The Truth Project #7

They didn't pull back from defining as God himself has defined. Now it's only an hour long, so you cannot go too deep, but it covered the "basic" relationship, husband to wife, in comparison to, Christ to the church. Very well indeed.

Focus on the Families "The Truth Project"

A clarification. I often speak of modern evangelicalism and what has been missed and/or ignored and I think everyone knows I am speaking of where we have been. How for most of us it's our heritage. You don’t pick your relatives. But if we think that just because we have left somewhere, and at the same time all of the incorrect worldviews were just left behind too, than we are mistaken. We will need flat headed screwdrivers to scrape off some of these incorrect ways of approaching life. “The Kingdom suffers violence and the violent take it by force…”

But I don’t want anyone to think I am laying blame on top of Rob and Jason. I think these men are trying hard to be obedient and are trying to be diligent with where they have soberly found themselves at this point in history. Praise God, this Nation is gonna need thousands more willing to take another look at what has been written and directed to us from his word. And foreheads of flint to move forward, because we are liable to be hated before the church at large turns around.



Now... this is pure 100% Americana: it's all about the individual. We celebrate the rugged individual. Everything is in terms of the individual. The individual and what they want is made almost a right. Nay, it is sacrosanct. A 90% majority might think something should be a certain way. In America today to stop that 90%, all you need to do is find one (1) person that feels the 90% represent a hurtful, hate speech, and it will be expected for the 90% to back down as the decent thing to do.

We have been driven as American parents to make sure that every potential of our kids are discovered, used and developed. We have been conditioned to think and say towards our child ”I just want you to be happy”. Now I'm just scratching the tip of the iceberg here, in stating the perspectives that our modern culture has imposed on our thinking, and that’s just to make the point that all of these perspectives make up a worldview that is humanistic to the core. Because using our Bibles…” you cannot get to there from here”.

But it is just because of this worldview that so much is done, the way that is done, in the modern church and in the typical believers life. As modern evangelicals we have taken this basic grid, this Americana understanding of life and meshed the Christian faith right on top of it. “See they do fit.” From God's point of view it must have been ugly!

When you sometimes buy something from Costco, it might be a big batch with all these individual packages and sometimes it will say… ”not for individual resale”. It is not the manufacturer's intent for them to be used that way.

We don’t have labels on us, or on our bibles saying, “not made for an individualized worldview use.” In the Word, God is always dealing with individuals within the terms and perspectives that he created, as in the context of the family, the church (his people) or a Nation.

But we modern evangelicals have been trained to view everything from the individuals perspective outward. So we might view everything from an incorrect perspective, form a humanistic perspective on our terms, as compared to on God's terms. Now this is like having the wrong prescription for your eyeglasses. oops.

We think “I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. Which we do.

But we don’t think “God has a relationship with me, that’s based within the context of my family over generations, my church, and my nation.” For most of the modern church this last sentence would probably make no sense.

This has not happened to us by accident. Public schools and a church that honored peoples feelings more than God and his word explains an awful lot. So….

I am up to number 6 in the Focus on the Family's “The truth Project”. I think there are twelve DVDS. This set does a very good job at introducing the concept of worldviews to the larger evangelical church. It is much needed. Just finished the history one tonight, awesome job, a bulls eye on this one.

So far I would say they don’t go far enough, tonight they did though. But at least the stage is set, some ground work is being laid, for areas of understanding with brothers and sisters.

One of the major stumbling stones I hope they address is what I started with in this email. That of viewing life from the individual perspective, rather from within God's context for life. Now again, Praise God they did that in number 6!

But as far as those basic areas that we have upside down, like what is the family for, what is marrage for, what are children for, what is the church for, what are nations for, what is civil gov't for etc, etc. For those, I am getting the feeling that they will stand pat with how they are mostly viewed by believers today.

What Is He Lord Of?

I have been poking and poking at this. I'm just throwing it out there and over time hope to get it right.

I wish sinks would hack and do fur balls. You know, like a cat. So that as it's getting clogged and slowing down as it's draining, you maybe would hear one of your kids yell “Dad…the bathroom sink is doing a furball!” you could then go in and scoop up the mess and your sink would work again. I hate having to clean out those traps. Absolutely disgusting.

(I was told by a father who had 7(?) kids that don't worry after awhile you will see you kid start to spit up and you will just stick out your hand to catch it. I don't remember doing that with Jamie or Kayla but recently I did it with Nathan. Didn't think twice about it, as it happened, but immediately remembered what he said as I did it.)

So that’s what I did last night. (The sink) Maybe it’s only at my house but from time to time it needs to be done. It's one of those things that when it needs to be done, I just go do it. I don’t pray first, ask God for help or anything. I just go take care of it.

My life long training as humanist is so hard to uproot. You know the lie, God is for spiritual things, inside your heart things, but for running a country or voting for someone you just have to be practical and get the sink fixed. Make the best choice you can. But whatever has been your yardstick to make those decisions becomes God for that area of life. Now there are only two yardsticks for reality and life, God's or man's. More on that in a bit.

So I want to start doing that. Asking God for help on just dumb stuff and trying to see “how does God want this done?”. He is Lord over sinks too.

I am starting to think that, there are so many areas for us that can be hard to get a grip on. Things we wish we could just say “ok, I won't do that anymore”, or “I will now be doing this”.

But we know its not always that easy.

Now I'm believing it's hard for some things to be dealt with correctly, because for every big thing, there are thousands of “smaller” areas of life, stuff that seems insignificant, sinks, etc, where we operate as humanists and don’t even see it. If you can function through most of life and not see how Jesus is Lord over everything. Then we miss out on the line upon line, precept upon precept, that is God's chosen way for us to interact with his world.

We instead operate as our own God's choosing as we wish to do, most….everything….? So because we as American evangelicals have really never been discipled, mentored, as God intended. We can see the big things…but it's hard to impossible to see that Jesus is just as concerned and wants his Kingship confirmed over all those other areas of life. He doesn’t even want the small things slipping between the cracks where we then function with them as humanists. He is a jealous God.

It's God's way or it's Humanism. That’s it. Wrap up all the phony religions and all unbiblical faiths and stuff like experientialism, etc, etc, and really they are all a further expression of Adam and Eve in the Garden thinking for themselves and then acting on it apart from God's instructions. Forget about the devil,he just eggs man on. Humanism, man decides. Jesus said “you are with me or against me”. So in every area of life you will be “with me or against me”. No neutral ground.

So Jesus, who over and over again throughout the old and New Testament has affirmed his rightful claim over everything, instead finds that he becomes “our Savior and soon and coming king.” He gets gyped of his Lordship over all of life and instead we let him save us and later he gets to be King.

If we become versed in approaching “life” and all it's details on his terms, then will what seems like the mountains to us now, just become another detail and can get handled properly like all the others? That presupposes we're working on all the others.

He said : “If you are faithful with a little….”

Some People Will Freak Out

For those who have been going through Swanson’s series on economics, #4 is a real doozer, I thought. Kudos to Rob H. he has been sniffing around some of these same bushes and expounding as God has been revealing to him. Kevin admits to not having all the answers but wants to show the implications of what the Word does say. If you sit and listen to these with someone still immersed in modern evangelicalism, Keep the smelling salts handy.

From Doug Wilson, Ouch!

From Doug Wilson's Blog and Mablog...comentary about this coming election.

Velcro Candidate
...People like McCain draw the anger of the progressive nutroots base for the same reason that people like Lot made the Sodomites angry. He was hardly an unblemished advocate of righteousness, but there was something about him that reminded them of somebody who might be related to someone who was righteous...

I believe that the election this November is going to be a Republican blowout, rivaling that of Nixon/McGovern. This, despite the fact that the Republicans' commitment to principle has had the structural integrity of a wet napkin...

Ronald Reagan used to be known as the teflon president. Nothing would stick to him personally. On this set of issues -- i.e. any indicators of elitist contempt for red state Americans who eat corn dogs at state fairs -- Obama is the velcro candidate. Everything within fifty yards of this kind of thing will now stick to him. His privileged yet complaining wife, his fire-eating yet well-cushioned pastor, his hobnobbing with bombers of government buildings, his off-the-cuff remarks about bitter small-towners, will all conspire to keep him from being able to un-name himself...whole comentary

Biblical Economics for the Familiy and Society

I work on Mercedes automobiles. We have this feature called pre-safe. When the car's computers see that the steering wheel is being turned, and maybe the brakes are applied and the wheel speed sensors and the yaw and acceleration sensors see that the cars motion is not complying with the driver's wishes so the chance of an impending accident is a likely (strong) possibility. It will commence presafe operations. It rolls up the windows and shut the sunroof to keep stuff inside, the seats will move towards a upright more optimum position for the airbag deployment, the seatbelts will take up a certain amount of slack. No, it doesn't ask you if it's ok to do it. It just does it. But after you and your friends stop doing brodies in the Walmart parking lot it returns everything to how it was. That, or else you hit something and get an airbag facial.

The Swanson messages on economics have been very, very interesting. I finished hearing number three today. I am not used to hearing the Old Testament applied like this. Swanson inserted Ben Bernanke’s (the fed chairman’s) name into some verses which I found very amusing. They are not jarring messages, you don’t need to put your head between your legs. But I thought the windows were rolling up and the seatbelt was getting tighter.

The fourth message is now up

We Want Our Leeks And Garlic

I thought this column today from Gary North was great.
He puts some stuff out on Lew Rockwell's to get new lookers to his sight. His observations about Joseph and Pharoah from the standpoint of out of control governments or should I say "we want to control everything governments" was to good. Fun biblical analysis from history.

Taxation Under the Pharaohs and Today
by Gary North

...In 1963, I was a student at Westminster Theological Seminary. There, I heard about the interpretation of this section of the Bible that had been offered by a popular professor at a small Presbyterian college that sent graduates to Westminster. As the story came to me, the professor had argued that this was a biblical case for central economic planning and taxation. I decided then that I would eventually write something that addressed this interpretation. I did so in 1982 in Chapter 23 of my book...

...Joseph in Egypt brought the Egyptian nation more firmly under tyranny. Why? For the same reason that the prophets of Israel and Judah said that God would judge them by captivity in foreign lands. The Egyptians had attributed to a man what God alone possesses: absolute sovereignty. They had declared their faith in the divine State. Joseph let the Egyptians get a taste of tyranny.

Eventually, Israelites were given this same lesson. A pharaoh arose who did not honor the tradition of Joseph. Under Joseph, the Israelites inherited the land of Goshen. That inheritance was removed by the Egyptians...

CONCLUSION

...In today's world, to get back to the tyranny of Egypt – 20% of income – the various levels of civil government would have to cut taxes by at least half.

The trouble is, the voters' response is familiar. "And they said, Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's servants." They do not cry out to God for deliverance back to the "low-tax" regime of Egypt. Egypt was a veritable flat-tax paradise compared to modern America. Yet Christians and Jews vote for more of the same...the whole article

What We're Reading

We have been reading another Henty book, “During the Reign of Terror” in the evenings. All of his books have been so good. When you read a good book as a family you have the potential for so many great things to happen. First off the family all gets to know some new friends, the characters in the books do seem like friends and as you then talk about them, this becomes another way of tying strings between the hearts of your family. It helps with understanding on different issues, …”remember what happened to so and so…” It becomes another tool.

These books have been a great springboard for all manner of discussions on worldviews, mindsets, you put “life” into different periods of history with Henty books. This book is a great illustration on what a society looks like when it deliberately abandons God, saying he doesn’t exist. “Reign of terror” is such a good description of what happens when man becomes the measure, when right and wrong is decided by whoever controls the power. We point out how more and more our culture wants to go this direction. That everyone may decide for themselves what is good and what is evil. It is great to contrast our nations birth as compared to the French revolution. Instead of abstracts about how or why mankind is how it is, with these Henty books we get that in a way that is much more tangible.


Speaking of books….We are about 60pgs into Swanson’s “The Second Mayflower” book. Reading it with the family after some meals or whenever. It's turning into a worldview Primer of sorts. Lots of whats and whys on “why” our nation had the foundation we started with. His recent series on biblical economics, the first three mp3’s are here for free, (part 4 is tomorrow) has probably sprung from the research of his book. This series and the book are resonating together. So far he has shown how a people who took serious, God's word for all of life, and gave us what has been the most blessed Nation on earth and why (which is interesting) and how, the following generations lost the vision and brought the nation to where we are today. He presses home the depth of the tyranny we are under. But because we have our leeks and garlic, we are content with our bondage. He is talking about building a Nation, within a Nation. Very good stuff.

Gary North one of the movers and shakers of what became the religious right, did this 3 part DVD series on the Unknown History of the 20th Century for Gary Demar at American Vision. After showing how we became content with our “spiritual walk” we stepped aside to let the world push forward with not only making us and our kids their disciples, but they have been “making disciples of the nations” ever since.

He laments that our biggest weakness is that you cannot beat something with nothing. Gary North knows that modern evangelicalism is adrift because it uses a “shorter Bible”. That for the most part we run behind the world trying to sprinkle holy water, as it were, on what the world is doing and hoping that we might be able to get a few more saved.

This Second Mayflower book is laying out that other vision. A different lifestyle from a biblical worldview. It might be first “one stop” book about this new way back to the old paths. Vision Forum has been trying to wake us up with this type of vision too, with 100’s of different talks and conferences. I am curious to see how much Swanson can flesh out in one book.

And now Botkin's “The Battle for Civilization” TV series will be another componant in trying to equipt men to first see that a battle has been going on and then to join the battle while it is still daylight. This looks good. Check out the trailer and the ENN report his young son did for Vision Forum.

Something to Keep in Mind...

This is one of the best, consise, bird's eye views of what at least one part of the economy has been built on. We do not operate in a free market economy. This is from Lewrockwells site. It is fascinating and sobering in many ways

An Economy Built On Lies
by Gary North

...Here is the inescapable reality: the Federal government let the subprime disaster build up for many years. This law was never enforced. No one in the entire government-insured scam worried about it. The bureaucrats were in on the deal from day one....

The biggest housing bubble in American history, 1995–2005, took place under the watchful eyes of the entire Federal real estate bureaucracy, the bureaucracy listed by name in the law. No one in government issued a warning. No one in government saw the bubble coming. No one in government identified it as a bubble....

The tissue of lies that held together the subprime market was believed by the best and the brightest. They were blind to what was coming. It has wiped out over $200 billion in assets.

We are assured that the worst is over. But who assures us of this? Salaried reporters in a dying field: newspapers and network TV.

The ill-informed tout the liars. We are assured that the liars know what went wrong and will not let it happen again...

An excellent article,read the whole thing

Autism and Vaccinations

This is an old article from 2005 questioning a connection between Autism and vaccinations. I'm putting it on my blog so that I can easily direct someones attention to it if they raise their eyebrows about not vaccinating. We are so conditioned to just respond positively to what ever the "experts" say. Please note the "experts" never seem to acknowledge God, and those individuals and groups who acknowledge someone as an "expert" usually don't acknowledge God either. Which puts both groups into the fools catagory. God's definition, not mine. Be very slow to listen to fools.

The Age of Autism: 'A pretty big secret'Published: Dec. 7, 2005 at 2:08 PM

...The autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the national rate of autism spectrum disorders at 1 in 166 -- 60 per 10,000.

....Medical practices with Homefirst's approach to immunizations are rare. "Because of that, we tend to attract families that have questions about that issue," said Dr. Paul Schattauer, who has been with Homefirst for 20 years and treats "at least" 100 children a week.

Schattauer seconded Eisenstein's observations. "All I know is in my practice I don't see autism. There is no striking 1-in-166," he said.

Earlier this year we reported the same phenomenon in the mostly unvaccinated Amish. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told us the Amish "have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States." Gerberding said, however, studies "could and should be done" in more representative unvaccinated groups -- if they could be found and their autism rate documented...entire article

Amen to This

God must be Lord of our pocketbook. Our tastebuds must submit to the Kingdom of God. When you identify someone or an organization that supports those who pervert God's order, we must not be found supporting them with either our goodwill or our money. this is From Rick Pearcy's Pro existance blog

No McDonald's Today
By Rick Pearcey

...Information from the Creator, not to mention simple lessons in biology, says there's a difference between diversity and perversity, between being pulled over for driving while black and being guilty of sinning while human.

A hamburger's worth giving up and giving in to all that?

Hardly.

McDonald's is now on trial.

The fries are good. Even great. But the worldview they support isn't fit for human consumption.

Maybe we'll stop by Chick-Fil-A instead. It's a little out of the way, but I hear they like families.

Real families -- not ones made up by the ACLU last Tuesday.

And what's an extra mile or two to vote with your pocketbook? One way or another, you always pay for your convictions.
pro existance blog

Nobody Can Subsidise Foolish Behavior Like the Gov't

Because they have done it for so long and never have to pay the piper. The mess they create is just another excuse to be involved even more. Oh well.

Gary North had this column the other day on his pay side of his website and now it's at Lew Rockwell's for anyone to see. I think he makes a great case of showing what has happened with the Feds involvement in the markets.

Moral Hazard and Really Stupid Loans
by Gary North

...."Moral hazard" is the phrase that describes one negative effect of guaranteeing the survival of a group of companies or an entire industry that have made bad investments, but which are then bailed out by the government or its licensed agent, the Federal Reserve System.

What is this negative effect? To promote future high-risk loans or investment strategies that offer above-market rates of return because of this riskThe decision-makers, knowing that their rich uncle has previously guaranteed that several large firms were not allowed to go bankrupt, now pursue investment strategies which they would not pursue if they believed that they would be held fully accountable for their actions. Senior managers see that their peers were bailed out. They think, "We will be bailed out, too." ...The entire article

Update to Hearstrings DVD

Along with the "Heartstrings" DVD you also get their earlier release called "Bubble Trouble" on this same DVD. The older story is entertaining too. Its enjoyable to see how much they progressed in their craft from the first to the second.

The kids really enjoyed "Bubble Trouble"

What Wilson does so Well

From Douglas Wilsons Blog and Mablog today. Greg Bahnsen is now dead but he was the master of pressupositional appologetics. Wilson does a good stand in job to get current presuppositional commentary on things happening today.

Doug Wilson has many a time taken and eaten Christopher Hitchens lunch. If it is helpful reading the column from today be encouraged to go into Wilsons archives and find his "God is not great" postings or you can find the debate from Christianity today.

Christopher Hitchens is an outspoken athiest,his brother Peter is a believer and somewhere they had a debate....

Christopher and Peter
Topic: "God Is Not Great"by Douglas Wilson

.. The issue is not what believers and unbelievers can do. The issue is logical consistency. When believers do evil, are they being consistent with their premises? No, they are not. When unbelievers do good, are they being consistent with their premises? Yes, but only in the sense that they would be equally consistent doing evil, and equally good with some kind of creative mix of the two. The reason for this is that they cannot give an account for the difference between the two; when one questioner asked him whether he believed in truth, and how he accounted for it, for a few moments, before he got a case of the cutes again, Christopher was effectively pole-axed...

40% Would Vote Democrat?

From the Barna Group. 40% of "born again" voters would vote for a democrat???? Only 29% would vote for the republicans, which I can understand. As they smile to get our votes and then legislate as "Democrat lite."

I could also understand if there was 60% that said they didnt know who they would vote for. But for 40% ready to vote for the Democrat party?!?!

It takes a superhuman effort to narrow our faith to the place where a born again believer cannot see the error with the Democartic party.

Born Again Voters in the 2008 Election
...Compared to recent presidential elections, the current leanings of the born again constituency have reversed. The new Barna study shows that if the election were to be held today, 40% of all born again adults who are likely to vote in November would choose the Democratic candidate and just 29% would choose the Republican candidate. The remaining 28% are currently not sure whom they would choose, preferring to make their selection on the basis of the candidate than strictly on the basis of his or her party affiliation....

Biblical Economics

Kevin Swanson has started a biblical economics series of messages. You can find them here

Update: apr3 08 I heard most of the first message today. Very good.
Nuts and bolts to start building a godly view of your position at work.

"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation..."

From Townhall.com
This is the primary, the deliberate purpose, for Govt schools. More important from an eternal standpoint is you are trained to view everything through humanistic eyes. They actually accomplish this more thouroughly.

Threat to Homeschooling
By John Stossel

The cat is finally out of the bag. A California appellate court, ruling that parents have no constitutional right to homeschool their children, pinned its decision on this ominous quotation from a 47-year-old case, "A primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."

There you have it; a primary purpose of government schools is to train schoolchildren "in loyalty to the state." Somehow that protects "the public welfare" more than allowing parents to homeschool their children, even though homeschooled kids routinely outperform government-schooled kids academically....read it all

Not Good

This is from Lew Rockwells site its Ron Paul writing about what the fed is doing. Others are not aggreeing that what the fed is doing is making more money, inflationary, as compared to swapping good treasury notes for garbage securities. Either way he is correct when he says the bad debt is being removed from wall street is put onto the taxpayers.


...The implicit guarantee from the Fed is quickly becoming explicit, as those institutions deemed "too big to fail" are bailed out at taxpayer expense. Wall Street made a killing during the housing bubble, reaping record profits. Now that the bubble has burst, these same firms are trying to dump their losses on the taxpayers. This approach requires more money creation, and therefore debasement of all dollars in circulation.


The Federal Reserve, a quasi-government entity, should not be creating money or determining interest rates, as this causes malinvestment and excessive debt to accumulate. Centrally planned, government-manipulated economies always fail eventually. The collapse of communism and the failure of socialism should have made this apparent. Even the most educated, well-intentioned central planners cannot plan the market better than the market itself. Those that understand economics best, understand this reality...
Read it all

Laugh or Cry

Ok not everyone enjoys this kind of humor. At Chalcedon blog Chris Ortiz had this you tube video under the heading " someone beat me to it" Its a parody of a mega church Pastor

It's called "Real Preachers of Genious"