Gas Prices, Runaway Climates, and Ice Age Theories

Is Oil Evil?

A lot of people are unaware of the tie between ice age theories and global warming theories.  Whether carbon is the cause of warming, or whether the climate is warming, or whether a warming climate is bad, are not the main topics of this article. However every one of those questions are highly debatable as Svensmark and the Danes have thrown a powerful wrench into the carbon caused warming theory, recent data show the climate hasn’t been warming appreciably, and it’s not really clear that warming would be altogether a bad thing. One thing is certain, the ocean level hasn’t raised the 10 or 20 feet originally predicted  by Gore or the global warming community or certainly we would have heard about it from local surfers on both coasts.

However, I do have the sneaky suspicion that the belief in global warming caused by carbon is definitely playing a role in the price of a gallon of gas. And it really appears that the majority of people don’t really question the scenario, or they know very little about it. Personally I never put much faith in it, having been around long enough to have lived through the carbon caused global ice age, the mass starvation predicted for the 1980′s, the Ozone layer crises, and the DDT scare that led to millions of deaths in Africa and other warm third world nations. The DDT didn’t kill them, the mosquitoes did.

However, in taking a college 101 English comp. course, a professor who was quite keen on global warming had us read through the IPCC data used to come up with their alarming assessment of Carbon Warming. So I was forced by the secular education system to learn about the underlying data behind global warming theory.

Unlike most the class, who were satisfied in reading reports in class and endlessly repeating, ” the polar bears are dying, dying,” I actually read the whole IPPC report and began to purchase the actual scientific journal it was based on. This didn’t do a lot to encourage my faith in the UN. Of course, I have to admit, having watched them deal with the nation of Israel, the only Jewish nation in the world, I wasn’t totally surprised.

I literally spent hundreds of dollars buying articles online from Nature and other top scientific journals, something a wiser woodcutter probably wouldn’t have done.  However I did discover the tie between the global warming scare and the theories of runaway climates. The idea of runaway climates was derived from observation of ice cores in the Antarctic and Greenland ice fields. You can read my college paper on it in this blog but briefly;

Scientists, on the assumption of uniformitarian geology decided the ice cap on the poles represented millions of years of ice build up. Having drilled cores, they examined them and thought they could detect evidence of rapid weather changes in them. This in turn fed the hysteria that weather patterns could fluctuate very rapidly. I have already explained some of the problems with all of that so I’m not going to repeat it here.

The IPCC report put a tremendous amount of weight on these findings, much more then most the scientists did who actually wrote the articles. But here is the funny thing. They believed the Milankovitch theory of orbital variations caused the ice age, (highly doubtful) and since the earth in their mind is millions of years old, they assumed we would have gone through many periods of orbital forcing and thus at least thirty different ice ages.

To their shock though, the evidence for these multiple ice ages really wasn’t there. They expected to find it in the ice cores when they drilled; but they didn’t.  Then they said that all the ice must have melted away, which still is just a tacit admission that they didn’t find what they were looking for.

Then it has been discovered that what they thought was evidence for multiple glaciations, wasn’t. Multiple layers of till at the edge of glaciers was thought to have been caused by many different glaciers, but it has now been observed that these layers are caused by stutter stepping of existing glaciers, the moving back and forth, that causes these layers.

Other problems are that the majority of till can be traced to existing glaciers, insufficient till and also the seldom mentioned problem that huge parts of the northern hemisphere, even in Alaska have never been covered by glaciation. That is pretty hard to swallow if you want to believe in multiple periods of ice ages going back millions of years.

All the data used to surmise the age of the ice cores, and sudden weather changes is highly debatable, as the scientists who wrote the articles often mentioned.

We need to practice good conservation and environmental practices, but we don’t need to make oil and carbon the villain or the target of our hysteria. We need to work on alternative forms of energy, but we don’t need to cause hardship and suffering for millions of people by turning away from the use of oil products.

We live in a fallen world and we are under the law of entropy. There will probably never be  a perfect form of energy. Maybe the fact that there are millions and millions of barrels of oil under the ground is because God intended for us to use it. That doesn’t mean we should destroy the earth to get the oil out. But it suggests that maybe the oil isn’t evil.

Rich people don’t care. They love the save the planet scenarios, they can afford them. It’s the working class and poor who always get nailed first in environmental fads.

Could we just elect a president that didn’t go to Harvard?

Was America founded to be a secular, non-theistic Government?

 Secular Myth No. 8; America was not founded as a Christian nation on Christian principles, and the first amendment was meant to be a fence to keep religion out of government

Taken from “10 More Myths of Modern Academia”

The fact that America was founded on the principles of the Christian faith was taught extensively in the public school system at least up into the 1960′s. Since then however, great effort has been put forth to portray our forefathers as at best luke warm Christians, who came to America to establish a secular nation that was essentially “religion free”. Often the example of the Salem witch trials is trotted out in a narrow attempt and context to discredit the idea of Christianity used in governing in one broad sweep.  In  a 2006 speech to a liberal Christian group, Barak Obama implied that if we tried to rule by the bible, we would probably have to promote slavery and stone children who were disobedient, and he asked, what would we do with the sermon on the mount? All of this leads people to think that setting up a nation on Christian principles would be impossible. However, as we established in the earlier chapters, there is no such thing as a non-religious society, because even one based on atheism is still religious, for atheism is certainly a religious presupposition. But what did our forefathers think?

I don’t think our forefathers were too fond of atheists, though they did tolerate them to some extent. I could talk all day about the Christian founding of our nation, but when  I want to know what people thought, or what they actually believed during any time in history, I believe in the principle of “Ad Fontes”, Latin for, to the source or fount. And by to the source, I mean the actual writings, letters, journals and speeches made by those people themselves. How did John Adams, Thomas Jefferson (more of a theist than the rest), George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and other founders feel about the role Christianity played in the formation of our nation and government?

We know that the majority of them were the grandsons of the Puritan settlers who were the first Europeans to arrive in the area of North America. And we know that no more zealous Christians, or people as dedicated to the Scriptures could be found in Europe then the Puritans. They may have been overzealous and legalistic at times, but no can deny that they certainly were Christian. What was the drive and motivation of the Puritan movement? In his book, The Story of the English Puritans, Reformation and Revival, published in 1910, author John Brown said this;

“The fundamental idea of Puritanism…was the supreme authority of the Scriptures brought to bear upon the conscience…the Puritan, whether narrow or broad, mistaken or enlightened, seemed to himself at least to be aiming not at singularity (uniqueness) but at obedience to that higher spiritual order prevailing in the Universe, which he recognized as being the mind of God, and therefore of more authority than the mere…requirements of man.”

These were the men and women who came to America and established the first colonies, and they were totally motivated and driven by their faith in Christ and the Judeo/Christian scriptures. But what about the founders, how did they view the role of Christianity in the founding of the nation? Let’s look at some actual documents.

The quote below is from the MassachusettsState constitution, and this part was authored by John Adams, a founder and early president of the newly formed United States;

“[All persons elected must] make and subscribe the following declaration, viz. “I do declare that I believe the Christian religion and have firm persuasion of its truth.” (1)

Hmm, not very secular. Thomas Jefferson said;

“The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were . . . . the general principles of Christianity. . . . I will avow that I then believed (and now believe) that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.” (2)

And that was the most liberal member of the founding fathers, yet I wouldn’t call those atheistic sentiments

G. Morris, author of the first draft of the Constitution said;

“Liberty and justice simply cannot be had apart from the gracious influences of a righteous people. A righteous people simply cannot exist apart from the aspiration to liberty and justice. The Christian religion and its incumbent morality is tied to the cause of freedom with a Gordian knot; loose one from the other and both are sent asunder.”

Gouverneur Morris, from biography by James Carter Braxton, 1911, p. 101

Adams again;

“[W]e 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.”(3)

You couldn’t really say that quote was supporting a anti-religious sentiment, in fact Adams is saying our government was built around a religious foundation. Adams again;

“The Bible contains the most profound philosophy, the most perfect morality, and the most refined policy that ever was conceived upon earth. . . .The curses against fornication and adultery, and the prohibition of every wanton glance or libidinous ogle at a woman, I believe to be the only system that ever did or ever will preserve a republic in the world. . . . I say then that national morality never was and never can be preserved without the utmost purity and chastity in women; and without national morality a republican government cannot be maintained.” (6)

Thomas Jefferson again;

“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have lost the only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?” (7)

And yet, if I am not mistaken, removing from the mind of our students that our liberties originated as a gift from God, seems to be exactly the goal of our public school systems. Thus the constant historic revisionism or simply obscurantism.  How did this religiosity actually show itself in the public lives of the colonies and the new nation? Below are some quotes which show how religion expressed itself in the school systems of early American history;

From an 1647 Massachusetts school law;

“It being one chief project of the old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures … it is therefore ordered … [to] appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read.“ (4)

In a 1749 booklet on education, Benjamin Franklin said the teaching of history in schools should;

“afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion … and the Excellency of the Christian religion above all others.” (5)

 Wow, a public religion…and you can be sure he didn’t have atheism in mind.

The Christian religion also played a major role in the founding of all our original colleges and universities as well, at Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth, for example. Harvard had strong Puritan roots, though it remained largely non-denominational, Yale was founded by 10 Congregationalist ministers, and Princeton was founded originally to train those of the Presbyterian denomination. Interestingly enough, Dartmouth was founded by a Puritan Congregationalist leader, named Eliezer Wheelock, who had been impressed and inspired by a native American Christian minister named Samson Occom. Occom was a Mohican who went as a missionary to the Montauk Indians of New York.

Wheelock desired to found Dartmouth as a training center for native Americans and the Latin motto he chose for the school is translated, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” after the New Testament description of John the Baptist. None of these institutions were named or modeled after Voltaire or Hobbes. Nor were they founded to promote general atheism.

But what did Jefferson and the other founders mean by a the first amendment, which is sometimes mistakenly believed to demand a separation between church and state? He certainly didn’t mean to bar the Christian religion from influencing the American Government, because Christianity, as John Adams and the founders clearly stated again and again, was the basis for it’s foundation. Their forefathers, the Puritans, had come to America to establish “The City of God”. And like their brethren in England such as Oliver Cromwell, they believed all law and morality had it’s beginning in the Judeo/Christian Bible.

This Constitution, this government of the American people, was not made by or for atheists, though they are free to live here if they so choose. If they don’t like the traditions or values of a nation based on the religion of Judeo/Christianity, they are free to travel to Russia, China (peoples republic) or any other Marxist, atheist country they desire. But they are not free to, as they have done, twist the constitution on it’s head and violate the first amendment, denying Christians their religious rights while inserting atheism as the default national religion.

The “wall” Mr. Jefferson was talking about, was to keep the government from passing any law as to religious practice in America, it was to be a fence to keep the government from exercising any control over the practice of religion, not vice-versa. See below, and judge for yourself what the purpose of the fence was;

“…the purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors . … experience has nevertheless proved they will be constantly encroaching on if submitted to them;.. there are also certain fences which experience has proved peculiarly efficacious [effective] against wrong and rarely obstructive of right, which yet the governing powers have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove. Of the first kind, for instance, is freedom of religion.”

Jefferson, Thomas, Writings, Vol. VIII, p. 112-113, to Noah Webster on December 4, 1790.

The fence was to keep government out of religion, not vice versa. So the government had no right to abrogate the right to pray, or not pray, in the American school system, as the first amendment clearly states;

“That their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”

No law, no law, prohibiting the free exercise there of. Which is exactly what they did in 1963 when the passed a law prohibiting the freedom to exercise prayer in the public school room.

But what about the establishment clause? Did Jefferson understand it meant that the government couldn’t acknowledge the Christian foundation of the Government of the United States? Hardly. Listen to Jefferson again on what the establishment clause meant;

“[T]he clause of the Constitution which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists…”( Jefferson, Writings, Vol. III, p. 441, to Benjamin Rush on September 23, 1800)

This is what the founders feared, a nationalization of one sect, “of a particular form of Christianity” like the Anglican Church in England, or the Greek Orthodox in Greece, or the Roman Catholic Church in Italy or France. It was from that kind of state church situation they had fled from in England.

So clearly, the amendment was to build a fence to keep government out of religion, not religion out of government. By establishing a state church, the government would in fact be dictating which sect would be most powerful and would be placing itself in a position to powerfully influence the practice of religion in the nation.

And as we have seen, expression of the Christian religion was rampant both in the colonies and in the newly formed government. Even our very basis for the formation of government and the reason we fought the revolution was firmly based in theistic religion, not atheistic. The Declaration of Independence firmly states that our rights and liberties come not from man, but from God; therefore man cannot take them away;

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and have been endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…” Declaration of Independence, also known as the Preamble to the Constitution

To further nail down the character of this nation being considered Christian, we will look at a few of the many U.S. Supreme Court rulings where it was confirmed that Americans could be called a Christian people;

“We are a Christian people (Holy Trinity Church v. United States. 143 U.S. 457, 470 , 471 S., 12 S. Ct. 511), according to one another the equal right of religious freedom and acknowledging with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God. But also we are a nation with the duty to survive; a nation whose Constitution contemplates war as well as peace; whose government must go forward upon the assumption (and safely can proceed upon no other) that unqualified allegiance to the nation and submission and obedience to the laws of the land, as well those made for war as those made for peace, are not inconsistent with the will of God.”

U.S. v. Macintosh, 283 U.S. 605, 625 (1931).

Notice that the Supreme Court in 1931 had no problem testifying that we are a Christian people and that we should conform ourselves and government to the will of God. They used the God-word twice in this one ruling, understanding that the first amendment was a one way fence to keep Government from interfering with religion, not to keep God out of government. The idea that the first amendment should be used to enforce atheism upon the people and outlaw God, had not yet arisen to any extent in this nation. And such an idea, even as late as 1931 would have been thought to be sheer lunacy. Every precedent prior to this time and actual original reason for the first amendment, were quite clear in these judges mind, so they kept with the original intent. Let’s look at some others, here is one from 1903;

“[I]n decisions of this court, the Indian right of occupancy of tribal lands, whether declared in a treaty or otherwise created, has been stated to be sacred. . . . Thus. . . . It is to be presumed that in this matter the United States would be governed by such considerations of justice as would control a Christian people . . . ”

Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553, 565 (1903). See also the same language in Yankton Sioux Tribe of Indians v. U. S., 272 US 351 (1926); U. S. v. Choctaw Nation, 179 U.S. 494 (1900); Atlantic & P R Co v. Mingus, 165 U.S. 413 (1897); Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Company v. Roberts, 152 U.S. 114 (1894); Buttz v. Northern Pac. R. Co., 119 U.S. 55 (1886).

Again, the Supreme Court had no problem in confirming that the U.S. is and was a Christian nation. Here is yet another ruling from 1890, dealing with polygamy in America;

“The organization of a community for the spread and practice of polygamy is . . . .

contrary to the spirit of Christianity and of the civilization which Christianity has produced in the Western world. “

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. United States136 U.S. 1, 49 (1890).

So, clearly, teaching children and college students history in such a manner that it leads them to believe that this nation was formed as a secular nation, and that the first amendments original intent was to enforce this secular and atheist view on the government and the people, is just a myth. Worse, it is a lie. Honest people have no reason to fear actual history or truth, so if our goal is to teach an accurate view of history, then we should have no reason to practice such heavy handed re-visionism. If our goal is to educate, and not indoctrinate, that is.

(1) A Constitution or Frame of Government Agreed Upon by the Delegates of the People of the state of Massachusetts-Bay (Boston: Benjamin Edes & Sons, 1780), p. 44, Chapter VI, Article I.

(2) Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew A. Lipscomb, editor (Washington, D. C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XIII, p. 293, from John Adams on June 28, 1813.

(3) John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1854),

4) Henry Steel Commager (Ed) MassachusettsSchool law of 1647, Documents of American History, F.S. Crofts, New York, p.29, 1947

(5) Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Leonard W. Labaree (Ed.), Yale University Press, New Haven, volume III, p. 413, , 1961; “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania,” 1798

(6) John Adams, Old Family Letters, Alexander Biddle, editor (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1892), pp.127-128, to Benjamin Rush on February 2, 1807.

(7) Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1794, Query XVIII, p. 237

The Apostasia; Ch. 3 Excerpt

Chapter Three

 What is different about Modern Society that would suggest wholesale apostasy?

 

Maybe it would be easier to ask what is not different about modern Christendom compared to the pre- 19th Century Christianity, the changes have been so manifold. But let me try and list a few.

As I pointed out earlier, for almost 1800 years, there were very few direct attacks on scripture or the worldview supported by it.. The Bible was sometimes repressed, banned, or not available in the common languages. It was sometimes controlled by church hierarchy, sometimes placed under church hierarchy, but never attacked or doubted in its God given authority or historical accuracy. The Church had plenty of trouble with false teaching and practice but for almost 1800 years there were no concentrated efforts to use science or philosophy or atheistic theories to over throw the common mans faith in the historicity or authority of the Bible.

This of course radically changed with time. At first the attacks were indirect, with an anti-supernaturalism being touted as a more rational way to view the universe by such early players as Hobbes and later Hume and others. These were rare and only began to become a chorus by the 18th Century. What is called existentialism began to challenge the biblical view of the nature of man, led by atheists such as Sartre, who denied any essential nature to man. Man could literally create himself, he was not made in the image of God and contained by those boundaries and his own fallen nature. We are not creatures made in God’s image and marred by the fall, nor are we bound by any moral absolutes. We must make them up as we go along.

Christian and theistic philosophers like Kierkegaard responded to this challenge, but still ended up moving away from the objective reality of the Scriptures. Even Kierkegaard and Barth had been impressed and influenced by the German higher critics (who turned out to be quite mistaken) and so even in an attempt to defend theism, they moved away from an absolute and objective faith based on the Scriptures first and foremost.

Later Charles Darwin in biology and men such as Charles Lyell in geology would purposefully construct their theories to undermine mankind’s faith in Scripture, even if they rarely admitted this goal publicly.

So the need for a god to create would be directly challenged by Darwin and the time frame that the bible proposed for creation would be challenged by Lyell. In philosophy theism would be attacked as irrational by Hume, and many others.

As these new ideas (for Christendom) began to sink in, more direct attacks on the bible began to take place. In Germany, the new so called higher criticism of the bible began to challenge the historicity of scripture quite aggressively. They claimed that the majority of the Old Testament could not have been written in the time period it claimed for itself, and that more than likely Moses and Abraham and the rest were merely fictitious characters made up centuries later by inventive sheepherders. And they claimed their attacks on Scripture were “assured” and need not be questioned by the layman, or anyone else. Not only that, but it became quite popular in higher academia to mirror and repeat these claims, to the point that no one who wanted to appear as knowledgeable or sophisticated would ever dare take the bible at face value. These views were highly regarded and espoused as the world headed into the 20th century.

These views in turn began to have their effects on governments. For millennias Europe and Christendom had operated under monarchies believed to be supported by God. The church also played an active role in the governing by the ruling monarchies. No one would argue that the results of this varying blend of faith and government was perfect, far from it. But the point is, the idea of a God having a role in government was quite prevalent, and at least at times played a positive role. With the coming of the first democracies in England and America, such as the parliament under Cromwell or the American experiment, the Bible and God still played a huge role in politics, being thought of as the foundation of true government and source of human rights. France of course was an exception to this rule and their bloody revolution was indeed one of the first atheistic attempts at self rule.

However, the French Revolution would not be the last attempt to remove the concept of God from the government. In Russia, Trotsky, Lenin, Marx and Stalin would lay out plans for governing that would virtually outlaw the idea of God from all forms of government and society. Using evolution as the basis for their philosophy they would ban any theistic teaching in the public school system or in public life. China would follow suit and Hitler’s Germany was in step as well. So for the first time in almost 2000 years, God was being actively banned from government, from the sciences of biology and geology and origin theories. And theism was being discouraged or removed from the schools and higher academia. This was indeed something new, and it was taking place in both the western and eastern regions where the Christian church had existed for thousands of years.

t’s no surprise that human morality and ethics would soon be engulfed in the anti-theist tsunami. Marxist Russia, for example was one of the first to remove the laws protecting children in the womb around 1917. Hitler’s pre-war Germany was next, allowing not only for the pre-natal killing of human infants but also the “termination” of the unfit, the crippled, mentally handicapped and eventually, the Jews. In order to help the creative evolutionary forces along the unfit were being forcibly eliminated.

In America, a country firmly established on the theistic principle that all human rights were derived from a creator God, the progress of the war on theism was a little slower.

However, another indirect attack on the morals of the bible exploded on the scenes in the 1960’s; with the sexual revolution or the rise of feminism, women’s liberation; which virtually flipped America on it’s ethical head. Divorce exploded, sex outside of marriage and homosexuality went from being unusual to being accepted behavior. Single parent homes became the norm and teenage pregnancy and cohabitation reached levels never seen in any Christian nation before. Child abuse skyrocketed also. In addition, just as Marxists Russia had outlawed theism from the classroom, so did America. Government mandates to increase the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution were instituted and in 1963, despite a Constitutional amendment that explicitly denies the federal government the right to pass a law concerning the exercise of religion, the U.S. Supreme Court passed a law removing the freedom to pray in the public school system.

In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court followed the lead of Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany and Maoist China and passed a law removing the protection for pre-natal infants; giving sanction to pre-natal infanticide for the first time in American history.

Again, I can’t emphasize enough that these changes are not just events that cycled through the last two thousand years, back and forth with time; they are all new changes to the culture of the Christian nations, that radically changed the way the common man and woman thought. These were not small, inconsequential changes. They indicated a strong and overwhelming desire on the part of Christendom to really spit God out of it’s mouth. In a very real way, we as the inheritors and offspring of the Christian nations have systematically removed God from almost every reality in our lives. In essence the Christian nations appear to have served divorce papers on the God of the Bible.

A further evidence of this apostate movement has been the formation of the “youth culture’, something that only came into existence during the last century. We will look at each of these aspects in separate chapters, and in other chapters we will look at the effects of apostasy on and inside the church, not just society in general.

So in the space of less than two hundred years the authority of the Scriptures and the views of the human being, roles of gender, origins and science, moral values and even the very concept of God came under direct or indirect attack. The main attacks could be listed as;

1) The “rationalist” atheist and existential challenge to the existence of God, absolute morals or objective truth, as well as a challenge to any thing beyond nature or material itself.

2) The challenge of German higher criticism; a direct attack on the historicity of Scripture, it objective reality and reliability as a source of historical truth or knowledge.

3) The Darwinian challenge to the need for a supernatural creator. Design and complex information could arise all by itself and all could be explained in a rational materialistic manner.

4) The Lyellian challenge; everything in geology could be and needed to be explained through the filter of uniformitarianism. The present is the key to the past. Vast river canyons and river plains were not formed by past catastrophes, they were formed by the slow processes we observe every day. Therefore the world was millions of years old and the bible had been proven to be unreliable in it’s presentation of world history.

5) The feminist challenge. The biblical roles of gender were all wrong, and not inspired by an all powerful and wise God. The bible was a book written by sexist men, in order to dominate women, and the sexual mores were un-necessarily strict and prudish. The biblical lines were not drawn to protect fallen man from himself; they were there to limit man from exploring and enjoying his full sexuality.

6) The Marxists challenge; all these new ways of thinking that were accepted very quickly by modern society led to a popular rejection of theism and particularly the biblical brand of theism. If God didn’t exist, then there was no need to allow room for Him in politics. If there was no god, then there were no moral absolutes or need to seek His blessing or rule in such a way to avoid His curse. In essence, Man was his own God. Instead of looking to God for our morality and modes of government and provision, we must look to government. Few people at the time realized how devastating this would be to the concept of human rights, all they saw was a new “freedom”.

We will look at each of these challenges in future chapters, but I think what we have witnessed is a relentless acceptance of atheism in every realm, or man’s ideas replacing biblical standards. And this is true even in the part of the church which claims to be true to the scriptures.

So, just to reiterate; we have removed the concept of the Christian God from the sciences; Biology, Geology and Astronomy; We have removed God from having any role in government; We have removed God from the public school system and theism from the majority of higher academia; We have removed God and biblical morality from being a basis for modern morality and have, even in the church rejected his roles of gender. We have allowed the Bible to be marginalized, standing accused of being historically inaccurate and a unreliable source of objective truth (despite the fact it defends itself quite well in any one of these arenas) and all this has taken place for the most part in the last hundred years, a rejection of almost two thousand years of tradition in Christendom.

And we have replaced the former biblical views with atheistic views. We haven’t just removed Christianity. A vacuum will always fill itself. We have replaced God with dozens of silly and failed theories and philosophies, which are wreaking havoc on the family, the schools and society in general. But we show no sign of relenting, or repenting.

And you’re telling me that were not in the throes of “the Apostasia”? Maybe not, but certainly the evidence does seem to point that way.

Oh, Heck, Here is all of Ch. 9

Chapter Nine

The Feminist Challenge

 This direct and premeditated desire to free society and in particular the government of any association with theistic religion was unprecedented. Nothing like it had ever happened in the prior two thousand years of European history. The concept of god had been used in positive ways and also in negative ways to justify crime and manipulate and control people. However, the protestant idea of placing everybody under God’s authority, putting even popes and kings under the power of the Scriptures, was a tremendous leap forward for individual freedom and rights. Before that, the Magna Charta had been a first step in that direction, kings could no longer do what they wanted without having to answer for it. Even kings were to be held accountable to God.

In essence, what the reformation said was; “No one is above God or the Scriptures. Not kings or dukes, not popes or pastors.” Interpretation would always be an issue, but placing a bible in the hands of the common people brought about a sense of empowerment and equality never heard of before in the annals of history. It also brought about one of the greatest leaps forward in literacy the world has ever seen. Whether you were a plow boy or the neighborhood woodcutter or a land owner and a Duke, you could read the bible for yourself and you could form your own opinion. This brought about in a very real way the first great democracies in modern history. It created a thriving common ground for a fervent morality which, among other things, brought an end to the African slave trade as well an end to child labor. It empowered people.

It was in this culture that modern science and medicine and humanitarian reforms flourished, though never perfectly. In a fallen world, even those struggling to follow God and his word will fall short, and every generation has it’s high marks and its lows.

 But if the Bible is the Word of God, I have to believe He was pleased by seeing so many people able to read and meditate upon His word. Unfortunately Darwin, Marx and Lyell and Stalin brought an end to all that. The bible wasn’t the word of God, Darwin had supposedly proven that, and God was dead. He was out of the picture.  

 Men and women, plow boys and Dukes could no longer have access to a book which informed them about the basic truths of life. They no longer had a book or common source that they could interpret for themselves to understand the basics of the human condition, nature, sexuality, and morals. No.

 From now on, they would have to rely on the intellectuals too do that for them. And Stalin and Marx and the evolutionary and academic community were only to glad to take over the role previously played by scripture and scripture’s God. Darwin’s priests would tell them how life formed, and Lyell’s pastors would inform them how old the Earth was. Karl Marx would dictate to them who they were and how they should be governed.

 Back in the USA, however, things didn’t seem so bad when the terrors of World War Two finally wound down. A new prosperity was beginning to fill the land and real estate was rising in value, Medical breakthroughs and new technology had exploded due to the recent war. Despite a short lived jump in the divorce rates at the end of the war, the moral structure of the nation continued on in tact. Americans had not fully embraced Darwin’s theory and there were not too many enthusiastic followers of Marx in Kansas or Oklahoma.

When the movie, Gone with the Wind, came out starring Clark Gable, he spoke the line;

“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Thousands of mothers all across America flooded the movie studios with phone calls and complaints about that line. These American mothers were shocked and they were angry. How dare anyone approve of a cuss word like “damn” on the air?

 Things have changed a little since then.

In the fifties, all bedroom scenes took place in rooms with separate beds and the camera flashed to both partners hands so the public could be assured they were wearing wedding rings. It’s hard to believe that was only fifty years ago. The divorce rate had dropped to almost nonexistence. There were almost no STDs around and if anyone had suggested same sex marriage you would have gotten a strange look. Women seemed satisfied with their condition, they had attained the right to vote and own property and many of them now had entered into the work force.

 In 1960 we all were watching Leave it to Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet. By 1970 the entire world had changed

 The “God is Dead” Slogan was pasted all over Look magazine. College professors were telling us to “Turn on to drugs and drop out”. Women were marching in the streets and burning their bras. My sister came home from college and told my father she wanted to move to Cuba to join the Marxist leader Fidel Castro. Drugs were every where, not only in the ghettos, but being used among the rich and middle class as well.

 The new atheistic world which America had ignored in her isolation and apathy was coming home to roost. Students went away to college and found out that the bible was an archaic book written by old white men and had no real power or authenticity to it. The bible’s views and dictates on human sexuality were prudish and laughable. Man created out of dust?  Women created from and for the man? The world less then ten thousand years old? Sex created and sanctified by the marriage bed?

Who could be so stupid to believe that?

And the most infuriating and ridiculous thing about the bible was it’s outdated and irrelevant definition of gender and the sexes.

Unlike Marxist Russia or China, Americans weren’t compelled at gun point to burn their bibles and throw out their religious relics and no devastating wars were fought on their soil. The enemy didn’t come in the door carrying a Russian made sub machine gun.

Instead the enemy came in passing out books like “Our body, Ourselves” which helped to explain to people how trapped they had been by the biblical sexual taboos and helped them to free themselves from grungy marriages and hetero sexual relationships. It taught them how to masturbate more often and practice birth control. Sex was fun and it was for everybody, not just for stodgy married folk.

Welcome to the women’s liberation movement. The feminist challenge to biblical authority. In this new defining of human gender and sexuality there were no rules except that you couldn’t have any rules. Following along the same route that Darwin and Marx and Wellhausen and Nietzsche had walked, the feminist rejected out of hand the concept that the bible may have been inspired by a all knowing Creator God. That whole idea was made up by men in order to control and manipulate women. The writers of the bible were chauvinist pigs. Not men inspired by the holy spirit of God. The bible was part of a long war for domination between the sexes, and was written to enslave women and put make them mere sex objects and servants. The sixties sexual revolution heralded by the feminists promised a new freedom from this domination.

 Of course with this new sexual freedom came an explosion of unwanted infants born out of wedlock and these babies had to be dealt with. After all, men don’t get pregnant, so a way to make women equal to men by stopping pregnancy had to be adopted. The American feminists didn’t have far to look because the Marxists nations, being founded on atheism, had knocked down all the previously existing laws protecting babies in the womb. If man wasn’t created in the image of God, there was no reason not to kill the unborn infants.

 At the time, no one understood the level of guilt or the psychological  burden the repression of this guilt this would place on the mothers later in life. Hey, they said, if it feels good, do it.

 Along with this new freedom came over 35 new sexually transmitted diseases, many of which, like the HIV virus, are deadly, and dropped a huge financial load on Medicare, medical insurance and society in general. And the damage to Marriage, long considered the building block and glue of any society may yet prove fatal to an American nation founded on the values of the Puritans. The damage has been so pervasive that we may have reached a point of critical mass in which recovery, outside of a moral revival, may be impossible.

Unlike the earlier women’s suffrage, the 60’s feminists movement came on the scene with unrivaled vehemence, Betty Freidan said;

“Housework] is peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls. [It] arrests their development at an infantile level. “ Betty Freidan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963.

 Gloria Steinham echoed”  “Housewives] are mindless and thing-hungry…not people.”                       Gloria Steinham, “What It Would Be Like If Women Win,” Time, August 31,

Simone de Beauvoir, in a very intolerant manner asserted; “As long as the family and the myth of the family and the myth of maternal instinct are not destroyed, women will be oppressed…no woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her  children. Society should be totally different, Women should not be allowed that  choice.”  Simone de Beauvoir, “Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma,” Saturday Review, June 14, 1975

 And I thought Women’s Lib was all about  choice…Anyone who didn’t agree with the new feminism was promptly labeled a “sexist” or “chauvinist pig”. The feminist however, never really explained why everyone should adhere to their new definitions of gender, or on what authority or moral argument they based them on. Nor did they explain in this new order of things, who would care for the kids.

God had now been effectively removed from having any role in defining marriage, gender or sexual boundaries. The divorce had been complete.But what about the existing church? If we are in some kind of apostasy in our culture, how has that effected the Church? The next chapter will look at one of the results of feminism and our rejection of God on the culture; the phenomena of Youth Culture.

The Rest of Ch. 2; The Apostasia

However Paul wrote of a time when these things would no longer be so. A time when the Church and Christian society would “fall away” from these standards and truths. The verses in context of Second Thessalonians read;

 ” Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering  together to Him, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.  Do you not remember that while  I was still with you, I was telling you these things?  And you know what  restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged  who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.”

 One thing is certain as far as I am concerned, the “man of lawlessness” has not been revealed and he is of key importance in these scriptures. None the less, as Paul said, even in his day the mystery of lawlessness was working, and he clearly indicates a falling away would come and that at that time Christian society would reach a point where they preferred to believe a lie, over the truth. Because of this total disregard for even the concept of truth, God would then send them a delusion.

 Romans chapter One talks of the general tendency of mankind to apostasy in a very clear and definable manner. Starting at verse 18 and continuing through verse 32, Paul writes;

 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse  because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man–and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.  Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”

 Man has an affinity for turning his worship towards the created earth and away from the earth’s Creator. He goes on to say that in such times of apostasy God would allow men and women to fall away from his truths because they preferred to believe a lie, and that homosexual behavior would increase among them, in both sexes. God allows this because;

 “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;”

 “For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.”

 Many today, including professing Christians, claim they don’t find the bible a meaningful source of connection to the real world. Yet who could deny that an unprecedented outbreak of sexual promiscuity exploded on the scene in both Europe and America following the 1960’s? With it’s emphasis on free sex without boundaries and the increasingly enforced acceptance of homosexual behavior, it does seems to resemble  Paul’s description of apostasy found in Romans chapter One. Nor does the AID’s epidemic seem wholly incongruous with the “receiving the penalty within themselves of the error that was due,” found in the first chapter of Romans.  AID’s was of not the only sexually transmitted disease by any means with Herpes and a couple of dozen others viruses becoming widespread at that time.

 So I think most would be willing to admit that the Christian societies of the old world at least appear to have entered into a time of apostasy. But are there any symptoms or evidences that we may be in “the” Apostasy, the period of time that sets the stage for the revealing of the anti-christ and the return of the Lord that Paul wrote about in Second Thessalonians?

 I think there are some unique and compelling evidences, and will list some of them in the next chapter.

See more; The Apostasy; Kindle-Amazon

Excerpt from Ch. 2; The Apostasia

 

What Does Paul mean by Apostasy in 2^nd Thessalonians?

 

 

How would we define apostasy from what Paul tells us in the context of his second letter to the Thessalonians? As the concordances we looked at in the previous chapter indicate, the apostasy is a time of falling away, of a great deflection, a divorce from the truth of God “Once and for all delivered to the saints” Jude 3.

 The Church Age has existed for over two thousand years now, and it’s history has for the most part been well documented by hundreds of historians and leaders from days past. That the church has gone through many periods of revival and devival, apostasies, as well a periods of stagnation is well known. However there is a tendency with some people to see the last days in every event and every period of history and we want to avoid reading too much into any one circumstance or set of circumstances.

 And yet on the other hand there is an opposite tendency on the part of many others to adopt an  “Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation” attitude towards church history in general and our present period. On an extremely short scale, the last seventy years, I think the evangelical church has gone from perhaps an over emphasis on the Lord’s imminent return since the re-establishment of the Jewish people in Israel, to an attitude among many of the Christian young people today of; “everything continues as it has since the beginning of creation,’ 2 Peter 3:4. The context of Second Peter is that just such a lax attitude towards the second coming would dominate before His return. However because the time scale is so short I am not offering that as one of the evidences of our being in the Apostasia.

 The point needs to be made that all eras and periods of church history have not been the same.  Paul the Apostle as well as the Apostle Peter definitely earmarked a certain period of history that would be marked by an increasingly apostate church, a church that would not only fail to have much effect on the surrounding culture, but would instead conform itself to meet the standards of an alarmingly aggressive apostate and pagan society.

 This period of apostasy wouldn’t apply so much to the areas of the world where the gospel is still spreading, places where there either never was or hasn’t been a real church presence for a long period of time. For this reason China, India and many parts of Africa would not have to be included in a survey of apostasy in the church. The term “apostasy” is a falling away, a turning away from something once widely held and taught.

 Historically, many would call the turning away from biblical truth in the beginning of the medieval ages a type of apostasy and they would be accurate. However the areas of the world which have been dominated by the church and the Christian faith for centuries, particularly the European nations and their colonies did go through a reformation which centered the church back on the Scriptures again. The Catholic Church also participated in the reform in many ways, and both continued to have a strong influence on their respective societies for centuries afterwards.

 Basic truths and ethical mores remained the same for over a millennia, whether you were a catholic or protestant, a peasant or of the nobility. While the Catholic might have placed the pope and the catholic hierarchy over the Word of God and it’s interpretation, no one doubted that the Bible was indeed, the word of God. No one questioned it’s authenticity or authority, even though they may have argued over it’s interpretation. Certain fundamental beliefs were held to be true by all, catholic or protestant.

By fundamentals I simply mean an English protestant would have shared many of the fundamental truths of the faith that any Cape Breton catholic would have believed 500 years ago. The Scriptures were the authoritive words of God and our guide for life and religion. The universe was created ex-nihilo by a triune God; Jesus Christ was God and man, both would have accepted an historical 6 day creation;  Adam made from dust, Eve from his side; they would have understood an initially good creation marred by a literal fall and curse, meaning no death before sin; they would have shared a common faith in a physical death and resurrection and ultimate return of the Jewish Messiah; a physical heaven for the saved and physical and eternal hell for the lost. All these basic beliefs were held in common throughout most of Christendom, not just for a few decades, but for centuries.

 Differences of emphasis, teaching, church structure, and doctrine were wide spread, but for the most part the basics of the historical Christian faith were firmly held. For almost two thousand years, this was the case.

 Fundamental beliefs about morality also pervaded throughout Christendom. Divorce was almost unheard of, sex before marriage was considered the sin of fornication, infanticide and pre-natal infanticide were made illegal everywhere, whether you lived in a catholic or protestant region of the world. Modesty was held to be the standard that both men and women should follow, not something to be mocked or looked down upon. Open displays of sexuality were not condoned nor considered healthy for society in general. Sexually transmitted diseases were not a serious problem for centuries. Homosexual behavior was largely kept out of view and there were no major plagues associated with either homosexual or heterosexual promiscuity.

Short Excerpt from Chapter Nine; The Apostasia; The Feminist Challenge

This direct and premeditated desire to free society and in particular the government of any association with theistic religion was unprecedented. Nothing like it had ever happened in the prior two thousand years of European history. The concept of god had been used in positive ways and also in negative ways to justify crime and manipulate and control people. However, the protestant idea of placing everybody under God’s authority, putting even popes and kings under the power of the Scriptures, was a tremendous leap forward for individual freedom and rights. Before that, the Magna Charta had been a first step in that direction, kings could no longer do what they wanted without having to answer for it. Even kings were to be held accountable to God.

In essence, what the reformation said was; “No one is above God or the Scriptures. Not kings or dukes, not popes or pastors.” Interpretation would always be an issue, but placing a bible in the hands of the common people brought about a sense of empowerment and equality never heard of before in the annals of history. It also brought about one of the greatest leaps forward in literacy the world has ever seen. Whether you were a plow boy or the neighborhood woodcutter or a land owner and a Duke, you could read the bible for yourself and you could form your own opinion. This brought about in a very real way the first great democracies in modern history. It created a thriving common ground for a fervent morality which, among other things, brought an end to the African slave trade as well an end to child labor. It empowered people.

 It was in this culture that modern science and medicine and humanitarian reforms flourished, though never perfectly. In a fallen world, even those struggling to follow God and his word will fall short, and every generation has it’s high marks and its lows.

 But if the Bible is the Word of God, I have to believe He was pleased by seeing so many people able to read and meditate upon His word.

Unfortunately, Darwin and Lyell, Marx and Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky brought and end to all that. The bible wasn’t the word of God, Darwin had supposedly just proven that, and God was dead. He was out of the picture .Men and women, plow boys and Dukes could no longer have access to a book which informed them about the basic truths of life. They no longer had a book or common source that they could interpret for themselves to understand the basics of the human condition, nature, sexuality, and morals. No.

From now on, they would have to rely on the intellectuals to do that for them. And Stalin and Marx and the evolutionary and academic community were only to glad to take over the role previously played by scripture and scripture’s God. Darwin’s priests would tell them how life had formed and Lyell’s pastors would inform how old the earth was. Karl Mark would dictate to them who they were and how they should be governed.          

 See more in The Apostasia, coming soon in the Amazon Kindle bookstore