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.

Recovering America Means Recovering Virture

 Eric Metaxas' most recent book is A Letter to the American Church" but I haven't read it and it isn't out in audio form through Srvices for the blind yet so all I know about it is what I'vw heard in various interviews.  But I did discover that he has noather book from about a decade ago that is out in audio form and I've listened to it once and am going through it a second time, "If You Can Keep It' which isof course about the American founding, which you may recobgnize from the title as Benjamin Frankloin's answer to the query what sort of government the Constitutional convention had given us.  A republic, he said, if you can keep it.

Since Metaxas' latest book is about how can san save america, specifically what the churchews can and should be soing to save America, I would guess that it covers some of the same metrial that's in this earlier book.   That is, I would expect it to focus to a large extent on the natur=e of America, how we are different from other nations and why it is important, and what it would take to recover this different sorft of nation based on the nature of those difer3ences.

I knew that John Adams had said that our consisution is meant for a moral and religious people, that it is wholly i8nadequate for the governmnent of anyh other, and that thourhg has urbled up in my mind from time to time, laregely without a solid understanding of what he had in mind although I've always found it to be a very intriguing thought.  Well, Metasas makes much of the idea of that moral requriement for our different sort of goverment and points out that Adams was far from the only one to say so.  Washington was another but there were others behisdies him who also said it.  I don't remember if Franklin said the same thing but his remark about whether we can keep it or not suggests something similar.  

Since heraing this earlier bgook about the founding I've had a much stronger sense of the importance of this idea.

Oh good grief.  I have a pretty lengthy essay in mind for this topic but now I'm so tired I can't follow through.  Happens so much lately.  Drat.  I hope I'll be up to coming back to tis soon.--___

aRE wE rEALLY wHERE gERMANY wAS IN THE tHRITIES?

Dietrch Bonhoeffer was executed for his part in the plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler in April of forty four or forty five ,I forget which, just before the Americans liberated Buchenwald so probably forty five.  He'd been in Buchenwald for a short time then taken to another camp as the Allies approached and he was slo close to freedom at that time it is hard to fathom why God let him be executed at tht late date.  

But God does many things that are hard to fathom at times.  

For one thing it is hard to fathom that there were four attempts to assassinate Hitler from which he escaped.  tHREE TIMES EVENTS PREVENTED THE EXPLODING OF THE BOMB, AND THE FOURTH TIME IT EXPLODED BUT MIRACULOUSLY HE WASN'T HURT BY IT.  

fOR WHATEVER REASON IT WAS GOD'S WILL THAT bONHOEFFER DIE WHEN HE DID AND THAT hITLER ESCAPE THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS.    gERMAN;Y WAS LIBERATED SOON AFTER ANYWAY AND HE DIED THEN BUT WHY THAT WAY RATHER THAN THE TOEHR?  iT DOES SHOW, IF YOU HAVE THE MIND TO SEE IT, THAT gOD IS SHOWING THAT hE IS IN CHARGE OF THE AFFAIRS OF MEN RATHER THAN HUMAN BEINGS ALTHOUGH OF COURSE WE ARE HIS INTSTRUMENTS IN ANY WAYCASE.    hITLER WAS hIS INSTRUMENT FOR hIS PURPOSES TOO, AND WE CAN ONLY SPECULATE WHAT THOSE PURPOSES WERE, ALTHOUGH AT LEAST WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SAY THAT HE WAS AN INSTRUMENT OF JUDGMENT AGAINST A WORLD THAT WAS IN VIOLATION OF hIS lAW.  

that is why we will yet have a final Antichrist come to rule this earth and probably not too far in the future.  Could be right around the corner the way things have been going these days.  God brings His judgments against nations and eventually the whole world for those violations when they ave accumulated to some trigger point known only to Him.  the Israelites were His instrument for the punishment of the cananaite tribes under the leadership of Johshua, but they had had to wait in bondage in Egypt for four hundred years bfore the time was right and the sins of the canaanites had rip[ened to the point of deserving the full blown judgment.  Later at the tifht time god brought assyria against the israelites for their transgressions and then the Babylonian Captivity of the Souther Kindgdom.   the fall of jerusalem and the e;temple in seventy AD was ahnother devastating judmgnet by God against Israel, after which the land fell into desolateion until the regathering of the Jews in the twentieth century abnd the establishment of the Jewish state in nineteen forty either.    We are now accumulationg sins apace sincde at lest the sixties and are already seeing the crazy consequences of a lot of it, both sin and consequence at once really.  transgender idiocy is both sin and punishment and son on.

I now have an audio book system at my disposal and have heard to books by Eric Metaxas.  I wanted to hear his latest, the Letter to the American Church but it isn't available in audio form, at least not yet.  I hope it will be eventually.  But I did hear "If You can Keep It" wghich is about the founding of America, and "Bonhoeffer" which is his biography of the Christian activist against the Nazies I mention above.  

I havw to mentionj a couple of peeves here.  Metaxas describes American Founder John Adams as "theologically orthodox" which he was not.  He was a unitarian from everything I've heard about him, far from orthodox.  He, like the other founders, had a strong appreciation of Biblical morality and considered it an essential foundation for the kind of government they crafted for us, but they were not Christians.  None of them was a Christian, at least of the main five, Washington, Adams, Jerfferson, rfranklin and Paine.   Christian in the cultural sense and very strongly so, yes, but not Christian in the biblical dogmatic sense.

The other peeve was in the Bonhoeffer book where he is trying to tgrapple with Luther's Anti Semitic rant against the jews and puts it down to phyiscal maladies that made him cranky about all kinds of things.  two of those things he mentions are his railing against the jews and his identification of the Pope as the Antichrist.    Woopsie.  Metas=as is way off on this one.  The Reforemers, not just Luther, and hundreds of other dissents in the previous centuries, had clearly made the ase against the Pope.  there is no doubt that they had proved his identity as the Antichrist from scripture.  It was certainly not Luther alone who arrived tat this conclusions.  It took him a while to recognize it, it took seeing how the Pope cealt with him and what scripture said about the Antichrist that fiolnally showed him beyond a doubt that this is who the Pope really is.  Whatever crankiness due to physical discomforts he may have had, they were not the reason for this conclusion which was pefectly scriptural and rtional.

ad for his rant against the Jews, it was certainly ill considered and impulsive but it wasn't without cause.  As I've understood it he'd befriended the Jews and hoped to convert them to their Messiah, but then he became aware of their blasphemous pronouncewments against the son of Mary in their talmudic writings, which made jesus the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier and Mary of course a whore.  this pushed Luther over the top.    this doesn't judtstify his recomendations forallkinds of punishments to be levied aainst them which of course the Naxzxis used to justify their own atrocities.    As I recall it was Art Katz, a jewish XChristian teacher who died a while back, who defended Luther on these gournds.  Explainsed him anyway, though not exactly juidtifying him.  

Ane another similar issue came up in the biographty of bonhoeffer as Bonhoeffer's students explained the evils coming against the Jews as the consequence of the curse abgainst them which they took on themsevles when they called for Pilate to crucify Jesus and spare the criminal Barabbas.  ": His blood be unopnj us and upon our c hildren, they said to Pilate when he announced that he washed his hands of guilt against Jeuss, knowing him to be innocent.  It is hard to avoid the horror of what the Jes did to themseles with that declaraction.  Yet VBonhoeffer told the students they were wrong.  He somehow argued that but I can't fathom how he could.  the curse is right there in scripture, there is no getting around it.  It certainly does not justify anyone's taking the role of punisher of the Jews, and certainly god isn't going to tolerate that for long but wikll finally judge the punsihers.  But meanwhile theyu act as God's instruments.  This is a theme in the Old TESTGAMENT.  gOD BRINGS ENEMIES AGAINST hIS PEOPLE AS PUHNISHEMTN BUT IS VERY CLEAR THAT hE DOEASN'T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT WITHOUT BEING PUNISHED IN RETURN.

aNYWAY i WAS DISAPPOINTED IN mETAXAS, AND bONHOEFFER, FOR THEIR DENIAL OF THIS OBVIOUS SPIRITUAL CONNCECTION.  i UNDERSTAND THAT THEY WORRY ABOUT JUSTIFYING THE PERPECTRATORS OF THE ATROCITIES, BUT WE NEED A MORE REFINED THEOLOGY THAN THAT.  wE ARE CALLED TO MERCY, NOT TO ENACT gOD'S JUDGMENTS, EXCEPT IN THE CASE ORF ACTUAL CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS, WHICH OF COURZE NONE OF THIS IS.  sHAM pROCEEDINGS MADEW UP BY THE nAZI REGIME, BUT ALL SHAM.  mUCH AS WE ARE SEEING SIMILAR SHAM PROCEEDINGS TODAY IN aMERICA AS THE lEFT IS UNRAVELING OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM IN ORDER TO PROMOTE THEIR OWN POLITICAL BENEFITS.  THOUGH IN THIS CASE IT'S HARD TO SEE HOW THEIR ESPECIFIC SHAM JUSTICE IS DESERVICED.  iN GENERAL, FOR SURE, THE COUNTRY IS AWASH IN VIOLATIONS OF gOD'S lAW, BUT NOT IN PARTICULAR.

gETHE gERMAN CHURCH IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY WAS CORRUPTED BY LIBERAL THEOLOGY, AND bONHOEFFER HAD BEEN TRAINED UNDER LIBRAL TGHEOLOGIANS AT UNIVERSITY.  THE SAME THING WAS GOING ON IN aMERICA WHERE HE TAUGHT FOR A W3HILE.  hNRY eMERSON fOSDICK, DID i GET THAT RIGHT?  WAS PASTOR OF A H7UGE CHURCH BASED ON THE LIBERAL THEOLOGY THAT DENIED THE SUPERNATURAL TACHINGS OF THE bIBLE AND FOCYUSED ON SOCIAL ISSUES.  iT DISGUSED bONHOEFFER THOUGH HE NEVER QUITE FULLY WHET OVER TO EHT FUNDAMENTALIST SICDE AS FAR AS i  COULD TELL FROM THE BIOLGRAPHY.  hE FOUND MORE TRUTH THERE AT ONE POINT, BUT HIS OWN THEOLOGICAL THINBKING ALWAYS SOUNDS TO ME LIKE IT'S TRYING TO WORK ROUND AND THROUGH THE LITERAL THEOLOGY HE HAD ORITINALLY LEARNED.  iT NEVR QUITE BREAKS FREE OF IT.  

gERMANY'S CHURCHES WERE WEAK IN THE nAZI ERA, AND aMERIAN HURCHES ARE WEAK NOW.  i HOPE mETAXAS'[ BOOK lETTER TO TEH aMERICAN cHHRUCH MIGHT BE SUCCESSFUL IN CHANGING THAT DIRECTION.  hE TOOK IBHHIS INSPIRTAION FROM WHAT HAPPENED IN GERMANY, SEEING THE SAME THINGS HAPPENING HERE.

Musings on Loury and McWhorter and the Moral Lsae snf oyhrt dyugg.

jOHN mCwHORTER ON THE gLENN lOURY SHOW ABOUT THE TIME OF THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS OR JUST AFTERWARD i SUPPOSE, WAS GOING ON AND ON ABOURT HOW BLATANTLY rEPUBLICANS WERE WORKING TO DISENFRANCHISE BLACK VOTERS.   wHUT?   i REALLY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT BUT IT WAS DRIVING ME BATTY HOW HE WENT ON LIKE THAT AS IF IT WERE OBVIOUS.   hE DIDN'T DESCRIBE WHAT THESE "REPUBLICANS" WERE DOING, JUST KEPT SAYING HOW DISGUSTINGLY OBVIOUS IT WAS THAT THEY WERE TRYING TO PREVENT BLACKS FROM VOTING.

f

fIBNALLY  lOURY HAD HIS TURN AND i THEN UNDERSTOOD THAT mCwHORTER WAS TALKING ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN FOR VOTER id.  i ALSO REMEMBERED THAT i'D SEEN THIS PODCAST BEFORE AND HAD FORGOTTEN IT.  yIKES, mCwHORTER ACTUALLY THINKS THAT VOTER id WOULD DISENFRANCHISE BLACK VOTERS?  yIKES!  aFTER lOURY MADE HIS CASE mCwHORTER CAME BACK AND SAID THIS WAS ONE OF THOSE RARE TIMES WHEN HE AND lOURY WERE TRULY AT ODDS AND THAT HE DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT lOURY WAS TALKING AOUT.  oUCH.  hE REALLY DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THAT THE PUSH FOR VOTER id HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH RACISM BUT WITH AN URGENT DESICRE TO PROTECT EL

hE REALLY REALLY REALLY HADN'T ENTERTAINED FOR A MOMENT THAT THE PUSH FOR VOTER id WAS ANYTHIJG BUT RACIST.   qwHEREAS i AND MILLIONS i UNDERSTOOD THOUGHT AS i DID HAD NO OTHER IDEA THAN THAT IT WAS IMPERATIVE TO DO SOMETHING TO STOP THE FRAUD.  fRAJUD WE SAW HAPPENING IN THAT ELECTION AND PREVIOUS ELECTIONS THAT APPARENTLY NOBODY ON THE OTHER SIDE WAS SEEING, THOUGH THAT WOULDN'T HAVE OCCURRED TO ME UNTIL i JUST HEARD mCwHORTER \'S BAFFLEMENT .   jUST A LITTLE SLICE OF THE ONGOING POLARIZATION IN THE COUNTRY BUT IT DEPRESSED ME MORE THAN MOST EXAMPLES OF IT.  jOHN mCwHORTER?:  wELL YEAH HE'S GOT A LOT OF LEFTIST VIEWS WHICH IS DEPRESSING ENOUGH BUT HE'S A THINKER AND IN A POSITION TO HEAR THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ISSUE IN A WAY THE AVERAGE CITIZEN DOESN'T THESE DAYS WHAT WITH CANCEL CULTURE AND CENSORSHIP BY THE TOTALITARIAN LEFT.

iT MADE ME CRY BUT THEN A LOT OF THINGS MAKE ME CRY THESE DAYS.  aND i WON'T GO FORTHER INTO THIS ONE FOR NOW.  eXCEPT TO SAY THAT OF COURSE mCwHORTER HAS NO CLUE THAT THERE WAS ANY FRAUD WORTHY OF NOTE.  oUCH.    mAYBE lOURY DOESN'T EITHEi'VE BEEN \\\\\\\\\R, i'M NOT SURE.

\\

\ REALLY 

sORRY, TYPING IS GETTING OUT OF CONTROL

i THOUGHT i WAS GOING TO GO ON TO A COUPLE OTHER THEMES i'VE LITENED TO RECENTLY ON lOURY AND mCwHORTER'S DISCUSSIONS BUT i CAN'T REMEMBER WHY i WANTED TO DISCUSS THEM SO i GUESS i WON'T.  eXCEPT TO SAY THAT ONE OF THEIR GUESTS WAS IRRITATINGLY WOKEISH AND CONSDERED HIMSELF A THEOLOGIAN, AND ANOTHER WAS A SOCIALIST WITH THE USUAL UTOPIAN IRRTATIONALISTY THAT IN MY OPINION SHOULD NEVER EVER HAVE GOTTEN AFOTTING IN ANY DISCUSSION ABOUT FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES IN aMERICA.  tHIS IS INDEED A FALLEN WORLD BUT THE REASON FOR ACKNOWLEGING THAT ISN'T TO WEEP AND MOURN OVER IT BUT  TO DO AS THE aMERICNA fOUNDERS DID AND TRY TO PROVIDE FOR CECK AND BALANCES TO THWART THE HUMAN TENDENCY TO TAKE OVER AND DOMINATE WHEN GIVEN A CHANCE.  wHAT'S HAPPENING NOW IS THAT RTHE Lefdt has figured out how to get around all those checks and is pushing hard against them and may succeed in establishing their own craziness as tyrants over all the rest of ius.

So I'll skitter on over to an interview by Loury of a guy named Delano Squaires, or something like that.  Yes I think so.  Delano.  A genuine Christian, what a breath of fresh air.  Loury says he went through a Christian phase back in the eighties I thijnjk but I've never heard him explain why he left it except I suppose I can guess as I recognize some trends in his polit8ical views that veer away from a Christian perspetive.      Nevertheless a lot of what he says is congenial o a Christian point of view and I'm sure that's why I like him so much.   It's hard to understand though nhow anyone could have been Born Again and then leave it behind.  Could he really have been Born Again or just assuing it because he'd joined the club as it were?    I mean, to be born again, to be regenerate which is another word of it, is to have the life of God in you, implanted because of your faith in Christ's death on the cross for us.   If you have that life in you how can you give it up?  Well, you an't and if he has it I can only assume he'll eventually come back to it.

Anyway it was interesting to hear the interview with Delano Squires with Loury playing devil's advocate, although I don't know for sure that Loury doen't himself hold some of those opinions he was advocating.    Squires of course advocates for biblcial principles as solutions to problems in the black community and Loury raised questions about how anyone could espounse a religious perspective that is only one religion out of the many that exist in the country.  Dies Kiyrt see ut tgus wqat ir bit>   Does Loury see it this way or not?    

rthe Amerian Founders, at least the Big Five, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and Paine, were not Christians.  But they did revere biblical morality and thought the new republic depended on the continuation of biblical morality among the citizenry if it could work.  And we've long since lost that biblical perspective.  We are now in post Christian America and totalitarian tyranny is on the odoorstep.  With their focus so much on the problems of the black community are Louryu and McWhorter even aware of this trend tot totalitarianism?  Globalism?   Or is all that just a feverish concern of the far right in their thinking?

I don't know.  But as Squirees was laying out his view of the necessity of recovering some basic moral principles for the sake of saving the black community and Loury was questionin how that could possibly work in this day and age, it brought me back to my own view that recovering Christianityh is the onlyh solution to the whole mess.

Too late perhaps.  Impossible now perhaps.  But then missionaries have gone to remote bastoions of heathenism and discovered fertile ground for the gospel after they've done some spade work, and maybe it's not beyond possible to do the same in our own heathen societiy.   In many communities, not just the black community.  Yes, missionary type work, that's what I'm thinking of.  there are churches, and Im'm thinking only of the true churches here, not the woke monstroszities and other compromised apostate wrecks of churchs, get out of your pews and go intgo the community and set up some sort of ministry to bring the people to Christ or at least to biblical morality.  That's worth something and if you want to samve a community I don't see an;y other path to it.

Get people saved, get them born again.  the life of god will lead them.  But at least give them the biblical morality that the American Founders consdiered to be so necessary to the preservation of the Repbulic.

Restore the Ten Commadments.  Good grief, such basic stuff of life in those commandements.   Even if you don't grasp that they reflect an actual supernmatural Law that runs the actual universe you should be able to see that they have practical power to gude people awsay from death and desatruction to some kind of orderly existence.  Better of course that they be understood as that supernatural moral law though, because fear of Hell really does have some transforming power.  If you think that stealing is going to take you there you 'll think tweice about stealing, and so on.  And we've lost that fear of course.