wHY wE'RE dOOMED iF wE ARE dOOMED

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, a self-governing nation, thta was the uniqueness of the founding vision of America.  The people are supposed to be the government, the government being made up of representatives of the peope.  

As 

As Eric Metaxas shows in his book about this American vision, 
If You Can Keep It," the founders understood that this people for whom they were designing this government had to be of a particular sort.  Not just any people could be a self=governing people, they had to be a religious and moral people.  John Adams put this most famously but others said the same thing as Metaxas shows.  

So when 

Althoiugh the main founders weren't Christian believers in the full sense, they were deeply imbued with Christian morality and a Christian worldview and understood these to be the essential elelments of the people who could be entrusted with this government they had finally hammered out.  

I think it's important to understnad, although perhaps the founders themselve sdidn't really understand this, that this religiosity they saw as necessary to the qualification to be a citizen of thi nation had to be the Christian religion.  Washington siaid something to the effect that even Islam would work, or I think he said something like that.  Freedom of religion was granted to all the religions as if it all amounts to the same thing and produces the same kind of person.    But of course it sdoes not.  Islam produces a completely different kind of person and a completely different kind of cujltured, and in its strictest fundamental form it is at odds with the very freedoms Amerian is known for.  And if you get into the inner workings of the Roman Catholic theology you will find a simnilar opposition to such freedoms.  Yes.  That's why they had an Inquisition whichh tortured and killed those who disagreed with its dogmas.  THAT SAME DOTGGMA PERSISTS IN ITS COREW AND GIVEN THE OPPORTUJITY WOULD BE FULLY EXPRESSED IN A REVIVED iNQUISITOIN.  tHE iNQUISITION BY THE SAY HAS PERSISTED IN SOME cATHOLIC COUNTRIES AND NEVER ENDED, THOUGH IN A HIDDEN WAY.  

sO WHILE PEOPLE OF DISPARATE RELIGIONHS DO LIVE IN aMERICA WITH FREEDOM TO PRACTICE THEIR RELIGION, AND ARE AS FAR AS ANYONE CAN TELL AS GOOD CITIZENS AS THE pROTESTANTS WHO EMBODY THE RELIGION i THINK IS THE TRUE FOUNDATION OF THE amERICAN VISION, IN REALITY THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENC ES IN OUTLOOK AND POTENTION  POTENTIAL BEHAVIOR AMONG THE DIFERENT GROUPS.  iT MAY BE THAT THE aMERICAN VISION ITSELF CONVERTS PEOPLE AWAY FROM THE OPPOSITION OF THEIR RELIGIONS ENOUGH TO BE A BARRICADE TO THE FULFILLMENT OF THEIR INHERENT TENDENCIES WHICH ARE AT ODDS WITH IT.  i CAN SEE HOW THAT MIGHT BE THE DCASE, BUT i'M ALSO ONLY TOIO AWARE OF THAT FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENE THAT WOULD EXPRESS ITSELF IN ANTIaMERICAN WAYS IF IT HAD FREE REIN.  sO i'VE NEVER BEEN COMPLETELY HAPPY WITH THE IDEA OF FREEDOM OF RELIGION THAT EMBRACES RELIGONS SO CLEARLY INIMICAL TO THE aMERICAN VISION.    aaND OF COURSE IT'S NOT JUST iSLAM AND cATHOLICISM BUT ALL RELIGIONS IN ONE WAY OR ANORTHER.  tHE REAL RELIGION AT THE BASE OF aMERICAN FREECDOM IS pROTESTANTISM AND AS FAR AS i KNOW THAT'S NOT USUALLY RECOGNIZED.  sOME HAVE RECOGNIZED IT BUT NOT IN THE LAST CENTURY AND THIT'S THE SORT OF RECOGNIZION THAT IS EASILY SUPPRESSED IN TODAY'SC CLIMATE.

tHE RELIGIOUS NATURE THAT dEtOQUEVILLE LAUDED AS SO CONGENIAL TO THE aMERIAN FVISION OF FREEDOM WAS pROTESTANTISM.  dID HE NOTE THAT OR NOT?  tHE pROTESTANTISM THAT HAD BEEN PREACHED IN THE gREAT aWAKENING BY gEORGE wHITEFIELD AND THE wELEYS AND jONATHAN eDWARDS.  tHIS IS THE FOUNDATIONAL RELIGIOSITY THAT PERHAPS WITHOUT RECOGNIZEING IT THE FOUNDERS CONSIDERED TO BE ESSENTIAL TO THE SUCCESS OF THE rEPUBLIC THEY HAD CRAFTED.  iN THEIR DAY THAT pROTESTANTISM WAS FRESH FROM THE gREAT aWAKENING AND AT LEAST NINETY FIVE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE OF aMERCA WOULD HAVE LIVED B IT.

wELL, WE'VE LOST IT BYNOW.  tHAT'S FOR SURE.  

sO AS i'VE BEEN PONDERING WHAT WOULD BE NEEDED TO RESTORE aMERICA TO ANYHTHING LIKE WHAT IT WAS ORIGINALLY MEANT RTO BE, TO RESTORE IT FROM THIS COLLAPSE INTO TYRANNY WE ARE NOW LIVING THROUGH, i'M RUNNING UP AGAINT THIS SENSE OF THE NATURE OF THE PEOPLE NECESSARY TO THAT ORIGINAL VISION AND THE PROBLEM OF HOW THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES COULD BE RECLAIMED.  nOT EVEN PARTICULARLY THINKING OF THE RELIGION ITSELF BUT CEWTAINLY OF A BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW, A cULTURAL cHRISTIANITY AS NECESSARY TO RESTORING THE VISION.

oDDLY ENOUGH i STARTED THIS TRAIN OF THOUGHT BY CONSIDERTING THTA WHAT IS NEEDED IS THE EDUCATION OF LIBERALS WHO HAVE BEEN LIVING IN A PROPAGANDISTIC LIE FOR DECADES NOW.  a BLITZ OF INFORMATION TO DISABUSE THEM OF THAT LIE IS WHAT i WAS THINKING IS THE MAIN THING NEEDED IF WE ARE TO RESTORE THE NATION AND SAVE US ALL FROM TOTALITARIAN BRUTALITY.  wHEN PEOPLE LEAVE TH XCDDEMOCRATIC PARTY IN THAT MOVEMENT CALLED THE WALKWAWAY MOVEMENT THEY'VE OFTEN DONE SO ON THE BSIS OF REO CCOGNIZING THE TRUTH ABOUT SOMETHING THE'D BEEN DECEIVED ABOUT BEFORE, BYU THE MEDIA OR THE GOVERNMENT AND SO ON.  tHAT'S THE SORT OF THING i WAS THINKING OF.  aND THAT LED ME TO THE GENERAL RECOGNITION THAT IT'S THE CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE THESMELVES THAT THE FOUNDERS UNDERSTOOD QUALIFIED OR DISQUALIFIED US FOR THE KIND OF GIVERNMENT THEY CREATED.

mETASXAX POINHTS OUT AMONG OTHER THINGS THAT WHEN WE TRY TO BRING DEMOCRACY TO OTHER CULTURES WE REALLY DON'T SUCCEED VERY WELL.  wE MAY SUCCEED IN GETTING A GENERATION TO HAVE ELECTIONS AND EXPRESS THEIR VOTE, BUT BECAUSE THEIR CULTURAL EXPERIENCE IS AT ODDS WITH THE LIBERTY OF THE aMERICAN VISION THEY CAN'T KEEP THEIR SUPPOSED NEW FREEDOMS FOR LONG AND QUICKLY DEVOLVE BACK INTO THEIR NORMAL TYRANNICAL FRAMEWORK.  aFGHANISTAN LIBERATED FROM sADDAM hUSSEIN.  

aMERICANS

aMERICANS TOO HAVE CULTURAL LY DEVOLVED TO A POINT THAT MAY MAKE ANY RECOVERY OF THE ORIGINAL aMERICAN VISION IMPOSSIBLE.  

sOMETGIMES i THINK IF WE LIVE IN A NATION THAT CAN BRING PORNOGRAPHY UNDER THE BANNER OF FREEDOM OF SPPEECH WE'RE DOOMED.  i DON'T WANT TO THINK THAT.  i WANT TO HTHIHNK WE CAN RECOVER THE ORIGINAL MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTER NEEDED TO FULFILLE THE AMERICAN VISION,   BUT THE MORE i THINK ABOUT THAT ONE EXAMPLE THE LESS SANQUINE i AM ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF RECOVERING WHAT WE'VE LOST.

False Ideas Have Evil Consequences: Marxism

 Thomas Sowell in an interview on the program Uncommon Knoweldge, which can be found on You Tube, said the reason he wsas first attracted to Marxas its  was its simple explanation for porverty, that the rich are righ and the poor are poor because the rich take from thew poor.    

Eventually he came to see how false that idea is but it's an incredibly popular idea among many othersw, and in fact in our day is probably what runs the world.  Into the ground.  I don't know if it's the red hot center of the rpproblem it feels to me to be, but something in Marxism is certainly that red not center.   Marxism is the enemy of everything sane and real.  And it dominates everything these days, having grown over the last five or six decades into a voracious monster that is eating up everything that makes life worthiwhile.  Yes it's totalitarian and maybe the pithy red hot center lies somewhere in that term rather than the economic term, I don't know, I'm trying to find the best way to think about it.  

Recently somebodey on the Rogan show said something so irrational and evil it left my stomach in knots.  Instead of complaining about all the illegal aliens coming across our border now we should be encouraging more to come because it's just unfair that America has so much wealth and prosperity and good things that most of the rest of the world lacks that it's only right that they overrun us and take it away from us to equalize things and make things fair.  I don't know how he bput it, I've forgotten but that's the gist of it.  I don't even remember his name.  Chris something I think.

A crimninal idea.  Utterly irrational, utterly at odds with reality, a receipte for not only a total crash from that prosperity but a recipte for murder in the end, the death of millions in the end.  

I guess I'm not to call this liberalism but there are people who call themsevles liberals who hold such crazy ideas.  Ldeftists is another world for it.  Also Marxism, socialism, communism.  All of it.  The most even destructive ideas ever  allowed to increase to a dominating role in the world.  How did we let this happen?

Listen to that discussion on Uncommobn Knoweldge with Thomas Sowell.  Good stuff.  How the welfare state had a destructive effect on the black community rather than the other way around which is what is commonly thought.  Decreased prosperity, decreased success, increased crime, the whole jmess.

I've been wondering why  the thinkers who most attract my interest in recent years are blacks, the black public interllectuals as they call themselves, such as Thomas Sowell.   I think maybe it's because in their quest to understand the deteriorating condition of the black community they often arrive at this sort of recognition, that the liberal or leftist solutions are really the problem, and in arrivcing at that conclusion they illuminate the general problem of Marxism in the world these days and its destructive effect on America.  How it's the seedbed of so many of our current nightmarish insanities, so much of it traceable to this perverted idea of equality or equity or social engineering that has no understanding at all of human nature or economic or social realities and forces people into nonsensical abstract ideas that kill everything good and decent.

Marxism seems to be the perfect demented ideology to reflect the fallen condition of humanity.  As a Christian I see the Christian worldview as the intellectual frameworld for all good things in this fallen world, and the natural habits of fallen humanity as the contrasticg opposite.  Thomas Sowell has a book out titled A Conflict of Visions in which he contrasts what he called the Constrained Vision with the Unconstrained vision and I'm hopint go get it through my audible books for the blind.   

Sowell's Constrained View is apparently more or less synonymous with conservativism, and I'd like to find out how closely both views align with the Christian Worldview.  Seems to me it is this arena of thought that we could find the solutions to the destruvie trends we are suffering from these days.  But it would take bringing such ideas into focus for libersals and leftists to make suha difference.  Something I heard recently, some talk show or other I suppose, said that Constitution Day, which recnetly came and went, on September seventeenth, was oritginally conceived to ba a day in which all the schools spend the entire day studying and Constitution of the United Stes, but somehow that idea got dropped and now nobody even knmows there is such a day.  But wow, what a differnece that would have made if it had bwen practiced.  Wow.  And  think the whole nation, not just the schools, need a day like that, a day when all the tv shows and radio shows and special gatherings, conrferences and so on, are aimed at educating us on the meaning of our American institutions, which so few of us understand at all these days.  Wow do we need that.

Yes I thinki the Constitution is probably a great example of the Constrained vision  I don't know, I haven't heard Sowell say so, but as he defined the vision as far as I've heard anyway it's pretty clear the Constittuion aims at a restraining of the passions of fallen humanity so that tyranny and totalitarianism are presevented.  Of course when you just throw out all the restrains or redefine the Constitution to mean something other than what it was intended to mean, which is of course what has been going on for decades now, it exerts none of the good influences on the nation it was inteneded to do.  The amoujmt of recovery needed to bring that back is staggering.

I think Mark Levin's book The Democrat Party Hates America is going to do a good job of defining how all the destructive evil ideas we are suffering from reside in that party.  That's a playce to start.  As might be Eric Metaxas' books "If You Can Keep It" and "Letter to the American Church>"  Kind of foundational principles we need to recognize.  All of us.

As usual I feel mistakes galore getting tapped out under my fingers and I can't see so I can't go back and correct them and all I an do is hope the resultant garbling doesn't make my message incoherent beyond usefulness.  

Ineffable GodD

True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time.

PPreface to The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer

cAN WORDS LEAD US TO gOD?  wELL, IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE wORD.  bUT ON THE OTHER HAND MAYBE THE BEST THEY CAN DO IS STEER US AWAY FROM THINGS THAT AREN'T gOD.  aND THAT'S A GOOD THING IN ITSELF FOR SURE.

rAPT ADORATION.  oF WHAT.  sOMETIMES JUST RAPT ADORATION ITSELF IT SEEMS, THOUGH THERE IS A SENSE THAT THE OBJECT OF IT gOD, gOD NOT HAVING ANY CLEAR DEFINTION OR SHAPE OR CONCEPT AT ALL.  

i'M BABBLING.  bUT i LOST gOD AND i WANT hIM BACK.  i LOST hIM YEARS AGO AND i WANT hIM BACK.  i DON'T KNOW HOW i FOUND hIM IN THE FIRST PLAYCE, THAT'S THE PROBLEM, BUT i HAD hIM FOR A LONG TIME AND NOW i DON'T.  rAPT ADORATION.

oNE OF THE POETS WROTE ABOUT THE MERE THOUGHT OF gOD FILLING US WITH SWEETNESS.  yES THE MERE THOUGHT AND YET THE THOUGHT ISN'T OF ANYTHING THAT CAN BGE DESCRIB3ED.  iT IS JUTS "gOD" AND THERE IS THE SWEETNESS.

i TMAKES THE AUTHEIST DEBATES LUDICROUS.  tHERE IS NO WAY TO ANSWER THIS SORT OF THING AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN SAY TO TURN ONE AWAY FROM IT.  

hAV YOU EVER NOTICED THAT SOMETIMES A cHRISTIAN WILL ACTUALLY SMACK HER LIPS AT THE IDEA OF gOD?  iVE SEEN IT.  THAT'S WHAT IT IS.  TASTE AND SEE THAT THE lord IS GOOD.  tHE nAME OF gOD MAY BE ENOUGH TO BRING THE TASTE OF gOD.

tHE MERE HOUGHT OF gOD, THOUGH THERE IS NO TOHOUGHT OF ANYTHING DESCRIBABLE.

iF gOD IS NOT THE ORIGIN OF EVERYTHING, IF SOME STUPID IDEA SUCH AS EVOLUTION INTERVENES i SUPPOSE IT IS SIMPLY IMOSSIBLE TO HAVE SUCH AN EXPERIENCE.  iF YOU HAVE EVOLUTION YOU SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE gOD, YOU CAN'T HAVE gOD.  TAKE YOUR PICK

Later:  I don't mean to imply that God is not with me at all because He is.  He is sometimes a presence I feel even , especially in His Word, and He answers my prayers or some of them.  He has not left me.  I only mean that because I let myself fritter away my own time on worldly things, however good some of them are in themselves, I lost my much more continuous sense of Him that I had for may years after I was saved, when my attention was almost exclusively on Him.  Now my attention is scattered and I don't know how to get back that blissful easy concentration on god that I once had.  

Gospel Weapons To Save America

 Starting with Eric Metaxas's book Letter to the American Church, which as I keep saying I haven't yet read, or heard, I've been definitieoloy drawn into the theme of recovering this miserably damaged nation we live in, despite the strong feeling that the Lord is right at the door ready to return and bring it all to an end.  I know that book I haven't yet read is all about calling the Church to speak up for the America we are losing to the destructive forces of the Left, and in response to a prayer for guidance after hearing about that book God told me to wear a MAGA hat.  Yers I'm sure it was God who told me to do that although I haven't yet been out of my apartment so I have yet to obey Him and that does mamke me nervous.  But He seems to be saying yes we need to be working to save this nation.  All of us, whatever role we are in a position to play.

Metaxas' book was the start of it for me.  But I think Levin's new book The Democrat Party Hates America could play a huge role in this effort and that's the next one I want to get through my Services for the Blind Audio Books system.   

It's God who has to guide this and I think He is doing it.  I just heard a great talk by Ben Carson at Classical Christian Schools, Association of Classical Christian Schools, which is where Rosaria Butterfield gave the talk I mentioned in the previous post, Five Lies of our Anti Christian Age.  Carson is talking at a conference called repairing the Ruins which pretty strongly affirms the effort to save the nation.  It's a great talk he gave, fulol of humor and pointed analysis.   

He quoted Skousen who wrote The Naked Communist, another book I need to read, who listed their plans for destroyihng America from sixty years ago which have almost all been fulfilled by now.  Scary stuff.  He also echoed some of my own recent thiemes about the founding of America on CHrisstian principles and de Toqueville's recognition of our religious morality as our strength.  that being what we've lost above all.  And Skousen pointed out that the Communist list of goals focused on destroying our moral foundations.  That has certainly been accomplished.

The one thing we need above all is the recovery of the biblical worldview that launched the nation \, the biblical mjorality if nothing else but a huge movement of evangelism to bring in millions of converts would be the most powerful effect if the Lord would grant it.   

I know I'm repeating myself a lot lately but \\\\ but it's SO imortant.  All those churches that Rosaria B identified as traoitors and cowards for refusing to stand for God's word over the claims of the LGBT etc etc they all need to wake up and repent and ive themselves to the Lord's work, skhaking off the tentacles of the world.  If the Church repented and focused on doing the Lord's work this evil national and even global menace could be overthrown in short order.

Still Hoping God will Give Us Recovery of the Nation and the Church

 The Lord sent George Whitefield to America a few decades before the American Revoluition, and his impact on the nation that was ultimately formed is considered by most historians to be enormous.  Eric Metaxas in his little book, If Youi Can Keep It, treats it as the essential consolidating culturual influence that made the new nation possible, a nation based on self-government, something that had never existed in the world to that point, a nation without a king or other despot, a nation of laws that could only be held together by what the main founders considered to be a religious and moral poeople.  As John Adams, the form of government they crafted was inadquate for anyother kind of people.  

I keep coming back to this but never feel I've said it enough or even appreciated it enough myself.  It is frighteningly clear that we are no longer such a nation, that we once were, as attested pricipally by Alexis De Toqueville, but no longer are.  Relgious and moral?  You've got to be kidding.  Of course we aren't and that's the way it should be, we don't need any of that nonsense in order to be America, in order to have the freedoms we were given, of course not.  We're good enough just as we are, rotten to the core as we are.

But the signs are pretty clear these days that we are headed toward a totalitarian tyhranny and in fact are already in the beginning phase of such atyranny, almost already a police state, in which we are not allowed to speak as we will unless we speak what the powers want us to speak.  We are to be censored and cancelled if we oppose them, and they are many, very  mamany.  Not just in the government, but in businesses and coroporations that can just pull our jobs out from under us, and on social media who can just pull us off the platform and silence us.  Here and there people are being thrown in jail, some pastors in Canada a few years agov for opposing the vaccine mandate there, and now we've got this horrendous jailing of people who committed nothing more than walking around the building getting slapped with long sentences in one of the worst jails in the country.   And on trumped up invented crimes they wnat to do the same to our ex president.  It's all partisan, it's all political, it's all done by the left against the right.  Sure it could be a different order I suppose, but at this time that's what it is, left against right and with a ferocious power and astonishing level of hatred and malice.  

Justice is corrupted, all normal ethics and morals are corrupted, that's the only way this could be happening as it is.  Satan succeeded in corrupting the nation, the people of the nation, and buidling up his stronghold on the left, and that's what is happening to our once free nation.  

ric Metaxas wrote another book, Letter to the American Church, in which he exhorts the church to fight for America against these trends.  I haven't read it yet, can't get the aubible version yhet but I hope I will soon.  He's one who thinks we still have a chance to reclaim our heritage.  I hope he's right.  Well, I'm sure he's right about the method.  I'm not so sure that the Church will rise to the occasion.

Another powerful voice that could make a huge difference if people read him in the numbers he deserves to be read, is Mark Levin, in his latest book, The Democrat Party Hates America.  It's just out and early responses show that it has th epower to change minds toward a reclaiming of what we have lost.  I haven't read this one yet either though I've heard a lot of it discussed on Levin's radio show and hope to get to hear an audible version soon.  It sounds like a real game changer if it gets the audience it needs.

And all this needs to be buttressed by prayer, prayer, prayer and more prayter.  Oh God have mercy on us, we don't deserve it, we've let this nation come under the power of evil forces, oh give us the ability to raise our voices in the mnillions for Your help now, change us, lead us to repentance, wake us up and save our nation.  Oh yes you promised that if we give up our wickedness and call on Your name you will heal our land.  You told Solomon that back when he dedicated his emple some three thousand years ago but we know it is for us too.

God raises up people of His own wise choice to bring about the changes He is willing to bless us with.  he did that with Whitefield before the revolution and He may be doing it now with Metaxas and Levin and no doubt others.  Jan Markell is probably another I just realized.  But now I'm thinking of one Ijust head, a new talk by Rosaria Butterfield titled Five Lies of Our American Christian Age in which she dismantels the gay rights and transgender corruption through biblical revelation.  Definitely a voice for such a time as this.  Metaxas to call the Church to rise up against the evils, Levin to show us the evil we are fighting so we know what we are to fight, Rosaria to identify one of the biggest strongholds we are up against and equip us with God's weapons against it.

I also like Glenn Loury and his cohort Johhnn McWhorter as fighters of the fight against the cuoprruptions  in this case the Woke stuff, the attempt to destroy the country by racial racial divisiveness and insanity.  I just heard one from a year or so ago titled The Golden Age of Black Heterodoxy in which they lay out some of the terms of the fight.  Well, now that I think about it, I liked that discussion but now I'm not sure it's thebest one for this purpose.  Oh well.  It's a good one anyway and they are always in one way or another attacking the craziness about racie and that is a huge stronghold in today's battle.

But I keep coming back to the formula about a moral and religious people as the foundation for the kind of governm,ent Washington and Adams and jefferson and Frankloin and Paine and others gave us.  We need somewho to reinstate the biblical mindset in this country and so far I don't see that midset as such on the agenda even thoguh I see many trends as listed above that would feed into it.  We need a George Whitefield or somebody or many somebodieies who can bring the gospel back to this natuion.

And as usual, yes we may be at the door of CHrist's return, the Rapture of the CHurch and the Great Tribuoation , the Great Reset in which world totalitarianism under the Antichrist will reign for seven years, and noe n of this recoveriy I'm talking about will have a chance to come about.  May be .  I don't know.    But I have to rmention it.

Rosaria makes clear just how corrupted the churches have becoming, capitulating to the leftist trends that are the cause of our destructon. That has to be overthrown.  Levin makdes it clear that he Democrat Party is who wholly corrupt the whole thing needs to be thrown out.  it's a lot to ask but then God is the God of the impossible.

Biarre new technologies, and demons too

 Over the last year or so I've found out more than I ever wanted to know about Artificial Intelligence and other technologies that carry some pretty portentous possibilities as they get more deveoped and refined, which is happening at a scary pace these days, according to those involvled in it.

It's almost too bizarre to mention, but they claim, some websites claim, some scientists claim, that there is technology that can read our thoughts and implant thoughts in our minds.  Yeah I know, way over the top but even if I don't want to believe it I'm afraid the sincerity of the reports I've found is hard to deny.  Scary stuff.  This kind of thing always suggests demons to me since I know that demons CAN do such things, implant thoughts at least, perhaps read some thoughts.  I've avoidied learning much about demonology because it's so creepy and scary but sometimes I wish I knew more about it.  I've thought for a long time that there is probably a lot of phenomena in this world being ascribed to normal physical or mental sources thta is really caused by demons.  I'm certain of the that in the case of the credible UFO reports.  No wayu any of that can be explained in terms of the physical universe.  It has to have a spiritual origina and what is that but a demonic origin.  Jacquesx Vallee who is not a Christian, arrived at the conclusion that these UFOs don'tbehave like anything in the physical world but do fit much of the folklore of the world, which means they belong to another dimension and not to they phyhsical world.

But technology that can implant thoughts in our minds?  If that isis really possible it gets awfully confusing since I know demons can certainly do that.  hwo would we be able to tell thedifference?  And there are some who see all this sophisticated stuff as occurring in some relation to the demonic.  I don't know how to put it all together but the whole thing is alarming and threatening of something unwelcome coming on the planet.    

Swarms of insect sized drones that can attack and kill people?  All sorts of insects from large to tiny.  Some take pictures, most take pictures but some can carry weaponse of various sorts, even needles to inject us with something or other, or things that can explode and other stuff that gives me the shakes.  For some reason I imagine arming myself with a ping pong paddle.  It's got a hard surface and could bat the things out of the air and perhaps do them some real harm.  Not a tennis racquet, that would only bounce them to some distance, not necessrily hurt them.  But a massive swarm would probably be impossible to deal with.  

I've seen videos of these things, I know they are real, and I suppose here may be more sophisticated version of them thatn those that we can find on  You tube.  Saw a demonstration of a very impressive "fireworks" display done completely by dorones, a thousand of them I belive they said.  Pictures in the sky, the usual exploding pretty displays and all that.  If they can control the things to that degree, make them  do that kind of precision s precision work, wow.  And what if AI is involved in this and reallyh does acquire self=programming powers?  Ow.

And there could still be demons involved in all this too.  Why not.  They are always there and always hating the human race so they have to have a role in it.  At least Christians know we can call on the name of the LORD to protect us, but unbelievers are unprotected.

If It Depends on Moral Virtue Then How Can It e Reinstated?

 Well, God could send us a George Whitefield or something like that.  It would take a supernatural event to make the kind of difference that is needed.  That's what I'm thinking anyway.  I don't see how you reinstate any kind of moral foundation without that sort of power behind it.  People love their fallenness to o much.

It figures of course that we are at the threshhold of the very last days, just a step over and we're into it, the church raptured if the pre trib scenriou is accurated, and the rest of humanity left to suffer mightily for their sins.  

If we are that close to the end it makes no sense tht we could ahve any kind of renewal or revival that would take us back to our moral foundations.  Unless, it just cooccurred to me, for the purpose of reaping a greater harvest than we would without it.  That is, right now the church, the believers, seem a very small number compared to what we could be or have been not too long ago even.  A revival would bring many into the church and then we'd have a lot more in the rapture.

But just focusing on what it would take to take America back to the condidtion described by De Toqueville and envisioned by the founds as necessitating a strong moral people, moral and eligious people, just in an dfor itself.  Just to imagine that much, what would it take?  

I was thinking the essential thing is the Fear of the LORD.  What is that but the sense in the individual that there is a God who is watching and who judges our thoughts and deeds on the basis of His moral law.  That's what he fear of the LORD is all about, keeping the individual afraid of deviating from a righteous response in every situation because God is real and Hell is real.  

That's what we've lost.

How can a travesty of the Law Prevail so easily in this country?

 I don't get it.  Hosw is it that a governor of a state, this Michelle Grisham of New Mexico in this case, can make a decree that violates the sewcond amendment, which is obvious on the face of it to everyone, but it has to go into effect in spite of that and we have to wait for some process or other to unfold before rthe amendment can be reinstated, some legal process.  Meanwhile for the duration the amendment is suspended.  How can that be?  

The same sort of thing is happening right and left these days.  Lawsuits are brought against Trump for instance that I know becuase I know what happened in the original case as it unfolded in the news, that they are bogus cases, tha for instance he was not trying to overthrow an election, he was protesting what he considered to be the illegitimacy of the election, and that was obvious at the time, yet we have to acc3ept this bogus lawsuit, and let it determine how things play out during an election year during which these cases are nothing but interference with the election process, waiting for this ponderous bogus legal situation to play itself out on some program or other that is only a mockery of justice.  Why?  How is it that these theings can happen?

The Constitution, the second amendment, is actually suspended for the duration of the governor's decree.  Actually suspended.  Her law must be obeyed over the Constitution, endorced by the police that are in the power of the state.  How can this be?  How can it be?  We are without the second amendment in New Mexico?  At least that particular expreession of it?  How can that be?  All it takes is some ignorant or malicious official to make a decree and the whole foundation of our government is dissoved?  That's the way it seemjs.  And there is no redress, no immediate recress anyway.  It has to be treated as leigtimate law?  The suspension of the Constitition has to be treated as legitimate law?  What on earth is going on here?

And now I think of the Covid nightmare.  They tell us to mask up although the science says that masks don't prevent tghe virus from being spread through them.  Still we have to bobey this utterly insane law because it has been decreed by some power or other in office.  We have to obey it because it is enforced by police power.  how can this be?  And they can mandate the vaccine for some people in some places and that has to be obeyed too because there are other ways of enforcing it, usch as the threat of losing a job.  Or being denied access to some business or insititution.  

Yes this is totalitarianism and it is being pushed on us these days.  So what are we talking about, the failiure of thta virtue the founders said was necessary to our kind of republic?  We've lost the moral foundation and now we are getting the only possible result, evil or ignorant people make a lwa and push us all around at their whim and we can't do anything about it?  

Saved and Unsaved

 John MacArthur has a talk titled "What's Wrong With Everybody?" about the current miserable state of affairs we're all living through so very unhappily..  He makes the distinc ction between saved and unsaved, the redeemed and the fallen nature into which we are all born and remain until we are saved if that is to be our destiny.  It's a dramatic difference he describes, not the usual rather vague distinction that leaves us scrambling to figure out of if we're saved or not. 

AIt's hard to recognize the difference because even when we are saved we still have the "old man" or fallen nature in us and are still capable of falling into our old sins.  Neverteless we do have the new life in us, which is what salvation is, which is what redemption is, a real transformation, a new birth out of a state of what is called death into the life of god.  Because of our believing the gospel we have this new life planted in us, god Himself has come to live in us.  I think of a couple of book titles:  Man the Dwelling Place of God, and The Life of God in the Soul of Man.  That's what salvartion is.  

I'd been thinking about the Burning Man event and how it is such a concentrated distilled essence of fallennness, the fallennness into which we are all born but without most of the usual restrains socieity puts on us.  At least in some departments of sin, mostly the sexual.   One way I am persuaded of my own salvation is through the recognition that I used to share in those \\\\the mentality that seeks those experiences.  Even if I can still fall into them from time to time, and I don't know if that's even true any more, but even so it's clear to me that that is no longer my mindset.  

When I became a believer, God became the most intensely attractive center of all delights and desires.  For long periods He eclipsed every other interest.  But the world and the flesh can still take over and when my focus changed to wore wordldly concerns such as politics and even the debates about creation versus evolution, my mind got drawn back into those old sources of pleasure.  Still, when I picked up the Bible, or heard it preached or heard a powerful devotional message, something in me would just melt, I'd "pant after God" and experience that other level of my being at least for that moment.  

It is a dramatic transformation, a massive transformation as MacArthur puts it.  It's not always at the forefront of our experinece but it is of such a diffdrent nature it has to be described as radically other than the experiences of this world and the flesh we start out so accustomed to.  A radical difference, a radical transfomrmation.    And the things of this world can be distressing in ways beyond even the distress everybody else is feeling these days.   

the world is not always a perfect reflection of fallenness.  There are restraints in place through laws, police agencies and the like, and people do seem to have a moral code, at least in some places at some times.  Certainly in America in the early years, as the Founders often affirmed was the reason we could be trusted with the fragile rule of the sort of republic they crafted for us.  eric Metaxas describes this early mentality, how for instance Alexis deToqueville saw us as a very religious nation, which was our strength.  

Well, fallenness has since then certainly reasserted its own nature over us and we are now headed into a police state, which is the only possible outcome when the people have lost the moral foundation that controls us individually.    that kind of moral self control is possible with an education toward that end, which was powerful in the days following the Great Awakening under Georlge Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards and lasted maybe a century and a half until the Sixcties, oh yes the Sixties, brought it all crashing down.  We are no longer America.  Without that moral foundation we can't be.  Metaxas makes that point clearly.  Deuoquevill e saw it.  Can we get it back?

Itg's probably tgoo late, but on the other hand, there is nothing else worth doing,.

Staggering Statistics on Women in the Clergy

 John MacArthur lays them out in what I suppose is a recent sermon although of course I can't see anything that would tell me when it was given so I don't know how recent.  Anyway he says some fifty percent of Masters of Divilinty students or graduates in the seminaries these days are women.  That's pretty staggering.  I don't remember the other numbers but in the twenties I think for women actually pastoring churches and so on and so forth.  Of course this is a heresy.  He says that many evangelicals, eighty something percent I think, are OK with a woman pastor.  What sort of evangelicals are these?  Do they not know what scripture has to say about it, or do they and deny it?

As always I come back to my theme of the woman's head covering.  I really don't know if it can be said to be the starting place of this fall into feminimism, I don't, but I think it must be somewhere back there at the beginning of it.  I suppose the Marxist influence might be the general starting place.  But abandoning the practice of covering the head in church continues to strike me as a pretty big deal.  It was practiced for almost the entire tewo millennia since Christ and abandoned only in the mid twetnties century.  

On eaxtremely flimsty grounds.  Yet men like MacArthur accept those grounds.  Why?  Because of the credentials of the man who wrote the essay that has become the foundation for all of this?  The idea that Paul wasn't really dtalking aboutg aliteral head covering that all women should adopt, but about cultrual practices that distingtuish women from men, the head covering being one of those in his time.  Thomsas Shriner made this his artubument against the head cove3ring in his very influential essay and ever since then that's been the abiding perspective and women gave up covering their heads in church.  Except for a very few churches that insist that no, Payl really was talking about a literal head covering.  Rare churches indeepd.  Marginalized you could say.

I spent quite a bit of time studying the question and came to the conclusion that Paul meant a literal head covering.  And myu pastor told me that binds me own consience to wear a head covering, which is fine, but of course I think if it's true then I'm certainly not the only one who should be wearing a head covering in church.  

And I think it's pimportant.  Maybe very very important.  Look, the passage, First Corinthians Eleven, two to sixteen, is about the literal human head, the head that sits on stop of the shoulders.  It is treated in that passage as a symbol of authoirty, the person's authority.  God is Authority over Christ, Christi is authority over men, Men are authority over womehn.  That's the worder of what is known as "headship."  There's the literal word "head."  This is not about femininity syjmbols, this is about the head and about the hierarchy of headship or suthority granted by God.  It is called a Creation Ordinance, like Marriage, something given by God at the very beginning of the creation.  We reject Gay Marriage because of the creation ordinance that defines marriage as between a man and a woman, but e ignore the ordinance that gives man the headship position over the womahn.  

I always come back to a particular simple point:  we require men to remove their headgear when they come into church, on the basis of this very passage of scripture which says mmen's heads should be uncovered, but we no longer require the other part of that passage, that women's heads are to be covered.  

I wish men like MacArthur would rethink it instad of falling bak on Shrinkers analysis, which has all sorts of flaws in it part from the central mistake of renying the importnt of the head as such, and I've written about those flaws in my blog on the subject, Hidden Glory.  

It is not treated as importnat by some I've talked to, as a trivial thing even if I'm right, but it can't be trivila if it's a creation ordinanyc of God, and isn't it glaringly obvious that it has implications galore for the position of women in the clergy that MacArthur is lamenting?  Isn't that just downstream of the abandonment of the head covering?  

There are a million things that the church needs to straighten out these days so why focus on this one?  The Lord is probably coming back before we could get to any of them with any effet anyway.  True, unfortunatley.   But shouldn't we be about the business of getting it right no matter what?  

So Many Signs in Place Already but So Many Still unsaved

 There are people, many people I'm afriad, tht I'm still hoping will be saved before the Lord returns, but since I see no movement in that direction and I'm feeling pretty exhausted I sometimes just wish He would come immediately and put an end it it all.  Then I feel guilty, as if I'm abandoning all those people I want to be saved.  Yes it is up to Him, He knows those He will save and when and I shouldn't give myself any credit for any of i, maybe blame but not creit.  

Anyway I'm hoping again for a soon rapture.  I may not understand all the parts of the arguemtnt from the pre trib side, I still have questions about how it all fits together, but since no other system answers those questions either and the pre trib scenario has a lot going for  it, I simply want it to be true and i want the Lord to come back as soon as possible.  I can't persuade anyone of anything, it's up to Him.  I have to let go of it all.  

Jan Markell's latest Understanding the Times radio show is full of good pointers to the signs of the times, some interesting stuff about what really happened on Maui iss one, and she gets back to the UFO deception as explanation for the rapture when it comes.  A rehearsal of some of the most depresing trends in our time as well, yes really depressing stuff.  Come soon, very soon, Lord Jesus.

Burning Man Visited by God

 Late getting to this but since Ben Shapiro echoes my own thoughts about it I want to gert that much recorded.  Nobody else said anything along the same lines but Shapiro opened his show a couple nights ago with a remark about biblical proportions or some such terminology and I perked up my ears.  The first thought I had when I heard about the rain and mud out at the B urning Man festival was, Oh God is putting them through His judgment.  And I watched a lot of videos after that to get a sense of what was going on and how everyone was taking it.

A muddy mess, the desert playa or alkali flats as my father used to refer to them, turning into a squishy mess with the sonsitency of peanut butter.  Pelple tying plastic bags around their showes to get through the sticky stuff that seems to have an appetite for shoes, sucking them off and swallowing them up if you aren't careful.  Cars would get stuck in the stuff so nobody could leave until it dried out enough for that.  Most attendees made the most of it, some even trying to celevrate it as a part of the event itself, continuing the tone of revelry, but there were a few who worried about being stuck there for a long time.  Although some who wanted to leave early had a problem getting out, those who were going to sty until the end anyway had dry enough conditions for the usual exodus when the time came.  

Not God's judgment on a scale of biblical proportions but yes I'd call it God's judgment.  A rare event to be rained out on the normally hot dry playa, and rained out in a way that made leaving impossible for a while, but more to the point, made it necessary for most of the entertainment to shut down.  You don't want to leave electrical cors out in the wet so music had to stop and many other things just got to o soggy to continue.  That's probably the manin judgment part of this.  I'm sure some were able to continue happy enough but a lot of it just wasn't there any more.  The event is of course known for its sex and drugs and that didn't have to stop witht he rain and mud.  But I c would think the shutting down of the ;entertainment and probably the destruction of some of the art had to take a toll on the fun.  

Of course nobody repented at the judgment of God, and such interference with the sinful revelries of fallen humanity cetainly suggetss that judgment to my mind, a pretty tame judgment of course, nothing life threatening, just a dampening of the festifvities and an alarming retstriction on movement for those for whom it mattered.  I imagined many ossible worse scenarios, the stranging continuing a long time mostly.  They'd run out of food, the toilet problem would get worse, some camps would be completely inoperable so people would be doubling up in uncomfortable ways.  There could be mdical emergies and so on.  But this is the modern age and we have helicopeters that could deliver food and even airlift people out if necessary.  And so on.  But still, it's God's judgment, that's what it is.  He's saying to these people who deny Him in this loud obnoxious way every year, I'm here and I'm the one in charge, heads up.  

So I was happy when Ben Shapiro made the same connection although his emphases were a bit different.  Nobody else saw God as the bringer of rain and discomfort to the event.  I suppose nobody there noticed, but maybe someonedid.  Maybe we'll hear about it late

Later:  I've always wondered what exactly the burning of an efigy of a man is supposed to mean.  Wha'ts the symbolism.  I suppose I'm naive, maybe it's obvious but I just don't get it.  And why is everybody so happy when he goes up in flames?  I mean the first symbolic meaning that occurs is that humanity itself isbeing trashed.  And that's more or less how Ben Shapiro read it.  But it doesn't seem likely that the "burdners" see it that way.  but how do they see it? Mayb nobody really knows? r.

Later:  DForgot to mention that people could walk out.  It wasn't an easy slog through the gooey mess but the distance to the nearest town is only a few miles so it's quite doable and some did it.  So even in the worst cast scenario most could get out that way, unfortunately having to leave vehicles and anything else too large to carry behind, but I suppose they could come back for those things later.  Anyway, the situation was never really impossible, just difficult.d  Also, almmost forgot this too, some behicles are able to traverse the muck, emergency vehicles of various sorts and so on, not able to carry many out but could bring in supplies and carry a few out.  ots of them could carry more out.  There really were a number of options possible, not comfortable options but options.

Find myself musing further on this, remembering that a beautiful double rainbow showed up at the scene at one pint, a remeinder of the rainborw God sent after thew Flood as a promise that He would never bring a flood on the earth again, a token of His love to humanity, even tghe fallen humanity of this fallen world, of which the Burners are a rather pointed symbol.  Yes God loves all us burners and sent salvation to us, His Son who came to die in our place.  He brings judgment on sinful nations too, but it's mostly meant to be a reminder that He's there and we can still turn to Him.  Unfortunately most of us miss the message.  Once we're saved, or for those who have an appreciation of the bible, we can see His hnand in such things as the mud at Burning Man, but most of them would be blind to it, as even us saved ones once were.

Friday:  Jan Marell's radio show today is about the end itmes as it often is, which led me to reconsider the effigy of the burning man as a symbol of that last days finale when the earth will be consumed in fire.  The Flood was the first great worldwide judgment of God, but the final judgment will be by fire.  I'm sure the festival attendees have no such idea about their burning mascot but it certainly does suggest that  freom a perspective above theirs.  Every yhear they come together in a celebration of fallenness, though that too wouldn't be their conception of it, fallenness to an intensity we don't normally experience in one place at one time, sin to the max.  Well not all sins fortunately, but a celebration of sin nevertheless.  Kind of the Sixties in microcosm, which I've often thought of as the Great SinLiberation Movement, all of those liberations rolled together.  And the timing is 

woops, lot the thread, drat.  timing.  Intense week of godless humanity celebrating themselves capped by an image of humanity being burned to a crisp.  Hm.

 

What a True Christian Retreat Should be

 I'm sure I ust have written about this before but I don't remember when and I'm thinking about it again anyway so her's another musing on it.  All it takes is to listen to a bit of a book by A W Tozer, it may not matter much which book it is because the man was so consistently at a depth so much greater than all the rest of us he could write anything trivial if he tried.  Anywayhit's enough to wake me up for at least a brief moment to how far I am from where he would have us alll be, so full of the Spirit of God we can worship Him in reality and not in the superficial terms so common these days.    

So Again I was thinking how we need something to help us overcome this superficiality and draw us into that depth we are missing.  George Whitefiled did that for the entire nation just before the revolutionary war, but individually I think it could be done if we had retreats for seekers of such depth designed for the purpose.  And that means retreats that eliminate the usual distractions and superficial expressions and drive us to a sort of confinement in which all that's available is deeper expressions of Godf.  

Church retreats are far from such a conception.  They have their moments of deeper communion vut they dissipate it with the usual distractions, recreations, social encounters, meals that invite overindulgence and that sort of thing.  So what I'm thinking is that we need retreats that focus us with some intensityh on God alone.  It doesn't have to be isolation as long as the time together is focused in that way as well, times of humn singing and brief exhortations, a careful avoidance of anything trivial or aimed at humor or that sort of thing.  Quiet and intense.  Then the time alone perhaps in the monastic cell sort of room with vry basic furniture and books that are about nothing but the deepest experieces of God, with no reference whatever to our emotional or earthly concenrs.  Is that too much to ask?  Audio versions of such teachings perhaps.  I don't know what all might be the best methods but the content has to be God focused to an intense d intense degree.    Even just a few days fo such a retreat ought to strip away a lot of the worldly barnacles that cling to us.  Don't know where that image came from but oh well.  Strip away the world the flesh and the temptations of the devil --   well, the temptations are always going to be there in some form or other and that too has to be taken into account.

No pint in trying to get too specific here, I just want to make the point that a retreat should be an intense experience focused completely on God Himself, His character, His promises, His holiness, His majesty.   Minimize all worldly distractions.  Food shouldn't be a snare, but although fasting could be a good thing in this context I think simple pleasant but unexciting meals should be the standard.

We need to get deeper into God.  That's the point.

Glenn Loury with Csrol Seain, listen to them, she's great

 I couldn't finish that previous post for mere tiredness and never got back to it, very disappointing because I did have lots of ideas about how I wanted to pursue the subject and now it's just gone.  For now anyway.   Then recently I thought I was oingf ro have to do a post against a couple of conservative talkers who went over a line, but now I'm glad I've gone past that one too.  I'll just mention that this was Rich Valdes, a radio talk show guy I don't herar very often so I really don't know jhow solid his conservativism really is, and Glenn loury who has become a sort of hero for me and now may be losing that status,.  Valdes actually said that yes we do seem to be a two or three tier justice system these days but he considers that to be something we can't overcome because it's just so understandable that if a cop stops a guy for a traffic violation and finds out he's from a welthy prominent family it's only natural that he'd want to show respect and give the guy a break.  I was flabvergasted.  Isn't that the whole basis of our notion of blind lady justice?  we don't see the differences in wealth and status of anyhone but only jutde the crime itself apart from all that?  Valdes was instantly emotied to I don't know what.  GFo learn something about justice and about American history, man.  And then Loury and his frequent talking partner McWhorter indulged in some locker room talk that rather shocked me, but I was more shocked at my being shocked than just sohocked itself.  It too mek me a few days to get through a lot of confusion about why I should have been so sohocked, don't guys just indulge in locker frroom terminology from time to time and how could that affect me so much?  What's wrong with me anyway?  And all that.  And I went through layers of questions aboug the fact that they are balack guys and I've occasionally heard them complain rather mildly but still complain that it bothers them that they have a lot of conservative white fans.  So I'm a conservative white fan and I could almost say I took that locker room blurt personally as a somplaint against my being a fan.  Weird I know and that was just one of my mamny confused thgouths.  I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.  Why had this mattered so much to me?  Why was I so offended when I shouldn't be and all that.  then a few days later I woke up just knowing that what they waid WAS offensive.  Nob ody should talk like that in public.  Yeah the media went ouf ot ehri way to make public Trumjp's locker room talk incident that was in private.  That's different.  this was out there for eeyrone to hear.  No, not good.  Bad taste, Morally offensive.  Apologize, repemnjt, that's what they shoujld do.

So now I've wasted all that time when I started this with a completley different topic in mind.  Loury is talking with a black lady I've never been aware of before and I love her to piecesw.  Carol Sewain .  She's  ....  now I'm getting tired again.  Drat.  She's going to vote for Trump again she says and she has all ghe right reasons for that.  She sees his flaws b ut she sees also that he's the best for the cxountry and that includes black peop[le.    that's all I'm up to saying.  Sorry.