Re: http://townhall.com/columnists/AlanSears/2009/03/18/preying_on_prayer

Mencken’s disparagement of Puritanism is understandable because as an atheist he associated happiness as freedom from moral constraint and accountability, whereas the Puritans viewed immorality as idolatry of self and bondage to sin.

He was at the ‘Monkey Trial’ in support of the minority view. Now that macro-evolution is the dominate view, would he still support academic freedom or would he side with the new fundamentalists? The disciples of Darwin are as dogmatic as the disciples of Moses and even more intolerant. Mencken was ahead of his time in his disdain for the Christian religion…

"THE MONKEY TRIAL": A Reporter's Account by Mencken

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/menk.htm

Mr. Bancroft is a most favored historian of the American Republic. This discourse on the history of the monetary policy is of interest because being among the great historians his dire predictions have come to past.

In what he calls ‘a death blow to the constitution’ the court has given ‘a sanction to irredeemable paper money’, and ‘clothes the government with powers that have no defined limit in its relations to the people’ [George Bancroft].

Re: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1237114844980&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Is there anything holy and sacred about the remains of the temple in Jerusalem build with hands?

Christ tells His people the day is coming when they will worship Him in a temple not at Jerusalem. The real temple, of which the one in Jerusalem was but a shadow of the substance to come, is made of living stones with Christ the chief cornerstone, a man of sorrows and rejected, but precious to those of faith [1 Peter 2].

“…the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” [John 4:21-24]

Two millennium after Jesus left their house desolate, the Jews continue in desolation…

Re: http://townhall.com/columnists/AllenHunt/2009/03/16/the_churchs_obituary

Prompted by my response to Paul Edwards’ recent article on praying for the president we will be considering this passage in coming weeks…

http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulEdwards/2009/03/13/how_im_praying_for_the_president

Obama has made himself an enemy of the cross while professing to be a man of faith. We are commanded to pray on behalf of all men and for those in authority [1 Timothy 2:1-2]. But how do we deal with the fact that the American people elected him and his ilk to power? We who had a birthright of liberty have sold it for a mess of pottage. We have become the heathen nation that rages against the Almighty and His Anointed.

Intolerance of Christianity is increasingly seen in public policy, because the progressives see us as the suppressors of human rights. Reputations and businesses of anyone who supported California’s Proposition 8 are being sought after with malicious intent. Western society is failing from inward corruption, and those who are supposed to be salt and light are seen as the enemies.

A healthy, thriving church is a blessing to any nation, but a nation in love with itself and at war with God does not deserve the blessing of a sound church. What we are seeing today with the perversion of marriage and the exaltation of deviancy is not what will bring the wrath of God; it is the wrath of God. [James White]

We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures. [Michael Spencer; http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html]

[Isn’t this what they said about artificial intelligence 30 years ago?]

 [Well which is? Can you really do in 10 years what took evolution millions of years? Or are you saying that intelligent design doesn’t require ions of time to create life?]

[Wow! I wonder what these genetic engineers will produce. It is bound to be an improvement over genetic mutations.]

[Wow! Is he going all the way back to the primordial ooze or will he start with living cells? Was that Dr. Deamer or Dreamer? Dreamer seems more fitting.]

[But what is behind that door?]

You mean like Mr. Data? Don’t these morons know that men are nothing more than complicated machines? And we intend to make one from scratch.]

[Now that is a relief. It will be years before we have to worry about safety. And if they get dangerous we can always pull the plug.]

[All they have to do is create the other pieces and plug them in to life support. No problem! Hey, doesn’t synthetic biology imply that living systems have design?]

[See, creating life is no problem, only a minor challenge.]

[These guys have never heard of Murphy’s Law?]

[Now there’s a realist. What can go wrong usually does go wrong, even when you know what you are doing.]

[There it is. The cell created itself! Don’t you mean we will do it sooner and better? So in conclusion “we are about to almost be able to do something?”]

Why should science not create human clones? What is to stop them? Science by definition cannot determine right from wrong, because moral judgments require a standard of ethics. The neo-scientists have declared that their science has ‘nothing to say about morality’.

Ms. Parker, you are right that dependency is not a racial issue, but neither is liberty. As you imply in your closing argument, these things have a spiritual foundation. What truth will deliver us from an acceptance of dependency and restore our love of liberty?

Shall we join those who worship at the altar of social justice? Why didn’t Jesus see the importance of social justice and make that a priority? Why did the Founders limit the power of the state? Didn’t they understand that the state will make us both free and equal?

In the gospel Jesus makes it clear that the heart is the priority, for out of it comes the issues of life. The New Covenant in His blood ended the theocracy because the outward constraints designed to control an immature people are now obsolete and have passed away. The mature man is able to delight in the Law from a heart renewed by grace. He prefers liberty over the bondage of an authoritative state.

But men and nations will not submit to the rule of Jesus Christ. They prefer the dependency of state control over the liberty He offers. They would go back to the way things were before the New Covenant principles came to America and were effectively applied without apology.

America became a beacon of freedom and prosperity not because of who we were, but because of what we believed. Our ultimate dependency was in the sovereign God who had set us free to pursue independence from everything contrary to Christ.

As it is written, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ [Galatians 3:29].

We reject the irrational conclusions of autonomous reason that the world is the product of the impersonal and therefore without a purposeful design. Men do not live without purpose. We are creative; we like to plan and visualize the execution of our plan and work toward its completion according to our purposes. God has given us this ability. We receive pleasure from what we make when it fulfills its purpose.

Is it not rational that image bearers would reflect the characteristics of the One whose image they bear? Is it not rational that God has a purpose in creation?

‘In order to determine what was designed, in the creating of the astonishing fabric of the universe we behold, it becomes us to attend to and rely on what HE who was the architect has told us. He best knows His own heart and what His own ends and designs were, in the wonderful works which He has wrought’ [Jonathan Edwards].

Let us turn to the Scriptures for they reveal the mind of God to His image bearers. He has not left us to wonder concerning these things. The Scriptures have much to teach us. Jonathan Edwards will be our most capable guide. We hope to get a glimpse of his view of the Almighty and His purpose in creation from Edwards’ book The End for which God Created the World.

Ms. Parker, we make the assumption that the government school admins are concerned about the welfare of the young people under their charge and for the culture in general. But it is apparent that their main interest in one of control. These young people are being held captive to a failed system built on a false ideology. It is cruel and inhuman to waste such potential.

Thanks again for testifying to the truth. A changed life is a powerful testimony to the grace of God for the values you talk about do not originate from the man-centered world view influenced by the social darwinites. Survival of the fittest philosophy taught by the neo-scientists and passed off as real science in the public class rooms is the adopted world-view of many who never escape.

It is a life changing belief that the Personal and Infinite God, Creator of every thing including men that bear His image, made us so that we might know Him and delight in Him and enjoy Him forever.

The preachers of unrighteousness exchange the truth for a lie. Their irrational beliefs that the universe is self existing and that life is without design and therefore without purpose become criminal child abuse when taught to a captive audience and funded by American tax payers under the guise of public education.

There is no shortage of the preachers of unrighteousness and those who will listen to them. They glory in their belief that the supernatural has been explained away. Since there is no creation and no design in nature then there is no need for a supernatural creator. There is no need of Jesus Christ because there is no sin and no need of redemption; and best of all there is no accountability and no judgment for their sin.

But in the real world in which we all live there is a spiritual order as well as physical order. As physics is governed by scientific law, so the nations of men are governed by moral law. This is the meaning of Psalm 2. Messiah has come, and He rules the nations with a rod of iron...

‘Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence’ [Colossians 1:15-18].

In the Gospels we have a record of how He used the Old Testament (OT). What can we learn from this record? What can we learn from the way His apostles used the OT? Since Christ is preeminent in all things then our use of the OT should be patterned after their example.

There is no better place to start than in Matthew’s Gospel. In chapter 4 Satan comes to Jesus after He has fasted for 40 days.

First the tempter questions the authority of Jesus and seeks a sign…

“If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”

But Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” This is a quote of Deuteronomy 8:3.

“If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple for it is written:

      ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’

   and,

      ‘In their hands they shall bear you up,
      Lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” [Psalm 91:11-12]

But Jesus corrects him, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the LORD your God.’” This is a quote of Deuteronomy 6:16.

1. He considers the Scriptures to be authoritative and appeals to their authority to fight temptation.

2. The Scriptures can be maliciously used against Him, but He is wise in the Scriptures to correct their abuse.

3. Temptations will come from the evil one to doubt Christ’s authority and the authority of His word.

4. The misuse of Scripture will appear as pitting one Scripture against another.

[What’s a few million years here or there? Makes sense that this would be a priority.]

Internal fertilization was widespread among prehistoric fish living on ancient tropical coral reefs in the Devonian period, research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday showed.

[Widespread internal fertilization…we wont ask how you know this.]

The discovery sheds new light on the reproductive history of all jawed vertebrates, including humans. "It shifts how we think about how reproduction evolved. You're a jawed vertebrate and I'm a jawed vertebrate, so this is our own history," said Zerina Johanson, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

[Yea, but where are your fins?]

Finding fossil evidence of reproduction is rare and experts initially missed the signs in the case of one specimen, where a tiny embryo was at first thought to be a last meal.

[Ever wonder why it’s rare? Perhaps it’s not there.]

It was thought that such ancient fish would show a more primitive type of reproduction, with sperm and eggs combining externally in the water, as still happens with many modern fish.

[So the ‘modern’ fish missed the sex gene?]

Adding to the evidence is the discovery of a modification in the pelvic fin on the belly of adult fish. The scientists believe this was used by the male to grip the female during mating, as happens with modern sharks.

[Brilliant deduction; let's visualize. Now that ties it! Any questions?]

Re: http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2009/02/25/americas_teens_not_as_raunchy_or_irresponsible_as_you_think

Abraham was told that destruction was coming to Sodom and Gomorrah because the ‘outcry against them is great, and because their sin is very grave’. He inquired of the Lord for the sake of the righteous that the city be spared, “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked...Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” So the LORD said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.”

But Abraham continued to intercede for Sodom, “Suppose ten should be found there?”  And the LORD said, “I will not destroy it for the sake of ten” [Genesis 18]. He is longsuffering and patience towards His people.