Monday
THERE IS A NEW NOTE OF HOPE
`
SOMEONE ELSE AGREES WITH US! That should not
be a great surprise, but it is always nice when you see such
agreement in print. Chuck Colson, formerly Special Counsel
for President Nixon, and founder of "Prison Fellowship"
has a daily radio broadcast and column titled "Breakpoint."
Last week these statements were included: "Allow me to
make a very direct statement. I believe it is time for the
Church in this country to stand up for religious freedom."
And after discussing the erosion of what he termed "the first
freedom, religious liberty," he concluded with these words:
"The Church needs to understand the urgency of the hour
and do its duty." That is exactly the urgent message that we
have been trying to convey, week after week. We thank
Chuck Colson for expressing our convictions so clearly.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
IN OUR NATION, AS IN THESE TIMES, THERE IS
TROUBLE, MUCH TROUBLE -- BUT AS OF LAST
FRIDAY, THERE IS A NEW NOTE OF HOPE
But first, this very timely reminder before we begin this
week's commentary on current events. Tomorrow is the
official U.S. national holiday of Thanksgiving. But before
you begin to focus on the roast turkey (or baked ham, or
whatever) with all the accessory side dishes, skip the
historical remembrances of that first Harvest Feast in 1621
in Plymouth . . . or George Washington's proclamation of
a day of thanksgiving and prayer in 1789 . . . or Lincoln's
proclamation in 1863 making it an official U.S. holiday, or
Congress' action in 1941 setting the 4th Thursday in
November as the official date . . . forget all those bits of
trivia, and take time, really take time, to thank God for all
the goodness and blessing He constantly provides for us.
Give thought also to Ephesians 5:20, where Paul urges us,
"Giving thanks always for all things unto God the Father
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." We are to give
thanks "always," not just on the "official" day in November.
It isn't difficult, in these times, to recall the witches in
Shakespeare's Macbeth, huddled around a caldron chanting,
"Double, double, toil and trouble." That ominous chant
seems to apply to us today -- in "toil" (work) we are
doubly cursed with 10.2% unemployment and some 16
million unemployed. And as Christians we have serious
trouble in the federal legislation Obama promised to his
favored minority groups, homosexuals and abortionists.
All his promises involve very similarly labeled legislations.
First there is DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, an act of
Congress signed into law by Bill Clinton. Obama promised
that he will repeal it, thus furthering the destruction of God's
plan for His people, whom he created as male and female,
instructing them to be fruitful and multiply. Then there is
FOCA, the Freedom of Choice Act, which will facilitate
and encourage further use of abortions, which have already
killed some 50 million babies since the infamous Roe v.
Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973. But now there is
another: ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
Suggested as a more accurate name is DACA, the
Discrimination Against Christians Act.
ENDA is relatively new on the Obama agenda, but briefly,
it will redefine our Christian faith as an element of illegal
workplace bigotry . . . make the government a full partner in
the homosexual rights movement . . . and force churches,
small businesses run by Christians, and faith-based charities
to hire nonbelievers or face federal investigation. As a law it
would punish anyone in the workplace who dares oppose
homosexual practices, cross-dressing and other similar
behavior. Very similar to the rush we are experiencing to
move Obamacare (AKA: Pelosicare or Reidcare) forward,
pro-homosexual members of Congress -- with the support
of the administration -- would prefer to pass ENDA quickly
so as not to have it become an issue in the 2010 elections.
And with respect to those elections: remember that our
much anticipated target date is now less than one year away
-- 342 days to be exact -- November 2, 2010.
And now there is a new note of hope for us as Christians
as we face those formidable challenges. Last Friday, in a
meeting in Washington, 148 strong and united Christian
leaders signed the "Manhattan Declaration," an epochal
statement of resolve by Christian church leaders as we face
these governmental attacks on our traditional moral values.
An indication of the nature of the Declaration is this excerpt
which summarizes its purpose: "Because we honor justice
and the common good, we will not comply with any edict
that purports to compel our institutions to participate in
abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide
and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we
bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral
sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the
equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we
know it, about morality and immorality and marriage
and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render
to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances
will we render to Caesar what is God’s."
Use the following link to display the Declaration, and to add
your name as a signatory. In the first 24 hours over 10,000
individuals signed the Declaration on-line, and as of today
the number of signatures has already passed 50,000.
So much to say; so little time or space to say it all. This
Internet headline caught our attention: "What's Obama
Bringing Home From Asia?" Well, aside from a few
touristy sightseeing events, like a half hour photo-op stroll
along the Great wall, and a 30 minute dash through the
Forbidden City (both closed to all others on those days),
the answer is: not much. Helene Cooper, reporting for the
New York Times, summarized it very well: "In six hours of
meetings, at two dinners and during a stilted 30-minute
news conference in which President Hu did not allow
questions, President Barack Obama was confronted, on
his first visit, with a fast-rising China more willing to say
no to the United States... With China's micromanagement
of Obama's appearances in the country, the trip did more
to showcase China's ability to push back against outside
pressure than it did to advance the main issues on
Obama's agenda."
There was no speech to the people of Asia, like the Cairo
address in June. Obama's one "public appearance" was a
self-labeled "Town Hall" meeting with university students in
Shanghai, but the audience inter-action was limited to 8 pre-
approved questions, two of which concerned his Nobel
Peace prize. And even this simulated give-and-take session
was not broadcast on the national TV system. (By contrast,
in 1998 President Clinton's press conference was nationally
televised across China.) So the vast Chinese populace did
not get to hear what Mr. Obama had to say.
And right on the heels of the Obama visit, a report to the
Congress warned that China is sharply stepping up its
espionage against the United States, as the new power in
Asia becomes more sophisticated in cyber warfare and
modern use of spying technology.
"Obama bows, but the world refuses to bow back" is a
heading under which Michael Barone recalls Obama's bow
to the Saudi king in April and to the Japanese emperor a few
days ago. And he recalls Obama's declaration in June, 2008
just after he had secured the Democrat nomination, "I am
absolutely certain that generations from now we will be
able to look back and tell our children that this was the
moment when we began to provide care for the sick and
good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise
of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal;
this was the moment when we ended a war and secured
our nation ..." (Still a little work to be done there!) Then
after citing Obama's several failures in attempts at personal
diplomacy to date, Barone summarizes: "All nations may
have the same interests in some platonic sense. But all
nations' leaders don't. George W. Bush didn't cause all
our foreign policy problems, and Obama's ascension and
appeasement don't seem to be solving them."
This, from Rich Lowry in the New York Post, seemed
too good to skip: "Oh, how the international community
loves Barack Obama -- loves to stiff him, play him along
and manipulate him. He's the world's celebrity ingenue,
the slender naif perpetually undone by the recalcitrance
of foreign leaders."
If you think that under the Obama administration all
that happens in Washington, D.C. is a failure -- you are
wrong. This past week our nation's capital bested all of the
50 states to post the highest rates in the nation for sexually
transmitted diseases (STDs): chlamydia, gonorrhea and
syphilis, according to a new report just released by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
And there was another record posted in Washington last
week: the U.S. National Debt topped the $12-trillion mark.
This most recent milestone in the ever growing National Debt
was reached in less than eight months after it first reached
$11 trillion. Another record was associated with this figure:
the federal deficit for the just-ended 2009 fiscal year hit an
all-time high of $1.42-trillion -- more than triple the record
for the previous year, which had been the all-time high. Is
there no end to the Obama administration's records?
Apparently not. In a report on 50 states and D.C. stating
how much each spent per pupil in public schools, D.C.
ranked third. But what did all this expenditure of taxpayer
dollars achieve? Another record for D.C. -- the District's
academic achievement ranks 51st, last in the U.S.
This is a great time to revisit the Father of our Nation:
"We should never despair, our Situation before has been
unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it
will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth
new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency
of the times." -- George Washington, 1777
Here are some "One Liners" from research this week:
“Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but
sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw
whether they be clergymen or laymen, such alone will
shake the gates of hell and set up the Kingdom of God
upon earth." (John Wesley)
"Obama, it seems, just strolls from greatness to greatness.
Not one establishment media outlet will weigh the obvious
damage our president’s ludicrous Cairo speech did to the
Middle East and to our security." (Ralph Peters)
"Obama's proposal certainly won't qualify as 'reform,' as
the president and The Washington Post call it. A more
likely verdict: self inflicted wound." (Robert J. Samuelson)
"Interesting, it's always cries of Allah-this or Allah-that
which accompany acts of terrorism; never 'Jesus saves!"
or 'Mazel Tov!'" (Don Feder)
"I think it is important, though, to recognize if we keep
on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery,
that at some point, people could lose confidence in the
U.S. economy..." (Barack Hussein Obama)
As always, we cite a quote from our Founding Fathers
as a reminder of the kind of nation they tried to establish.
"This country and this people seem to have been made
for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of
Providence that an inheritance so proper and convenient
for a band of brethren, united to each other by the
strongest of ties, should never be split into a number of
unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties."
--John Jay, 1787, the nation's First Chief Justice
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Tuesday
TWO ATTACKS ON AMERICA
`
WE VERY MUCH APPRECIATE your response to our
editorial last week, and we reconfirm our promise to continue
to remind the Christian church in America of our responsibility
to obey Jesus' charge to us to become salt and light for the
world in which we live. Our unique message blends politics
and religion -- or as we quoted Randy Thompson last week,
to "attach might to right." As Christians, what we believe is
right; now we must bring the might of our American privilege
of the vote to accomplish what is is right for our nation.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
TWO ATTACKS ON AMERICA ON AMERICAN
SOIL REMAIN VERY MUCH AS TOPICS
FOR OUR CONCERN THIS WEEK
In fairly recent memory there have been four attacks on
our nation by our enemies on American soil. Pearl Harbor
in 1941 was probably the most successful surprise attack
in the history of warfare, but it was avenged and settled in
our defeat of Japan in 1945. But it was on the Hawaiian
Islands and not on mainland USA. In more recent years there
were three attacks by Muslim terrorists -- the bombing of the
World Trade Center in 1993 ... the widespread attacks of
9/11 and now the wanton killing of soldiers and civilians at
the US Army base, Fort Hood in Texas.
We are very much aware of those attacks, even though the
present administration has banned the use of the word or
concept of "terrorist" attacks under the theory of "Political
Correctness," calling them instead man caused disasters."
And as investigations begin into the Fort Hood attack by a
Muslim follower of Islam, who calls himself a "Soldier of
Allah," and who shouted the Islamic battle-cry, "Allahu
akbar" (Allah or God is great, Allah being the name for their
God in that pagan religion), a vagueness on the part of the
Obama administration is very evident.
In his first comments on the Fort Hood attack, Mr. Obama
described the violence as "incomprehensible," referred to it
as "twisted logic," called it "too hard to comprehend," and
labeled it a "tragedy," never admitting it was an enemy attack.
The Obama administration seems to be suffering a serious
failure of comprehension. We might ask, "What is so hard
to comprehend?" A Muslim jihadist shouted "Allahu akbar"
and began shooting, murdering 13 and wounding 29.
Syndicated columnist Ralph Peters well summarized the
situation in these words: "On Thursday afternoon, a
radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting, 'Allahu
akbar!' committed the worst act of terror on American soil
since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or
associate it with Islam. What cowards we are. Political
correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Fort Hood
as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat
it like a case of nondenominational shoplifting. This was a
terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a
murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our
efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it's an act of terror."
But perhaps the most reprehensible comment came from
Lt. Gen George W. Casey, Jr., the Chief of Staff of the US
Army, who saw the attack as endangering the liberal concept
of "political correctness." His actual words were: "What
happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it
would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes
a casualty here." Others have labeled this as a despicable
thing for any army officer to say, and is an insult to the
memory of the more than forty dead and wounded in this
planned and premeditated attack on the United States of
America by a Muslim terrorist obeying the same religious
convictions which underlaid the prior attack of 9/11.
For American Christians the warning is clear. Even
though Mr. Obama has declared that America is no longer a
Christian nation, and lauds the great accomplishments by
the Muslims who represent less than 1% of the population
of the US, it is a fact that Muslims are becoming a force in
previously Christian Europe -- even Great Britain -- and
Christians are foremost among their enemies as unbelievers,
or "infidels" as the Quran labels us. And the Quran is clear
in its teaching that infidels are to be treated most harshly,
even killed ... for example, consider these few citations from
the Quran about the treatment of infidels: 2:191 - "And slay
them wherever ye catch them " ... 5:33 - "The punishment
of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger
... is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands
and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land..." 8:12
- "I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers:
smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips
off them"...9:23 - "O ye who believe! take not for protectors
your fathers and your brothers if they love infidelity above
Faith: if any of you do so, they do wrong" ... 9:29 -"Fight
those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold
that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and
His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth" ...
9:39 - "Unless ye go forth, (for Jihad) He will punish you
with a grievous penalty..." 8:17 - "It is not ye who slew
them; it was Allah."
This is the "religion of peace;" this is the religion we are
being asked to accommodate ourselves to their practices and
life styles. In addition to the military wars in which we are
engaged as a nation, we are also in a spiritual war, and one
aspect of the enemy is clearly evident in the quotations cited
above. As pointed out in last week's ANC, we Evangelical
Christians have the potential of 75 million votes, and if we
are to fulfill our God-directed purpose here in America, we
must utilize the civil power we have. Keep in mind Election
Day, November 2, 2010.
And looking back to the attack of 9/11, it was announced
this past week that the Obama administration has decided to
try the mastermind of the attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
in civil court in New York City. By this unilateral decision,
Obama has reduced the 9/11 Act of War upon America to a
law enforcement issue. This is contrary to his own statement
on the floor of the US Senate on September 27, 2006 during
the debate on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, where
he said that Khalid would face a "full military trial with all
the bells and whistles" and declared that "justice will be
carried out in his case." Once again he has gone back on
his own word, and by so-doing will give a Muslim terrorist
mastermind the same full legal and civil rights that American
citizens enjoy! And that means high priced lawyers, which
we will pay for with our tax dollars, probably involving the
best legal minds the ACLU can come up with. And in this
transforming the 9/11 attack into a civil crime, the Obama
administration is ignoring the fact that the Pentagon, our
primary military headquarters, was attacked, with massive
property damage and nearly 200 fatalities, of which 55 were
military officers. Doesn't that sound like a military attack?
How can this be considered a "civil crime" as our Attorney
General Eric Holder labels it?
Our president has had a busy week by any standard.
This present trip to Asia gives Mr. Obama another
presidential record -- the most foreign countries visited by a
president in his first year. This trip will make it 20 countries
he has visited already this year. The former record holder,
George H. W. Bush, had 14 countries during his first year in
office. George W. Bush went to 11 countries in his first year,
but Bill Clinton visited only 3 countries in that same period.
During this first visit to Asia, apparently in an attempt to
reassure allies and rivals, President Obama billed himself as
"America's first Pacific president," promising the nations
of Asia a new era of engagement with the world, based on
mutual interests and mutual respect. And we thought he
was "America's first Middle East president," after all his
speeches degrading America and bragging on Muslim
achievements in their world.
And Mr. Obama did another one of his bowing things to
Michiko, going to an extreme even by Japanese standards.
His deep bow and several smaller ones, totally out of
protocol, brought back the memory of his humble bow to
Saudi King Abdullah, which the Washington Times called
a "shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate." Thus
he strengthens his hold on the title "First US President Ever
to Bow to a Foreign Ruler." He has already sewed up sole
possession of "Groveler in Chief." He has so much to learn.
Some interesting comments we noted this week:
From Thomas Segel: "It started out as a mild virus
initiated by the left-of-center intellectuals of academia.
But, like computer viruses or influenza, it spread rapidly
through schools, hospitals, civil service, the media,
companies, governance, and the armed forces. Political
correctness has poisoned all of America."
From Behshad Hastibakhsh: "To millions of people around
the world, Barak Obama is the messiah, a visionary with
the message of ‘hope' and ‘change', whose mere image
portrays a new America in the quest for peace. Barack
Obama may possess John F. Kennedy's youthful ambition
and Ronald Reagan's communication skills, but his foreign
policy doctrine bears a striking resemblance to Neville
Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany."
From Robert Ringer: "There's no question that BHO and
The Boys have bigger responsibilities - like, for example,
fundamentally changing a democratic republic into a
socialist police state."
We heard you; you like the "one liners." Here they are:
"To think that Barack Obama, the leader of the Democratic
Party, the most corrupt political organization in Western
history, would lecture the President of Afghanistan on the
merits of clean government and honest elections is just ...
incomprehensible." (Paul R. Hollrah)
"I'm afraid Congress has not only misread the Constitution,
but they've also misjudged the American people. Or maybe
they just don't know what country they live in." (Jon N. Hall)
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every
day!" (Alfred E. Neuman of MAD Magazine)
"A government that decides who lives and who dies is no
longer a government of the people and by the people. And
it’s certainly not a government for the people."
(Chuck Colson)
"As a candidate, Barack Obama vowed to 'finish the fight
against al Qaeda and the Taliban.' But our troops can't
finish what the president won't start."
(Editorial, New York Post)
We never fail to cite quotes from our Founding Fathers
because they remind us what they intended this nation to be.
Consider these from our nation's second president.
"We ought to consider what is the end of government before
we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all
speculative politicians will agree that the happiness of
society is the end of government, as all divines and moral
philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual
is the end of man....All sober inquirers after truth, ancient
and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the
happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue."
-- John Adams, 1776
"We have no government armed with power capable of
contending with human passions unbridled by morality
and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry,
would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a
whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made
only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly
inadequate to the government of any other."
-- John Adams, 1798
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