Archive for the 'Religion' Category

News.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that a Washington school district can ban a former coach from praying on the field after football games.

Joseph Kennedy, the school’s former football coach, sued the Bremerton School District after alleging his rights were violated when the district banned him from praying in the middle of the football field after games ended, according to the court’s ruling.

“Kennedy’s attempt to draw nationwide attention to his challenge to the District showed that he was not engaging in private prayer,” the three-judge panel ruled. “Instead, he was engaging in the public speech of an overtly religious nature while performing his job duties.”

Next up, hatred for the traditional family.

A New York City judge has removed a 6-year-old girl from her mother because she did not wear a mask while dropping her off outside of the school.

In a shocking and egregious move, the court also told Dr. Epstein that in order to get short supervised visits with her child — she will have to wear a mask inside her own home.

Those who hate God pay with their souls.  And systems of government that hate God pay with the collapse of society.

Georgiaboy61.

It is common knowledge on the internet, that (( )) is a synonym for Jewish, yes, so lets dispense with the nonsense and speak plainly, shall we?

Let us stipulate that supremacist movements, whatever their origin, are wrong. Movements which seek to deny others their humanity and turn them into something less than that. Movements which seek to scapegoat and persecute others who have done no wrong. This is true no less of Jewish supremacism than it is of Islamic or national socialist or communist supremacism.

In other words, if there are Jews doing what you accuse them of doing, then they ought to be held to account for it. They ought to be identified and censured in public, in the light of day. If they have committed crimes, they ought to stand before the bar of justice. At the very least, make their acts a part of the public record.

Here’s the thing, though: Vague statements about “The Jews” or using (( )) – do nothing to remedy the problem, if indeed it exists in the first place. All they do is make the accusers look like unhinged nut-jobs. And alienate and make enemies of people – including many Jews – who would otherwise be sympathetic to the cause of preserving what remains of western civilization and the U.S.A.

So rather than rant and rave on the internet to no good purpose, why not supply evidence? Specific names, specific acts of wrong-doing, and so forth? Once you have actionable intelligence, hand it over to the local DA’s office. Then maybe, maybe, if a crime has been committed, you’ll get some sort of action. If that doesn’t work, then maybe the Veritas Project would be interested in your findings.

Oh, and one other thing: It is common practice for the authorities employed by certain agencies and NGOs to plant anti-Semitic material on websites they wish to discredit. The SPLC has been doing it for years, to name one example. The way that little game works is that their operatives plant anti-Semitic or other inappropriate material on the site, and then they can come back and point the finger at the host of the site, accusing them of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, whatever.

The founder of the SPLC, a nasty little piece of work named Morris Dees – a hard-left Jewish lawyer – got to be so toxic that not even the political left could stand him anymore. When he got caught abusing women a few years back, it made firing the guy that much easier.

See? Specific names and actions…. now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Or “the tribe,” or “those who must not be named,” wink wink, or whatever.

Frankly, it’s stupid, and I roll my eyes every time I see it.  Stop it.

The Turkish Muslims caused the genocide of the Armenian Christians.  Hitler went after the Christians before (or at least at the same time) as he went after the Jews.  Pol Pot killed everyone who wasn’t favored by him, people who complained about being relegated to state workers, or who had money.  The genocide of the CCP is legendary, and Christians still suffer today under the CCP.

Idi Amin went after the Christians with fervor.  The Muslims almost decimated the church in Mesopotamia.  The current U.S. and various state administrations are okay with the church, as long as the official line is the state line, they observe the new woke ideology, and they don’t meet for worship.  We’ve yet to see how far they will take things, but history doesn’t paint a pleasant picture.

And if you think since you may not happen to be a Christian they’ll leave you alone, you’re crazy.  You can add to the list the Rwandan genocide, the Venezuelan genocide, the Haiti massacre of 1804, the aggressive and offensive Islamic conquests of Europe (against which the Crusades had to be fought), the Catholic repression of the Protestants leading to the war on the Huguenots, Sherman’s brutality in the South, the Chinese civil war (nearly 12,000,000 dead), and on and on and on we could go.

Any man without God, given the right opportunity, wants to control others.  I’ve observed before that the desire to control others is the signal pathology of the wicked.  My words were carefully chosen.  It is a sure, infallible sign.  You can disbelieve in God is that’s your choice.  Be a fool if you want to.  The fool has said in his heart there is no God.

Whether you believe or not has absolutely nothing to do with His true existence.  God doesn’t ask you if He can exist.  He demands obedience.  Evil exists because of the fall and federal headship of Adam.  There have been wars and genocide since the beginning of time, and there will be until the end of time.

Call the problem what it is: rejection of the God of the bible.  This has nothing whatsoever to do with race or nationality.  For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.  Every man, without God, would enslave you.  If it isn’t a Jew, it will be a black, or Muslim, or Caucasian, or Asian.

No man will respect your liberty or right to worship the true God without himself being saved by the true God.

Turn to the living God and understand the true break, the fault line, the fracture, that defines all of history, without a single exception.  As I learned from my professor, Dr. C. Gregg Singer, without understanding God and His decrees, you cannot understand history.

Via David Codrea, this take on the reprehensible David French.

“Evangelical vaccine hesitancy is both an information problem and a spiritual problem.”

[ … ]

In this way, French’s article differs little from an ignorant piece of anti-religion propaganda peddled by The New York Times originally titled, “The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals” in which the author says, “This denial of science and critical thinking among religious ultraconservatives now haunts the American response to the coronavirus crisis.” French’s article conveys the same temporal terror that saturates the fear porn peddled by politicos and the sycophants at The New York Times to assure us Christians will be the death of us all.

Yes, so according to David French, theological heresies like open theology, denial of the trinity, denial of the deity of Christ, continuing revelation, and so on, aren’t the spiritual problems he needs to address.  It’s whether Christians get vaccinated.

So David French is now David French, ThD, PhD microbiologist, and spiritual leader of the bride of Christ.  That’s quite a Curriculum Vita.

Actually, I consider him to be just another carnival barker and ignoramus.

PJM.

Next week, the California Department of Education will vote on a new ethnic studies curriculum that seeks to root out “white supremacy,” “colonization,” and the various evils of American culture. The curriculum aims to reverse Christianity’s alleged “theocide” against Native American gods by leading students in a chant to various indigenous deities, including the Aztec god of human sacrifice. This horrific chant arguably violates the First Amendment, but it also exposes the true ugliness of “woke” supremacy.

The Discovery Institute’s Christopher Rufo exposed the new curriculum in City Journal and published the full documents on his blog.

R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, the original co-chair of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, developed much of the curriculum’s material on early American history. The curriculum cites Cuauhtin’s book Rethinking Ethnic Studies, in which he argues that the United States was founded on “Eurocentric, white supremacist (racist, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous), capitalist (classist), patriarchal (sexist and misogynistic), heteropatriarchal (homophobic), and anthropocentric paradigm brought from Europe.”

The ethnic studies curriculum claims that whites began “grabbing the land,” “hatching hierarchies,” and “developing for Europe/whiteness,” which created “excess wealth” that “became the basis for the capitalist economy.” This white “hegemony” continues to the present, and it allegedly subjects minorities to “socialization, domestication, and ‘zombification.’”

The curriculum singles out Christianity for particular demonization. Cuauhtin claimed that white Christians committed “theocide” by killing indigenous gods while replacing tribal cults with Christianity. White settlers established a regime of “colonially, dehumanization, and genocide,” characterized by the “explicit erasure and replacement of holistic Indegeneity and humanity.”

Cuauhtin, whomever this is, is an idiot.  That sounds like a second grader wrote it.

As for worshiping the false god of human sacrifice, eh, no change.  America has been doing that ever since the days of Margaret Sanger via abortion.

Romans 1:18-21 comes to mind.  And the only true God scoffs at them.

FRC.

There were a lot of powerful arguments against the Equality Act, but Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) resorted to the ultimate authority: the Bible. During an intense debate on the House floor, the Florida representative said it was time for his colleagues to hear the truth about the transgender issue. But Democrats aren’t interested in the truth — or God. And far-Left radical Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) didn’t mind saying so.

“‘A woman must not wear men’s clothing nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this,'” Steube read from Deuteronomy 22:5. But let’s be clear, he said. “It’s not clothing or personal style that offends God, but rather the use of one’s appearance to act out or take on a sexual identity different from the one biologically assigned by God at birth.” What’s happening when men, women, and children do that, Steube said, is that “they’re making a statement that God didn’t know what He was doing when he created them.” And if Congress supports that — by passing extreme transgender bills like the Equality Act — then this country is “go[ing] directly against what is laid out in scripture.”

Democrats, irate that the Florida congressman dared to quote the word of God on the House floor, unleashed on Steube. Everyone from Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) to Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), shamed him for being transphobic and intolerant. But it was Congressman Nadler’s response that was the most shocking and revealing. “Mr. Steube,” he said pointedly, “what any religious tradition describes as God’s will is no concern of this Congress.”

God scoffs at his arrogance.

It sounds like it might be time for imprecatory prayers against this man.

“A pointed question must be put.  If the prophets who spoke, if the authors who wrote, and if our Lord Himself, are mistaken about verbal inspiration, if they are mistaken these hundreds of times, what assurance may anyone have with respect to the other things they said and wrote?  Is there any reason to suppose that men who were so uniformly deceived as to the source of their message could have had any superior insight and accurate knowledge of man’s relation to God?  Still more pointedly: Can anyone profess a personal attachment to Jesus Christ and consistently contradict his assertion that the Scriptures cannot be broken?

Gordon H. Clark, Religion, Reason and Revelation

The answer to the last question is of course no, and the entirety of revelation is undermined when one undercuts the doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture.  This is why modernism has gone to war with infallibility, reason, inspiration and the sufficiency of Scripture.  If your epistemology doesn’t come from the Holy Writ, that means an end to truth.

The Westminster Confession of Faith.

Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable;(a) yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation.(b) Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church;(c) and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing:(d) which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary;(e) those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.(f)

[The 66 books of the Bible are listed]

All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.(g)

[ … ]

The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God.(i)

Note that the confession doesn’t say that the Bible “contains” the word of God.  That’s a clever lie.  It leaves the door open for some of it being something else.  Nor does the confession leave the door open for additional revelations of any sort.  The Bible is the word of God.

In the land to the North (via WiscoDave).

A pastor in Edmonton, Canada was just tried, sentenced, and jailed for refusing to follow government pandemic mandates.

Pastor James Coates of GraceLife Church was charged and arrested after last Sunday’s service with repeatedly failing to follow mask and 15% capacity mandates.

His crime? Hosting 300 maskless people who voluntarily gathered inside to worship God, taking a willing 99% chance of surviving a virus to obey their Savior’s command to gather and build the church.

Since being put in prison, he has been sitting “in isolation in a cell block.” Just a few days later, the government has already tried him and handed down a sentence to prison for his high crimes and treason against sCiEnCe.

His wife Erin said the government “went for the jugular” and “tried him in secret.” She also said he must promise to “not pastor anymore” in order to be released, but that he is unwilling to do so.

The survival rate is much higher than that.  As for their little “secret” trial, how utterly absurd.

“Shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart.”  Psalm 44:21

Someone is piling agony on top of agony for themselves in judgment one day soon.  God will not be mocked.  Nothing is secret – He knows everything and judges with a righteous judgment.  There won’t even be a response from the accused on that awful day of judgment.  The tyrant’s lips will be sealed, and they will be prostrate before the ruler of the universe, the real judge, not a pretend judge.

Of course, this may happen in time too.  As always, ignore commands from the state when they conflict with the commands of God.  Maybe a righteous prison break would be in order.  Followed by an armed defense of the pastor’s home and family.

So says the headline.  The actual ruling isn’t so strong.

A deeply divided Supreme Court doubled down on religious rights late Friday, ruling that California can no longer continue with a ban on indoor church services put in place to fight to the coronavirus pandemic. But the court said that the state, for now, can keep in place restrictions on singing and chanting inside.

The two cases at the center of Friday’s ruling marked a test of how far states can go to safeguard public health before running afoul of constitutional protections for the free exercise of religion. In response to suits brought by the South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista and the Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, the court said California cannot bar in-person services altogether, but can limit attendance to 25% of capacity.

Last year the high court, by a 5-to-4 vote, upheld such bans in California and elsewhere. But with the arrival of new Justice Amy Coney Barrett in place of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the balance of power on the question switched, and this latest order is fresh evidence of the court’s willingness to second-guess both epidemiologists and elected officials who are fighting a once-in-a-century pandemic when it comes to questions of religious liberty.

The churches argued that California violated their religious rights when the state moved last year to place limits on attendance at in-person worship services based on COVID-19 infection rates. In the hardest-hit areas of the state, in-person services were put on hold completely. So too was singing and chanting inside, given that the coronavirus is not only more transmissible in enclosed spaces, but that singing releases tiny droplets that carry the virus through the air.

Though the conservative wing of the court prevailed decisively in the case Friday night, it was sharply split, with the conservative justices filing four separate opinions. In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that federal courts owe “significant deference” to state officials when it comes to matters of public health, but he said such deference can only go so far.

“The State has concluded, for example, that singing indoors poses a heightened risk of transmitting COVID–19. I see no basis in this record for overriding that aspect of the state public health framework,” wrote Roberts. “At the same time, the State’s present determination — that the maximum number of adherents who can safely worship in the most cavernous cathedral is zero — appears to reflect not expertise or discretion, but instead insufficient appreciation or consideration of the interests at stake.”

The chief justice’s opinion marked a middle ground of sorts among the court’s conservatives. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas said they would have lifted California’s restrictions in full. While acknowledging that the state has a “compelling interest” in reducing the spread of COVID-19, they said California had effectively given preferential treatment to “lucrative industries” such as the film industry, adding that the state had “openly imposed more stringent regulations on religious institutions than on many businesses.”

“If Hollywood may host a studio audience or film a singing competition while not a single soul may enter California’s churches, synagogues, and mosques, something has gone seriously awry,” they wrote in an opinion that was joined by Justice Samuel Alito.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in her first signed opinion since joining the court in October, focused on the state’s restrictions on singing and chanting. In an opinion joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Barrett said that it was up to churches to demonstrate that they were entitled to relief from the singing ban, but that in this case, they had not. Still, she said, it remains unsettled as to whether the ban applies evenly across the board in California or if it favors certain sectors.

“Of course, if a chorister can sing in a Hollywood studio but not in her church, California’s regulations cannot be viewed as neutral,” Barrett said.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said they would have left California’s restrictions in place. In a stinging dissent for the three, Kagan noted that none of the justices is a scientist, and she accused the majority of substituting its own judgment for the epidemiologists and elected officials who are “desperately trying to slow the spread of a deadly disease.” Kagan disputed the notion that the state is somehow treating religious institutions worse than secular entities. The only secular conduct the state treats better, she said, “is the kind that its experts have found does not imperil” the battle against the pandemic.

“I cannot imagine that any of us [on the court] has delved into the scientific research on how COVID spreads, or studied the strategies for containing it,” she said. “So it is alarming that the court second guesses the judgments of expert officials and displaces their conclusions with its own. … In the worst public health crisis in a century, this foray into armchair epidemiology cannot end well.”

They sound like a bunch of second graders.

The question before the court was (or at least, should have been) whether the shutdowns violated constitutionally protected rights, not whether the state was neutral in said violation.

Doctors aren’t air filtration engineers.  Epidemiologists aren’t doctors.  Neither is a physicist or chemist.  And none of the above know how to perform computation fluid dynamics (CFD).  Epidemiologists are supposed to be concerning themselves with industrial toxicants and performing statistical analyses using one-sided confidence and the like (of course, the epidemiologists with the CDC do nothing).  Many epidemiologists with the CDC are simply graduates of a Master of Public Health program, which doesn’t make them epidemiologists.

Show me a licensed physician who has a master’s or doctoral degree in engineering or physics and who has experience as an air filtration engineer and I may listen to him on how a biological particle is transmitted.  Until then, shut up.

This worship of “science,” whatever non-scientists take that to be, is silly and childish.  As for judges and justices, they are supposed to be deciding cases on the basis of the constitution.  They have one job.  One … job.  And they can’t seem to do that well.

Kagan can leave the “airchair epidemiology” to the folks at the CDC.  She isn’t required to know anything about it, and neither are her peers.  As to Kavanaugh’s comment about churches being required to show that they deserved relief from the ban in singing, no, the government is required to show that what they’re requiring is constitutional.  He has everything exactly backwards.

As for Roberts’ statement that he has no basis for overriding the state’s health framework, he has every basis if it violates the constitution, which is (or should be) the only question in front of the court.

“Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8)

” … not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some.” (Hebrews 10:25)

“Speaking to one another is psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19)

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

I just gave the supreme court everything they needed to do their jobs.  They have one job.

“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Genesis 3:26

“Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”  Genesis 11:7

” … and He saw the spirit of God descending as a dove … and behold, a voice coming out of the heavens, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Matt 3:16-17

‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”  2 Corinthians 13:14

There is perfect fellowship of the three persons of the Godhead, and the doctrine of the trinity perfectly solves the long standing philosophical problem of the one and the many (here see Rousas J. Rushdoony, “The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy”).

Without the trinity, there is no salvation, there is only death to those who do not believe.  God decreed the salvation of His elect, Jesus accomplished it, and the Holy Spirit applies it by regeneration and the gift of faith.

WCF:

In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.(o) The Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding: the Son is eternally begotten of the Father:(p) the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.(q)

“The secret things belong to Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.”

Deuteronomy 29:29.

Here we have wrapped up in a tidy package both the (a) decretive will of God, and the (b) preceptive will of God.

God decrees (or foreordains) “whatsoever comes to pass” (Westminster Confession of Faith, 3.1).  Why? Because of the counsel of His own will.  Not yours, not mine, not according to anything in the creature, and not according to what he foresaw would happen.

God forbids us to try to see His decretive will.  He calls this sorcery, witchcraft, and idolatry, and such things are to be shunned.

God ordains His law, and that is ours for obedience forever.  He says so in the passage.

Do you see the mistaken notion of the Charismatic movement ideations of trying to pry into the secret things?  Do you see that what God has given us in His Holy word is enough?  Would that Christians work a little harder trying to obey His revealed will and leave His secret will to Him.

“All Scripture is inspire by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”  2 Timothy 3:16-17

For pleasing God, you don’t need to know what He has decreed and somehow discern it through any means other that the Scripture.  God does not tell you what job to take, what college to attend, or even whom to marry.  Not in a secret voice, not in your prayer closet, not in happenstances, not in getting a “peace” about things (Christians are seldom at peace, and for good reason, we are in a spiritual war).

He gives you rules, laws, requirements, that govern all of the above.  You cannot take a job where you must be dishonest or engage in tyranny.  You cannot cheat homeowners by putting studs on center any measurement but code (or less).  You cannot attend a college where you must deny Him.  And you cannot marry in such a manner as to be unequally yoked.

Scripture is sufficient.

Sola Scriptura.