Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Naturalistic, Materialistic, World View
Francis Schaeffer and Gospel of Christ in the pages of the Bible
Francis Schaeffer’s term the “Mannishness of Man” and how it relates to Woody Allen and Charles Darwin!!! Schaeffer noted that everyone has these two things constantly pulling at them. First, it is the universe and its form and second, it is the mannishness of man. If one does not realize that God created them in the image of God where they can know right and wrong and worship their Creator then they will be longing throughout their life and even though they may say that we are a product of chance, like Allen did in his recent film MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT, he still is left with an empty feeling. Furthermore, Paul in Romans 1 brings out these same two factors. In this post I am not going to spend much time on the demonstration that Woody Allen has dealt with the issues for the simple reason that I have done that over and over again in my previous posts. However, I will look at what Schaeffer says about Allen but mostly what he says about Charles Darwin and I will be providing extensive quotes from Darwin’s own autobiography Darwin, Francis ed. 1892. Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters [abridged edition]. London: John Murray.
The Search for an Adequate World-View: A Question of Method
Before we consider various possibilities, we must settle the question of method. What is it we are expecting our “answer” to answer?
There are a number of things we could consider, but at this point we want to concentrate on just two. The first is what we will call “the universe and its form,” and the second is “the mannishness of man.” The first draws attention to the fact that the universe around us is like an amazing jigsaw puzzle. We see many details, and we want to know how they fit together. That is what science is all about. Scientists look at the details and try to find out how they all cohere. So the first question that has to be answered is: how did the universe get this way? How did it get this form, this pattern, this jigsawlike quality it now has?
Second, “the mannishness of man” draws attention to the fact that human beings are different from all other things in the world. Think, for example, of creativity. People in all cultures of all ages have created many kinds of things, from “High Art” to flower arrangements, from silver ornaments to high-technology supersonic aircraft. This is in contrast to the animals about us. People also fear death, and they have the aspiration to truly choose. Incidentally, even those who in their writings say we only think we choose quickly fall into words and phrases that only make sense if they are wrong and we do truly choose. Human beings are also unique in that they verbalize. That is, people put concrete and abstract concepts into words which communicate these concepts to other people. People also have an inner life of the mind; they remember the past and make projections into the future. One could name other factors, but these are enough to differentiate people from other things in the world.
What world-view adequately explains the remarkable phenomenon of the distinctiveness of human beings? There is one world-view which can explain the explain the existence of the universe, its form, and the uniqueness of people – the world-view given to us in the Bible. There is a remarkable parallel between the way scientists go about checking to see if what they think about reality does in fact correspond to it and the way the biblical world-view can be checked to see if it is true.
Many people, however, react strongly against this sort of claim. They see the problem – Where has everything come from and why is it the way it is? – but they do not want to consider a solution which involves God. God, they say, belongs to “religion,” and religious answers, they say, do not deal with facts. Only science deals with facts. Thus, they say, Christian answers are not real answers; they are “faith answers.”
This is a strange reaction, because modern people pride themselves on being open to new ideas, on being willing to consider opinions which contradict what has been believed for a long time. They think this is what “being scientific” necessitates. Suddenly, however, when one crosses into the area of the “big” and most basic questions (like those we are considering now) with an answer involving God, the shutters are pulled down, the open mind closes and a very different attitude, a dogmatic rationalism, takes over.80
This is curious -first, because few seem to notice that the humanist explanations of the big and most basic questions is just as much a “faith answer” as any could be. With the humanist world-view everything begins with only matter; whatever has developed has developed only within matter, a reordering of matter by chance. Even though materialistic scientists have no scientific understanding of why things exist, nor any certain scientific understanding of how life began, and even though this world-view leaves them with vast problems – the problems Woody Allen has described of “alienation, loneliness [and] emptiness verging on madness” – many modern people still reject at once any solution which uses the word God, in favor of the materialistic humanist “answer” which answers nothing. This is simply prejudice at work.
We need to understand, however, that this prejudice is both recent and arbitrary. Professor Ernest Becker, who taught at the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State College, said that for the last half-million years people have always believed in two worlds – one that was visible and one that was invisible. The visible world was where they lived their everyday lives; the invisible world was more powerful, for the meaning and existence of the visible world was dependent on it. Suddenly in the last century and a half, as the ideas of the Enlightenment have spread to the whole of Western culture, we have been told quite arbitrarily that there is no invisible world. This has become dogma for many secular people today.
Christians try to answer prejudices like these by pointing out that the biblical system does not have to be accepted blindly, any more than the scientific hypotheses have to be accepted blindly. What a scientist does is to examine certain phenomena in the world. He then casts about for an explanation that will make sense of these phenomena. That is the hypothesis. But the hypothesis has to be checked. So a careful checking operation is set up, designed to see if there is, in fact, a correspondence between what has been observed and what has been hypothesized. If it does correspond, a scientist accepts the explanation as correct; if it does not, he rejects it as false and looks for an alternative explanation. Depending on how substantially the statement has been “verified,” it becomes accepted as a “law” within science, such as the law of gravity or the second law of thermodynamics.
What we should notice is the method. It is rather like trying to find the right key to fit a particular lock. We try the first key and then the next and the next until finally, if we are fortunate, one of them fits. The same principle applies, so Christians maintain, when we consider the big questions. Here are the phenomena. What key unlocks their meaning? What explanation is correct?
We may consider the materialistic humanist alternative, the Eastern religious alternative, and so on. But each of these leaves at least a part of these most basic questions unanswered. So we turn to examine the Christian alternative.
Obviously, Christians do not look on the Bible as simply an alternative. As Christians we consider it to be objectively true, because we have found that it does give the answers both in knowledge and in life. For the purposes of discussion, however, we invite non-Christians to consider it as an alternative – not to be accepted blindly, but for good and sufficient reasons.
But note this – the physical scientist does something very easy, compared to those who tackle the really important and central questions for mankind. He examines a tiny portion of the real world – a leaf, a cell, an atom, a particle – and, because these things are not personal and obey very precise laws, he is able to arrive at explanations with relative ease. C. F. A. Pantin, who was professor of zoology at Cambridge University, once said: “Very clever men are answering the relatively easy questions of the natural examination paper.” This is not to disparage physical science. It works consistently with its own principles of investigation, looking further and further into the material of the world around us. But it only looks at part of the world. As Professor W. H. Thorpe of Cambridge University says, it is “a deliberate restriction to certain areas of our total experience – a technique for understanding certain parts of that experience and achieving mastery over nature.”
We are not then moving from definite things to indefinite things, when we look at those aspects of our experience which are more central than the study of an individual physical thing such as a leaf, a cell, an atom, or a particle. Rather, we are turning from a small part of reality to a larger part of reality. Picture a scientist for a moment: he is looking at a particular detail and carrying out his scientific investigation according to the recognized procedures. We have already discussed the method he uses to find the answers. Now we need to draw back and consider the whole phenomenon we are looking at, that is, the scientist carrying out his experiment. When the scientist is seated at his desk, he is able to find answers to his questions only because he has made two colossal assumptions about his situation, in fact about the entire world. He is assuming first of all that the things he is looking at do fit together somehow, even if some areas – such as particle physics – cannot at this time be fitted into a simple explanation. If the scientist did not assume that the things he is studying somehow fit together, he would not be trying to find an answer. Second, he is assuming that he as a person is able to find answers.
In other words, the big questions constitute the very framework within which the scientist is operating. To quote Thorpe again, “I recently heard one of the most distinguished theoretical scientists state that his own scientific drive was based on two fundamental attitudes: a conviction of his own responsibility and an awe at the beauty and harmony of nature.” So we have to resist any suggestion that to be involved in answering the big questions is somehow to be getting further and further away from “the real world.”
The opposite is the case. It is as we come to these big questions that we approach the real world that every one of us is living in twenty-four hours a day – the world of real persons who can think and so work out problems such as how to get to the other side of town, persons who can love, persons who can make moral decisions. These are, in other words, the phenomena which cry out for an adequate explanation. These are the things we know best about ourselves and the world around us. What world-view can encompass them?
C. S. Lewis pointed out that there are only two alternatives to the Christian answer – the humanist philosophy of the West and the pantheist philosophy of the East. We would agree. We agree, too, with his observation that Eastern philosophy is an “opposite” to the Christian system, but we shall look at that later. For the present our attention is directed toward the materialistic world-view of the West.
From time to time we read in the press or hear on the radio that an oil tanker has run aground on rocks and that the crude oil is being driven by the wind and currents onto an otherwise beautiful coast. We can picture the problem of humanism in that way. There is a rock on which all humanist philosophy must run aground. It is the problem of relative knowledge and relative morality or, to put it another way, the problem of finiteness or limitation. Even if mankind now had perfect moral integrity regarding the world, people would still be finite. People are limited. This fact, coupled with the rejection of the possibility of having answers from God, leads humanists into the problem of relative knowledge. There has been no alternative to this relativity for the past 200 years, and there can be no alternative within the humanist world-view. That is what we want to show now.
A nice parallel can be made between Woody Allen’s struggle with the issue of the mannishness of man and that of Charles Darwin. Below is something that Charles Darwin wrote looking back on his life:
“It is impossible to answer your question briefly; and I am not sure that I could do so, even if I wrote at some length. But I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide.
Francis Schaeffer observed:
So he sees here exactly the same that I would labor and what Paul gives in Romans chapter one, and that is first this tremendous universe [and it’s form] and the second thing, the mannishness of man and the concept of this arising from chance is very difficult for him to come to accept and he is forced to leap into this, his own kind of Kierkegaardian leap, but he is forced to leap into this because of his presuppositions but when in reality the real world troubles him. He sees there is no third alternative. If you do not have the existence of God then you only have chance. In my own lectures I am constantly pointing out there are only two possibilities, a personal God or this concept of the impersonal plus time plus chance. You will notice that he divides it into the same two points that Paul does in Romans into and that Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) will in the problem of existence, the external universe, and man and his consciousness. Paul points out there are these two things that man is confronted with. Two things is the real world, the universe and its form and I usually quote Jean Paul Sartre here, and Sartre says the basic philosophic problem is that something is there rather than nothing is there and I then I add at the point the very thing that Darwin feels and that is it isn’t a bare universe that is out there, it is an universe in a specific form. I always bring in Einstein and the uniformity of the form of the universe and that it is constructed as a well formulated word puzzle or you have Carl Gustav Jung who says two things cut across a man’s will that he can not truly be automous, the external world and what Carl Gustav Jung would call his “collected unconsciousness.” It is the thing that curns up out of man, the mannishness of man. Darwin understood way back here this is a real problem. So he says “the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrouse universe,” part one, the real world, the external universe, and part two “with our conscious selves arose through chance” and then he goes on and says this is not “an argument of real value.” This only thing he has to put in its place is his faith in his own theory.
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Here below is the Romans passage that Schaeffer is referring to and verse 19 refers to what Schaeffer calls “the mannishness of man” and verse 20 refers to Schaeffer’s other point which is “the universe and it’s form.”
Romans 1:18-22Amplified Bible (AMP)
18 For God’s [holy] wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative.
19 For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God [Himself] has shown it to them.
20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification],
21 Because when they knew and recognized Him as God, they did not honor andglorify Him as God or give Him thanks. But instead they became futile andgodless in their thinking [with vain imaginings, foolish reasoning, and stupid speculations] and their senseless minds were darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves].
Francis Schaeffer commented:
Now Darwin is going to set forth two arguments for God in this and again you will find when he comes to the end of this that he is in tremendous tension. Darwin wrote,
“At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons. Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to (although I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me), to the firm conviction of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, ‘it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body; but now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind,
Francis Schaeffer observed:
Now Darwin says when I look back and when I look at nature I came to the conclusion that man can not be just a fly! But now Darwin has moved from being a younger man to an older man and he has allowed his presuppositions to enter in to block his logic. These things at the end of his life he had no intellectual answer for. To block them out in favor of his theory. Remember the letter of his that said he had lost all aesthetic senses when he had got older and he had become a clod himself. Now interesting he says just the same thing, but not in relation to the arts, namely music, pictures, etc, but to nature itself. Darwin said, “But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind…” So now you see that his presuppositions have not only robbed him of the beauty of man’s creation in art, but now the universe. He can’t look at it now and see the beauty. The reason he can’t see the beauty is very simple: THE BEAUTY DRIVES HIM TO DISTRACTION. THIS IS WHERE MODERN MAN IS AND IT IS HELL. The art is hell because it reminds him of man and how great man is, and where does it fit in his system? It doesn’t. When he looks at nature and it’s beauty he is driven to the same distraction and so consequently you find what has built up inside him is a real death, not only the beauty of the artistic but the beauty of nature.
Darwin wrote:
…and the universal belief by men of the existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the least value as evidence. This argument would be a valid one if all men of all races had the same inward conviction of the existence of one God; but we know that this is very far from being the case. Therefore I cannot see that such inward convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence of what really exists. The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar feelings excited by music.
Francis Schaeffer noted:
You notice that Darwin had already said he had lost his sense of music [appreciation]. However, he brings forth what I think is a false argument. I usually use it in the area of morality. I mention that anthropologists point out that different people have different moral [systems] and this is perfectly true, but what the materialist anthropologist can never point out is why man has a sense of moral motion and that is the problem here. Therefore, it is perfectly true that men have different concepts of God and different concepts of moral motion, but Darwin himself is not satisfied in his own position and WHERE DO THEY [MORAL MOTIONS] COME FROM AT ALL? So you are wrestling with the same dilemma here in this reference as you do in the area of all things human. For these men it is not the distinction that raises the problem, but it is the overwhelming factor of the existence of the humanness of man, the mannishness of man. The simple fact is he saw that you are shut up to either God or chance, and he said basically “I don’t see how it could be chance” and at the same time he looks at a mountain or listens to a piece of music it is a testimony that really chance isn’t sufficient enough. So gradually with the sensitivity of his own inborn self conscience he kills it. He deliberately kills the beauty so it doesn’t argue with his theory. Maybe I am being false to Darwin here. Who can say about Darwin’s subconscious thoughts? It seems to me though this is exactly the case. What you find is a man who can’t stand the argument of the external beauty and the mannishness of man so he just gives it up in this particular place.
In 1972’s Play It Again, Sam, Allen plays a film critic trying to get over his wife’s leaving him by dating again. In one scene, Allen tries to pick up a depressive woman in front of the early Jackson Pollock work. This painting, because of its elusive title, has been the subject of much debate as to what it portrays. This makes for a nifty gag when Allen strolls up and asks the suicidal belle, “What does it say to you?”
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Woody Allen in Play It Again Sam
Uploaded on May 20, 2009
Scene from ‘Play it Again Sam’ (1972)
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Allan: That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it?
Museum Girl: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.
____ Woody Allen’s past movies and the subject of the Meaning of Life examined!!! Out of the Past: Woody Allen, Nostalgia, the Meaning of Life, and Radio Days Kyle Turner Jul 25, 2014 Film, Twilight Time 1 Comment “I firmly believe, and I don’t say this as a criticism, that life is meaningless.” – Woody […]
__________ I wrote on this yesterday and will continue to write on it for a while. Below is a very fine article by Mike Huckabee on the subject. American people have to take up the slack for absentee president. (Photo: Philippe Wojazer, AFP/Getty Images) 3237CONNECT 21TWEETLINKEDIN 35COMMENTEMAILMORE Woody Allen said that “80% of success is […]
40 songs from Past Woody Films plus song I suggested for Woody Allen’s new film from Pee Wee Spitelera (Clarinetist at Al Hirts’ Club, New Orleans) ___________ Woody Allen – Songs from Woody Allen’s Films Published on Oct 7, 2013 Woody Allen – Songs from Woody Allen’s Films Upload the album here :http://bit.ly/17BenPD iTunes […]
______________________ God and Carpeting: The Theology of Woody Allen Details Written by David M. of the group “Jews for Jesus” Woody Allen about meaning and truth of life on Earth Dick & Woody get semi-metaphysical Woody Allen interview 1971 PART 2/4 Woody Allen interview 1971 PART 1/4 God and Carpeting: The Theology of Woody […]
_______ Woody Allen’s recent films have done very well!!! Below Allen discusses them. 12 Questions for Woody Allen Woody Allen: American Master The reluctant auteur opens up By Roger Friedman | 07/30/14 11:13am Would it kill you to know that Woody Allen is just like us? He’s got two teenage girls who listen to pop […]
____________ Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Woody Allen’s 2015 Film September 26, 2014 · by William Miller · in Actors, Everything You Always Wanted To Know, Films In keeping with his decades old habit of a film a year, there will be a 2015 Film written and directed by Woody Allen. With production […]
____________ Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Woody Allen’s 2015 Film September 26, 2014 · by William Miller · in Actors, Everything You Always Wanted To Know, Films In keeping with his decades old habit of a film a year, there will be a 2015 Film written and directed by Woody Allen. With production […]
_______ Woody Allen’s recent films have done very well!!! Below Allen discusses them. 12 Questions for Woody Allen Woody Allen: American Master The reluctant auteur opens up By Roger Friedman | 07/30/14 11:13am Would it kill you to know that Woody Allen is just like us? He’s got two teenage girls who listen to pop […]
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Francis Schaeffer below pictured on cover of World Magazine: __________________ Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age […]
______________________ God and Carpeting: The Theology of Woody Allen Details Written by David M. of the group “Jews for Jesus” Woody Allen about meaning and truth of life on Earth Dick & Woody get semi-metaphysical Woody Allen interview 1971 PART 2/4 Woody Allen interview 1971 PART 1/4 God and Carpeting: The Theology of Woody Allen […]
Aunt May’s foil in the film is Ben (Sam Waterston), a pious rabbi who says that he couldn’t go on living “if I didn’t feel with all my heart a moral structure with real meaning and forgiveness and some kind of higher power. Otherwise there’s no basis to live…. Without the law, it’s all darkness.” Allen reveals his attitude toward the rabbi by subjecting him to a progressive loss of vision that ends in total blindness by the conclusion of the film — a blunt metaphor for the darkness induced by his own moral and religious faith.
We know that this was Allen’s intent because he’s said so. Ben, according to Allen, “doesn’t really understand the reality of life… and that’s why I wanted to make him blind. I feel that his faith is blind. It will work, but it requires closing your eyes to reality.” And what is reality? That “at best the universe is indifferent” to our lives and our various ways of construing right and wrong. This indifference is so awful that many of us feel driven to “create a fake world for ourselves, and we exist within that fake world.”
This is exactly what you have done Woody yourself by continuing to make your movies and describe your poor plight. You are leaping into the area of nonreason to try and cope. It is exactly what the Surrealists and Dadaists did.
Jean Arp (Hans Arp) Jean Arp is associated with the DADA movement. His collages were of torn pieces of paper dropped and affixed where they would land. His use of chance is intended to create free of human intervention. “Dada,” wrote Arp, “wished to destroy the hoaxes of reason and to discover an UNREASONED ORDER.”
“It is often said that Søren Kierkegaard, the Dane (1813-55)… is the father of modern secular thinking and of the new theological thinking…. Why is it that Kierkegaard can so aptly be thought of as the father of both? What proposition did he add to Hegel’s thought that made the difference? Kierkegaard came to the conclusion that you could notarrive at synthesis by reason. Instead, you achieved everything of real importance by a leap of faith. So he separated absolutely the rational and logical from faith……from that time on, if rationalistic man wants to deal with the real things of human life (such as purpose, significance, the validity of love) he must discard rational thought about them and MAKE A GIGANTIC, NON-RATIONAL LEAP OF FAITH. The rationalistic framework had FAILED TO PRODUCE AN ANSWER ON THE BASIS OF REASON, and so all hope of a uniform field of knowledge had to be abandoned.”
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(Francis Schaeffer pictured below)
(Luis Bunuel, Man Ray, Salvador Dali visit with Gil Pender in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS)
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(Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dali, circa 1930 pictured below)
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The principle of making A GIGANTIC, NON-RATIONAL LEAP OF FAITH is demonstrated by the Surrealists in a scene in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS when Salvador Dali introduces his friends Luis Bunuel and Man Ray to Gil Pender and then comments to them “Pender is in a perplexing situation.”
Gil Pender tells the SURREALISTS, “It sounds so crazy to say. You guys are going to think I’m drunk, but I have to tell someone. I’m…from a…a different time. Another era.The future. OK? I come…from the 2000th millennium to here.I get in a car, and I slide through time.”
When they accept this then Gil responds, “Yeah, you’re surrealists!But I’m a normal guy.” In other words the SURREALISTS understand Gil’s predicament and realize that they too have attempted to escape from reason in their own lives (sometimes probing their own dreams in an attempt to find meaning). That is the reason Gil suddenly realizes that he is getting no where with them.
Francis Schaeffer noted in his book HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT:
So just as all men love even if they say love does not exist, and all men have moral motions even though they say moral motions do not exit, so all men act as though they there is a correlation between the external and the internal world, even if they have no basis for that correlation…Let me draw the parallel again. Modern men say there is no love, there is only sex, but they fall in love. Men say there are no moral motions, everything is behavioristic, but they all have moral motions. Even in the more profound area of epistemology, no matter what a man says he believes, actually–every moment of his life–he is acting as though Christianity were true, and it is only the Christian system that tells him why he can, must, and does act the way he does (Chapter 4, HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT ).
Let me challenge you to take a closer look at the Bible and it’s accuracy. More on that later in this letter.
Not a believer. (Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)February 4, 2014
I don’t know what did or did not happen between Woody Allen and Dylan Farrow more than 20 years ago, and neither does Nicholas Kristof. What I do know is that Allen is a moral nihilist. This should not be taken as evidence that he sexually molested Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter when she was 7 years old, or taken as a sign that he’d condone such behavior. But it does mean he espouses a philosophical outlook that renders him powerless to condemn it.
Let me be clear about two things right off the bat. First, I’m a great admirer of Allen’s filmmaking — and like Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher, I think the artistry of his films can and should be judged apart from his (perhaps substantial) moral failings. Second, I consider nihilism to be a viable, albeit false and ultimately chilling, philosophical and existential position. In describing Allen as a nihilist, I am not issuing an indictment — simply describing an outlook that he has elaborated in several films and interviews over the years.
Allen’s most thorough cinematic treatment of nihilism and its moral implications can be found in what may be his greatest film, Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). The movie tells the story of an ophthalmologist named Judah Rosenthal (played by Martin Landau) who decides to kill off his lover Dolores (Angelica Houston) when she threatens to divulge their affair to Judah’s wife. (Allen’s Match Point (2005), an inferior film in almost every way, explores many similar themes.)
At first wracked with guilt over the murder, Judah eventually gets over his moral qualms. (As another character quips in the film, “comedy is tragedy plus time.”) In a shocking subversion of Hollywood-style happy endings as well as Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment — in which the character Raskolnikov is driven by unremitting guilt to confess a pair of murders to the authorities — the film ends with Judah seemingly at complete peace with himself and thriving in every way: Happy, wealthy, successful, adored by a beautiful wife and daughter, with the latter soon to be married.
The viewer is left to conclude that Judah got away with his crime scot-free — and that such an outcome is possible for anyone courageous enough to violate accepted moral customs and lucky or clever enough to avoid getting caught by the legal authorities.
The theme and its broader implications are reinforced throughout the film. In one of its most powerful scenes, Judah observes and interacts with a memory from his youth in which members of his family debate morality, God, and the Holocaust. Espousing the view endorsed by the film, Judah’s atheist aunt May (whom Judah’s religiously observant father dubs a “nihilist”) remarks that if National Socialist Germany had won World War II, then Hitler’s actions would have ended up being “right.” After all, in such a nightmarish, counterfactual world, the Nazis would be empowered to set and enforce the reigning moral standard — and there simply is no higher moral authority to appeal to against such a standard. In a nihilistic universe, the overarching moral truth is that might makes right.
Aunt May’s foil in the film is Ben (Sam Waterston), a pious rabbi who says that he couldn’t go on living “if I didn’t feel with all my heart a moral structure with real meaning and forgiveness and some kind of higher power. Otherwise there’s no basis to live…. Without the law, it’s all darkness.” Allen reveals his attitude toward the rabbi by subjecting him to a progressive loss of vision that ends in total blindness by the conclusion of the film — a blunt metaphor for the darkness induced by his own moral and religious faith.
Allen, 1970. | (Evening Standard/Getty Images)
We know that this was Allen’s intent because he’s said so. Ben, according to Allen, “doesn’t really understand the reality of life… and that’s why I wanted to make him blind. I feel that his faith is blind. It will work, but it requires closing your eyes to reality.” And what is reality? That “at best the universe is indifferent” to our lives and our various ways of construing right and wrong. This indifference is so awful that many of us feel driven to “create a fake world for ourselves, and we exist within that fake world.”
On a lesser level you see it in sports. They create a world of football, for example. You get lost in that world and you care about meaningless things…. People by the thousands watch it, thinking it’s very important who wins. But, in fact, if you step back for a second, it’s utterly unimportant who wins. It means nothing. In the same way we create for ourselves a world that, in fact, means nothing at all, when you step back. It’s meaningless.
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This sounds like you want to take a leap into the area of non-Reason to help you cope with the meaningless of life!!!
Francis Schaeffer has correctly argued:
The universe was created by an infinite personal God and He brought it into existence by spoken word and made man in His own image. When man tries to reduce [philosophically in a materialistic point of view] himself to less than this [less than being made in the image of God] he will always fail and he will always be willing to make these impossible leaps into the area of nonreason even though they don’t give an answer simply because that isn’t what he is. He himself testifies that this infinite personal God, the God of the Old and New Testament is there.
Instead of making a leap into the area of nonreason the better choice would be to investigate the claims that the Bible is a historically accurate book and that God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.
TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?)
In the previous chapter we saw that the Bible gives us the explanation for the existence of the universe and its form and for the mannishness of man. Or, to reverse this, we came to see that the universe and its form and the mannishness of man are a testimony to the truth of the Bible. In this chapter we will consider a third testimony: the Bible’s openness to verification by historical study.
Christianity involves history. To say only that is already to have said something remarkable, because it separates the Judeo-Christian world-view from almost all other religious thought. It is rooted in history.
The Bible tells us how God communicated with man in history. For example, God revealed Himself to Abraham at a point in time and at a particular geographical place. He did likewise with Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel and so on. The implications of this are extremely important to us. Because the truth God communicated in the Bible is so tied up with the flow of human events, it is possible by historical study to confirm some of the historical details.
It is remarkable that this possibility exists. Compare the information we have from other continents of that period. We know comparatively little about what happened in Africa or South America or China or Russia or even Europe. We see beautiful remains of temples and burial places, cult figures, utensils, and so forth, but there is not much actual “history” that can be reconstructed, at least not much when compared to that which is possible in the Middle East.
When we look at the material which has been discovered from the Nile to the Euphrates that derives from the 2500-year span before Christ, we are in a completely different situation from that in regard to South America or Asia. The kings of Egypt and Assyria built thousands of monuments commemorating their victories and recounting their different exploits. Whole libraries have been discovered from places like Nuzu and Mari and most recently at Elba, which give hundreds of thousands of texts relating to the historical details of their time. It is within this geographical area that the Bible is set. So it is possible to find material which bears upon what the Bible tells us.
The Bible purports to give us information on history. Is the history accurate? The more we understand about the Middle East between 2500 B.C. and A.D. 100, the more confident we can be that the information in the Bible is reliable, even when it speaks about the simple things of time and place.
The site of the biblical city called Lachish is about thirty miles southwest of Jerusalem. This city is referred to on a number of occasions in the Old Testament. Imagine a busy city with high walls surrounding it, and a gate in front that is the only entrance to the city. We know so much about Lachish from archaeological studies that a reconstruction of the whole city has been made in detail. This can be seen at the British Museum in the Lachish Room in the Assyrian section.
There is also a picture made by artists in the eighth century before Christ, the Lachish Relief, which was discovered in the city of Nineveh in the ancient Assyria. In this picture we can see the Jewish inhabitants of Lachish surrendering to Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. The details in the picture and the Assyrian writing on it give the Assyrian side of what the Bible tells us in Second Kings:
2 Kings 18:13-16
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
13 Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. 14 Then Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong. Withdraw from me; whatever you impose on me I will bear.” So the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 Hezekiah gave him all the silver which was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasuries of the king’s house. 16 At that time Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the doorposts which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.
________
We should notice two things about this. First, this is a real-life situation–a real siege of a real city with real people on both sides of the war–and it happened at a particular date in history, near the turn of the eighth century B.C. Second, the two accounts of this incident in 701 B.C. (the account from the Bible and the Assyrian account from Nineveh) do not contradict, but rather confirm each other. The history of Lachish itself is not so important for us, but some of its smaller historical details.
The movie MIDNIGHT IN PARISoffers many of the same themes we see in Ecclesiastes. The second postlooked at the question: WAS THERE EVER A GOLDEN AGE AND DID THE MOST TALENTED UNIVERSAL MEN OF THAT TIME FIND TRUE SATISFACTION DURING IT?
In the third post in this series we discover in Ecclesiastes that man UNDER THE SUN finds himself caught in the never ending cycle of birth and death. The SURREALISTS make a leap into the area of nonreason in order to get out of this cycle and that is why the scene in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS with Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Luis Bunuel works so well!!!! These surrealists look to the area of their dreams to find a meaning for their lives and their break with reality is only because they know that they can’t find a rational meaning in life without God in the picture.
The fourth post looks at the solution of WINE, WOMEN AND SONG and the fifthandsixth posts look at the solution T.S.Eliotfound in the Christian Faith and how he left his fragmented message of pessimism behind. In theseventh post the SURREALISTS say that time and chance is all we have but how can that explain love or art and the hunger for God? The eighth post looks at the subject of DEATH both in Ecclesiastes and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. In the ninth post we look at the nihilistic worldview of Woody Allen and why he keeps putting suicides into his films.
In the tenth post I show how Woody Allen pokes fun at the brilliant thinkers of this world and how King Solomon did the same thing 3000 years ago. In theeleventh postI point out how many of Woody Allen’s liberal political views come a lack of understanding of the sinful nature of man and where it originated. In thetwelfth post I look at the mannishness of man and vacuum in his heart that can only be satisfied by a relationship with God.
In the thirteenth postwe look at the life of Ernest Hemingway as pictured in MIDNIGHT AND PARIS and relate it to the change of outlook he had on life as the years passed. In the fourteenth post we look at Hemingway’s idea of Paris being a movable feast. The fifteenth andsixteenth posts both compare Hemingway’s statement, “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know…” with Ecclesiastes 2:18 “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” The seventeenth post looks at these words Woody Allen put into Hemingway’s mouth, “We fear death because we feel that we haven’t loved well enough or loved at all.”
In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Hemingway and Gil Pender talk about their literary idol Mark Twain and the eighteenth post is summed up nicely by Kris Hemphill‘swords, “Both Twain and [King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes] voice questions our souls long to have answered: Where does one find enduring meaning, life purpose, and sustainable joy, and why do so few seem to find it? The nineteenth postlooks at the tension felt both in the life of Gil Pender (written by Woody Allen) in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and in Mark Twain’s life and that is when an atheist says he wants to scoff at the idea THAT WE WERE PUT HERE FOR A PURPOSE but he must stay face the reality of Ecclesiastes 3:11 that says “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” and THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING! Therefore, the secular view that there is no such thing as love or purpose looks implausible. The twentieth post examines how Mark Twain discovered just like King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes that there is no explanation for the suffering and injustice that occurs in life UNDER THE SUN. Solomon actually brought God back into the picture in the last chapter and he looked ABOVE THE SUN for the books to be balanced and for the tears to be wiped away.
The twenty-first post looks at the words of King Solomon, Woody Allen and Mark Twain that without God in the picture our lives UNDER THE SUN will accomplish nothing that lasts. Thetwenty-second postlooks at King Solomon’s experiment 3000 years that proved that luxuries can’t bring satisfaction to one’s life but we have seen this proven over and over through the ages. Mark Twain lampooned the rich in his book “The Gilded Age” and he discussed get rich quick fever, but Sam Clemens loved money and the comfort and luxuries it could buy. Likewise Scott Fitzgerald was very successful in the 1920’s after his publication of THE GREAT GATSBY and lived a lavish lifestyle until his death in 1940 as a result of alcoholism.
In the twenty-third postwe look at Mark Twain’s statement that people should either commit suicide or stay drunk if they are “demonstrably wise” and want to “keep their reasoning faculties.” We actually see this play out in the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS with the character Zelda Fitzgerald. In the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth posts I look at Mark Twain and the issue of racism. In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS we see the difference between the attitudes concerning race in 1925 Paris and the rest of the world.
The twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth posts are summing up Mark Twain. In the 29th post we ask did MIDNIGHT IN PARIS accurately portray Hemingway’s personality and outlook on life? and in the 30th postthe life and views of Hemingway are summed up.
In the 31st post we will observe that just like Solomon Picasso slept with many women. Solomon actually slept with over 1000 women ( Eccl 2:8, I Kings 11:3), and both men ended their lives bitter against all women and in the 32nd post we look at what happened to these former lovers of Picasso. In the 33rd post we see that Picasso deliberately painted his secular worldview of fragmentation on his canvas but he could not live with the loss of humanness and he reverted back at crucial points and painted those he loved with all his genius and with all their humanness!!! In the 34th post we notice that both Solomon in Ecclesiastes and Picasso in his painting had an obsession with the issue of their impending death!!!
Woody Allen believes that we live in a cold, violent and meaningless universe and it seems that his main character (Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson) in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS shares that view. Pender’s meeting with the Surrealists is by far the best scene in the movie because they are ones who can […]
In the last post I pointed out how King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN and that Bertrand Russell, and T.S. Eliot and other modern writers had agreed with Solomon’s view. However, T.S. Eliot had found a solution to this problem and put his faith in […]
In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Gil Pender ponders the advice he gets from his literary heroes from the 1920’s. King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN and many modern artists, poets, and philosophers have agreed. In the 1920’s T.S.Eliot and his house guest Bertrand Russell were two of […]
Credit: Left: the Ratio Club in Cambridge, May 1952. Back row: Harold Shipton, John Bates, William Hick, John Pringle, Donald Sholl, John Westcott, Donald Mackay. Middle row: Giles Brindley, Turner McLardy, Ross Ashby, Tommy Gold, Albert Uttley. Front row: Alan Turing, Gurney Sutton, William Rushton, George Dawson, Horace Barlow. (Photo: Wellcome Collection, archive reference GC/179/B.25, used under CC BY / Cropped). Right: Horace Barlow at home in Cambridge, March 2016 (Photo: Ida Barlow).
In December of 2017, I received a two page typed letter from Dr. Barlow reacting to several of the points made in the previous letters and emails. From August of 2020 to June of 2021 I posted these 32 letters I wrote to Dr. Barlow from February 11, 2015 to April 18, 2020 and below is a list of those letters. Sadly Dr. Barlow passed away on July 5, 2020 at age 98. However, I want to summarize some the issues we discussed in a series of 10 posts.
Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning moral motions in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
I learned that Horace (Barlow) passed away. He was a visionary, a neurotheory pioneer. I feel terrible since I had promised him a draft based on our discussion and only managed to rewrite and put it in the bin 5 times. Here is the last pic I have of him w his (then) new puppy
There is a fantastic interview with Horace in “mechanical minds in history”, as well as a chapter on “Ratio club” where pioneers met and discussed ideas around cybernetics, brain and information processing (you can find it online). ppl like Turing, McCulloch, MacKay, Ashby etc One of the cool things from the interview is that Horace wanted to get into physics, but his classmate was Freeman Dyson. Seeing Dyson’s prowess with math pushed Horace to go to biology since. (I think most ppl if had a classmate like Dyson would feel the same) Another cool thing is that when he discussed his plan to test the retina inhibiton story (his visionary 1953 paper) with his PhD advisor Lord Adrian (yeah “the” Adrian), since he was questioning Hartline’s idea, Adrian told him not to bother. But,Barlow didn’t give up even though both Adrian and Hartline were Nobel laurates…and out came his ground breaking paper. That is good lesson for everyone, specially younger scientists, to know that even the most accomplished can be wrong. Don’t give up and follow your curiosity
If you have not, check the @SfNtweets interview with him as part of their history of neuro collection. There is much to learn from history of science as told by the greats.. RIP Horace, you have been a role model for many and have pushed us to think deeply. A generous deep thinker, driven by curiosity, a visionary skeptic, a great physiologist and a pioneer theorist…there are not more like him. Sad loss for the field.
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Francis Schaeffer
Debating from 2015-2020 Darwin’s great grandson (Horace Barlow) about Francis Schaeffer’s 1968 critique of Darwinism!
The autobiography of Charles Darwin read by Francis Schaeffer in 1968 was not the same one originally released in 1892 because that one omitted the religious statements of Charles Darwin.
pictured below with his eldest child William:
Notice this statement below from the Freedom from Religion Foundation:
(Nora Barlow pictured below)
Charles Darwin wrote the Rev. J. Fordyce on July 7, 1879, that “an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.” Darwin penned his memoirs between the ages of 67 and 73, finishing the main text in 1876. These memoirs were published posthumously in 1887 by his family under the title Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, with his hardest-hitting views on religion excised. Only in 1958 did Darwin’s granddaughter Nora Barlow publish his Autobiography with original omissions restored D. 1882. ——-
Charles Robert Darwin (1809 – 1882) had 10 children and 7 of them survived to adulthood.
Sir Horace Darwin, KBE, FRS (13 May 1851 – 22 September 1928), the fifth son and ninth child of the British naturalist Charles Darwin and his wife Emma, the youngest of their seven children who survived to adulthood.
(Horace Darwin pictured below)
Emma Nora Barlow, Lady Barlow (née Darwin; 22 December 1885 – 29 May 1989) Nora, as she was known, was the daughter of the civil engineer Sir Horace Darwin and his wife The Hon. Lady Ida Darwin (née Farrer),
Horace Darwin married Emma Cecilia “Ida” Farrer (1854–1946) pictured below.
—-
Francis Schaeffer
Horace Barlow was the son of Nora Barlow. From February 11, 2015 to July 1, 2017, I wrote 7 letters to Dr. Horace Barlow because I wanted to discuss primarily the views of his grandfather CharlesDarwin and Francis Schaeffer’s 1968 critique of Darwinism!
Franicis Schaeffer
If you wish to hear Francis Schaeffer’s 1968 talk on Darwin’s autobiography then you can access part 1 at this link and part 2 at this link.
Let me share with you a portion of my fifth letter mailed on March 1, 2017 and Dr. Barlow responded to several points made in the letter:
But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blindand the universal belief by men of the existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the least value as evidence. This argument would be a valid one if all men of all races had the same inward conviction of the existence of one God; but we know that this is very far from being the case. Therefore I cannot see that such inward convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence of what really exists. The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar feelings excited by music.
Francis Schaeffer observed:
You notice that Darwin had already said he had lost his sense of music [appreciation]. However, he brings forth what I think is a false argument. I usually use it in the area of morality. I mention that materialistic anthropologists point out that different people have different moral [systems] and this is perfectly true, but what the materialist anthropologist can never point out is why man has a sense of moral motion and that is the problem here. Therefore, it is perfectly true that men have different concepts of God and different concepts of moral motion, but Darwin himself is not satisfied in his own position and WHERE DO THEY [MORAL MOTIONS] COME FROM AT ALL? So you are wrestling with the same dilemma here in this reference as you do in the area of all things human. For these men it is not the distinction that raises the problem, but it is the overwhelming factor of the existence of the humanness of man, the mannishness of man. The simple fact is he saw that you are shut up to either God or chance, and he said basically “I don’t see how it could be chance” and at the same time he looks at a mountain or listens to a piece of music it is a testimony that really chance isn’t sufficient enough. So gradually with the sensitivity of his own inborn self conscience he kills it. He deliberately kills the beauty so it doesn’t argue with his theory. Maybe I am being false to Darwin here. Who can say about Darwin’s subconscious thoughts? It seems to me though this is exactly the case. What you find is a man who can’t stand the argument of the external beauty and the mannishness of man so he just gives it up in this particular place.
_________________
Let make 2 points here. First, the Bible teaches that everyone knows in their heart that God exists because of the beauty of God’s creation and the conscience that God has planted in everyone’s heart (Romans 1).
“[in Christianity] there is a sufficient basis for morals. Nobody has ever discovered a way of having real “morals” without a moral absolute. If there is no moral absolute, we are left with hedonism (doing what I like) or some form of the social contract theory (what is best for society as a a hole is right). However, neither of these alternative corresponds to the moral motions that men have. Talk to people long enough and deeply enough, and you will find that they consider some things are really right and something are really wrong. Without absolutes, morals as morals cease to exist, and humanistic mean starting from himself is unable to find the absolute he needs. But because the God of the Bible is there, real morals exist. Within this framework I can say one action is right and another wrong, without talking nonsense.” 117
Romans 1:18-19 (Amplified Bible) ” For God’s wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness REPRESS and HINDER the truth and make it inoperative. For that which is KNOWN about God is EVIDENT to them and MADE PLAIN IN THEIR INNER CONSCIOUSNESS, because God has SHOWN IT TO THEM,”(emphasis mine). At the 37 minute mark on the CD that I sent you today Adrian Rogers noted, “”There is no such thing anywhere on earth as a true atheist. If a man says he doesn’t believe in God, then he is lying. God has put his moral consciousness into every man’s heart, and a man has to try to kick his conscience to death to say he doesn’t believe in God.”
ROMANS CHAPTER ONE IS RIGHT WHEN IT SAYS THAT GOD PUT THAT CONSCIENCE IN EVERYONE’S HEART THAT BEARS WITNESS THAT HE CREATED THEM FOR A PURPOSE AND THAT IS WHY THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD ARE ATTEMPTING TO SEEK OUT GOD!!!!
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Dr. Barlow responded to this letter on moral motions with these comments in the letter I received from him in December of 2017:
It is also sometimes asked whether chance, even together with selection, can define a “MORAL CODE,” which the religiously inclined say is defined by their God. I think the answer is “Yes, it certainly can…” Chance mutations increase the diversity present in the population under consideration, and evolutionists naturally think of this as a “good thing,” for without diversity there can be no evolution. This is not often true for religiously determined moral codes, for most Gods are jealous and demand conformity among their followers, often enforced by persecution and extreme cruelty. As an evolutionist, I regard diversity itself as a desirable asset, and I think this improves my judgment when I hear a proposal that I do not initially agree with
XXXX
On March 2, 2018 In my letter to Dr. Barlow I included this article below that pointed out the bankruptcy of his secular moral basis and Woody Allen demonstrates that in a grand way in his film CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS.
“Existential subjects to me are still the only subjects worth dealing with. I don’t think that one can aim more deeply than at the so-called existential themes, the spiritual themes.” WOODY ALLEN
Evangelical Chuck Colson has observed that it used to be true that most Americans knew the Bible. Evangelists could simply call on them to repent and return. But today, most people lack understanding of biblical terms or concepts. Colson recommends that we first attempt to find common ground to engage people’s attention. That then may open a door to discuss spiritual matters.
(Judah pictured below)
Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS , is an excellent icebreaker concerning the need of God while making decisions in the area of personal morality. In this film, Allen attacks his own atheistic view of morality. Martin Landau plays a Jewish eye doctor named Judah Rosenthal raised by a religious father who always told him, “The eyes of God are always upon you.” However, Judah later concludes that God doesn’t exist. He has his mistress (played in the film by Anjelica Huston) murdered because she continually threatened to blow the whistle on his past questionable, probably illegal, business activities. She also attempted to break up Judah ‘s respectable marriage by going public with their two-year affair. Judah struggles with his conscience throughout the remainder of the movie. He continues to be haunted by his father’s words: “The eyes of God are always upon you.” This is a very scary phrase to a young boy, Judah observes. He often wondered how penetrating God’s eyes are.
(Judah with his hitman brother)
Later in the film, Judah reflects on the conversation his religious father had with Judah ‘s unbelieving Aunt May at the dinner table many years ago:
(Aunt May pictured below)
“Come on Sol, open your eyes. Six million Jews burned to death by the Nazis, and they got away with it because might makes right,” says aunt May
Sol replies, “May, how did they get away with it?”
Judah asks, “If a man kills, then what?”
Sol responds to his son, “Then in one way or another he will be punished.”
Aunt May comments, “I say if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he is home free.”
Judah ‘s final conclusion was that might did make right. He observed that one day, because of this conclusion, he woke up and the cloud of guilt was gone. He was, as his aunt said, “home free.”
Woody Allen has exposed a weakness in his own humanistic view that God is not necessary as a basis for good ethics. There must be an enforcement factor in order to convince Judah not to resort to murder. Otherwise, it is fully to Judah ‘s advantage to remove this troublesome woman from his life.
The Bible tells us, “{God} has also set eternity in the hearts of men…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV). The secularist calls this an illusion, but the Bible tells us that the idea that we will survive the grave was planted in everyone’s heart by God Himself. Romans 1:19-21 tells us that God has instilled a conscience in everyone that points each of them to Him and tells them what is right and wrong (also Romans 2:14 -15).
It’s no wonder, then, that one of Allen’s fellow humanists would comment, “Certain moral truths — such as do not kill, do not steal, and do not lie — do have a special status of being not just ‘mere opinion’ but bulwarks of humanitarian action. I have no intention of saying, ‘I think Hitler was wrong.’ Hitler WAS wrong.” (Gloria Leitner, “A Perspective on Belief,” THE HUMANIST, May/June 1997, pp. 38-39)
Here Leitner is reasoning from her God-given conscience and not from humanist philosophy. It wasn’t long before she received criticism. Humanist Abigail Ann Martin responded, “Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?” (THE HUMANIST, September/October 1997, p. 2)
The secularist can only give incomplete answers to these questions: How could you have convinced Judah not to kill? On what basis could you convince Judah it was wrong for him to murder?
As Christians, we would agree with Judah ‘s father that “The eyes of God are always upon us.” Proverbs 5:21 asserts, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his paths.” Revelation 20:12 states, “…And the dead were judged (sentenced) by what they had done (their whole way of feeling and acting, their aims and endeavors) in accordance with what was recorded in the books” (Amplified Version). The Bible is revealed truth from God. It is the basis for our morality. Judah inherited the Jewish ethical values of the Ten Commandments from his father, but, through years of life as a skeptic, his standards had been lowered. Finally, we discover that Judah ‘s secular version of morality does not resemble his father’s biblically-based morality.
Woody Allen’s CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS forces unbelievers to grapple with the logical conclusions of a purely secular morality. It opens a door for Christians to find common ground with those whom they attempt to share Christ; we all have to deal with personal morality issues. However, the secularist has no basis for asserting that Judah is wrong.
Larry King actually mentioned on his show, LARRY KING LIVE, that Chuck Colson had discussed the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS with him. Colson asked King if life was just a Darwinian struggle where the ruthless come out on top. Colson continued, “When we do wrong, is that our only choice? Either live tormented by guilt, or else kill our conscience and live like beasts?” (BREAKPOINT COMMENTARY, “Finding Common Ground,” September 14, 1993)
Later, Colson noted that discussing the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS with King presented the perfect opportunity to tell him about Christ’s atoning work on the cross. Colson believes the Lord is working on Larry King. How about your neighbors? Is there a way you can use a movie to find common ground with your lost friends and then talk to them about spiritual matters?(Caution: CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS is rated PG-13. It does include some adult themes.)
I found Dr. Barlow to be a true gentleman and he was very kind to take the time to answer the questions that I submitted to him. In the upcoming months I will take time once a week to pay tribute to his life and reveal our correspondence. In the first week I noted:
Today I am posting my first letter to him in February of 2015 which discussed Charles Darwin lamenting his loss of aesthetic tastes which he blamed on Darwin’s own dedication to the study of evolution. In a later return letter, Dr. Barlow agreed that Darwin did in fact lose his aesthetic tastes at the end of his life.
In the second week I look at the views of Michael Polanyi and share the comments of Francis Schaeffer concerning Polanyi’s views.
In the third week, I look at the life of Brandon Burlsworth in the November 28, 2016 letter and the movie GREATER and the problem of evil which Charles Darwin definitely had a problem with once his daughter died.
On the 4th letter to Dr. Barlow looks at Darwin’s admission that he at times thinks that creation appears to look like the expression of a mind. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words in 1968 sermon at this link.
My Fifth Letter concerning Charles Darwin’s views on MORAL MOTIONS Which was mailed on March 1, 2017. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning moral motions in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
6th letter on May 1, 2017 in which Charles Darwin’s hopes are that someone would find in Pompeii an old manuscript by a distinguished Roman that would show that Christ existed! Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning the possible manuscript finds in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
7th letter on Darwin discussing DETERMINISM dated 7-1-17 . Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning determinism in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
Thanks 8th letter responds to Dr. Barlow’s letter to me concerning the Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning chance in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
Thanks 9th letter in response to 11-22-17 letter I received from Professor Horace Barlow was mailed on 1-2-18 and included Charles Darwin’s comments on William Paley. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning William Paley in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
10th letter in response to 11-22-17 letter I received from Professor Horace Barlow was mailed on 2-2-18 and includes Darwin’s comments asking for archaeological evidence for the Bible! Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning His desire to see archaeological evidence supporting the Bible’s accuracy in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
11th letter I mailed on 3-2-18 in response to 11-22-17 letter from Barlow that asserted: It is also sometimes asked whether chance, even together with selection, can define a “MORAL CODE,” which the religiously inclined say is defined by their God. I think the answer is “Yes, it certainly can…” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning A MORAL CODE in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
12th letter on March 26, 2018 breaks down song DUST IN THE WIND “All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
In 13th letter I respond to Barlow’s November 22, 2017 letter and assertion “He {Darwin} clearly did not lose his sense of the VALUE of TRUTH, and of the importance of FOREVER SEARCHING it out.”
In 14th letter to Dr. Barlow on 10-2-18, I assert: “Let me demonstrate how the Bible’s view of the origin of life fits better with the evidence we have from archaeology than that of gradual evolution.”In 15th letter in November 2, 2018 to Dr. Barlow I quote his relative Randal Keynes Who in the Richard Dawkins special “The Genius of Darwin” makes this point concerning Darwin, “he was, at different times, enormously confident in it,and at other times, he was utterly uncertain.”In 16th Letter on 12-2-18 to Dr. Barlow I respond to his letter that stated, If I am pressed to say whether I think belief in God helps people to make wise and beneficial decisions I am bound to say (and I fear this will cause you pain) “No, it is often very disastrous, leading to violence, death and vile behaviour…Muslim terrorists…violence within the Christian church itself”17th letter sent on January 2, 2019 shows the great advantage we have over Charles Darwin when examining the archaeological record concerning the accuracy of the Bible!In the 18th letter I respond to the comment by Charles Darwin: “My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive….The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words on his loss of aesthetic tastes in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.In 19th letter on 2-2-19 I discuss Steven Weinberg’s words, But if language is to be of any use to us, we ought to try to preserve the meanings of words, and “God” historically has not meant the laws of nature. It has meant an interested personality.
In the 20th letter on 3-2-19 I respond to Charles Darwin’s comment, “At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep [#1] inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons...Formerly I was led by feelings such as those…to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that [#2] whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, ‘it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. [#3] But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning his former belief in God in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
In the 21st letter on May 15, 2019 to Dr Barlow I discuss the writings of Francis Schaeffer who passed away the 35 years earlier on May 15, 1985. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words at length in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
In the 22nd letter I respond to Charles Darwin’s words, “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe…will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words about hell in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link
In 23rd postcard sent on 7-2-19 I asked Dr Barlow if he was a humanist. Sir Julian Huxley, founder of the American Humanist Association noted, “I use the word ‘humanist’ to mean someone who believes that man is just as much a natural phenomenon as an animal or plant; that his body, mind and soul were not supernaturally created but are products of evolution, and that he is not under the control or guidance of any supernatural being.”
In my 24th letter on 8-2-19 I quote Jerry Bergman who noted Jean Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. A founding father of the modern American scientific establishment, Agassiz was also a lifelong opponent of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Agassiz “ruled in professorial majesty at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.”
In my 25th letter on 9-2-19 I respond to Charles Darwin’s assertion, “This argument would be a valid one if all men of ALL RACES had the SAME INWARD CONVICTION of the existence of one God; but we know that this is very far from being the case.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning MORAL MOTIONS in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
In my 26th letter on 10-2-19 I quoted Bertrand Russell’s daughter’s statement, “I believe myself that his whole life was a search for God…. Indeed, he had first taken up philosophy in hope of finding proof of the evidence of the existence of God … Somewhere at the back of my father’s mind, at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul there was an empty space that had once been filled by God, and he never found anything else to put in it”
In my 27th letter on 11-2-19 I disproved Richard Dawkins’ assertion, “Genesis says Abraham owned camels, but archaeological evidence shows that the camel was not domesticated until many centuries after Abraham.” Furthermore, I gave more evidence indicating the Bible is historically accurate.
In my 28th letter on 12-2-19 I respond to Charles Darwin’s statement, “I am glad you were at the Messiah, it is the one thing that I should like to hear again, but I dare say I should find my soul too dried up to appreciate it as in old days; and then I should feel very flat, for it is a horrid bore to feel as I constantly do, that I am a withered leaf for every subject except Science. It sometimes makes me hate Science.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning MORAL MOTIONS in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
In my 29th letter on 12-25-19 I responded to Charles Darwin’s statement, “I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds…gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dullthat it nauseated me…. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness…” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning his loss of aesthetic tastes in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
In my 30th letter on 2-2-20 I quote Dustin Shramek who asserted, “Without God the universe is the result of a cosmic accident, a chance explosion. There is no reason for which it exist. As for man, he is a freak of nature–a blind product of matter plus time plus chance. Man is just a lump of slime that evolved into rationality. There is no more purpose in life for the human race than for a species of insect; for both are the result of the blind interaction of chance and necessity.”
In my 31st letter on 3-18-20 I quote Francis Schaeffer who noted, “Darwin is saying that he gave up the New Testament because it was connected to the Old Testament. He gave up the Old Testament because it conflicted with his own theory. Did he have a real answer himself and the answer is no. At the end of his life we see that he is dehumanized by his position and on the other side we see that he never comes to the place of intellectual satisfaction for himself that his answers were sufficient.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning his loss of his Christian faith in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
In my 32nd letter on 4-18-20 quoted H.J. Blackham on where humanism leads “On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted, Current Events | TaggedBen Parkinson, Carl Sagan | Edit | Comments (0)
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (2)
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I wanted to reach out to you because of some of the troubling moral issues coming out of your administration.
John MacArthur gave a sermon in June of 2021 entitled “When Government Rewards Evil and Punishes Good” and in that sermon he makes the following points:
INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION OF ROMANS 13
GOVERNMENT CAN FORFEIT ITS AUTHORITY
THE WORLD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOSPEL
ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY IS PROGRESSING TOWARD A GLOBAL KINGDOM UNDER THE POWER OF SATAN
ONE FALSE WORLD RELIGION IS FINAL PLAY BY SATAN
REAL PERSECUTION CAN ONLY BE DONE BY GOVERNMENT
PERSECUTION IN BOOK OF DANIEL
THE LAW IS KING AND NOT THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
THERE IS A PLACE FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
DOES GOVERNMENT WIN?
Recently I read the story below about targeting of the TEA PARTY conservative groups by the IRS from Obama administration:
The 2013 lawsuit during the Barack Obama administration was over treatment of conservative groups who said they were singled out for extra IRS scrutiny on tax-exempt status applications.
“These are groups of law-abiding citizens who should have never had their First Amendment rights infringed upon by the IRS,” Jenny Beth Martin, president of the Tea Party Patriots umbrella group, said Wednesday. “These are groups that want the government to be accountable.”
The government has been used to persecuting people they don’t like for centuries! Let me just share a portion of that sermon by John MacArthur with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
PERSECUTION IN BOOK OF DANIEL
I want to show you another illustration of this in Daniel, in Daniel chapter 2. Daniel, though he is a Jew in exile in Babylon along with all the Jews that were taken there, God has elevated him because he interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. At the end of chapter 2, verse 46, “King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, did homage to Daniel, gave orders to present to him an offering and fragrant incense. The king answered Daniel and said, ‘Surely your God is a God of gods and a Lord of [lords] and a revealer of mysteries, since you have been able to reveal this mystery.’ Then the king promoted Daniel and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. And Daniel made request of the king, and appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego over the administration of the province of Babylon, while Daniel was at the king’s court.” You know for a while Nebuchadnezzar liked Daniel a lot because all his own fools, disguised as wise men, couldn’t answer any of his dilemmas. But he sounds like—almost like a believer here. Verse 47, “Your God is a God of gods and a Lord of [lords].”
Some time passed, probably some years. Chapter 3 gives us a different picture. Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten, apparently, about the declaration that the God of Daniel was the God of gods, and he “made an image of gold, the height of which was sixty cubits”—that would be ninety feet—the “width six cubits”—that would be nine feet—“and he set it on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent word to assemble the satraps, the prefects, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates, all the rulers of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.” And by the way it was an image of him.
Then they all came. In verse 4, “The herald loudly proclaimed: ‘To you the command is given, O people, nation and men of every language, that at the moment you hear the sound of the horn, the flute, the lyre, the trigon’”—another musical instrument, stringed instrument—“‘psaltery, bagpipe and all kinds of music, . . . fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king has set up. Whoever doesn’t fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire.’” So now Nebuchadnezzar has set himself up as god, and anybody who defies that is going to die.
So some of the “Chaldeans,” in verse 8, “came . . . and brought charges against the Jews.” They came, in verse 9, and they said to Nebuchadnezzar, “‘O king, live forever! You, O king, made a decree that every man’” should bow when they hear the music, “‘fall down and worship the golden image. And whoever doesn’t fall down and worship shall be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire. There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the administration of the province of Babylon, namely Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. These men, O king, have disregarded you; they do not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up.’
“Then Nebuchadnezzar in rage and anger gave orders to bring Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego; then these men were brought before the king. . . . ‘Is it true,’” he says, “‘that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I set up?’” Verse 16, they replied, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” This is civil disobedience: “We’re not worshiping your god; we’re not worshiping you. If it is to be the fire, let it be the fire.” Nebuchadnezzar was so infuriated by this that “his facial expression was altered,” and he gave “orders to heat the furnace seven times more.”
Well you know the rest of the story, right? Threw them in the furnace. In verse 25, “Look! I see four men loosed and walking in the midst of the fire without harm, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods!” And again in verse 28, Nebuchadnezzar says, “‘Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants who put their trust in Him, violating the king’s command, and yielding up their bodies so as not to serve or worship any god except their own God. Therefore I make a decree that any people, nation or tongue that speaks anything offensive against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego shall be torn limb from limb and their houses reduced to a rubbish heap, inasmuch as there is no other god who is able to deliver in this way.’ Then the king caused Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego to prosper in the province of Babylon.” This is getting to be a little bit repetitious—but he bounces back again. When it serves them well, government may tolerate the people of God; but when they are angry, they have the power of death in their hands.
Chapter 4 is incredible. It’s one of the great conversion stories in the Bible. It’s the conversion of Nebuchadnezzar, and it’s a first-person story. “Nebuchadnezzar the king to all the peoples, nations, and men of every language that live in all the earth: ‘May your peace abound! It has seemed good to me to declare the signs and wonders which the Most High God has done for me. How great are His signs and how mighty are His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and His dominion is from generation to generation.” He was hard to convince, but there’s a change in his attitude.
Then he gives his testimony; I won’t go through all of it. It’s an amazing testimony. He has a dream, he can’t figure out the meaning of the dream, Daniel tells him the meaning of the dream in verses 19 through 27. The dream is about him being cut down. It’s a dream of a tree; it’s him—he’s going to be cut down, chopped down, nothing left but a small stump. Why? Well because he needs to learn, verse 25, “that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever He wishes.”
So Daniel interprets the dream, and then in verse 27 says, “Let me give you some advice, O king”: “Break away now from your sins by doing righteousness and from your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, in case there may be a prolonging of your prosperity.” Here’s another opportunity for this guy to say what he says and actually believe it. All this happened to the king. This is the interpretation of the dream.
Verse 29, “twelve months later,” he’s forgotten it again. And he thinks he’s God, and he’s reflecting on it: “Is not this Babylon”—verse 30—“the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” It’s a soliloquy on his majesty. “While the word was in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: sovereignty has been removed from you. You’ll be driven away from mankind, your dwelling place will be with the beasts of the field. You’ll be given grass to eat like cattle, and seven [years, literally] will pass over until you recognize the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever He wishes.’ Immediately the word concerning Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled; he was driven away from mankind, began eating grass like cattle, his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair had grown like eagles’ feathers and nails like birds’ claws.” For seven years. That is humbling.
“At the end of the period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever; for His dominion is an everlasting dominion, His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing; He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, “What have You done?” At that time my reason returned to me. And my majesty and splendor were restored to me for the glory of my kingdom, and my counselors and my nobles began seeking me out; so I was reestablished in my sovereignty, and surpassing greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt and honor the King of heaven, for all His works are true and His ways just, and He’s able to humble those who walk in pride’”—yeah, he learned that. I think you’re going to see him in heaven. It’s a real conversion story.
—
The Book of Daniel is one of the most amazing prophetic books in the Bible and it predicts the coming of 4 world dominating powers starting with Babylon and ending with the Roman and critics have attacked the 6th century B.C authorship (around 530 B.C.) and have tried to push it as late as 160 B.C. When Rome came on the scene.
One of the pieces of evidence used for late authorship is the term “Chaldeans.” Jeffrey argues: “The use of the word kasdim (Chaldeans), not in the proper ethnic sense which it has, for example, in Jeremiah, but to mean a caste of wise men, points to a time when the word was commonly used for a class of priestly astrologers, diviners, or magicians, a sense the word has in the pages of Strabo or Diodorus Siculus, who wrote in the first century B.C. (p. 349).
Dr. Samuel Driver (1846-1914) agrees that the argument concerning the use of the term “Chaldeans” is very convincing. So much that he places it first in the list of his three strongest arguments that show that the book of Daniel was composed in Palestine “during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes” (pp. 47-56 of the Introduction).
How strong is this argument? On page 12 of Driver’s commentary, Driver himself takes exceptions to some of the assertions made by Jeffrey. Driver admits that in Daniel 5:30, and 9:1 the author of the book of Daniel did use the ethnic sense of the word “Chaldeans.” Then on the same page Driver admits this term “Chaldeans” is found “in Herodotus (Herodotus, Histories, 1.181-183, c. 440 B.C.), and is common afterwards in the classical writers” (p. 12). Furthermore, Driver also admits that evidence indicates that such a group of wise men as pictured in the book of Daniel did exist as a group as early as 2000 B.C. (p. 14).
Francis Schaeffer summarized Driver’s argument: “Remember this is his first strong argument. he is going to take the book of Daniel and throw away its historical date on the basis of these `so-called’ strong arguments. Now we have defined this question in regard to the term “Chaldeans.” The writer knew the ethnic sense. This group did exist from a long time before. About 90 years later everybody acknowledges that the word was used in this sense to the wise men. And so he is going to throw away the book of Daniel and its dating and all that it means on the basis that this specific group of wise men, who were well known from long before and afterwards, were not called this term in this 90-year span (530 B.C. to 440 B.C.). Now, once you word it this way, it doesn’t look so strong” (Francis Schaeffer’s five part series, Dr. Driver’s Criticism of the Book of Daniel, tape #2).
Is it any wonder that the bible critic J.J. Collins admits that the author’s use of the term “Chaldeans” cannot be used to date his material (Daniel, Hermeneia, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994, pp. 137-138). In fact, Jeffrey makes a similar error in his commentary on Daniel 10:1. He states: “Cyrus is here called `king of Persia.’ This may be merely a statement of fact, for he was king of Persia, but if it is meant as an official title, it is an anachronism in the mouth of Daniel. The title ‘king of Persia’, was Hellenistic usage and not the usage of the Achaemenid kings at this time” (p. 500).
Jeffrey overlooked the fact that Robert Dick Wilson contradicted this view expressly with what he found in the tablets of the Persian period (Robert Dick Wilson, “The Title `King of Persia’ in the Scriptures,” The Princeton Theological Review, Vol. 15, 1917, pp. 90-145). Wilson commented: “It is evident therefore, that there are thirty-eight distinct extra-biblical instances of the use of this title from 545 to about 400 B.C.; and that these instances are found in twenty different works by nineteen different persons (p. 100).”
This argument of Jeffrey’s is completely put to flight concerning Daniel 10:1. It shows how much many of these scholars continue to repeat the same old arguments. No doubt, Jeffrey had read this argument in Driver’s commentary (p. 152), but he had failed to read the refutation provided by Wilson seventeen years later.
Adrian Rogers noted the Bible is affirmed through historical accuracy. Do you remember the story about the handwriting on the wall that is found in the fifth chapter of Daniel? Belshazzar hosted a feast with a thousand of his lords and ladies. Suddenly, a gruesome hand appeared out of nowhere and began to write on a wall. The king was disturbed and asked for someone to interpret the writing. Daniel was found and gave the interpretation. After the interpretation, “Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.” (Daniel 5:29). Basing their opinion on Babylonian records, the historians claim this never happened. According to the records, the last king of Babylon was not Belshazzar, but a man named Nabonidas. And so, they said, the Bible is in error. There wasn’t a record of a king named Belshazzar. Well, the spades of archeologists continued to do their work. In 1853, an inscription was found on a cornerstone of a temple built by Nabonidas, to the god Ur, which read: “May I, Nabonidas, king of Babylon, not sin against thee. And may reverence for thee dwell in the heart of Belshazzar, my first-born favorite son.” From other inscriptions, it was learned that Belshazzar and Nabonidas were co-regents. Nabonidas traveled while Belshazzar stayed home to run the kingdom. Now that we know that Belshazzar and Nabonidas were co-regents, it makes sense that Belshazzar would say that Daniel would be the third ruler. What a marvelous nugget of truth tucked away in the Word of God!
PRESIDENT BIDEN YOU NEED TO REALIZE THE BIBLE IS HISTORICALLY ACCURATE AND CAN BE TRUSTED AND SHOULD BE THE BASIS FOR OUR MORALS IN THIS COUNTRY LIKE THE FOUNDING FATHERS ENVISIONED! Today your administration seems to believe that killing unborn babies is okay! What do you think the founders would have said about that!
—
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. I also respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children. I wanted to encourage you to investigate the work of Dr. Bernard Nathanson who like you used to be pro-abortion. I also want you to watch the You Tube series WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop. Also it makes me wonder what our the moral climate Of our nation is when we concentrate more on potential mistakes of the police and we let criminals back on the street so fast! Our national was founded of LEX REX and not REX LEX!
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity
Sunday Night Prime – Dr. Bernard Nathanson – Fr Groeschel, CFR with Fr …
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Francis Schaeffer pictured above
Larry King had John MacArthur as a guest on his CNN program several times.
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Max Brantley, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Arkansas Times, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (3)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (2)
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I wanted to reach out to you because of some of the troubling moral issues coming out of your administration.
Over and over on my blog I have written about your efforts as Vice President and President to attack legally the rights of our unborn babies in the USA. These views of yours are due to your allegiance to the humanist worldview which Francis Schaeffer and Tim LaHaye exposed in their books. Your vast support from humanist groups in the 2020 election proves my point. No wonder we have seen criminals let go and an effort by Democrats (namely VP Harris) to defund the police. The Bible recognizes the sinful nature of humans and calls for the authorities to have the power of the sword in Romans 13! However, there have been times when the IRS has been used against freedom of expression such as the past persecution of the Tea Party. The Founding Fathers did NOT think the King was above the law! Unfortunately many lawmakers today don’t care about the law very much it seems which is a result of loss of a Christian Consensus influence in our society!
America’s second-ever Catholic president supports abortion rights, leaving the bishops unsure about how to move forward.By Emma Green
MARCH 14, 2021
Archbishop Joseph Naumann is anxious about President Joe Biden’s soul. The two men are in some ways similar: cradle Catholics born in the 1940s who witnessed John F. Kennedy become America’s first Catholic president. Both found a natural home in the Democratic Party—in Naumann’s midwestern family, asking Catholics if they were Democrats was a redundancy. Naumann became a priest and Biden became a politician, but their paths really diverged over the issue of abortion. Now in his 70s, Naumann watched Biden—America’s second Catholic president—transform into a vocal supporter of abortion rights while competing for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Naumann runs the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas and also leads what the Catholic bishops describe as their pro-life activities. He has suggested that Biden should no longer call himself a devout Catholic. At the very least, Naumann says, Biden should stop receiving Communion, a holy sacrament in Catholic life.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recently convened a working group to discuss how the bishops should interact with Biden, and how they should deal with the challenge of having a visibly Catholic president who defies Church teachings on a central issue. Naumann was part of that group. Conflicts have already arisen: Naumann recently co-authored a statement expressing moral concerns about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was developed and tested using cell lines from aborted fetal tissue. He also joined a statement from a group of the country’s top bishops celebrating the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act, but called it “unconscionable that Congress has passed the bill without critical protections needed to ensure that billions of taxpayer dollars are used for life-affirming health care and not for abortion.”
John MacArthur gave a sermon in June of 2021 entitled “When Government Rewards Evil and Punishes Good” and in that sermon he makes the following points:
INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION OF ROMANS 13
GOVERNMENT CAN FORFEIT ITS AUTHORITY
THE WORLD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOSPEL
ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY IS PROGRESSING TOWARD A GLOBAL KINGDOM UNDER THE POWER OF SATAN
ONE FALSE WORLD RELIGION IS FINAL PLAY BY SATAN
REAL PERSECUTION CAN ONLY BE DONE BY GOVERNMENT
PERSECUTION IN BOOK OF DANIEL
THE LAW IS KING AND NOT THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
THERE IS A PLACE FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
DOES GOVERNMENT WIN?
Let me just share a portion of that sermon with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
One New Testament writer says that Romans 13 has “caused more unhappiness and misery . . . than any other . . . verses in the New Testament by the license they have given to tyrants . . . used to justify a host of horrendous abuses of individual human rights.” Hitler’s Holocaust, racism in the apartheid of South Africa, Cantrell says, “Both the Jews in Germany and blacks in South Africa were viewed as a threat to public health and national security. . . . “‘Trust us,’ said government . . . ‘we truly have your best interests at heart. All we want to do is help . . . keep you safe.’”
Government has already become the purveyor of wickedness. Government is a murderer, slaughtering millions of infants in abortion; elevating the LGBTQ agenda, the bizarre transgender deception. The culture has become anti-truth, we all know that. The truth is the biggest threat to lies. William Pitt, well-known name in English history, said this: “Necessity (i.e., public health, common good) is the plea [of] every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants. “Get people afraid, and they’ll do whatever you want. A fearful society will always comply; panicking people will believe anything” [(Cantrell)].
“During the gruesome and bloody days of the French Revolution, when 40,000 innocent [people] lost their heads,” you would be interested to know who was operating the guillotine: the Committee for Public Safety [(Cantrell)]. One writer says, “Governments now get voted into power by promising to oversee housing, education, medicine, the economy, [the] currency, a minimum income, food, water, land, and the list goes on. The government become a parent, and the citizens are dependents. The government in this role becomes a monstrous juggernaut of bureaucracy, devouring taxes and trying to regulate every detail of life.” And they definitely want to regulate the church and silence its proclamation.
In his book The Glorious Body of Christ, Kuiper wrote, “Our age is one of ecclesiastical passivism. . . . When a church ceases to be militant it also ceases to be a church of Jesus Christ. . . . A truly militant church stands opposed to the world both without its walls and within. . . . Time and again in its history the church has found it necessary to assert its sovereignty over against usurpations by the state.” And Kuiper gave some biblical examples, like when King Saul or King Uzziah usurped the priesthood, stating, “In both cases a representative of the state was severely punished for encroaching [on] the sovereignty of the church.”
“Lord Macaulay of England summed up the Puritan reputation this way” [(Cantrell)]. He said of the Puritans, “He bowed himself in the dust before his Maker; [as] he set his foot on the neck of his king.” Kuiper says, “Ours is an age of state totalitarianism. All over the world statism is [rising] . . . . In consequence, in many lands the church finds itself utterly at the mercy of the state whose mercy often proves cruelty, while in others the notion is rapidly gaining ground that the church exists and operates by the state’s permission.” We do not operate by the state’s permission; we operate by the Lord’s command.
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Francis Schaeffer discusses this more in his fine book CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO:
PAGE 437
CHAPTER 3 THE DESTRUCTION OF FAITH AND FREEDOM
And now it is all gone!
In most law schools today almost no one studies William Blackstone unless he or she is taking a course in the history of law. We live in a secularized society and in secularized, sociological law. By sociological law we mean law that has no fixed base but law in which a group of people decides what is sociologically good for society at the given moment; and wha they arbitrarily decide becomes law. Oliver Wendall Holmes (1841-1935) made totally clear that this was his position. Frederick Moore Vinson (1890-1953), former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, said, “Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes.” Those who hold this position themselves call it sociological law.
As the new sociological law has moved away from the original base of the Creator giving the “inalienable rights,” etc., it has been natural that this sociological law has then also moved away from the Constitution. William Bentley Ball, in his paper entitled “Religious Liberty: The Constitutional Frontier,” says:
i propose that secularism militates against religious liberty, and indeed against personal freedoms generally, for two reasons: first, the familiar fact that secularism does not recognize the existence of the “higher law”; second, because, that being so, secularism tends toward decisions based on the pragmatic public policy of the moment and inevitably tends to resist the submitting of those policies to the “higher” criteria of a constitution.
This moving away from the Constitution is not only by court rulings, for example the First Amendment rulings, which are the very reversal of the original purpose of the First Amendment (see pp. 433, 434), but in other ways as well. Quoting again from the same paper by William Bentley Ball:
Our problem consists also, as perhaps this paper has well enough indicated, of more general constitutional delegation of legislative power and ultra vires. The first is where the legislature hands over its powers to agents through the conferral of regulatory power unaccompanied by strict standards. The second is where the agents make up powers on their own–assume powers not given them by the legislature. Under the first, the government of laws largely disappears and the government of men largely replaces it. Under the second, agents’ personal “home-made law replaces the law of the elected representatives of the people.
Naturally, this shift from the Judeo-Christian basis for law and the shift away from the restraints of the Constitution automatically militates against religious liberty. Mr. Ball closes his paper:
Fundamentally, in relation to personal liberty, the Constitution was aimed at restraint of the State. Today, in case after case relating to religious liberty, we encounter the bizarre presumption that it is the other way around; that the State is justified in whatever actions, and that religion bears a great burden of proof to overcome that presumption.
It is our job, as Christian lawyers, to destroy that presumption at every turn.
As lawyers discuss the changes in law in the United States, often they speak of the influence of the laws involved in the reentrance of the southern states into the national government after the Civil War. These indeed must be considered. But they were not the reason for the drastic change in law in our country. This reason was the takeover by the totally other world view which never have given the form and freedom in government we have had in Northern Europe (including the United States). That is the central factor in the change.
PAGE 439
It is parallel to the difference between modern science beginning with Copernicus and Galileo and the materialistic science which took over the last century. Materialistic thought would never have produced modern science. Modern science was produced on the Christian base. That is, because an intelligent Creator had created the universe we can in some measure understand the universe and there is, therefore, a reason for observation and experimentation to be pursued.
Then there was a shift into materialistic science based on a philosophic change to the materialistic concept of final reality. This shift was based on no addition to the facts known. It was a choice, in faith, to see things that way. No clearer expression of this could be given than Carl Sagan’s arrogant statement on public television–made without any scientific proof for the statement–to 140 million viewers: “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever was or ever will be.” He opened the series, COSMOS, with this essentially creedal declaration and went on to build every subsequent conclusion upon it.
There is exactly the same parallel in law. The materialistic-energy, chance concept of final reality never would have produced the form and freedom in government we have in this country and in other Reformation countries. But now it has arbitrarily and arrogantly supplanted the historic Judeo-Christian Consensus that provided the base for form and freedom in government. The Judeo-Christian consensus gave greater freedoms than the world has ever known, but it also contained the freedoms so that they did not pound society to pieces. The materialistic concept of reality would not have produced the form-freedom balance, and now that it has taken over it cannot maintain the balance. It has destroyed it.
Will Durant and his wife Ariel together wrote The Story of Civilization. The Durants received the 1976 Humanist Pioneer Award. In The Humanist magazine of February 1977, Will Durant summed up the humanist problem with regard to personal ethics and social order: “Moreover, we shall find it no easy task to mold a natural ethic strong enough to maintain moral restraint and social order without the support of supernatural consolations, hopes, and fears.”
Poor Will Durant! It is not just difficult, it is impossible. He should have remembered the quotation he and Ariel Durant gave from the agnostic Renan in their book The Lessons of History. According to the Durants, Renan said in 1866: “If Rationalism wishes to govern the world without regard to the religious needs of the soul, the experience of the French Revolution is there to teach us the consequences of such a blunder.” And the Durants themselves say in the same context: “There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.”
PAGE 440
Along with the decline of the Judie-Christian consensus we have come to a new definition and connotation of “pluralism.” Until recently it meant that the Christianity flowing from the Reformation is not now as dominant in the country and in society as it was in the early days of the nation. After about 1848 the great viewpoints not shaped by Reformation Christianity. This, of course, is the situation which exists today. Thus as we stand for religious freedom today, we need to realize that this must include a general religious freedom from the control of the state for all religion. It will not mean just freedom for those who are Christians. It is then up to Christians to show that Christianityis the Truth of total reality in the open marketplace of freedom.
This greater mixture in the United States, however, is now used as an excuse for the new meaning and connotation of pluralism. It now is used to mean that all types of situations are spread out before us, and that it really is up to each individual to grab one or the other on the way past, according to the whim of personal preference. What you take is only a matter of personal choice, with one choice as valid as another. Pluralism has come to mean that everything is acceptable. This new concept of pluralism suddenly is everywhere. There is no right or wrong; it is just a matter of your personal preference. On a recent SIXTY MINUTES program on television, for example, the questions of euthanasia of the old and the growing of marijuana as California’s largest paying crop were presented this way. One choice is as valid as another. It is just a matter of personal preference. This new definition and connotation of pluralism is presented in many forms, not only in personal ethics, but in society’s ethics and in the choices concerning law,
PAGE 440
Now I have a question. In these shifts that have come in law, where have the Christian lawyers been? I really ask you that. The shift has come gradually, but it has only come to its peak in the last 40 or 50 years. Where have the Christian lawyers been? Surely the Christian lawyers should have been the ones to have sounded the trumpet clear and loud, not just in bits and pieces but looking at the totality of what was occurring. Now, a nonlawyer like myself believes I have a right to feel let down because the Christian lawyers did not blow the trumpets clearly between, let us say, 1940 and 1970.
PAGE 441
When I wrote HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? From 1974 to 1976 I worked out of a knowledge of secular philosophy. I moved from the results in secular philosophy, to the results in liberal theology, to the results in the arts, and then I turned to the courts, and especially the Supreme Court. I read Oliver Wendell Holmes and others, and I must say, I was totally appalled by what I read. It was an exact parallel to what i had already known so well from my years of study in philosophy, theology, and the other disciplines.
In the book and film series HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? I used the Supreme Court abortion case as the clearest illustration of arbitrary sociiological law. But it was only the clearest illustration. The law is shot through with this kind of ruling. It is similar to choosing Fletcher’s situational ethics and point to it as the clearest illustration of how our society now functions with no fixed ethics. This is only the clearest illustration because in many ways our society functions on unfixed, situational ethics. The abortion case in law is exactly the same. It is only the clearest case. Law in this country has become situational law, using the term Fletcher used for his ethics. That is, a small group of people decide arbitrarily what, from their viewpoint, is for the good of society at that precise moment and they make it law, binding the whole society by their personal arbitrary decisions.
But of course! What would we expect? These things are the natural, inevitable results of the material-energy, humanistic concept of the final basic reality. From the material-energy, chance concept of final reality, final reality is, and must be b it nature, silent as to values, principles, or any basis for law. There is no way to ascertain “the ought:” from “the is.” Not only should we have known what this would have produced, but on the basis of this viewpoint of reality, we should have recognized that there are no other conclusions that this view could produce. It is a natural result of really believing that the basic reality of all things is merely material-energy, shaped into its present form by impersonal chance.
No, we must say that the Christians in the legal profession did not ring the bell, and we are indeed very, very far down the road toward a totally humanistic culture. At this moment we are in a humanistic culture, but we are happily not in a totally humanistic culture. But what we must realize is that the drift has been all in this direction. if it is not turned around we will move very rapidly into a totally humanistic culture.
PAGE 442
The law, and especially the courts, is the vehicle to force this total humanistic way of thinking upon the entire population.This is what has happened. The abortion law is a perfect example. The Supreme Court abortion ruling invalidated abortion lawsin all fifty states, even though it seems clear that in 1973 the majority of Americans were against abortion. It did not matter. The Supreme Court arbitrarily ruled that abortion was legal, and overnight they overthrew the state laws and forced their will on the majority, even though their ruling was arbitrary both legally and medically. Thus law and the courts became the vehicle for forcing a totally secular concept on the population.
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. I also respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children. I wanted to encourage you to investigate the work of Dr. Bernard Nathanson who like you used to be pro-abortion. I also want you to watch the You Tube series WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop. Also it makes me wonder what our the moral climate Of our nation is when we concentrate more on potential mistakes of the police and we let criminals back on the street so fast! Our national was founded of LEX REX and not REX LEX!
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
PS: In this series of letters John MacArthur covers several points. In the first letter, he quotes you saying that the greatest threat to America—he said on one occasion—is systemic racism, which doesn’t exist; he said white supremacy, which doesn’t exist with any power; and then he said global warming, which doesn’t exist either, and if it does, God’s in charge of it.
In reality the greatest threat to this nation is the government, the government. And I want to show you how we are to understand that. Turn to Romans 13
In the 2nd letter, Dr. MacArthur noted When government turns the divine design on its head and protects those who do evil and makes those who do good afraid, it forfeits its divine purpose
In the 3rd letter Dr. MacArthur noted The world is the enemy of the gospel. The world is the enemy of the church. I pointed out that this manifests itself today in the form of HUMANISM.
In the 4th letter Dr. MacArthur points out how much today the devil is having his way in our society and that the Bible predicts that these will get worse!
In the 5th letter Francis Schaeffer points out “The HUMANIST MANIFESTOS not only say that humanism is a religion, but the Supreme Court has declared it to be a religion. The 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins specifically defines secular humanism as a religion equivalent to theistic and other non theistic religions.”
In the 6th letter Dr. MacArthur noted God has given government the sword, the power; and when they prostitute that power and they begin to punish those who do good and protect those who do evil, they wield that power against the people of God.
In the 7th letter Dr. MacArthur asserted, Throughout history, even in the Western world, people lived under what was called the divine right of kings. Kings were believed to have had a divine right. This was absolute monarchy. What broke that was basically the Reformers. The Reformers—a little phrase was “the law is king,” not the man.
In the 8th letter Dr. MacArthur noted that today the United States “Government has already become the purveyor of wickedness. Government is a murderer, slaughtering millions of infants in abortion.”
Judge gives preliminary OK to $3.5M settlement of IRS case is discussed about the 2013 lawsuit during the Barack Obama administration over treatment of conservative groups who said they were singled out for extra IRS scrutiny on tax-exempt status applications. Then Dr. MacArthur talks about persecution in the Book of Daniel.
“These are groups of law-abiding citizens who should have never had their First Amendment rights infringed upon by the IRS,” Jenny Beth Martin, president of the Tea Party Patriots umbrella group, said Wednesday. “These are groups that want the government to be accountable.”
The government has been used to persecuting people they don’t like for centuries! Let me just share a portion of that sermon by John MacArthur with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
Francis Schaeffer, who died in 1984, says, “If [there’s] no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God.” And that point is exactly when the early Christians performed their acts of civil disobedience, even when it cost them their lives. “Acts of State which contradict God’s [Laws] are illegitimate and acts of tyranny. Tyranny is ruling without the sanction of God. To resist tyranny is to honour God. . . . The bottom line is that at a certain point there is not only the right, but the duty to disobey the State.”
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity
Sunday Night Prime – Dr. Bernard Nathanson – Fr Groeschel, CFR with Fr …
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Francis Schaeffer pictured above
Larry King had John MacArthur as a guest on his CNN program several times.
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Max Brantley, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Arkansas Times, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (3)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (2)
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I wanted to reach out to you because of some of the troubling moral issues coming out of your administration.
John MacArthur gave a sermon in June of 2021 entitled “When Government Rewards Evil and Punishes Good” and in that sermon he makes the following points:
INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION OF ROMANS 13
GOVERNMENT CAN FORFEIT ITS AUTHORITY
THE WORLD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOSPEL
ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY IS PROGRESSING TOWARD A GLOBAL KINGDOM UNDER THE POWER OF SATAN
ONE FALSE WORLD RELIGION IS FINAL PLAY BY SATAN
REAL PERSECUTION CAN ONLY BE DONE BY GOVERNMENT
PERSECUTION IN BOOK OF DANIEL
THE LAW IS KING AND NOT THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
THERE IS A PLACE FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
DOES GOVERNMENT WIN?
Let me just share a portion of that sermon with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
THE LAW IS KING AND NOT THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA
The point that I want to make out of this is it’s always in the power of monarchs to do damage to the people of God, always. That is why Proverbs 16:12 says, “It is an abomination for kings to commit wickedness,” because it turns everything upside-down. Only in righteousness is a throne established.
Look, in Acts chapter 4, the Jewish leaders said to the apostles, “Stop preaching!” In Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar said, “Stop worshiping!” Again, in Daniel 6—we didn’t read it—the rulers said, “Stop praying, or we’re going to throw you into”—what?—“the lions’ den.” The governor of California says, “Stop singing! Stop hugging!” But God’s people don’t stop because no—listen to me—no human authority is absolute. No human authority is absolute. I’ll say it again: No human authority is absolute. All human authorities are only authorities as long as they function in the way God designed them; and when they don’t function that way anymore, but they turn it on its head and do it in the reverse form, they yield up that God-given authority. Obviously the fallout is horrendous.
I love this little paragraph by Doug Wilson talking about Peter. He said, “The man who [told us to submit to the government] was soon to be executed by the magistrate as someone who was a grave threat to the civil order. This [is] the same man who was broken out of jail by an angel, . . . who disappeared from the book of Acts as a wanted man. The guards who lost him were executed because of his disappearance. This was the man who was in jail in the first place because he was a leader of Christians, and who earlier had told the Sanhedrin that he [would not] quit preaching, no matter what they said. And he was the man who was writing this letter to prepare law-abiding Christians for the time of persecution that was coming, in which time they would be accused of being [rebellious]. So whatever his words in chapter 2 mean, they [had] to be consistent with the life of the [man] who wrote them.” You submit when the government functions in the way God designed it.
So we are beginning to see persecution from government. This is the most formidable persecution: COVID, LGBTQ, transgender, social justice—all these new ideologies are now going to become the only acceptable moral standards. And if you don’t accept them, you’re going to be the enemy of the government. Truth, the Bible, Scripture is going to be canceled. The government’s taking control; they want to take control of absolutely everything. The church has become the main enemy of the government—nothing new.
Some helpful insights from Tim Cantrell over in South Africa, one of our missionaries: “In July 1933, during Hitler’s first summer in power, a young German pastor named Joachim Hossenfelder preached a sermon in . . . Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin’s most important church. He used the words of Romans 13 to remind worshippers of the importance of obedience to those in authority.” This is 1933. “The church was [all decked out] with Nazi banners . . . its pews packed with the Nazi . . . faithful [and soldiers in uniform].” Earlier that same year, Friedrich Dibelius, “a German bishop and one of the highest Protestant officials in the country” also preached on Romans 13 “to justify all the Nazi seizure[s] of power and [brutal] policies,” and misquoted Martin Luther himself about the powers of the state. “Three days” after this sermon by Dibelius, “the German parliament dissolved,” and Hitler took over. Within a few years, six million Jews had been slaughtered, and the world devastated by World War II.
Throughout history, even in the Western world, people lived under what was called the divine right of kings. Kings were believed to have had a divine right. This was absolute monarchy. What broke that was basically the Reformers. The Reformers—a little phrase was “the law is king,” not the man. Because of the myth of the divine right of kings, it became the justification for the slaughter and the massacre of countless children of God.
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Recently I read this:
Joe Biden Leaves God Out of the National Day of Prayer
President Joseph Biden mentions his Catholic faith frequently. We’ve heard him cite both the pope and Saint Francis. At his inauguration, he ran through a litany of promises about love and healing and decency, and other things no one could object to, prefaced by, “Before God and all of you, I give you my word.” But when it came time for his first proclamation for a National Day of Prayer, his administration chose to leave God out of it.
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Take a look below in these words by Francis Schaeffer concerning our founding fathers and their view of how God should be in a center place in our nation!
John MacArthur’s statement The Reformers—a little phrase was “the law is king,” not the man is also referred to in this in the book CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO by Francis Schaeffer.
The Founding Fathers of the United States (in varying degrees) understood very well the relationship between one’s world view and government. John Witherspoon (1723-1794) has always been important to me personally, and he is even more so since I have read just recently a biography of him by David Walker Woods. John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister and president of what is now Princeton University, was the only pastor to sign the Declaration of Independence. He was a very important man during the founding of the country. He linked the Christian thinking represented by the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) with the work he did both on the Declaration of Independence and on countless very important committees in the founding of the country. This linkage of Christian thinking and the concepts of government were not incidental but fundamental. John Witherspoon knew and stood consciously in the stream of Samuel Rutherford, a Scotsman who lived from 1600-1661 and who wrote Lex Rex in 1644. Lex rex means “law is king”—a phrase that was absolutely earthshaking. Prior to that it had been rex lex, the king is law. In Lex Rex he wrote that the law, and no one else, is king. Therefore, the heads of government are under the law, not a law unto themselves.
[Thomas] Jefferson, who was a deist, and others, knew they stood in the stream of John Locke (1632-1704), and while Locke had secularized Lex Rex he had drawn heavily from it. These men really knew what they were doing. We are not reading back into history what was not there. We cannot say too strongly that they really understood the basis of the government which they were founding. Think of this great flaming phrase: “certain inalienable rights.” Who gives the rights? The state? Then they are not inalienable because the state can change them and take them away. Where do the rights come from? They understood that they were founding the country upon the concept that goes back into the Judeo-Christian thinking that there is Someone there who gave the inalienable rights. Another phrase also stood there: “In God we trust.” With this there is no confusion of what they were talking about. They publicly recognized that law could be king because there was a Law Giver, a Person to give the inalienable rights.
The election of William Linn as first Chaplain of the House on May 1, 1789, continued the tradition established by the Second Continental Congress of each day’s proceedings opening with a prayer by a chaplain.
Most people do not realize that there was a paid chaplain in Congress even before the Revolutionary War ended. Also we find that prior to the founding of the national congress all the early provincial congresses in all thirteen colonies always opened with prayer. And from the very beginning, prayer opened the national congress. These men truly understood what they were doing. They knew they were building on the Supreme Being who was the Creator, the final reality. And they knew that without that foundation everything in the Declaration of Independence and all that followed would be sheer unadulterated nonsense. These were brilliant men who understood exactly what was involved.
Saying grace before carving the turkey at Thanksgiving dinner in the home of Earle Landis in Neffsville, Pennsylvania. (1942)
As soon as the war was over they called the first Thanksgiving Day. Do you realize that the first Thanksgiving Day to thank God in this country was called immediately by the Congress at the end of the war? Witherspoon’s sermon on that day shows their perspective: “A republic once equally poised must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty.” Don’t you wish that everybody in America would recite that, and truly understand it, every morning? “A republic once equally poised must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty.” Earlier in a speech Witherspoon had stressed: “He is the best friend of American liberty who is most sincere and active in promoting pure and undefiled religion.” And for Witherspoon, and the cultural consensus of that day, that meant Christianity as it had come to them through the Reformation. This was the consensus which then gave religious freedom to all— including the “free thinkers” of that day and the humanists of our day.
This concept was the same as William Penn (1644-1718) had expressed earlier: “If we are not governed by God, then we will be ruled by tyrants.” This consensus was as natural as breathing in the United States at that time. We must not forget that many of those who came to America from Europe came for religious purposes. As they arrived, most of them established their own individual civil governments based upon the Bible. It is, therefore, totally foreign to the basic nature of America at the time of the writing of the Constitution to argue a separation doctrine that implies a secular state.
When the First Amendment was passed it only had two purposes. The first purpose was that there would be no established, national church for the united thirteen states. To say it another way: There would be no “Church of the United States.” James Madison (1751-1836) clearly articulated this concept of separation when explaining the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty. He said that the First Amendment to the Constitution was prompted because “the people feared one sect might obtain a preeminence, or two combine together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform.”
Nevertheless, a number of the individual states had state churches, and even that was not considered in conflict with the First Amendment. At the outbreak of the American Revolution, nine of the thirteen colonies had conferred special benefits upon one church to the exclusion of others. In all but one of the thirteen states, the states taxed the people to support the preaching of the gospel and to build churches. It was not until 1798 that the Virginia legislature repealed all its laws supporting churches. In Massachusetts the Massachusetts Constitution was not amended until 1853 to eliminate the tax-supported church provisions.
The second purpose of the First Amendment was the very opposite from what is being made of it today. It states expressly that government should not impede or interfere with the free practice of religion.
Those were the two purposes of the First Amendment as it was written.
The First Amendment has a dual aspect. It not only ‘forestalls compulsion by law of the acceptance of any creed or the practice of any form of worship’ but also ‘safeguards the free exercise of the chosen form of religion.’
Today the separation of church and state in America is used to silence the church.
When Christians speak out on issues, the hue and cry from the humanist state and media is that Christians, and all religions, are prohibited from speaking since there is a separation of church and state. The way the concept is used today is totally reversed from the original intent. It is not rooted in history. The modern concept of separation is an argument for a total separation of religion from the state. The consequence of the acceptance of this doctrine leads to the removal of religion as an influence in civil government. This fact is well illustrated by John W. Whitehead in his book The Second American Revolution. It is used today as a false political dictum in order to restrict the influence of Christian ideas.
As Franky Schaeffer V says in the Plan for Action:
“It has been convenient and expedient for the secular humanist, the materialist, the so-called liberal, the feminist, the genetic engineer, the bureaucrat, the Supreme Court Justice, to use this arbitrary division between church and state as a ready excuse. It is used, as an easily identifiable rallying point, to subdue the opinions of that vast body of citizens who represent those with religious convictions. ”
To have suggested the state separated from religion and religious influence would have amazed the Founding Fathers. The French Revolution that took place shortly afterwards, with its continuing excesses and final failure leading quickly to Napoleon and an authoritative rule, only emphasized the difference between the base upon which the United States was founded and the base upon which the French Revolution was founded. History is clear and the men of that day understood it. Terry Eastland said in Commentary Magazine:
As a matter of historical fact, the Founding Fathers believed that the public interest was served by the promotion of religion. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which set aside federal property in the territory for schools and which was passed again by Congress in 1789, is instructive. “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind,” read the act, “schools and the means of learning shall forever be encouraged.”
Chief Justice of New York: “We are Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity.”
In 1811 the New York state court upheld an indictment for blasphemous utterances against Christ, and in its ruling, given by Chief Justice Kent, the court said, “We are Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity.” Fifty years later this same court said that “Christianity may be conceded to be the established religion.”
The Pennsylvania state court also affirmed the conviction of a man on charges of blasphemy, here against the Holy Scriptures. The Court said: “Christianity, general Christianity is, and always has been, a part of the common law of Pennsylvania . . . not Christianity founded on any particular religious tenets; nor Christianity with an established church and tithes and spiritual courts; but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men.”
The establishment of Protestant Christianity was one not only of law but also, and far more importantly, of culture. Protestant Christianity supplied the nation with its “system of values”—to use the modern phrase—and would do so until the 1920’s when the cake of Protestant custom seemed most noticeably to begin crumbling.
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As we continue to examine the question of law in relation to the founding of the country, we next encounter Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780). William Blackstone was an English jurist who in the 1760s wrote a very famous work called Commentaries on the Laws of England. By the time the Declaration of Independence was signed, there were probably more copies of his Commentaries in America than in Britain. Commentaries shaped the perspective of American law at that time, and when you read them it is very clear exactly upon what that law was based.
To William Blackstone there were only two foundations for law, nature and revelation, and he stated clearly that he was speaking of the “holy Scripture.” That was William Blackstone. And up to the recent past not to have been a master of William Blackstone’s Commentaries would have meant that you would not have graduated from law school.
There were other well-known lawyers who spelled these things out with total clarity. Joseph Story in his 1829 inaugural address as Dane Professor of Law at Harvard University said, “There never has been a period in which Common Law did not recognize Christianity as laying at its foundation.”
Concerning John Adams (1735-1826) Terry Eastland says:
. . . most people agreed that our law was rooted, as John Adams had said, in a common moral and religious tradition, one that stretched back to the time Moses went up on Mount Sinai. Similarly almost everyone agreed that our liberties were God-given and should be exercised responsibly. There was a distinction between liberty and license.
What we find then as we look back is that the men who founded the United States of America really understood that upon which they were building their concepts of law and the concepts of government. And until the takeover of our government and law by this other entity, the materialistic, humanistic, chance world view, these things remained the base of government and law. (PAGE 436)
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. I also respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children. I wanted to encourage you to investigate the work of Dr. Bernard Nathanson who like you used to be pro-abortion. I also want you to watch the You Tube series WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop. Also it makes me wonder what our the moral climate Of our nation is when we concentrate more on potential mistakes of the police and we let criminals back on the street so fast! Our national was founded of LEX REX and not REX LEX!
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
PS: In this series of letters John MacArthur covers several points. In the first letter, he quotes you saying that the greatest threat to America—he said on one occasion—is systemic racism, which doesn’t exist; he said white supremacy, which doesn’t exist with any power; and then he said global warming, which doesn’t exist either, and if it does, God’s in charge of it.
In reality the greatest threat to this nation is the government, the government. And I want to show you how we are to understand that. Turn to Romans 13
In the 2nd letter, Dr. MacArthur noted When government turns the divine design on its head and protects those who do evil and makes those who do good afraid, it forfeits its divine purpose
In the 3rd letter Dr. MacArthur noted The world is the enemy of the gospel. The world is the enemy of the church. I pointed out that this manifests itself today in the form of HUMANISM.
In the 4th letter Dr. MacArthur points out how much today the devil is having his way in our society and that the Bible predicts that these will get worse!
In the 5th letter Francis Schaeffer points out “The HUMANIST MANIFESTOS not only say that humanism is a religion, but the Supreme Court has declared it to be a religion. The 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins specifically defines secular humanism as a religion equivalent to theistic and other non theistic religions.”
In the 6th letter Dr. MacArthur noted God has given government the sword, the power; and when they prostitute that power and they begin to punish those who do good and protect those who do evil, they wield that power against the people of God.
In the 7th letter Dr. MacArthur asserted, Throughout history, even in the Western world, people lived under what was called the divine right of kings. Kings were believed to have had a divine right. This was absolute monarchy. What broke that was basically the Reformers. The Reformers—a little phrase was “the law is king,” not the man.
In the 8th letter Dr. MacArthur noted that today the United States “Government has already become the purveyor of wickedness. Government is a murderer, slaughtering millions of infants in abortion.”
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity
Sunday Night Prime – Dr. Bernard Nathanson – Fr Groeschel, CFR with Fr …
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Francis Schaeffer pictured above
Larry King had John MacArthur as a guest on his CNN program several times.
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Max Brantley, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Arkansas Times, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (3)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (2)
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
Programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, along with the tax code’s healthcare exclusion, have created a system where consumers directly pay for only about 10 percent of the care they receive.
We think it’s normal and appropriate for either the government or an insurance company to foot the bill.
Is it possible, though, to put the toothpaste back in the tube? Can we unwind the bad government policies that have undermined market forces?
There are certainly big-picture reforms that would be helpful. Genuine entitlement reform could address the problems with Medicare and Medicaid, and fundamental tax reform could get rid of the healthcare exclusion.
But progress is possible even without major policy change.
Reason interviewed a doctor, Lee Gross, who decided to set up a practice based on “direct primary care,” which means no involvement from government or insurance companies. Just health consumers and health providers directly buying and selling.
Here’s some of what he said about this market-based approach.
When I was in the fee-for-service system, I felt like I was playing a game of Whac-A-Mole with Medicare. …Eventually we just said, “No more.” …the epiphany was “Why are we inserting so many people at the primary care level between the doctor and the patient? Why are we insuring primary care?” The more people that you insert between the doctor and patient, the more expensive it gets, the more cumbersome it gets…we created one of the first direct primary care practices in the country. …essentially it’s a membership-based primary care program. …Once a patient is a member of our practice, anything that we can do within the four walls of our office is included at no additional charge. …Insurance is good for the big stuff. It’s not good for the little stuff. It’s too complicated. What we do in direct primary care is we make the predictable things affordable for everybody. We take the stuff that you’re going to need on an everyday basis and we put affordable price tags on it, and we say you don’t need your insurance for this. In fact, the insurance makes it more expensive. …You need your homeowners insurance if your house burns down. You don’t need it to mow the lawn.
The good news is that Dr. Gross’ practice is part of a growing movement.
Direct primary care is absolutely a growing movement. …There’s well over 1,500 practices around the country… There are some regulatory barriers that get in the way of expanding this model. …if we’re looking for the ideal health care system, we want to see three pillars. We want to see lower cost, better quality, and more choices. You cannot have all three of those in a government-run system. You can only have those in a free market capitalist system.
Indeed, I’ve shared previous examples of this phenomenon from Maine and North Carolina.
And it even works for surgery, as you can see from this must-watch video from Reason.
Let’s now circle back to some analysis of what’s wrong with the current system.
John Stossel explained a few years ago how government-encouraged over-insurance causes problems.
Someone else paying changes our behavior. We don’t shop around. We don’t ask, “Do I really need that test?” “Is there a place where it’s cheaper?” Hospitals and doctors don’t try very hard to do things cheaply. Imagine if you had “grocery insurance.” You’d buy expensive foods; supermarkets would never have sales.Everyone would spend more. Insurance coverage—third-party payment—is revered by the media and socialists (redundant?) but is a terrible way to pay for things. Today, 7 in 8 health care dollars are paid by Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance companies. Because there’s no real health care market, costs rose 467 percent over the last three decades. By contrast, prices fell in the few medical areas not covered by insurance, like plastic surgery and LASIK eye care. Patients shop around, forcing health providers to compete.
The final couple of sentences are extremely important.
As illustrated by this data from Mark Perry, there are a few parts of the health care system where there’s little or no third-party payer.
And what do we find? Prices go down rather than up.
For all intents and purposes, the goal should be to make health insurance more like homeowners insurance or auto insurance.
Speaking of the latter, David Graham compared market-driven auto insurance and government-subsidized health insurance.
There are…similarities between health care and car ownership… We can go for many years with predictable spending on both cars and medical care until — out of the blue — something terrible happens. For that reason, we value insurance for both. But there’s a key difference… Car insurance, while not a trivial expense, is a relatively small share of the total cost of owning a car. According to the AAA, the average premium was $1,023, just under 12 percent of the total cost of ownership. Even excluding depreciation, insurance is just one-fifth of the total cost. In other words, we do not expect auto insurers to pay claims for most of the cost of operating and maintaining a car. Health care is completely the opposite. …Insurance adds administrative costs and bureaucratic interference. …Left to our own devices, we would never buy coverage for every single medical expense.
The moral of the story is that government intervention has made America’s health system a mess.
Unsurprisingly, many politicians say the answer it to have even more government (which is how we got Obamacare).
P.S. In less than eight minutes, I explain the economics of third-party payer in this speech.
“I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible,” economist Milton Friedman once said. So the Nobel Prize winner would undoubtedly be concerned this year asTaxmageddon, the one-year $494 billion tax increase that is poised to strike the economy in January approaches.
Friedman’s opposition to taxes was based on the idea that governments were inefficient in everything they did. “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand,” he quipped. By limiting government resources, he hoped to limit the size and scope of government.
Instead, the coming of Taxmageddon would make the federal government even more intrusive and influential. As such, it’s already slowing job creation, generating economic uncertainty, and reducing productive investment.
Friedman would also warn us about the dangers of Obamacare.
“The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus,” he explained. “There is no alternative way so far discovered at improving the lot of ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.”
Friedman warned that government involvement would lead to socialized medicine and that it would be “very much against the interests of patients, of physicians, and of other health care personnel.” Why? Because “you invariably get lower quality and a lower quantity of medical care.”
In one of his most famous quotes, Friedman pointed out that “there’s no free lunch.” Every government “benefit” is paid for by somebody.
Friedman would have been 100 years old today. His wise counsel is missed, but the lessons he taught apply just as much to today’s debates as they did during his lifetime.
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I have written about Obamacare over and over again on this blog. Dan Mitchell has shared many funny cartoons about Obamacare too. Milton Friedman has spoken out about government healthcare many times in the past and his film series FREE TO CHOOSE is on You Tube and I encourage you to watch it. It is clear that the federal government debt is growing so much that it is endangering us because if things keep going like they are now we will not have any money left for the national defense because we are so far in debt as a nation.
__________ Enzi statement on the Supreme Court’s King Vs. Burwell decision 5 Takeaways From Today’s Supreme Court Ruling on Obamacare Wicker Comments on King v Burwell Supreme Court Decision Senator Lankford Discusses the King v. Burwell Supreme Court Decision Congressman Steve King Response to SCOTUS King v. Burwell Ruling Obamacare and the Odious Anti-Constitutionalism of […]
Open letter to President Obama (Part 718) (Emailed to White House on 6-25-13.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get […]
______ Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1 The Region – Banking and Policy Issues Magazine – Interview with Milton Friedman June 1992 In his new book, Money Mischief, economist Milton Friedman compares inflation to alcoholism; blames the rise of Chinese communism, in large part, on an […]
______ Milton Friedman – A Conversation On Minimum Wage Milton Friedman Interview Milton Friedman is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.Dr. Friedman received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science. Member of the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1937 […]
________ Milton Friedman on Donahue – 1979 Uploaded on Aug 26, 2009 Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, promoting “Free to Choose” on the show Donahue. Walter E. Williams: Milton Friedman was an economist’s economist Print Font [+] [-] Leave a comment » By Walter E. Williams Published: Wednesday, Dec. 6 2006 12:00 a.m. MST Walter […]
_______ José Niño José Niño is a graduate student based in Santiago, Chile. A citizen of the world, he has lived in Venezuela, Colombia, and the United States. He is currently an international research analyst with the Acton Circle of Chile. Follow@JoseAlNino. 40 Years Later: Milton Friedman’s Legacy in Chile “Chilean Miracle” Struck a Blow […]
____ Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax The Conservative Case for a Guaranteed Basic Income NOAH GORDON AUG 6, 2014 Creating a wage floor is an effective way to fight poverty—and it would reduce government spending and intrusion. Swiss backers of a minimum income spread out coins in Bern. Denis Balibouse/Reuters Last week, my […]
________________ Which Fed Bill Would Milton Friedman Have Liked? Posted on March 10, 2015by John Taylor Writing last week on the Cato at Liberty blog, Steve Hanke argued that Milton Friedman would have supported the “Audit the Fed” bill recently introduced in the Senate. Steve’s reasoning is based on Friedman’s 1962 essay “Should there be an […]
A great speech below: Here are the myths:Robber Baron Myth, The Cause of Great Depression Myth, The Demand for Government Service Myth, The Free Lunch Smith, and The Robin Hood Myth. 1) the Robber Baron Myth, 2) the Great Depression Myth, 3) the Demand for Government Service Myth, 4) the Free Lunch Myth, and 5) […]
_______________ FEATURED ARTICLE | SEPTEMBER 4, 2006 An Interview with Milton Friedman Milton Friedman* I recently sat down with Milton Friedman, a few days before his 94th birthday, to discuss the impact of two of his most important contributions to economics and liberty: A Monetary History of the United States, 1870-1960 [co-written] with Anna Schwartz, […]
Milton Friedman on Self-Interest and the Profit Motive 1of2 Milton Friedman on Self-Interest and the Profit Motive 2of2 The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits by Milton FriedmanThe New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970. Copyright @ 1970 by The New York Times Company. When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the […]
____________ Levin on Milton Friedman: ‘One Thing to Have Free Immigration to Jobs, Another for Welfare’ By Michael Morris | January 16, 2015 | 5:12 PM EST During his show on January 15, 2015, Nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin recalled the famed economist Milton Friedman and explored an important reason why open immigration, despite […]
Who on earth, could comfort me
and love me like You do?
Who could ever be more faithful true?
I will trust in You; I will trust in You, my God
There is a fountain who is a King
Victorious Warrior and Lord of everything
My Rock, my Shelter, my very own
Blessed Redeemer, who reigns upon
the throne
Living water, rain down Your life on me
Cleasing me, refreshing me with life abundantly
River, full of life, I’ll go where You lead
I will trust in You, I will trust in You, my God
The “Break My Heart O’ God” album, written by the talented Dennis Jernigan, has been a source of healing and comfort in my family for many years. Therefore, I’m grateful for YouTube as a way of sharing this anointed music with those who may not of heard it yet. May you feels God’s Love for you as you listen to this music written by and from Dennis Jernigan’s heart.
For many years and generations, our society has been losing a most valuable ingredient. Why do we see so many perversions come to be accepted as “normal” and “natural?” I personally believe that men don’t know how to be men and fathers don’t know how to be fathers to their children. I believe women long to be women but men have run away from their responsibilities leaving the women to be both mother and father. This will never work. A child, whether a son or a daughter, gains his identity from his or her father. If the father is not there, either physically or emotionally, how can he instill any worth or identity upon the child? Our only hope is in learning how much our heavenly Father desires a close and intimate relationship with His children and becoming the children He says we are.
What you are about to read is a story of hope…and the reason we sing…the reason we will never stop praising the Lord Jesus Christ. The following is our personal witness of the love and power of Jesus Christ in our lives. As you read, we are asking the Lord to break your heart by the things that break His heart. And may you realize your Father’s great love for you! You see, it’s time for the Church to be honest. If we can’t be honest then how can we be healed? And if we can’t love one another enough to see healing in our own lives, how can we love a lost and dying world enough to see healing in their lives? No sin is too little or too big. They are all filthy before Him! All we know is we have been called to bring hope and healing to the lost and dying! How He loves you, child!
Dennis & Melinda Jernigan
DJ’s Testimony
We Have Believed A Lie!
Before I begin my story, you must know that I desire to bring honor to my earthly father and mother as well as to my heavenly Father. The reason I share the things I am about to share with you is because I believe many people will be able to identify with what I have “gone through.” My greatest desire is that you would come to know the Father even more intimately than I have. Because we are all born sinners we all have some very basic needs. Yes, we have physical needs. But I’m referring to the many emotional and spiritual needs we are born with. Little children gain their identity through their father. I can remember being a little boy and desiring my daddy’s approval and acceptance for every area of my life. Being a father of both boys and girls myself I can see not only how my sons need me to help them realize “who they are” but my daughters as well. One of my daughters may “do” her own hair and come to my wife, Melinda, and ask how it looks. But it takes dad’s stamp of approval before she will really believe that it looks acceptable. And isn’t that the way it should be with our heavenly Father? I desire to gain my worth and acceptance from my heavenly Father? I desire to gain my worth and acceptance from my heavenly Father and who He says I am. As a father, I desire to nurture my children in such a way that they do not become dependent upon me but are able to transfer their deep needs to their heavenly Father. I realize I will never be perfect as a father, husband, worship leader, or person. But my Father is perfect–in every way! My healing has come and will continue to come as I seek an intimate and life-giving relationship with Him.
I was born in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. Soon after my birth, my parents moved to the farm my grandparents (Samuel Washington and Myrtle Mae Snyder) had built…the farm where my father was raised. We lived three miles from the small town of Boynton, Oklahoma (Pop. approx. 400) where my brothers and I attended school. The Lord gifted me from an early age to play the piano. By the time I was nine years old I was regularly playing for the worship times at First Baptist Church. This was also the church my grandfather Herman Everett Johnson had pastored. This was the church where my parents, Samuel Robert Jernigan and Peggy Yvonne Johnson, had met. My father had also “led singing” here from the earliest I can remember (as he presently does today). When I was about six or seven years old, my grandmother Jernigan moved back to the farm in a trailer next to the old farmhouse where we lived. And each day after school I could be found at my grandmother’s house practicing piano conveniently forgetting about my chores.
It was through my grandmother Jernigan that the Lord taught me to play the piano. Since we lived so far from any town with a music teacher, I had to learn to play by ear. My grandma was very patient with me and taught me how to “chord” for “church playing!” It was also my grandma who told me there was more to a relationship with Jesus than getting saved. She once told me that she would know my grandpa Jernigan when she got to heaven because the Lord had told her his “new name in glory!” I was in awe! God spoke to my grandma…but I could never hear him speak to me. Needless to say, I grew very close to this godly woman. It would be many, many years before I would begin to realize the full impact that she was to have and is having on my life.
My relationship with my parents, from talking with many others over the years, was quite typical for my generation. We were not an affectionate family. While I did feel affection from my mother, I never remember receiving physical affection from my father or among my brothers and myself. My daddy was very hard working. We were not poor…but we were not rich monetarily. In addition to working the farm, my dad was employed by a utility company and eventually worked as a mechanic for many years. Since I have gotten older, God has reminded me of many ways my father expressed affection and love for me as I was growing up. My problem was not my father. My problem was that I believed a lie. Once Satan got his foot in the door of my heart, any rejection – no matter how big or how small was perceived as a lack of love from my dad (or whomever I felt rejected by at the time).
Looking back, I realize that I was a very selfish child. From the earliest I can remember, I found it hard to believe anyone loved me. I felt worthless. Since I didn’t believe anyone loved me, I couldn’t really receive love. What I did discover, though, was that if I did something well, people would like me. So, I tried to be the best in whatever I did: schoolwork, basketball, music, etc….But I became so frustrated because no matter how well I performed, it never seemed to be good enough. I was very miserable and felt all alone (even though I wasn’t alone!). Sports and grades weren’t giving me any hope…neither was music. Because I made choices based upon how or what I perceived people thought of me, I became a very selfish person…usually at the expense of others and most often as the expense of my little brothers. What people thought was so good, my outward performance, soon began to hide the deepest hurts and failures of my heart. And I must add that my daddy and mama never missed one single event I was involved in while growing up, this should have spoken volumes to me. Still I chose to believe a lie.
Now I need to tell you about what I consider to be the most painful part of my life, a part I tried to hide. Since I felt so rejected, I allowed it to permeate every part of my life. What I didn’t realize was that Satan was lying to me, all the while trying to keep me from God’s plan for my life. This included the sexual part of my life. In this area I felt so ashamed and afraid of rejection that I became even more selfish and perverted in my way of thinking. As a boy I needed a role model to show me the way to manhood. But because I felt rejected by the main man in my life I, in turn, rejected him and began to yearn for intimacy with a man in perverse ways. Because of this wrong thinking I came to believe I was homosexual. It must have begun early in my life because I remember having those feelings for the same gender at a very early age. I hid this from others through high school and through my four years at Oklahoma Baptist University even though it wasn’t hidden from those I had relations with. I might add that even though I was involved in homosexuality through my college days that I still regard that time with fondness. It is in looking back that I can see the awesome and mighty hand of God ministering His love to me in the midst of my sin and confusion. Because of my lack of musical training while growing up, my musical studies at OBU were like learning a whole new language. To be able to actually read and write the music I could see or hear was like a whole new world opening up to me. This would be very valuable later in my life as I began to express my heart and my feelings in song.
Upon my graduation from OBU in 1981, God began to move in supernatural ways that even I couldn’t see! One of these instances was a simple music concert. A group called The Second Chapter of Acts was going to be in concert in Norman, Oklahoma, and I knew that I was supposed to go. By that time in my life I was looking for anybody who was real, someone who had a real walk with the Lord. Among Christian musicians, I was looking for more than entertainers. So, I went to their concert. I knew by the words they said and the music they sang that these people were genuine, and the message was born out of times of desperation in their own lives. I needed hope. As I listened to Annie Herring speak and sing I was overwhelmed by the love she spoke of. This was the love I had dreamed of but still couldn’t believe was available to me! So I listened very intently with great expectation–until she came to the song *”Mansion Builder.” This song caught my deepest attention because of the simple phrase, “Why should I worry? Why should I fret? I’ve got a Mansion Builder Who ain’t through with me yet?” All of a sudden she just stopped in the middle of the song and said, “There are those of you here who are dealing with things that you have never told anyone and you are carrying those burdens and that’s wrong–that’s sin and you need to let those hurts go and give them to the Lord. We are going to sing the song again and I want you to lift your hands to the Lord–and all of those burdens that you are carrying, I want you to place them in your hands and lift your hurts to Him.” This was all new to me–worship and praise. I had always thought before that this was just an emotional response that didn’t really mean anything. But you know what it did for me? As I lifted my hands, God became more real to me than I had ever imagined! The lifting of my hands was more than a physical action. My hands were an extension of my heart! I realized that Jesus had lifted His hands for me–upon the cross. I realized that He truly was beside me a nd that He was willing to walk with me and carry me and just be honest with me. And I could be honest with Him! At that moment, I cried out to God and lifted those burdens to the Lord and said, “Lord Jesus, I can’t change me or the mess I’ve gotten myself into–but you can!” And you know what? He did change me!
At that time I acknowledged the fact that I was totally helpless and I turned everything in my life over to Jesus–my thoughts, my emotions, my physical body…and my past. Basically, I took responsibility for my own sins and yielded every right to Jesus–my right to be loved, my right even to life. Because of my choice to sin, I deserved death and hell–and that’s where Jesus came in. At that point, something wonderful began to take place in my life…I began to hear the Lord speak to my heart–“Dennis, I love you. I have always loved you! Dennis, you are my child–I love you no matter what. Dennis, I will always love you!” It was then that I lost the need to be accepted or loved by others because I realized Jesus would love me and accept me no matter what, even when I was rejected by others! It was also at this same time that those sexually perverse thoughts and desires were changed…and He began to replace them with holy and pure thoughts about what sexual love was all about. You see, the sexual drive is a creative drive and Satan knows that if he can pervert that drive, he can kill and pervert God’s creativity in us.
This all seems to fit in place for me now. For when I was about nine years old, I felt the Lord speak to me that I would someday have a large family of my own…with nine children! I thought, “Lord, You must be crazy. How can I have children if I have homosexual (unnatural) desires?” Do you see what Satan was trying to do? Not only is God blessing me with a wonderful marriage and many children, He continues to pour out His music in my heart. It is out of the gratefulness of my heart towards the Lord that I will have all the children He will bless me with and I will never stop singing praise to His name. The secret–the key for me is knowing that Jesus loves me and that I need Him desperately more every day…and realizing that He wants to change me–to change my heart–every day. My desire is to come into His presence (lay myself on the altar) that He might change me into His own image. You see, when I was nine years old, Jesus began calling me to Himself. On September8, 1968, I asked my mother how to be saved. She explained the plan of God’s salvation–that we were all sinners and that we deserved to perish in hell. I was saved that Sunday afternoon and baptized that same evening. I believe that I was saved when I was nine years old, but because I looked and perceived my heavenly Father through my own perverted image of my earthly father, I couldn’t fully receive all He had in store for me–like acceptance and forgiveness. It is so amazing to me that He loved me enough to preserve my life the way he has in this day and age of promiscuity, perversion, and sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS. One thing that kept me going during the early years of my life when I felt like giving up and living in sin, was the fact that Jesus kept calling me. If He was God then there was truly hope for me! The most precious thing of all is that He loves me with all His heart…and that’s how I want to love Him. Because of this relationship with Jesus, my healing has been and will be a continual process…until the day I die and can see Him face to face!
Another major point of change for me came during this same time in 1981–yet another divine setup! A close friend found out about my past. I knew I would be disgraced and rejected now! When he confronted me, I ran from the house and continued to run until I could run no more. At that point, I simply cried out to God to speak to me. At the same, my eyes were directed to look into the darkness of the evening sky where I was drawn to a puffy white cloud floating above. This cloud looked like an old man with a beard and outstretched arms. Near this cloud was a smaller cloud in the shape of a lamb. As I watched, the bearded man engulfed the little lamb in His arms. I knew immediately that God was speaking to me…that this was what He wanted to do for me in this time of need. I then had the grace to return and “face the music.” But that’s not what happened! This friend was a true friend. He told me he loved me and was willing to stand with me as I walked through this time of deliverance in my life. And you know what else happened? God began to bring others into my life who were willing to love me unconditionally and to walk with me through the trials of my life–no matter what–for my complete healing.
In 1983, God called me to marry my wife, Melinda. I assumed that since I considered myself to be healed that there was no need to share my past with her. But I soon realized that I was really still trying to hide–which meant I still carried a burden and that I was still more concurred with what man thought of me than what God thought of me. Soon after we were married, the babies started coming! And with the babies, the added pressure of responsibility to deal with the real issues of total healing in my life. Hiding the truth would keep me from the healing God wanted for me in my life.
Because I hid these things from others, my relationships could never truly be what God wanted them to be–because in true love there is no fear. I was always afraid to tell anyone because I thought no one would love me. Why am I telling you now? Well, on July 13, 1988, I realized God wanted to take the greatest failures and weaknesses of my life and make them my greatest strengths–and that Satan wanted me to keep them hidden so he could use them against me. But like the prostitute, Mary Magdalene, I realized that to hide those things kept me from fellowship and freely loving the One I loved the most–Jesus. Not only this, but if I confessed my past freely, Satan would have no ammunition against me. So here’s what I did. In July of 1988, I shared what I just told you (in a much more brief way!) with my church…and something beautiful took place. People began to come out of the woodwork who had been hurting just like me and even more so, men and women who were involved in homosexuality (sodomy), women who were abused by their fathers, those who had been raped and never told anyone, and even those who had abortions, etc. As they confessed their sins and hurts, Jesus was able to begin healing all their past. On that day, I publicly laid down my life and my reputation to serve Jesus in an awesome way. However, I want my life to be broken and poured out life the perfume Mary Magdalene used to wash Jesus’ feet even though they said she was foolish. I want to lay down my life and reputation for others just as my Lord Jesus did for me. Imagine that–the perfect King of the Universe humbled Himself and gave up all His power and glory because He loves me! I can do no less!
Since the day I first shared my past publicly, God has called me to tell others what He has done for me–to lead and call others into intimacy with Jesus through the avenue of music and worship. It was after such a time of sharing in my hometown of Boynton in 1989 that I began to realize the true depth and extent of God’s great love for me and the calling upon my life and the role of my grandmother Jernigan’s vision and prayer upon my ministry. After leading worship at the Boynton Community Center, one of my grandma’s old prayer partners said to me, “Isn’t it wonderful how your grandmother’s prayers have been answered?” Amid feelings of shock and tears of joy, I asked, “What prayers?” And she answered, “Didn’t you know? Your grandmother told me how she would stand behind you as you practiced the piano at her house each day and would ask god to use you mightily in His kingdom to lead in music and worship! And He has answered her prayers!”
Your circumstances, your sins, your wounds, etc., may all be different than mine, but the answer is still the same–Jesus.
Your circumstances, your sins, your wounds, etc., may all be different than mine, but the answer is still the same–Jesus. You may have been sinned against and wounded very deeply. For those times you are not guilty! If you have been used or abused in any way, you can be healed. Do not receive the false guilt that Satan would try to put on you because of circumstances that were beyond your control. I urge you to deal with your own heart and the things you were (and are) responsible for–like attitudes, actions, thoughts, and feelings! There is hope for the hurting. If you are like me, you may need radical surgery. Surgery may take more time than it takes to put a Band-Aid on a wound. But surgery generally gets to the cause and doesn’t just cover up or pacify the symptoms of the wound. If you are willing, you can get to the root(s) of your sin(s). I urge you to get to the root of and deal with whatever you may be facing.
I’ve been there and found the way out, and I must share my story–the story of Jesus with those who are hurting. Aren’t we all hurting in one-way or another?
The bottom line is this: I can’t make it one day without the Lord. I ask Him to fill me with His spirit day-by-day and moment-by-moment and to lead me. You see, we are all helpless and in need of a Father to care for us. And He is the Father Who will never leave us or forsake us. He is the Father Who enjoys our presence more than we could ever enjoy His! I am no longer afraid of what others think of me (at least I’m asking the Lord to help me in that area!). Please pray for me and my family as we seek God’s direction for our lives. I love you.
__________ “How He Loves” – Live Performance Video Published on Jan 22, 2013 John Mark McMillan – How He Loves (Live performance video from Threshing Floor Studios in Lincolnton, NC) __________________________ The Heart of John Mark McMillan The singer-songwriter talks about "How He Loves," needing to have tragedy in worship music and authenticity. By Kevin […]
______ Christians should obey the Lord in the area of sexuality too!!! Earlier I wrote about Rebecca St. James and his “True Love Waits” movement and how God will bless those who seek to wait for marriage to be sexually active with their spouse. Today I am going to highlight one of my favorite songs […]
______ Cary Grant as Cole Porter night and day-you do something to me song Uploaded on Dec 4, 2009 http://download21th.blogspot.com/ you do something to me song from night and day.Night and Day is a 1946 Technicolor Warner Bros. biographical film of the life of American composer and songwriter Cole Porter. It was directed by […]
Cole Porter’s song “True Love” in the movie HIGH SOCIETY sung by Bing Crosby True Love .. Grace and Bing .. Full scene. ____________ True Love (song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For other uses, see True love (disambiguation). “True Love” Single by Richard Chamberlain from the album Richard Chamberlain Sings B-side […]
Cole Porter “Let’s Do it, Let’s Fall in Love” in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Midnight in Paris – Let’s Do It Let’s do it : Cole Porter.( Midnight in Paris ) Celebrate Wikipedia Loves Libraries at your institution in October/November. Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: […]
Cole Porter’s song “Anything goes” was also used in the Francis Schaeffer film WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? _______________ It’s De-Lovely – Anything Goes.mpg Anything Goes (song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article is about the Cole Porter song. For other songs with the same title, see Anything Goes […]
Ethel Merman and Bing Crosby Sing “You’re the Top” which is great song written by Cole Porter ________________ Ethel Merman and Bing Crosby Sing “You’re the Top” You’re the Top From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search “You’re The Top” is a Cole Porter song from the 1934 musical Anything Goes. It is […]
Jim Morrison’s sad drug death was followed by Pamela Courson’s sad story!!! pamela courson/ jim morrison interview Interview with Jim Morrison’s father and sister Uploaded on Aug 9, 2010 This interview is from “When You’re Strange” DVD bonus material. I do not own this video and own no rights to it! Pamela Courson Uploaded […]
The life of Lou Reed (includes videos from 1960′s and 1970′s) ____________ Rock & Roll – Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs – Live 1) Lou Reed – Sweet Jane – live in Paris, 1974 Velvet Underground-”Sunday Morning” from “Velvet Underground and Nico” LP Lou Reed From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump […]
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Over and over on my blog I have written about your efforts as Vice President and President to attack legally the rights of our unborn babies in the USA. These views of yours are due to your allegiance to the humanist worldview which Francis Schaeffer and Tim LaHaye exposed in their books. Your vast support from humanist groups in the 2020 election proves my point. No wonder we have seen criminals let go and an effort by Democrats (namely VP Harris) to defund the police. The Bible recognizes the sinful nature of humans and calls for the authorities to have the power of the sword in Romans 13! However, there have been times when the IRS has been used against freedom of expression such as the past persecution of the Tea Party. The Founding Fathers did NOT think the King was above the law! Unfortunately many lawmakers today don’t care about the law very much it seems which is a result of loss of a Christian Consensus influence in our society!
I wanted to reach out to because of some of the troubling moral issues coming out of your administration. Your liberal buddy the Governor of California tried to shut churches down and had some success back in 2020, but now churches like GRACE COMMUNITY CHURCH are open. Below is a story from last summer when religious freedom was being suppressed:
How 5 Justices Botched the California Church Case on COVID-19 Restrictions
Chief Justice John Roberts, pictured at the State of the Union, sided with the court’s four liberal members, and said that although “California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.” (Photo: Leah Mills/Reuters/Pool/Getty Images)
Zack Smith is a legal fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Today’s news reads like it’s ripped straight from the pages of the Old Testament. Plagues and protests dominate the headlines.
But unlike Moses, who received his law directly from God, ours today derives from mere mortals. It’s mostly good, but still fallible.
As a result, sometimes an individual’s views of God’s law and man’s law are in tension, and a debate has been simmering about how much protection the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause provides when these situations arise.
>>> When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here.
The recent rash of coronavirus-related restrictionson churches and other religious communities has brought this simmering tension to the surface.
Late on the evening of May 29, the Supreme Court released an important, but easily overlooked, order in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom denying a California church’s request for an injunction against the state’s phased reopening plan.
The church alleged that the plan violated its First Amendment free exercise rights by treating similarly situated, nonreligious businesses and activities more favorably than religious ones.
That prompted a debate among the justices.
Is going to church more like going to the movies or going to the office? Is it more like going to a play or going to a restaurant? Attending a ballgame or shopping at the mall?
Unfortunately, Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s four liberal members, and said that although California’s guidelines “place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings … .”
The court’s four conservative members disagreed. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a dissent that Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined. (For some unknown reason, Justice Samuel Alito didn’t join Kavanaugh’s dissent. We can only speculate as to why).
Kavanaugh wrote, “I would grant the Church’s requested temporary injunction because California’s latest safety guidelines discriminate against places of worship and in favor of comparable secular businesses. Such discrimination violates the First Amendment.”
On its face, the order appears to turn simply on a disagreement among the justices about which activities are most like going to church. If it’s more like going to a movie or a play, or attending a ballgame, no problem. California had restricted those activities in a similar way to church gatherings.
If it’s more like going to the office, a restaurant, or shopping, there’s a problem. California would have been treating similarly situated, nonreligious activities more favorably than religious ones.
But the disagreement among the justices and its implications might run deeper and highlight an important issue left unaddressed by—but at the heart of—the ruling: What’s the proper level of scrutiny to apply when deciding free exercise claims?
It’s true that this case came to the court from a unique procedural posture—requesting immediate and preliminary relief—so it might be difficult to read too much into it.
The chief justice asserted that such a request “demands a significantly higher justification” than others and that the “legal rights at issue [must be] indisputably clear,” and even then, the relief requested must be used “sparingly and only in the most critical and exigent circumstances.”
It’s also true that the case came up to the court during a pandemic, something that clearly weighed heavily on the mind of the chief justice, who wrote that the Constitution “principally entrusts” elected officials to deal with health crises and other “areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties.”
As is common in these types of orders, the other four justices in the majority didn’t make their reasoning or rationales known. But given Roberts’ statements and rationale, it’s also probable that the same decision would have been reached had the majority explicitly applied rational basisreview to this matter.
In other words, so long as California’s government had a rational reason for adopting the rules it did and the rules treated everyone equally—even equally badly or restrictively—those rules would survive constitutional scrutiny, even if other less restrictive means for accomplishing those same goals had been available.
After all, the chief justice wrote, “The precise question of when restrictions on particular social activities should be lifted during the pandemic is a dynamic and fact-intensive matter subject to reasonable disagreement.”
The minority disagreed. In his dissent, Kavanaugh explicitly applied strict scrutiny to resolve the matter. He would have required California to show a “compelling government interest” in its rules and to show that it had “narrowly tailored” those rules “to advance that interest.”
Who cares? This sounds like an esoteric argument among nine justices far removed from the humdrum of everyday life. But it’s far from it.
This distinction is fundamentally important. Why? Under rational basis review, the church lost. Under strict scrutiny, the church would have won.
Currently, the court’s precedent, specifically Employment Division v. Smith (1990), requires courts to apply only rational basis review for many—if not most—free exercise claims under the First Amendment. It applies only when courts are reviewing neutral laws (or rules) of general applicability.
If churches are targeted for discriminatory treatment, a different analysis, one applying strict scrutiny, applies. The Supreme Court clarified that in its Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. Hialeah (1993) decision. Still, Employment Division v. Smith upended the court’s precedent and practice of applying strict scrutiny—even if it didn’t explicitly call it that—in most prior free exercise cases, such as Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), Sherbert v. Verner (1963), and Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940).
Because Congress was rightly unhappy with the court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith, it passed (with broad bipartisan support)—and President Bill Clinton signed into law—the Religious Freedom Restoration Act requiring courts to once again apply strict scrutiny to religious freedom claims.
The court struck down significant portions of that statute, too, limiting its application only to claims against the federal government and not to those against the states.
That’s where we stand now: Rational basis review rules the day.
Fortunately, the tides may be turning. In January 2019, Alito wrote a concurrence in a denial of certiorari in which he lamented that the court in Employment Division v. Smith had “drastically cut back on the protection provided by the Free Exercise Clause.” Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh joined that concurrence.
It’s worth noting that these are the same four justices who dissented in the current case.
More importantly, in February, the court agreed to hear a case that explicitly asks it to revisit its decision in Employment Division v. Smith and to replace it with “a standard that is true to the text, history, and tradition of the Free Exercise Clause.” Who wouldn’t want that?
As John Yoo and James Phillips have pointed out, the court in Employment Division v. Smith went wrong in part because “its author, [then-Justice Antonin] Scalia, failed to engage with the original meaning of the free-exercise clause. While normally persuaded by historical arguments, Scalia instead worried about cabining judicial discretion.”
This same concern comes through in Roberts’ concurrence denying relief to the California church.
Scalia was a legal lion, but he got Employment Division v. Smith wrong. With the hindsight of history, Roberts would do well to avoid making the same mistake, by seizing an opportunity, perhaps during a calmer time, to correct Scalia’s rare misstep and restore religious freedom to its proper place in our constitutional order.
John MacArthur gave a sermon in June of 2021 entitled “When Government Rewards Evil and Punishes Good” and in that sermon he makes the following points:
INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION OF ROMANS 13
GOVERNMENT CAN FORFEIT ITS AUTHORITY
THE WORLD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOSPEL
ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY IS PROGRESSING TOWARD A GLOBAL KINGDOM UNDER THE POWER OF SATAN
ONE FALSE WORLD RELIGION IS FINAL PLAY BY SATAN
REAL PERSECUTION CAN ONLY BE DONE BY GOVERNMENT
PERSECUTION IN BOOK OF DANIEL
THE LAW IS KING AND NOT THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
THERE IS A PLACE FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
DOES GOVERNMENT WIN?
Let me just share a portion of that sermon with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
REAL PERSECUTION CAN ONLY BE DONE BY GOVERNMENT
“Woe”—verse 19—“the great city, in which all who had ships at sea became rich by her wealth, for in one hour she had been laid waste!” Verse 20, “Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.” This is where Satan is taking the world. Again, Satan has many strategies; but he has one goal, and that is to collect the world around one final Antichrist, empower him to defeat God. In the process, he persecutes the saints; he seeks to kill them.
Now let me remind you of something. We talk about persecution and we sometimes experience it in the sense that somebody doesn’t like us because of our Christian testimony. You might have trouble with a professor in a university class because of your testimony; you might get a bad grade. You might lose your job because of your convictions and your testimony. And that’s a measure of persecution. But mark this: Real persecution, which means imprisonment or execution, can only be done by government, right? Only government does that. There can’t be a group of atheists who go out and imprison Christians; only government can do that. God has given government the sword, the power; and when they prostitute that power and they begin to punish those who do good and protect those who do evil, they wield that power against the people of God.
Satan knows that in order to kill the saints he has to have the one legitimate earthly power, and that’s the power of the government. So government is, and always has been, and always will be the ultimate persecutor of the church. It is government—authority, power constituted in rulers and leaders—that has essentially done all the damage to the church through its history. And so I say what I said at the beginning: The greatest threat to truth and virtue in this country is the government because they have totally prostituted their God-ordained design. All through history, government is the ultimate persecutor of people. Satan has to get ahold of government; and that’s where he operates—always work through government.
Go back to Isaiah 14. Isaiah 14, the prophecy of Isaiah spoken to the king of Babylon, the king of Babylon. It’s a judgment against the king of Babylon—chapter 14, verse 4, a “taunt against the king of Babylon,” judgment against the king of Babylon. But notice how interesting it is. This judgment, down in verse 12—something more than just the king of Babylon appears to happen here: “How are you fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn!”
Has the king of Babylon fallen from heaven? No, but who is fallen from heaven? Lucifer. So who is behind the king of Babylon? Lucifer. He goes from talking about judgment on the king of Babylon to going behind the king of Babylon to the “star of the morning, the son of the dawn”: “You’ve been cut down to the earth, you have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart”—this is what Satan said when he was in heaven—“‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God’”—the angels of God—“‘I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” “‘I will, I will, I will, I will.’” This is Satan’s rebellion. And so Isaiah shows us that it is Satan himself, the fallen one, who is energizing the king of Babylon, controlling the king of Babylon.
There is a similar section of Scripture, Ezekiel 28; I want you to turn to it. Ezekiel 28, verse 11, “And the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Son of man’”—that was God’s name for Ezekiel—“‘take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre.’” Now we’re talking about the king of Tyre; Tyre was another pagan kingdom, persecuted the people of God. But notice how this seems to be something more than just the king of Tyre: “Thus says the Lord God, ‘You had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God’”—wait a minute, the king of Tyre? He wasn’t in Eden. Who was in Eden? Who was prowling in Eden? Satan.
“You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering: the ruby, the topaz, the diamond; the beryl, the onyx, the jasper; lapis lazuli”—which is a beautiful blue stone—“the turquoise, the emerald; and the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets, was in you. On the day you were created they were prepared. You were the anointed”—what?—“cherub who covers.” Now you can see, Satan in Isaiah is working behind the king of Babylon; here in Ezekiel he’s working behind the king of Tyre. This is because Satan does his great work against the people of God using political leaders—kings and rulers.
“You were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God and walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. By the abundance of your trade you were internally filled with violence, and you sinned; therefore I have cast you as profane from the mountain of God, and destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I put you before kings, that they may see you, the multitude of your iniquities.” He goes back to talking about the king of Tyre with almost not missing a beat. The judgment on the king of Tyre is also a declaration of the judgment on the one who is behind the king of Tyre.
Satan always works through evil rulers to persecute the people of God. In the book of Exodus it was Pharaoh. When the children of God left Egypt, it was the Canaanites, it was the powers of the Philistines. It was the rulers of Assyria then, and then it was the rulers of Babylon. And you come into the New Testament, and the persecutors of the people of God were the official leaders of Israel, the Sanhedrin. And then it was the Roman Empire. Destroying the people of God is always a government enterprise.
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HOW ABOUT TODAY AND THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT ATTITUDE TO OUR CHURCHES? Francis Schaeffer comments in CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO in 1981 after the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan:
I hope the window does not close. I hope those with a humanistic world view who have increasingly controlled our culture for the last twenty, thirty, forty years, something like this, cannot close the open window with all their efforts. But if they do, if they take over with increased power and control, will we be so foolish as to think that religion and religious institutions will not be even further affected than they have been so far? I wonder how many of us are aware of the cases that the churches have faced in the last ten years in various places. The things that have been brought into courts of law should make our hair stand on end. Do you think that in such a case as I have portrayed (and may it not happen!) that the Christians and the Christian institutions will not be even further affected?
Robert L. Toms, an attorney-at-law, lists the issues pending this year and which are up for final adjudication during the coming decade before the United States’ courts, administrative bodies, executive departments, and legislatures:
1. Is a minister of the gospel liable for malpractice to a counselee for using spiritual guidance rather than psychological or medical techniques?
2. Can a Christian residence house in a college have the same standing as a fraternity and sorority house for purposes of off-campus residency rules?
3. Can Christian high school students assemble on the public school campus for religious discussion?
4. Can Christian teachers in public schools meet before class for prayer?
5. Can Christian college students meet in groups on the state university campus?
6. Can HEW require a Bible college to admit drug addicts and alcoholics as “handicapped persons”? …
7. Can a church build a religious school or a daycare center in an area zoned residential?
8. Can parents who send their children to religious schools not approved by a state board of education be prosecuted under the truancy laws?
9. Is an independent, wholly religious school entitled to an exemption from unemployment taxes as are church-owned schools?
10. Will the State enforce antiemployment discrimination laws against a church which in accordance with its stated religious beliefs fires a practicing homosexual staff member?
11. Can seminary trustees refuse to graduate a practicing homosexual?
12. Can a city continue its forty-year practice of having a nativity scene in front of the city hall?
13. Can zoning laws be used to prevent small group Bible studies from meeting in homes?
14. Can a court decide which doctrinal group in a church split gets the sanctuary?
15. Must a religious school accept as a teacher an otherwise qualified practicing homosexual?
16. Can a church be fined by a court for exuberant noise in worship?
17. Can a state department of health close a church-run juvenile home for policies that include spanking?
18. Can religious solicitation in public places be confined to official booths?
19. Is an unborn fetus a “person” and entitled to Constitutional protection?
20. Can the Ten Commandments be posted in a public classroom?
21. Can students in public education have a period of silent meditation and prayer?
22. Can Christmas carols be sung in public schools?
23. Must an employee who believes he should worship on Saturday be permitted a work holiday on that day in order to worship?
24. Can the graduation ceremony of a public high school be held in a church?
25. Can a State official seize a church on allegations of misconduct by dissident members and run the church through a court-appointed receiver?
26. Can the State set minimum standards for private religious school curricula?
27. Is religious tax exemption a right or privilege, and, if it is a privilege, are the exemptions an unwarranted support of religion by the State?
28. Should churches be taxed like any other part of society?
29. Can Federal labor laws be used to enforce collective bargaining rights and unionization in religious enterprises?
30. Can the State require a license before a religious ministry may solicit funds for its work?
31. Are hospitals, schools, counseling groups, halfway houses, famine-relief organizations, youth organizations, homes for unwed mothers, orphanages, etc., run with religious motivations or are they secular and subject to all controls secular organizations are subject to?
He [attorney Robert L. Toms] further says:
… two U.S. trial courts have recently ruled that a group of college students who wish to discuss religion could not meet in the context of a public state university, that religious speech must go on elsewhere since it might “establish religion” on the campus….The State must screen out religious speech from the otherwise free speech practiced on a university campus.
We might differ as to what the ruling should be in some of these cases, but that does not change the weight of the whole. It should be said that it is not only Protestants who are facing the implications of the above list, but Roman Catholics and Jews as well.
And for Christians who are in the habit of drifting complacently, a case presently before the courts should be a loud-sounding alarm bell. As I write, Samuel E. Ericsson, an attorney-at-law, is defending Grace Community Church, the largest Protestant church in Los Angeles County, in a clergyman malpractice suit. This suit was brought by parents because the pastors of that church cared for their son (who had later committed suicide) instead of turning him over to professional psychiatric and psychological care. Obviously if the church lost this case, all religions would be greatly affected. In fact, anyone who tried to help someone with questions or fears could be sued if he or she did not fall under the category of professional psychiatric and psychological competence. And to make matters more complicated, no one has thought how to set standards acceptably for professional psychiatric and psychological competence!
Samuel Ericsson has put the case in the proper perspective when in a letter to me dated May 1, 1981, he wrote: “I believe that clergyman malpractice, or more accurately spiritual counseling malpractice, is going to present the secular courts with a head-on clash between the two competing world views, secularism and Christianity.”
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. I also respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children. I wanted to encourage you to investigate the work of Dr. Bernard Nathanson who like you used to be pro-abortion. I also want you to watch the You Tube series WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop. Also it makes me wonder what our the moral climate Of our nation is when we concentrate more on potential mistakes of the police and we let criminals back on the street so fast! Our national was founded of LEX REX and not REX LEX!
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
PS: In this series of letters John MacArthur covers several points. In the first letter, he quotes you saying that the greatest threat to America—he said on one occasion—is systemic racism, which doesn’t exist; he said white supremacy, which doesn’t exist with any power; and then he said global warming, which doesn’t exist either, and if it does, God’s in charge of it.
In reality the greatest threat to this nation is the government, the government. And I want to show you how we are to understand that. Turn to Romans 13
In the 2nd letter, Dr. MacArthur noted When government turns the divine design on its head and protects those who do evil and makes those who do good afraid, it forfeits its divine purpose
In the 3rd letter Dr. MacArthur noted The world is the enemy of the gospel. The world is the enemy of the church. I pointed out that this manifests itself today in the form of HUMANISM.
In the 4th letter Dr. MacArthur points out how much today the devil is having his way in our society and that the Bible predicts that these will get worse!
In the 5th letter Francis Schaeffer points out “The HUMANIST MANIFESTOS not only say that humanism is a religion, but the Supreme Court has declared it to be a religion. The 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins specifically defines secular humanism as a religion equivalent to theistic and other non theistic religions.”
In the 6th letter Dr. MacArthur noted God has given government the sword, the power; and when they prostitute that power and they begin to punish those who do good and protect those who do evil, they wield that power against the people of God.
In the 7th letter Dr. MacArthur asserted, Throughout history, even in the Western world, people lived under what was called the divine right of kings. Kings were believed to have had a divine right. This was absolute monarchy. What broke that was basically the Reformers. The Reformers—a little phrase was “the law is king,” not the man.
In the 8th letter Dr. MacArthur noted that today the United States “Government has already become the purveyor of wickedness. Government is a murderer, slaughtering millions of infants in abortion.”
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity
Sunday Night Prime – Dr. Bernard Nathanson – Fr Groeschel, CFR with Fr …
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Francis Schaeffer pictured above
Larry King had John MacArthur as a guest on his CNN program several times.
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Max Brantley, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Arkansas Times, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (3)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (2)
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
I’ve only excerpted three paragraphs, but you should read his entire column. It is very tragic that the vision of liberty put forth by the Founders has been so undermined by modern politicians who swear an oath to the Constitution without having any idea what the document actually says.
In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees, James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, stood on the floor of the House to object, saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” He later added, “(T)he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” Two hundred years later, at least two-thirds of a multi-trillion-dollar federal budget is spent on charity or “objects of benevolence.” What would the founders think about our respect for democracy and majority rule? Here’s what Thomas Jefferson said: “The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.” John Adams advised, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” The founders envisioned a republican form of government, but as Benjamin Franklin warned, “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” What would the founders think about the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo v. City of New London decision where the court sanctioned the taking of private property of one American to hand over to another American? John Adams explained: “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”
That grotesque abuse of power largely was designed to weaken opposition to Obama’s statist agenda and make it easier for him to win re-election.
Now there’s a new IRS scandal. In hopes of advancing President Biden’s class-warfare agenda, the bureaucrats have leaked confidential taxpayer information to ProPublica, a left-wing website.
Here’s some of what that group posted.
ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. …ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before.We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period. We’re going to call this their true tax rate. …those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.
Since I’m a policy wonk, I’ll first point out that ProPublicacreated a make-believe number. We (thankfully) don’t tax wealth in the United States.
So Elon Musk’s income is completely unrelated to what happened to the value of his Tesla shares. The same is true for Jeff Bezos’ income and the value of his Amazon stock.*
And the same thing is true for the rest of us. If our IRA or 401(k) rises in value, that doesn’t mean our taxable income has increased. If our home becomes more valuable, that also doesn’t count as taxable income.
The Wall Street Journalopined on this topic today and made a similar point.
There is no evidence of illegality in the ProPublica story. …ProPublica knows this, so its story tries to invent a scandal by calculatingwhat it calls the “true tax rate” these fellows are paying. This is a phony construct that exists nowhere in the law and compares how much the “wealth” of these individuals increased from 2014 to 2018 compared to how much income tax they paid. …what Americans pay is a tax on income, not wealth.
Some journalists don’t understand this distinction between income and wealth.
Or perhaps they do understand, but pretend otherwise because they see their role as being handmaidens of the Biden Administration.
Consider these excerpts from a column by Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times.
Jeff Bezos…added an estimated $99 billion in wealth between 2014 and 2018 but reported only $4.22 billion in taxable income during that period.Warren Buffett, who amassed $24.3 billion in new wealth over those years, reported $125 million in taxable income. …some of the wealthiest people in the United States essentially live under a different system of income taxation from the rest of us.
Mr. Appelbaum is wrong. The rich have a lot more assets than the rest of us, but they operate under the same rules.
If I have an asset that increases in value, that doesn’t count as taxable income. And it isn’t income. It’s merely a change in net wealth.
And the same is true if Bill Gates has an asset that increases in value.
Now that we’ve addressed the policy mistakes, let’s turn our attention to the scandal of IRS misbehavior.
The WSJ‘s editorial addresses the agency’s grotesque actions.
Less than half a year into the Biden Presidency, the Internal Revenue Service is already at the center of an abuse-of-power scandal. …ProPublica, a website whose journalism promotes progressive causes, published information from what it said are 15 years of the tax returns of Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and other rich Americans. …The story arrives amid the Biden Administration’s effort to pass the largest tax increase as a share of the economy since 1968. …The timing here is no coincidence, comrade. …someone leaked confidential IRS information about individuals to serve a political agenda. This is the same tax agency that pursued a vendetta against conservative nonprofit groups during the Obama Administration. Remember Lois Lerner? This is also the same IRS that Democrats now want to infuse with $80 billion more… As part of this effort, Mr. Biden wants the IRS to collect “gross inflows and outflows on all business and personal accounts from financial institutions.” Why? So the information can be leaked to ProPublica? …Congress should also not trust the IRS with any more power and money than it already has.
And Charles Cooke of National Review also weighs in on the implications of a weaponized and partisan IRS.
We cannot trust the IRS. “Oh, who cares?” you might ask. “The victims are billionaires!” And indeed, they are. But I care. For a start, they’re American citizens, and they’re entitled to the same rights — and protected by the same laws — as everyone else. …Besides, even if one wants to be entirely amoral about it, one should consider that if their information can be spilled onto the Internet, anyone’s can.…A government that is this reckless or sinister with the information of men who are lawyered to the eyeballs is unlikely to worry too much about being reckless or sinister with your information. …The IRS wields an extraordinary amount of power, and there will always be somebody somewhere who thinks that it should be used to advance their favorite political cause. Our refusal to indulge their calls is one of the many things that prevents us from descending into the caprice and chaos of your average banana republic. …Does that bother you? It should.
What’s especially disgusting is that the Biden Administration wants to reward IRS corruption with giant budget increases, bolstered by utterly fraudulent numbers.
Needless to say, that would be a terrible idea (sadly, Republicans in the past have been sympathetic to expanding the size of the tax bureaucracy).
*Financial assets such as stocks generally increase in value because of an expectation of bigger streams of income in the future (such as dividends). Those income streams are taxed (often multiple times) when (and if) they actually materialize.
Open letter to President Obama (Part 644)
(Emailed to White House on 6-10-13.)
President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
If you take a group of Democrats who are also unionized government employees, and put them in charge of policing political speech, it doesn’t matter how professional and well-intentioned they are. The result will be much like the debacle in the Cincinnati office of the IRS. …there’s no reason to even posit evil intent by the IRS officials who formulated, approved or executed the inappropriate guidelines for picking groups to scrutinize most closely. …The public servants figuring out which groups qualified for 501(c)4 “social welfare” non-profit status were mostly Democrats surrounded by mostly Democrats. …In the 2012 election, every donation traceable to this office went to President Obama or liberal Sen. Sherrod Brown. This is an environment where even those trying to be fair could develop a disproportionate distrust of the Tea Party. One IRS worker — a member of NTEU and contributor to its PAC, which gives 96 percent of its money to Democratic candidates — explained it this way: “The reason NTEU mostly supports Democratic candidates for office is because Democratic candidates are mostly more supportive of civil servants/government employees.”
Tim concludes with a wise observation.
As long as we have a civil service workforce that leans Left, and as long as we have an income tax system that requires the IRS to police political speech, conservative groups can always expect special IRS scrutiny.
The real issue is the expansive, expensive bureaucratic state and its inherent threat to any system of limited government, rule of law, and individual liberty. …the broader the government’s authority, the greater its need for revenue, the wider its enforcement power, the more expansive the bureaucracy’s discretion, the increasingly important the battle for political control, and the more bitter the partisan fight, the more likely government officials will abuse their positions, violate rules, laws, and Constitution, and sacrifice people’s liberties. The blame falls squarely on Congress, not the IRS.
…the denizens of Capitol Hill also have created a tax code marked by outrageous complexity, special interest electioneering, and systematic social engineering. Legislators have intentionally created avenues for tax avoidance to win votes, and then complained about widespread tax avoidance to win votes.
So what’s the answer?
The most obvious response to the scandal — beyond punishing anyone who violated the law — is tax reform. Implement a flat tax and you’d still have an IRS, but the income tax would be less complex, there would be fewer “preferences” for the agency to police, and rates would be lower, leaving taxpayers with less incentive for aggressive tax avoidance. …Failing to address the broader underlying factors also would merely set the stage for a repeat performance in some form a few years hence. …More fundamentally, government, and especially the national government, should do less. Efficient social engineering may be slightly better than inefficient social engineering, but no social engineering would be far better.
But here’s the challenge. We know the solution, but it will be almost impossible to implement good policy unless we figure out some way to restrain the spending side of the fiscal ledger.
___________________________
At the risk of over-simplifying, we will never get tax reform unless we figure out how to implement entitlement reform.
Here’s another Foden cartoon, which I like because it has the same theme asthis Jerry Holbert cartoon, showing big government as a destructive and malicious force.
_____________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
We know the IRS commissioner wasn’t telling the truth in March 2012, when he testified: “There’s absolutely no targeting.”However, Lois Lerner knew different when she misled people with those words. Two important points made by Noonan in the Wall Street Journal in the article below: First, only conservative groups were targeted in this scandal by […]
Ohio Liberty Coalition versus the I.R.S. (Tom Zawistowski) Published on May 20, 2013 The Ohio Liberty Coalition was among tea party groups that received special scrutiny from the I.R.S. Tom Zawistowski says his story is not unique. He argues the kinds of questions the I.R.S. asked his group amounts to little more than “opposition research.” Video […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views concerning […]
We got to lower the size of government so we don’t have these abuses like this in the IRS. Cartoonists v. the IRS May 23, 2013 by Dan Mitchell Call me perverse, but I’m enjoying this IRS scandal. It’s good to see them suffer a tiny fraction of the agony they impose on the American people. I’ve already […]
Dear Senator Pryor, Why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion). On my blog http://www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, […]
Is the irs out of control? Here is the link from cato: MAY 22, 2013 8:47AM Can You Vague That Up for Me? By TREVOR BURRUS SHARE As the IRS scandal thickens, targeted groups are coming out to describe their ordeals in dealing with that most-reviled of government agencies. The Ohio Liberty Coalition was one of […]
Get Ready to Be Reamed May 17, 2013 by Dan Mitchell With so many scandals percolating, there are lots of good cartoons being produced. But I think this Chip Bok gem deserves special praise. It manages to weave together both the costly Obamacare boondoggle with the reprehensible politicization of the IRS. So BOHICA, my friends. If […]
You want to talk about irony then look at President Obama’s speech a few days ago when he joked about a potential audit of Ohio St by the IRS then a few days later the IRS scandal breaks!!!! The I.R.S. Abusing Americans Is Nothing New Published on May 15, 2013 The I.R.S. targeting of tea party […]
Dear Senator Pryor, Why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion). On my blog http://www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, […]
We could put in a flat tax and it would enable us to cut billions out of the IRS budget!!!! May 14, 2013 2:34PM IRS Budget Soars By Chris Edwards Share The revelations of IRS officials targeting conservative and libertarian groups suggest that now is a good time for lawmakers to review a broad range […]
Image via Complex / APJAC Productions
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