A good rebuke from Paul Washer

"Progressive" Tyranny

From Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin

"For the Statist, however, the Declaration is an impediment to his schemes. The Statist cannot abide the existence of Natural Law and man's discovery of "unalienable rights" bestowed on all individuals by "their Creator." In ideology and practice, the Statist believes rights are not a condition of man's existence but only exist to the extent the Statist ratifies them. Furthermore, rights do not belong to all individuals. They are to be rationed by the state—conferred on those whom the Statist believes deserving of them, and denied to those whom the Statist believes undeserving of them. He acknowledges only that law which he himself sets in place, and which is subject to change or arbitrary application on his say-so. The Statist may wrap himself and his deeds in the language of enlightenment—claiming to be the voice of reason, the beholder of knowledge, and the architect of modernity—but recent history has shown him to be unenlightened in his understanding of mankind, moral order, liberty, and equality. Statists have launched bloody revolutions followed by violent periods of terror in France, Russia, Germany, China, and elsewhere, always under the flags of democratic populism, Marxism, national socialism, and fascism. For the Statist, revolution is an ongoing enterprise, for it regularly cleanses society of religious dogma, antiquated traditions, backward customs, and ambitious individuals who differ with or obstruct the Statist's plans. The Statist calls this many things, including "progressive." For the rest, it is tyranny."

Atheism and the meaningless life

Atheism and the meaningless life
By Randal Rauser

“…To have a value means that an object or action has an associated goodness. That goodness is often helpfully illumined by comparing it over-against other things with less goodness or value. Thus the action of helping a little old lady across the street is of value. And most of us will agree it is of more value than standing on the street corner and passively picking our nose while the old lady fumbles by herself. And it is of much more value than pushing the old lady into oncoming traffic…” More...

Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin

Lately I've been reading Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin and I've really enjoyed it. He has some fairly good political insights for the most part but when it comes to the basis of political authority he really doesn't have all the lug nuts on his wheels, but more about that later.

If your looking for a book with some good, thought provoking political insights my first recommendation would be something by R. J. Rushdoony like the Institutes of Biblical Law, he blows away most other writers when it comes to understanding the Biblical revelation concerning the subject of politics and law, but if you'd like something fairly easy to read (my 15 year old son really liked it and read it in a day or two) with a some political history, lots of very interesting facts and some good insights into the governmental mess that we presently find ourselves in you might like Liberty and Tyranny as we certainly find ourselves as a country embracing the very tyranny that this nation was created to escape.

Wood, Hay and Stubble

I went to add this exhaust fan in our small master bath because it fogged up so bad when we tried to shower

Up above the bathroom, in our attic, some birds had built a nest in one of the attic vents (you can kind of see the bottom of the nest here in the middle of the roof)

And apparently they've been nesting there every year for a long time for right underneath the nest is this huge pile of grass and straw (vaguely resembling a California Condors nest) that has been falling through the vent and piling up in our attic over the years. It's hard to believe that some little birds made this pile of grass bigger than my five year old.

Family Driven Faith

New at Polemos
Audio Links
Children
Family Worship at Church
Sunday School/ Youth Groups

• Family Driven Faith
  Voddie Baucham
  

The Law of God in Light of the Kingdom

New at Polemos
Audio Links
Dispensationalism
Law of God
New Covenant Theology

Another good and sound message from Voddie Baucham:

• The Law of God in Light of the Kingdom
  Voddie Baucham
  

The Statist and Liberty

A good quote from Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin

"For the Statist, liberty is not a blessing but the enemy. It is not possible to achieve Utopia if individuals are free to go their own way. The individual must be dehumanized and his nature dele­gitimized. Through persuasion, deception, and coercion, the indi­vidual must be subordinated to the state. He must abandon his own ambitions for the ambitions of the state. He must become reliant on and fearful of the state. His first duty must be to the state—not family, community, and faith, all of which have the potential of threatening the state. Once dispirited, the individual can be molded by the state.

The Statist's Utopia can take many forms, and has throughout human history, including monarchism, feudalism, militarism, fas­cism, communism, national socialism, and economic socialism. They are all of the same species—tyranny. The primary principle around which the Statist organizes can be summed up in a single word—equality.

Equality, as understood by the Founders, is the natural right of every individual to live freely under self-government, to acquire and retain the property he creates through his own labor, and to be treated impartially before a just law. Moreover, equality should not be confused with perfection, for man is also imperfect, mak­ing his application of equality, even in the most just society, im­perfect. Otherwise, inequality is the natural state of man in the sense that each individual is born unique in. all his human char­acteristics. Therefore, equality and inequality, properly compre­hended, are both engines of liberty.

The Statist, however, misuses equality to pursue uniform eco­nomic and social outcomes. He must continuously enhance his power at the expense of self-government and violate the indi­vidual's property rights at the expense of individual liberty, for he believes that through persuasion, deception, and coercion he can tame man's natural state and man's perfection can, therefore, be achieved in Utopia. The Statist must claim the power to make that which is unequal equal and that which is imperfect perfect. This is the hope the Statist offers, if only the individual surren­ders himself to the all-powerful state. Only then can the impos­sible be made possible."

Already Gone

Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church
and What You Can Do To Stop It
By Ken Ham & Britt Beemer with Todd Hillard / Master Books

A recent study by Britt Beemers America's Research Group found that those who faithfully attend Sunday school and all the other youth ministries in their churches are more likely, as they get older, to question the authority of Scripture, leave the church , defend premarital sex, legalized abortions and gay marriage.

They are far more likely to disbelieve that all the stories in the Bible are true, doubt the Bible because it was written by men, believe God used evolution, believe that good people do not need to go to church and more.

Ken Ham from Answers in Genesis recently published a book entitled Already Gone: Why your kids will quit Church and What You Can Do to Stop It dealing with the findings of this study. I have not read the book personally but I have read Ken Hams Already Gone blog and I've heard several interviews with Ken Ham and others who were talking about this survey and sadly it seems that most of the answers being proposed have to do strictly with getting better curriculum in our Sunday Schools.

What would Sunday School have to do with these kind of behaviors and beliefs? There are really only two answers to this question: 1) the thousands of people surveyed all had bad curriculum or 2) the principles underlying these ministries are all wrong.

I think Kevin Swanson of Generations Radio hit the nail on the head in this program entitled Sunday Schools Detrimental? when he discusses how the church has irresponsibly put someone other than parents in charge of a job that God specifically gave to parents and now parents assume that that job is being taken care of and they do not disciple their children themselves.

It's the whole welfare mentality in a slightly different package which seems to be part of our fallen nature; start doing something for someone that they are supposed to be doing for themselves and before long they will quit seeing it as their responsibility and start expecting that you're going to take care of it.

The government has ruined a large segment of our country because it has failed to understand this simple facet of our sinful natures and the Church is making the same mistake; once again it looks like the church is just following in the footsteps of big brother.

The Wicked themselves are an Example...

New at Polemos
Some Good Quotes
Apologetics
Atheism And Unbelief
John Calvin

“…in the present day not a few are found, who deny the being of a God, yet, whether they will or not, they occasionally feel the truth which they are desirous not to know. We do not read of any man who broke out into more unbridled and audacious contempt of the Deity than C. Caligula, and yet none showed greater dread when any indication of divine wrath was manifested. Thus, however unwilling, he shook with terror before the God whom he professedly studied to condemn. You may every day see the same thing happening to his modern imitators. The most audacious despiser of God is most easily disturbed, trembling at the sound of a falling leaf. How so, unless in vindication of the divine majesty, which smites their consciences the more strongly the more they endeavour to flee from it. They all, indeed, look out for hiding-places where they may conceal themselves from the presence of the Lord, and again efface it from their mind; but after all their efforts they remain caught within the net. Though the conviction may occasionally seem to vanish for a moment, it immediately returns, and rushes in with new impetuosity, so that any interval of relief from the gnawing of conscience is not unlike the slumber of the intoxicated or the insane, who have no quiet rest in sleep, but are continually haunted with dire horrific dreams. Even the wicked themselves, therefore, are an example of the fact that some idea of God always exists in every human mind.”

-John Calvin in Institutes of the Christian Religion

Taking Place Before our Eyes Every Day

New at Polemos
Some Good Quotes
Predestination

"The determination of the existence of all things to be created, or what is to be camellia or buttercup, nightingale or crow, hart or swine, and equally among men, the determination of our own persons, whether one is to be born as boy or girl, rich or poor, dull or clever, white or colored or even as Abel and Cain, is the most tremendous predestination conceivable in heaven or on earth; and still we see it taking place before our eyes every day, and we ourselves are subject to it in our entire personality; our entire existence, our very nature, our position in life being entirely dependent on it. This all-embracing predestination, the Calvinist places, not in the hands of man, and still less in the hand of blind natural force, but in the hand of Almighty God, sovereign Creator and Possessor of heaven and earth; and it is in the figure of the potter and the clay that Scripture has from the time of the prophets expounded to us this all-dominating election. Election in creation, election in providence, and so election also to eternal life; election in the realm of grace as well as in the realm of nature."

-Abraham Kuyper in Lectures on Calvinism

“The very essence of consistent theism is that God would have an exact plan for the world, would foreknow the actions of all the creatures He proposed to create, and through His all-inclusive providence would control the whole system. If He fore-ordained only certain isolated events, confusion both in the natural-world and in human affairs would be introduced into the system and He would need to be constantly developing new plans to accomplish what be desired. His government of the world then would be a capricious patch work of new expedients He would at best govern only in a general way, and would be ignorant of much of the future. But no one with proper ideas of God believes that He has to change His mind every few days to make room for unexpected happenings which were not included in His original plan. If the perfection of the divine plan be denied, no consistent stopping place will be found short of atheism.”

-Loraine Boettner in The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination

The Settlers of Catan

I had never even heard of this game until one of my sons got it as a gift a couple of weeks ago but half way through the first game I was hooked! No wonder it's one of the best selling games in Germany and the US.

Settlers requires 3 to 4 players and takes anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half to play. It took me a few minutes of playing before I started to catch on but after that it was a lot of fun. If you're looking for a good family game you might want to try this one.

Man Before God's Majesty

Since I posted the first two sections of the first chapter of Calvin's Institutes I thought I better finish the chapter and post the 3rd. So here it is:

From the Institutes of the Christian Religion Chapter 1, Section 3

"3. Man before God's majesty

Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. When we see those who previously stood firm and secure so quaking with terror, that the fear of death takes hold of them, nay, they are, in a manner, swallowed up and annihilated, the inference to be drawn is that men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God. Frequent examples of this consternation occur both in the Book of Judges and the Prophetical Writings; so much so, that it was a common expression among the people of God, "We shall die, for we have seen the Lord." Hence the Book of Job, also, in humbling men under a conviction of their folly, feebleness, and pollution, always derives its chief argument from descriptions of the Divine wisdom, virtue, and purity. Nor without cause: for we see Abraham the readier to acknowledge himself but dust and ashes the nearer he approaches to behold the glory of the Lord, and Elijah unable to wait with unveiled face for His approach; so dreadful is the sight. And what can man do, man who is but rottenness and a worm, when even the Cherubim themselves must veil their faces in very terror? To this, undoubtedly, the Prophet Isaiah refers, when he says, (Isaiah 24: 23,) "The moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts shall reign;" i. e., when he shall exhibit his refulgence, and give a nearer view of it, the brightest objects will, in comparison, be covered with darkness."

What is That?!

My 5 year old daughter came wondering in the house clutching this colorful little object in her hand recently. "What is that?" I asked, not having remembered seeing such a thing in our house before.

"My little friend gave it to me" she said (Her "little friend" is a little girl that lives in back of us and sometimes they talk to each other through the chain link fence where our back yards meet).

I asked to see it and as near as I could tell it was an old, hot, cracked Easter egg that the little girl had put colored band-aids all over to keep it from falling apart and had given it to my daughter as a gift.

I quickly told my daughter to put all her eggs in one basket (the waste basket) and she cried and cried like her little heart was broken. Finally I told her we would take a picture to remember it by and that made her feel a little better. So here it is, surely one of the very few hard boiled Easter Eggs from last Easter still in circulation.

John Calvin

New at Polemos

After all this time and 500 years of shaping this worlds history I thought John Calvin deserved his very own page at Polemos, so here it is:

• The John Calvin Page

Celebrating American History!

New at Polemos
American History

• The Stream of Liberty from Calvin to the Founders
  by Dan Ford
• America’s First War for Independence
  by Douglas W. Phillips, Esq.
• Calvin and the Scots-Irish in America
  by Bill Potter
• John Calvin and the Puritan Founders of New England
  by Bill Potter

Churches Losing Youths Long Before College

Another good article at The Christian Post!

Survey: Churches Losing Youths Long Before College

The Bible calls the Church "the Body of Christ." Today, that body is bleeding profusely, says a Christian author and sought-out speaker.

"The next generation of believers is draining from the churches, and it causes me great personal and professional concern," said Ken Ham, founder and president of Answers in Genesis and a Young Earth creationist…..

In an even more alarming finding, attending Sunday school proved to be of no help in strengthening a young person's faith. In fact, the survey revealed that Sunday school is actually more likely to be detrimental to the spiritual and moral health of children.... More....

John Calvin vs. Charles Darwin

Hundreds Flock to Boston to Celebrate 500th Calvin Anniversary
The Christian Post

Hundreds of Christians have gathered in Boston this week for a four-day event commemorating the influence of the Reformation on Western Civilization over the last half a millennium.

Hosted by Vision Forum Ministries, “Reformation 500 Celebration” will highlight the influence of Reformers on the Church, the family, the state, and the founding of the United States…..

“Calvin’s biblical worldview in particular took strong root in the New World - one reason why scholars describe him as the true ‘founder of America,’” noted organizers. More.....

A good article from The Christian Post and a good commercial from Vision Forum: