exerts a power like no other. It's so powerful that rulers, legislattors, dictators, educators, corporations, and businesses fear it with a vengeance and with such strength we might classify it as a seasonal phobia that comes every December around the world--a Christmasphobia. The very word itself strikes fear into the hearts of the aforementioned. 

We see the fear in any country in which communist rulers clench their iron fists to crush the day. The reason for that is because to celebrate or even say the word, "Christmas" is to say that there is a power higher than the states they rule. Embedded in the word is "Christ." 

THE PHOBIA IN ALBANIA 

 Beginning in 1945, Albania was under the communist regime of Enver Hoxha. In 1967, Albania became the first officially declared atheist country in the world. All religions were prohibited, places of worship were closed and / or destroyed, clergy were persecuted, tortured, and / or imprisoned. 

Religious practices being forbidden, religious celebrations were also removed from the calendar and replaced by festivities in honor of the communist party. (There can be no power higher than the state.) Christmas was replaced by New Year’s Day. Celebrated on December 31st and January 1st, New Year’s Day got all aspects of the Christmas festivities while erasing the religious aspects. Santa Claus was no longer Saint Nicholas, he was, "Grandfather of the New Year." The Christmas tree became the "New Year's Tree."

Only a few children, those of the elite, received gifts for New Year or a basket containing fruits and dried fruits. Nevertheless, braving the laws, many believers celebrated Christmas secretly within families, running the risk of being arrested or imprisoned. For almost 25 years Albania was deprived of Christmas, until 1990, when religion was again allowed and places of worship were reopened and rebuilt.

THE PHOBIA IN NORTH KOREA

The North Korean government works hard to ensure information about religious holidays doesn't enter the "Hermit Kingdom," so its citizens remain unaware that people are eating cookies, gorging on pecan pies, and singing Christmas carols across the West.

This is because inside North Korea – a country widely deemed to be one of the most hostile and repressive towards organized religion – you can be imprisoned, tortured or executed for celebrating Christmas. The fear of Christmas among the leaders is that strong.

Kang Jimin, who grew up on the ghostly grey concrete streets of the capital of Pyongyang, says he remained wholly oblivious to Christmas while living there.

“There is no Christmas in North Korea. I didn't know what it was,” he said in an interview.( He was 31 years-old at the time.)

He went on to say, "Christmas is Jesus Christ’s birthday but North Korea is a communist country so people do not know who Jesus Christ is. They do not know who God is. The Kim family is their god.” (I. e., "The government is their god.")

In a strange quirk, Christmas trees adorned with baubles and Christmas lights can be found in Pyongyang, but are there all year round and citizens are unlikely to be aware of the message they bear.

But this doesn't mean the North Korean government was happy with the Christmas tree-shaped tower the South Korean government constructed near the border with the North.

The tower – which was about two miles from the border and had in the past been lit up at Christmas – could be seen by North Koreans living in nearby towns. Incensed by it, the North threatened to shoot it down back in 2014, saying it constituted “psychological warfare." Talk about having a fear of Christmas!

But while Christmas is forbidden in North Korea, celebrating the birthday of Kim Jong-Suk – the deceased grandmother of Kim Jong Un – is not. People mark the revolutionary idol’s birthday, which falls on Christmas Eve, by making pilgrimages to a town in the north-east called Hoeryong (her birthplace).

“The birthday of Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong Un – the men – is more important, but Kim Jong-Suk’s birthday was celebrated. People come together and have a drink and sometimes drink too much,” he said.

Kang says he didn't know any Christians when he was living in North Korea, adding: “I did not know any Christians or anyone who believed in God. The North Korean government controls all of the media and the Internet, and people I met don't know who Jesus is.”

He was aware of the stark punishments enforced on those who dared practice religion in the atheist state.

“You can’t say you are Christian. If you do, they will send you to a prison camp,” he says. “I heard about a family who believed in God and the secret police caught them. They are now all dead – even the children – a 10-year-old and a seven-year-old.” (The terror of the state for anything or anyone higher than the state results in murdering children, women, and men.)

THE PHOBIA IN RUSSIA

Stalin hated the idea that his people might believe in a power greater than his own. Christmas says that there is. When the Bolsheviks—Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin with comrades—took power in Russia, the Christmas tree had to go.

While Lenin was alive, the tree was used as a New Year Eve feature. After him, in order to dress up what was now called a “New Year spruce” for public display, you needed the government’s permission. In the banning of his rule, Stalin sent government officials into homes to see if they had dared to erect a Christmas tree. The fear of Christmas results in government agents bursting into the homes of the people. 

THE PHOBIA IN AMERICA

Among the movers and shakers of our society there is a Christmasphobia. Among the many instances of this terror,  a Michigan elementary school's principal issued a directive specifically forbidding references to God, Christianity, or the birth of Jesus Christ. 

Advertisers fear using the word "Christmas"-- instead, there are the ubiquitous wishes, "Happy Holidays" and "Seasons Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas." Schools no longer have the Christmas Holidays," but instead the observe a "Winter Break" Is it not strange that advertisers have no fear of saying, "Happy Hanukkah," but can't say, "Merry Christmas?"

The President of the United States was afraid to say the name "Jesus" in a recent address. From the news report we learn that he said, "How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given,” Biden began, as he delivered his address to reporters at the White House. The president spoke about a “child” born on Christmas but didn't speak the child’s name. “We look to the sky to a lone star, shining brighter than all the rest guiding us to the birth of a child, a child that Christians believe to be the Son of God,” he said.

In addition to fearing to say, "Jesus," the careful reader will note the statement, "The child that Christians believe to be the Son of God." The implication is, "He's not the Son of God, but Christians believe He is."

And now for a personal example: I was in line to check out at a store when the clerk, a person who appeared to be in her late teens or early, very early, 20s finished with the customer in front of me, said, "Happy holidays," to which he replied, "Merry Christmas." She then responded, "Merry Christmas." 

When my turn came, as she finished, she said, "Happy Holidays," and I said, "You shouldn't be afraid to say, "Merry Christmas." She then said, "Merry Christmas."

Go figure.  

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WHY WE CAN'T TALK TO EACH OTHER

We're living in a terrible time spiritually. It's an age that's been called "a post-truth age" which, according to the dictionary, means, “a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts.” 

We see this when we hear people talking about  "my truth" and "your truth." This reflects the idea that there is no objective standard by which we can know the truth. Those words the warp and woof of a “post-truth” society as it replaces an “objective truth” with many "truths" based on individual emotions and feelings.

I saw this in full view at the University of Missouri where there was this well-known speaker was to give a lecture open to the public, students, faculty, and anyone. This speaker was to present a lecture on controversial topics like the objective fact that there are two sexes, male and female, subjects like that. 

As he started speaking, a group of students stood up and started chanting, "Shame! Shame! Shame!" over and over and over again. They were so loud that the speaker couldn't be heard with the result that he couldn't continue. I would add that some of them were making obscene gestures at him as they chanted. The students were wild-eyed and in the grip of their frenzied emotions run amuck. 

As an aside, their actions were not courageous. They knew absolutely nothing was going to happen to them. They weren't going to be expelled or sanctioned in any way for the disruption of an approved meeting on state property. There would be no consequences. The adults on the faculty who were there would not criticize them; they would approve their actions, thinking that they, as their teachers, had taught them well. They were letting the inmates run the asylum. 

This is what a post-truth age is like: Instead of emotions being formed by objective truth, those emotions become “my truth.”This was what was on full, raging display at the University Missouri. The hecklers had worked themselves into an emotional display on steroids. Thus, the hecklers' veto carried the day. The frenzied herd can get so frenetic that the campus police have to escort the speaker out of the room for his or her own protection of life and limb. It's happening repeatedly on campuses.

There can be no rational conversation with chanters bellowing the same word or words over and over again. The students had become a mindless herd which can could manipulated through feelings. In actuality what was happening in Missouri was that, by the frenzied chanting of "their truth," they couldn't be confronted by "the truth." It was impossible.

That's what these "safe spaces" on college campuses are all about: they teach the immature to avoid facts that would promote rational thought and conversations leading to objective truth. Those who hold to "my truth"--they are people with whom you cannot reason. You cannot meaningfully communicate with chanters of slogans. Society begins to break down. 

It's like a cancer, it brings its corrupting influence on our politics; it's dividing families as incompatible “my truth” worlds come up against each other.

The post-truth age isn't new, read the book of Judges, chapters 1-21 and watch a nation descends into chaos as each person has his own "my truth." 

LIVING WITH JOHN CALVIN

History is one fascinating subject whether it be American history (Bunker Hill, The Alamo, et al.) or church history. Church history is the redheaded stepchild of many a Christian's ranking of what's what in the past, but fascinating it is. 

For example, what was it like to live in Geneva, John Calvin's "New Israel," AKA Geneva? You don't have to wonder, we have the receipts. 

In time, with the authority of the Geneva city council, Calvin became the religious dictator of Protestant Geneva, empowered to root out all manifestations of Catholicism and immorality. And root he did.

His was an overt totalitarian regime. Calvin instituted a kind of religion police that he and the city council empowered to inspect people’s houses to ascertain if they behaved according to Calvin’s ordinances. (Could you live with those inspectors and their inspections?)

The council said, "No way" to having Rosaries and relics in your domicile, and it became illegal to name children after saints. (Could live with city officials telling you the approved names for your children?)

Next, your choice of reading material came under Calvin's purview. “Immoral” or Catholic books were locked down; art, music with instruments, dancing, and theater were not allowed. 

Then your dinner table came under his watchful eye. There were regulations for the amounts of the edibles allowed at your table, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

Next came your wardrobe which included the prescribed colors of clothing. What about your hair style? That was fair game too.  Gambling, drunkenness, adultery, promiscuity, immodest dress, profane songs, idolatry, heresy, and speaking ill of the clergy were punished, often by exile or execution. (I sort of like that "no speaking ill of the clergy" idea, but that's just me.)

They censored the press, and severely so. Education, which Calvin regarded as inseparable from religion, was carefully regulated. New schools were established, with emphasis on arithmetic, writing, and history in primary school, and Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in secondary schools to facilitate study of the Bible. They eliminated begging by having the government regulate charity.

Fifty-eight people were executed during the first five years of Calvin’s rule, and seventy-six exiled. Most notorious was the case of Michael Servetus, the scientist and theologian with whom Calvin had corresponded earlier but they disagreed on religious dogma. 

Specifically, Servetus (indeed a heretic) denied the existence of the Trinity. On his way to Italy he made the fatal error of passing through Geneva, was arrested, tried for heresy by the city council, and condemned to death. 

Calvin agreed with the sentence and wanted him beheaded. But the council decided to have him slowly roasted at the stake in a fire made expressly of green wood so that it would burn more slowly and prolong his agony.

One author states, "John Calvin’s Geneva, represented the ultimate in repression. The city-state of Geneva, which became known as the Protestant Rome, was also, in effect, a police state, ruled by a Consistory of five pastors and twelve lay elders, with the bloodless figure of the dictator looming over all. In physique, temperament, and conviction, Calvin (1509–1564) was frail, thin, short, and lightly bearded, with ruthless, penetrating eyes, he was humorless and short-tempered."

The slightest criticism enraged him. Those who questioned his theology he called “pigs,” “donkeys,” “riffraff,” “dogs,” “idiots,” and “stinking beasts.” One morning he found a poster on his pulpit accusing him of “Gross Hypocrisy.” A suspect was arrested. No one produced any evidence as to his guilt, but he was tortured day and night for a month untill he confessed. Screaming with pain, he was lashed to a wooden stake. His feet were nailed to the wood; ultimately he was decapitated.

Now here's a thought: had Calvin been a classical dispensationalist, those 58 people would have lived; those 76 could have stayed at home. The classical dispensationalist distinguished Israel from the church and that would have made all the difference in the world.

Any takers to move to 16th century Geneva and live with John Calvin?

THE FLAG

 It happened in the historic city of Boston in a courthouse. The news reported the story: "The city of Boston has agreed to pay more than $2.1 million to the Christian legal organization that backed a court challenge after the city refused to fly a Christian flag outside City Hall, a case that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

"The settlement announced Tuesday by Liberty Counsel covers attorneys' fees and other costs associated with the legal battle that started in 2017 when city resident Hal Shurtleff and his Camp Constitution group asked to hoist the flag on one of three poles on City Hall Plaza to mark Constitution Day.

"The Christian flag — which is white, with a red cross on a blue background in the upper left corner —finally flew for a couple of hours outside City  Hall on August 3, 2022, as activists cheered and sang songs of praise,"

A five-year battle, over two million dollars, all for a couple of hours? And for what purpose? It will be forgotten tomorrow. 

But there's a question: Why? What's the purpose? The courthouse isn't Christian and has nothing to do with Christianity. In fact, many of their decisions have been flat-out anti-Christian. 

Freedom of speech? Yes, that's true. But, again, why? Is this a line in the sand you're willing to die for? 

For those 120 minutes, was the city government of Boston Christianized? Did Boston's colleges such as MIT, Harvard, and Boston College profess the name of Christ? Did the culture change in any way? Of course not.

The issue goes deeper than that. God ordained the state because of sin. Its concern is for all people. God ordained the church for the community of the saved. 

The state cannot be Christianized, certainly not by a flag flying for a few hours.  

Five long years of legal wrangling. Over $2 million spent. Why  on earth? 

WHEN THE LOSERS APPLAUDED

 Relativism is shooting through every aspect of society to the extent that it's producing ludicrous results, ridiculous results but also insanely dangerous results. A case in point happened in the Live Free or Die State of New Hampshire as seen in the outcome of a beauty pageant.Competing in that contest was a male who is now a female. (Not too many months ago, that would have been a ridiculous sentence to write but this is now, that was then.)

The winner, in the opinion of the judges, signals the serious problem. The result signifies what relativism does to a culture: it causes the loss of categories. In such a society, all categories are gone--right, wrong, male female, good, evil, even the category of beauty or not beautiful. And that last word brings up a popular song of days gone by, a song of relativism called, "Everything is Beautiful in It's Own Way."

The Nazi concentration camps and crematoriums weren't beautiful. The starvation of his own people by Stalin showed us that communism isn't beautiful. The self-admitted blood lust of the Cuban thug Che Guevara wasn't beautiful. A comatose drug addict lying on a front porch in San Francisco is ugly.  Abortion would also fit in the class of those things which aren't beautiful. 

When the judges announced the winner, the losing girls acted as trained seals and, with smiling faces, applauded with gusto. Each one of the losers, after who knows how many months of preparation, were acting as if the final decision was normal. From everything I've read about the event, no parent, mother or father, no aunt or uncle, no brother or sister raised their voices against the charade. Everyone was acting as if the emperor was wearing clothes, to use the analogy of the fable. They were active participants in the farce.

There are those of you who were fortunate because of the genes you inherited regarding your appearance. Then there are the rest of us; not so fortunate. But, that's the way life is, and to pretend otherwise is a denial of reality and that's dangerous especially when it slides over into the denial of right and wrong.

Douglas Murray, a leading and perceptive critic of our relativistic culture, says that few have the courage to say, "No, this is wrong" or, "I will not listen to this." Or, "I will not participate in this." He points out that there will be a serious personal result from this, the person who doesn't speak up will hate himself later because he didn't say, "No." 

"In the absence of intellectual opposition, these notions  will gradually come to be absorbed into the culture. The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other--until the day when they are suddenly declared to the country's official ideology." (Ayn Rand)

We will leave it at that without saying more other than to say that a picture is worth a thousand words. You can judge for yourself by viewing the picture of the winner of the pageant as well as the losers by going to https://mwdentallab.org/transgender-brian-nguyen-wins-miss-greater-derry-2023-netizens-divide-over-models-beauty-pageant-winner/

The winner is in the center of the picture holding what appears to be the trophy. 

The categories are gone. Absurdity has triumphed and with applause.

 ONE STRIKE

There's a line in the famous baseball song, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game,'" that goes, "For it's one, two, three strikes and you're out of the ol' ball game." During the 7th inning stretch, the Cub fans at Wrigley Field stand and belt out that tune under the leadership of Harry Caray their late and beloved announcer in the broadcast booth.

Baseball has three strikes and you're out. Three chances to hit the 90+ mile an hour fastball or the curve, or whatever the pitcher throws. But what about God? Does He go by the three strike rule or is He, as we say, the God of second chances? Well, everyone of us proves that He is, that He does give us another opportunity after we've had our spritual failure(s). We prove it everyday since we still exist. God is gracious, isn't He? Abraham, Jacob, Samson, Jonah, Peter, and all the disciples had their second and sometimes third and fourth and fifth opportunities to get in step, in harmony with the will of God. It's all right there when you read the Bible, Old or New Testaments. 

But, you know,when you think about it, that's not the complete picture. Sometimes in recorded history, it's one strike and you're o--u-t out. So, let's balance out the picture of God in this regard and think of some one strike and you're out people. 

The first that comes to mind is a group: the angels that decided to rebel against God and follow Lucifer. They went that route once and that was it. They were cast out from God's presence and that was it. No repentance for them. No salvation.

But let's go to the human race. Remember Ananias and Sapphira? One lie to the Lord and their church--they were struck dead  immediately. No second chance to say, "I take it back, I'm sorry." How about Aaron's sons who didn't observe the proper approach to God by means of the sacrificial system? Nadab and Abihu, both gone in a flash through a consuming fire. There was no, "Can't we do the sacrifice over?" 

Achan and his family disobeyed God in the taking of the spoils of war for their own personal enrichment. God destroyed them right in front of everybody. They weren't allowed to say, "OK. OK.We'll give it back."

Then there's the really frightening one in Hebrews 6. In writing to the Jewish Christians who were defecting back into Judaism because of persecution from their kinsman according to the flesh, God said this of them:  "For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,  and then have [a]fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, [b]since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame."

For those who defected from the faith, there would be no second chances: it would be impossible "to restore them again to repentance." In context, He's saying that it will be impossible to restore them to progressing to maturity. 

As the author of Hebrews points out, that was their "willful sin," the sin of defection and siding with the enemies of Christ, thus "crucifying Him again." They would never recover from that; they would be "sinners in the hands of an angry God."

Is God the God of second chances? Of course, but there are times and there are sins  . . . We've been warned.

THE BIBLE FOR THE DUMB

The Princeton Review educational testing service measured one indicator of the historical decline of comprehension by the American public by comparing the vocabulary used by Richard Nixon and John Kennedy in their televised debate of 1960 with the vocabulary used by Bill Clinton and George Bush in their 1992 debate. Their study found that the level of vocabulary in the presidential debates had slipped from a tenth-grade reading level in 1960 to a sixth-grade level in 1992. (Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had debated at an eleventh-grade level in 1858.)  

By the year 2000, things were worse: In the debates of that year, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7); Al Gore spoke at a high seventh-grade level (7.9). (from The Hoover Institution)

The Hoover Institution went on to say, "Our contemporary politicians, who find it necessary to speak to us as sixth and seventh graders, in turn, looked sophomoric when compared to Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, whose scores in their debates, respectively, were 11.2 and 12.0 in 1858." 

In my humble opinion, things have sunk so low that our current vice president Kamala Harris speaks at an infuriating condescending level to adults that's too low to measure on the Princeton scale. It's so bad that if I had ever given a speech like she does in my junior high school English classes or my high school speech class, my grade would have been an "F" and rightly so. 

There's no doubt that the American public has been and is being dumbed down year by year. My own personal indicator is a question I often ask people since it's connected with my book, "Truthspeak," a book whose intellectual roots are the novel, "1984" by George Orwell. The answer to my question, "Are you familiar with the book, "1984?" is, much more often than not,"No." It's come to be a classic work few today have read or heard of. 

And this brings us to a Bible called "The Living Bible." It's a paraphrase by Dr. Kenneth N. Taylor. It's important, as you will see, to note that it's a paraphrase.

One reviewer wrote about "The Living Bible,' "The growing popularity of the Living Bible was one of many signs of the dumbing-down of American English that took place during the twentieth century. The trend was noticed by linguists as early as 1931, when Edward Sapir observed that the technology of mass communication has led to 'the insidious cheapening of literary and artistic values due to the foreseen and economically advantageous ‘widening of the appeal.’ All [linguistic] effects which demand a certain intimacy of understanding tend to become difficult and are therefore avoided.”  The rate of decline accelerated during the 1960’s and 70’s.

"Taylor’s method and its 'exciting results' involved the dumbing-down of the biblical text to a grade-school level, and this was in keeping with the linguistic and educational trends of the time." 

 

A "Bible" on the grade school level for adults? When the child becomes a young adult and goes to college, the odds are that he will look upon the Bible as a puerile book, a book meant for children, not adults. He will put it on the level just a bit above "Dick and Jane Go to the Farm." He will never know the depth of the Gospel of John nor the intellectual heft of Paul's epistles.

Besides that, there's an inherent danger in all paraphrases: there is no way that the one doing the paraphrasing can keep his own proclivities, opinions, and doctrines out of his work. It is impossible and there's no way around it. It will invariably happen. Therefore, the Bible will not be allowed to speak for itself. The paraphraser becomes the fallible human filter through which the Word of God must flow.

Avoid the paraphrase. Choose a translation such as "The New American Standard Bible." But no, never a paraphrase.