Tag: Thomas Jefferson

The War Against Christianity: Is American Beyond Redemption?

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics4 Comments

American FreedomHas the moral and ethical fiber of the greatest country on the face of God’s Green Earth, been irrevocably ripped apart? Should we all start preparing for another Biblical Flood, as in the days of Noah (the real one…not the politically-correct, ecological one)?

TheBlaze.com has the story…

Is mankind evolving into a more peaceful and prosperous people – or are we on a path toward ever-increasing moral depravity, social chaos and destruction?

Answering that dichotomy depends on one’s worldview, but Christian author Jeff Kinley is in the latter camp, telling TheBlaze that he sees human beings continuously and perilously cutting God out of society.

“I look around my world and I think, ‘Wow, we’ve written God out of our own story here,’” Kinley recently said in an interview. “We’re content in living in our own lives.”

The author, who believes Noah, the flood and the ark unfolded as the Bible recounts, draws parallels between contemporary culture and the “pandemic godlessness of the earth” during Noah’s in his new book “As It Was in the Days of Noah.”

Human behavior then and now, he posits, isn’t all that different.

“Humanity had forgotten God so literally every man just did what they thought was right in their own eyes,” Kinley said of the days of Noah.

As for the current conditions, the author described what he sees as “pandemic unrestrained immorality” and “a falling away of the purity of faith.”

Kinley proceeded to describe how society’s current treatment of God mirrors the Bible’s depiction of the “end times” – a time-frame in Christian theology that precedes the Earth’s end.

While he said it’s impossible to judge when the end times might unfold, Kinley described the current conditions as matching those presented in the Bible, citing Matthew 24, among other references.

“As we ramp up to the end times, there’s going to be, as Romans 1 describes, a simmering hostility against God, against biblical morality,” Kinley told TheBlaze.

Kinley repeatedly spoke against the removal of God from society, saying that it leaves mankind to his own devices, creating a horizontal rather than vertical morality – one in which there is a “sliding scale of morality.”

Citing gay marriage, which is now legal for the first time “perhaps since the days of Noah itself,” Kinley said that human beings are creating new ways of doing things based on shifting standards.

The author also mentioned Israel’s reemergence as a prophetic sign as well.

So, is America beyond Redemption?

It troubles me to no end that, even though I know, in my heart of hearts, that there are plenty of average Americans who are just as upset over the dilapidated moral and fiscal condition of “the shining city on a hill” as I am, there are times when I feel like the little Dutch boy, with his finger in the dike, desperately trying to hold back the flood waters, which are about to destroy everything in its path.

I know that civilizations come and go. I am a student of history, and I have read about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Their incredibly advanced governmental, military, and architectural legacy was eclipsed by situational ethics, immorality. and governmental corruption, caused by enemies foreign and domestic.

Sound familiar?

The United States of America has been one of the most noble undertakings in the history of mankind.

Our Founding Fathers came here to escape religious persecution. Not to get away from religion , as both Liberals, and their unwitting dupes, attempt to claim as truth.

John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and Second President of the United States said..

It is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.

…We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Benjamin Franklin, signer of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, said…

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that “except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service.

Thomas Jefferson, signer of the Declaration of Independence and Third President of the United States, said…

Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you. Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly. Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises, being assured that they will gain strength by exercise, as a limb of the body does, and that exercise will make them habitual. From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death.

So, how did we get to where we are?

Today 78% of Americans still believe that Jesus Christ is their personal Savior. You wouldn’t know that fact from exposure to our American Media, nor from following the anti-Christian actions of our present Administration.

The problem though, is the fact that man is a fallen creature. There was only one Perfect Man. We all fall short of the Glory of God.

There will be no escape for America from this downward spiral we find ourselves in, without Revival in the Land.

Just as addicts, going through the 12-step program, are told to reach out for spiritual help, so should we, as a sovereign nation, bought with the sweat and blood of our fallen, who fought for an ideal much greater than themselves, so that this Blessed Land, UNDER GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, should not perish from the face of God’s green Earth, seek the help of the God of our Fathers, to reclaim The Promise that is America.

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.- Ronald Reagan

Until He Comes,

KJ

The War Against Christianity: A Sunday Morning Rebuttal

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

American ChristianityAs I sit here on an American Sunday morning, my bride sound asleep, here in the quiet of my stately mansion,presently, a bottom floor two-bedroom apartment on a golf course, I ponder the reaction I received to to yesterday’s post,”America’s Culture War: Of Pedophilia and “Gay” Apparel”.

Of particular interest to me, was an attack I received from a Liberal, who was hanging out on Senator Ted Cruz’s Facebook Page, simply to contribute to the massive effort, by Liberals and the Republican Establishment, to “Palinize” Cruz, a straight-talking Conservative Leader.

This Liberal, or, “Troll”, as one who engages in what he was doing on the Internet  is called, posted numerous quotes, from Thomas Jefferson, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and anybody else he could think of, in an attempt to prove that America was not founded by Christians, and that our Country’s Founding Documents were not based on Judeo-Christian Principles, so, therefore, Christian Principles  have no place in the governance of the United States of America.

Catching flack for sticking to my Christian American Conservative Principles in nothing new for me.

My posts, concerning American Christianity, seem to “touch a nerve” in both Liberals and Atheists, alike. (But, I repeat myself.)

Their reaction has hardly been unexpected.

Of course, those Liberals and Atheists who responded, over the years, immediately denied that our Founding Fathers were Christians and that our country was founded on a Judeo-Christian belief system.

Evidently, they had never read anything, except what their like-minded, non-believing soothsayers, allowed them to.  Or else, they would have read historical documents like President George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, written on November 1, 1777, and found at wallbuilders.com:

The committee appointed to prepare a recommendation to the several states, to set apart a day of public thanksgiving, brought in a report; which was taken into consideration, and agreed to as follows:

Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received, and to implore such farther blessings as they stand in need of; and it having pleased him in his abundant mercy not only to continue to us the innumerable bounties of his common providence, but also smile upon us in the prosecution of a just and necessary war, for the defense and establishment of our unalienable rights and liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased in so great a measure to prosper the means used for the support of our troops and to crown our arms with most signal success:

It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive powers of these United States, to set apart Thursday, the 18th day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise; that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor; and that together with their sincere acknowledgments and offerings, they may join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor, and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance; that it may please him graciously to afford his blessings on the governments of these states respectively, and prosper the public council of the whole; to inspire our commanders both by land and sea, and all under them, with that wisdom and fortitude which may render them fit instruments, under the providence of Almighty God, to secure for these United States the greatest of all blessings, independence and peace; that it may please him to prosper the trade and manufactures of the people and the labor of the husbandman, that our land may yield its increase; to take schools and seminaries of education, so necessary for cultivating the principles of true liberty, virtue and piety, under his nurturing hand, and to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.

And it is further recommended, that servile labor, and such recreation as, though at other times innocent, may be unbecoming the purpose of this appointment, be omitted on so solemn an occasion.

One of the first reactions to my posts, by the Liberal/Atheist responders continued to deny Jefferson’s Christianity.

Atheists like to bring up the fact that he wrote a version of the Bible which left out Christ’s miracles.  What they are reluctant to do, though, is explain why he wrote his book that way.  David Barton explains on wallbuilders.com:

The reader [of a newspaper article which Barton is replying to], as do many others, claimed that Jefferson omitted all miraculous events of Jesus from his “Bible.” Rarely do those who make this claim let Jefferson speak for himself. Jefferson’s own words explain that his intent for that book was not for it to be a “Bible,” but rather for it to be a primer for the Indians on the teachings of Christ (which is why Jefferson titled that work, “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth”). What Jefferson did was to take the “red letter” portions of the New Testament and publish these teachings in order to introduce the Indians to Christian morality. And as President of the United States, Jefferson signed a treaty with the Kaskaskia tribe wherein he provided—at the government’s expense—Christian missionaries to the Indians. In fact, Jefferson himself declared, “I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.” While many might question this claim, the fact remains that Jefferson called himself a Christian, not a deist.

Finally, the Eight Per Centers who replied to my blogs insisted that Crosses and other Chrstian symbols have no place in the Public Square.  They wish for Christians to remain unseen and unheard from, worshiping in private.

Well,  y’all can wish for a unicorn to magically appear in your backyard…but that ain’t gonna happen, either.

As a free nation, all you who are non-believers have every right to exercise your faith.

However, as Orthodox Rabbi Daniel Lapin of the Jewish Policy Center clearly explains:

[I] understand that I live . . . in a Christian nation, albeit one where I can follow my faith as long as it doesn’t conflict with the nation’s principles. The same option is open to all Americans and will be available only as long as this nation’s Christian roots are acknowledged and honored.

…Without a vibrant and vital Christianity, America is doomed, and without America, the west is doomed. Which is why I, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, devoted to Jewish survival, the Torah, and Israel am so terrified of American Christianity caving in. God help Jews if America ever becomes a post-Christian society! Just think of Europe!

Is the Rabbi prophetic? I pray that he isn’t. 

I have, however, noticed in the last few years, a propensity among those who have not been raised in a Christian home, to be intolerant toward those who have….staring with the individual who sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.

Americans’ Christian Faith, of which 78% of us, according to Gallup, still anchor our lives around,has been the Solid Rock upon which our nation was built. To deny that, is to deny reality, to re-write history, and, to, quite frankly, endanger “the Shining City on a Hill”.

As President Ronald Reagan said, 

If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under. 

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Hey, Bloomie. C’mon Down to Mississippi. I’ll Buy You a Barbeque Sammich and a Sweet Tea Big Gulp.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

bloombergobamaAs I have related before, I live in DeSoto County, in the Northwest corner of Mississippi. I moved across the state line from Memphis, back in 1997, after the Mayor of Memphis told me that hard-working taxpayers, like myself, were no longer wanted there. But I digress…

My state made me very proud yesterday, as it took a stand for freedom.

NationalReview.com reports

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s soda ban may have been struck down yesterday, but lawmakers in Mississippi have taken action to prevent similar initiatives in their state by passing what is being called the “Anti-Bloomberg Bill.” The bill would prevent Mississippi counties, cities, and towns from passing laws that require restaurants to post calorie counts, limit portion sizes, and bar toys from kids’ meals. Republican Governor Phil Bryant is expected to sign the bill later this month, according to National Public Radio.

The bill has attracted bipartisan support, with members of both parties rallying behind the cause. It sailed through Mississippi’s state Senate by a 50 to 1 margin earlier this month. “If you want 1,000 sodas, you can still do that,” said the Democratic congressman who introduced the bill.

The bill has its detractors, though. Critics cite the fact that Mississippi is ranked among the unhealthiest in the country and boasts the nation’s highest obesity rate.

The bill, SENATE BILL NO. 2687, begins

1 AN ACT TO RESERVE TO THE LEGISLATURE ANY REGULATION OF

2 CONSUMER INCENTIVE ITEMS AND NUTRITION LABELING FOR FOOD THAT IS A

3 MENU ITEM IN RESTAURANTS, FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS AND VENDING

4 MACHINES; TO SPECIFY THAT THE ACT WOULD NOT AFFECT THE FEDERAL

5 REGULATION OF NUTRITION LABELING UNDER EXISTING FEDERAL LAW; AND

6 FOR RELATED PURPOSES.

Meanwhile, up in The Big Apple, where Liberalism is out of control, Judge Martin A. Tingling told Nanny Mayor Bloomberg that his decree banning Big Gulps was way out of line.

As the New York Times reports,

In his ruling, Justice Tingling concurred with much of the beverage industry’s legal arguments. He said the Board of Health, which is appointed by the mayor, had overreached in approving the plan, and wrote that the City Council was the only legislative body with the power to approve such a far-reaching initiative.

The administration, Justice Tingling wrote, had interpreted the board’s powers broadly enough to “create an administrative Leviathan,” capable of enacting any rules and “limited only by its own imagination.”

The judge also criticized the rules themselves, noting they would apply only to certain sugared drinks — dairy-based beverages like milkshakes, for instance, would be exempt — and be enforced only in certain establishments, like restaurants and delis, but not others, like convenience stores and bodegas. The rules, the judge wrote, would create “uneven enforcement, even within a particular city block, much less the city as a whole.”

…On Monday, a spokesman for the American Beverage Association said that the court decision “provides a sigh of relief.”

“With this ruling behind us, we look forward to collaborating with city leaders on solutions that will have a meaningful and lasting impact on the people of New York City,” the spokesman, Christopher Gindlesperger, said.

It is unclear if the appeal of the case will be resolved before Mr. Bloomberg leaves office at the end of this year. His would-be successors are mixed in their views of the measure and may not share his zeal on the issue.

The mayor appears increasingly preoccupied with his legacy, and recently hired two public relations advisers — a former Times editor, Arthur Pincus, and a former television reporter, Andrew Kirtzman — to shape the public perception of the Bloomberg era.

Asked on Monday if he was concerned that a drawn-out legal battle over the soda limits could spill into the administration of a successor who does not favor them, Mr. Bloomberg, sounding a bit irked, muttered, “All of our time is running out,” before saying, “I don’t know who is going to be my successor.”

The mayor added: “People are dying every day. This is not a joke. This is about real lives.”

Speaking of “real lives”, I am certain that the majority of New Yorkers are glad that Rudy was their mayor on September 11, 2001, and this idiot, Bloomie, was not. While Rudy showed decsive, prudent leadership in a time of crisis, this babbling fool would have been running around like a chicken with his head cut off, trying to apologize to the murderous Muslims, for putting up the Twin Towers, which obviously offended them.

Thomas Jefferson wrote

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits. 

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

All I heard from the Liberal Main Stream Media yesterday, when the news about my state’s Anti-Bloomberg Bill was announced, was how Mississippi was “the fattest state in the Union”. Nothing was said about how Bloomberg’s ludicrous ban was a out-of-bounds restriction on New Yorkers’ freedom as Americans.

As we are experiencing during the beginning of the second term of The Lightbringer, with his attacks on our right to bare arms and our country’s Judeo-Christian belief system, upon which our Founding Documents were written, and his fellow Liberals, like his wife, Michelle’s and Mayor Bloomberg’s, desire to control what we eat and feed our children, and even our pets, Mrs. Roosevelt is being proven to have been exactly right.

The Personal Freedom that Americans have enjoyed since the birth of our nation is as abhorrent to Liberals as a crucifix is to a vampire.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The War on Christianity: The Long and Winding Road

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics6 Comments

If you listen to the message-bringers of Popular Culture, you would think that Christianity in America is on its last legs.  Hardly.

Here’s an example of the kind of story that has lead to that false dynamic, followed up by, as the late, great Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story”:

Baynews9.com has the story.

Atheists in Polk County symbolically scrubbed away at a major highway leading into the county Saturday.

The were removing a blessing placed there a year ago by a group of religious leaders.

Brooms, mops and water hoses in hand, the atheists gathered at the roadside.

“We come in peace .. now that’s normally what aliens say when they visit a new planet, but we’re not aliens, we’re atheists!” Humanists of Florida director Mark Palmer shouted to the group along Highway 98.

Representatives from various atheist groups in the area scrubbed the road at the Pasco-Polk county line. They were figuratively removing holy oil that had been put on the road last year by a group of area religious leaders. That group was Polk Under Prayer, or PUP.

PUP director Richard Geringswald said his group had been blessing the county line.

“And praying for that entryway in to the city, that God would protect us from evildoers, mainly the drug crowd, that they would be dissuaded to come in to the county,” Geringswald said.

But Humanists of Florida members don’t see it that way. They say it makes them feel unwelcome.

“It sends a very bad signal to everyone in Polk County, and (anyone) who travels through Polk county who doesn’t happen to be Christian,” Palmer said, “This event is not about atheist rights; this is about welcoming everybody into Polk county.”

So they took their “unholy water” and washed the road.

It’s been an ongoing feud between the groups in the county: the atheists are also unhappy with prayer bricks PUP members buried along I-4 and various other roadway leading in to the county, engraved with Psalm 37.

“For the wicked shall be destroyed, but those who trust the Lord shall be given every blessing,” Geringswald said, reading the psalm from his Bible.

Geringswald said PUP is trying to do something positive – to keep crime out and encourage faith. He says they also plan to run TV ads later this year that will say they are trying to send a positive message about criminals turning their lives around.

The humanists say they don’t plan on stopping their protests any time soon.

That’s all well and good, but they still only represent 8% of our nation’s population.

Last June, Gallup reported the following:

More than 9 in 10 Americans still say “yes” when asked the basic question “Do you believe in God?”; this is down only slightly from the 1940s, when Gallup first asked this question.

Despite the many changes that have rippled through American society over the last 6 ½ decades, belief in God as measured in this direct way has remained high and relatively stable. Gallup initially used this question wording in November 1944, when 96% said “yes.” That percentage dropped to 94% in 1947, but increased to 98% in several Gallup surveys conducted in the 1950s and 1960s. Gallup stopped using this question format in the 1960s, before including it again in Gallup’s May 5-8 survey this year.

In 1976, Gallup began using a slightly different question format to measure belief in a deity — “Do you believe in God or a universal spirit?” — and found that 94% of Americans agreed. That percentage stayed fairly steady through 1994, and is at 91% in the May 2011 survey.

78% of Americans still identify themselves as Christians, per Gallup.  This is not only a choice of faith, it’s an American Legacy.

Which Creator do you think that our Founding Fathers were writing about?

Atheists tend to use President Thomas Jefferson as their “poster boy” to back up a lot of their shallow arguments.  What they don’t know or won’t say, will hurt them.  For instance, did you know that

Jefferson urged local governments to make land available specifically for Christian purposes;

In an 1803 federal Indian treaty, Jefferson willingly agreed to provide $300 to “assist the said Kaskaskia tribe in the erection of a church” and to provide “annually for seven years $100 towards the support of a Catholic priest.” He also signed three separate acts setting aside government lands for the sole use of religious groups and setting aside government lands so that Moravian missionaries might be assisted in “promoting Christianity.”

When Washington D. C. became the national capital in 1800, Congress voted that the Capitol building would also serve as a church building. President Jefferson chose to attend church each Sunday at the Capitol and even provided the service with paid government musicians to assist in its worship. Jefferson also began similar Christian services in his own Executive Branch, both at the Treasury Building and at the War Office.

Jefferson praised the use of a local courthouse as a meeting place for Christian services;

Jefferson assured a Christian religious school that it would receive “the patronage of the government”;

Jefferson proposed that the Great Seal of the United States depict a story from the Bible and include the word “God” in its motto;
While President, Jefferson closed his presidential documents with the phrase, “In the year of our Lord Christ; by the President; Thomas Jefferson.”

Jefferson believed that every individual should pray according to his own beliefs. As Jefferson himself, explained:

[The] liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will [is] a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support. (emphasis added)

Atheist Activists will probably lose their minds over reading that President Jefferson said that:

No nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.

And, when Atheists aren’t erroneously quoting Jefferson, they’re bringing up President James Madison, who also encouraged public officials to declare openly and publicly their Christian beliefs and testimony. In fact, in a letter he wrote to William Bradford (who became Attorney General under President George Washington), he declared that:

I have sometimes thought there could not be a stronger testimony in favor of religion or against temporal enjoyments, even the most rational and manly, than for men who occupy the most honorable and gainful departments and [who] are rising in reputation and wealth, publicly to declare their unsatisfactoriness by becoming fervent advocates in the cause of Christ; and I wish you may give in your evidence in this way.

In conclusion, Americans’ Christianity is a Legacy passed down from our Founding Fathers, continuing from generation to generation.

And to the Polk County, Florida Atheists, who made a big show out of “unblessing” a highway:

It was a lot of “sound and fury, signifying nothing”.  

Give it up, y’all.  You can’t “unbless” anything.  It’s above your pay grade.