My God and Government: same sex marriage

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Saturday, September 5, 2015

Congress Sells Us Out to Iran, UN and Others

Congress Just Gave Up Our Constitutional Rights to the World

I don't know why we are just hearing about this now, but back in May of this year, our Congress passed a law which will kick the door wide open for the total destruction of ALL our Constitutional

Rights! I am not an alarmist, or a ranting radio personality like Rush Limbaugh and this one has got me totally freaked out, because I understand the full implications.

Below you will find the text of a letter from Congressman Richard Hudson, written to a friend of mine. He explains why he is opposed to the Iran deal Obama just negotiated. But all of his arguments against it are overshadowed by one line in the letter. I will quote it here.

I voted against the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act which was signed into law in May –it did nothing but abdicate the Senate’s constitutional right to review treaties by requiring the Senate to get two-thirds to disapprove instead of the constitutional two- thirds to approve. Under this law, Congress is technically able to review and vote to approve or strike down the agreement, but the President has promised to veto Congress’ disapproval, which virtually makes any Congressional decision moot.

Just in case you aren’t clear on why this is a big deal, let me explain this to you. Under the Constitution, when a treaty is ratified by the Senate, it becomes the law of the land - even if it wipes out our Constitutional guarantees under the Bill of Rights. So, now the President has the power to sign a treaty and it becomes the law of the land. This opens the door for us to be ruled by every hair-brained treaty the American-Hating members of the UN manage to concoct and convince the President to sign.

Even if I totally trusted the President of the US (POTUS) to be looking out for our well-being and protecting our freedoms - and I don’t trust this current President at all - I would still be opposed to this.

The Constitution specifically states that the Senate has to approve treaties signed by the POTUS or they are not binding. This law turns that approval process on its head and requires the Senate to disapprove the treaty and this gives the President the ability to override the disapproval.

In the past, if the Senate didn’t like a treaty, they could either just ignore it, or vote against it. In either of those cases, it never comes to the desk of the POTUS and he cannot act on it, one way or another.

The folks in the UN are not our friends. They have repeatedly trotted out treaties that would have ripped away our freedoms, and folks like Hilary Clinton have signed on. Fortunately, the Senate just ignored all that garbage, and we were kept safe.
That is totally not the case anymore!

Each of us needs to write to our elected representatives and urge them in the strongest possible ways to repeal the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. If we don’t me might as well kiss our Constitutional Protections away.

I encourage you to share links to this article, or copy it and paste it, but do everything you can to get this seen by as many Americans as possible.

And by the way, so that even any Liberals, LGBTQ, the same-sex marriage crowd and anyone who advocates human rights based on natural laws who read this are clear, this means that the Ayatollahs may be able to come and cut off your heads, or burn you in the public square, if they can get the POTUS to sign a treaty that says we accept Sharia Law.

Liberals and Conservatives alike should unite to repeal this unconstitutional law right now!
Here is the text of the letter in its entirety, except that I removed my friend’s name for privacy.

Dear XXXXXXXXX:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the final Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) that President Barack Obama has proposed for Iran’s nuclear program. I agree a nuclear capable Iran is a grave threat to our national security and I believe that President Obama has made a historic mistake pursuing this deal.

The United States owes it to our allies and our citizens to promote peace and stability, especially in a turbulent region like the Middle East. Unfortunately, the President is formally blessing the illegal nuclear weapons program of the world’s number one sponsor of terrorism by signing the JCPA.

Unfortunately, the administration is gambling the security of the entire world on this deal and I fear Congress is almost powerless to stop it. That’s why I voted against the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act which was signed into law in May –it did nothing but abdicate the Senate’s constitutional right to review treaties by requiring the Senate to get two-thirds to disapprove instead of the constitutional two-thirds to approve. Under this law, Congress is technically able to review and vote to approve or strike down the agreement, but the President has promised to veto Congress’ disapproval, which virtually makes any Congressional decision moot.

The JCPA lifts economic sanctions almost immediately and these crippling sanctions are what brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. Contrary to the narrative the administration portrayed during negotiations that Iran would receive economic relief in phases, the JCPA provides sanction relief on implementation day. The JCPA also introduces provisions that will lift weapons embargos on Iran. This means that Iran will be free to sponsor Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and any other terrorist group they desire while bolstering their military at home with over $100 billion in cash from the lifted sanctions. Giving Iran billions in cash while lifting weapons embargos against them is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous.

The most alarming provision of this deal is Iran will continue operating thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium. Additionally, much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will be left in place including the underground facility at Fordow, which will remain open for “peaceful research.” By signing this agreement, President Obama is granting Iran the right to be a nuclear power, threatening the security of the entire world.

I have long been a skeptic of negotiating with such an anti-American and untrustworthy regime. Despite engaging in “good-faith negotiations,” Iran continues to aggressively drive its regional influence and fill the vacuum of power in the Middle East, threatening regional and global stability. I agree that diplomacy is the preferred method to deal with Iran, but we must pursue a treaty that permanently ensures Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons, not one that merely delays their development for a few years.

As your Representative, I will continue to be a strong voice for our national security interests and in opposition of this deal that paves the way for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons capabilities.

Again, thank you for taking the time to share your views. Your opinions are important, so please continue to write, call, or email me with any concerns you may have in the future. For more information on issues impacting North Carolinians, please visit our website at: http://hudson.house.gov and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Sincerely,
Richard Hudson Member of Congress

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Am I Being Judgmental?

The Bible teaches, "Judge not." Or does it?

"Judge not" is not the whole of the teaching. What it really says, is, "Judge not, that ye be be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged" Matthew 7:1-2

Many take this as a commandment that we should not judge others. However, that understanding is false, because it is incomplete. In John 7:24, we are told, "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment." In Psalms (37:30) we read, "The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment."

So, actually, we are commanded by God to judge. And, we are cautioned to use righteous judgment.

That begs the question, "what is righteous judgment?"

In part this can be answered by saying what is unrighteous judgment.

Hypocritical judgment, where we point the finger at someone else when we are guilty of even worse, unrepentant, behavior is unrighteous judgment. This is what Jesus was referring to when he said we had to first remove the beam from our own eye (truly repenting), before we can legitimately help remove the speck (mote) from another's eye.

When our judgment is based on presuming to know things that we cannot know, we are engaged in unrighteous judgment. For example, when you assume you know the motives for an action, unless the actor told you their motives, you cannot know it, because you cannot read minds.

Another example of this is when you assume someone is going to Hell, or Heaven. You don't know the thoughts and intents of their hearts (which God will use to judge us), and you don't even know ALL the acts another has done, so you lack the necessary information to make righteous judgment on this matter. And, God has reserved this particular judgment and kept it out of our hands.

You can exercise righteous judgment by judging actions (rather than actors). To put it another way, you can righteously judge that someone who is commiting adultery is doing something wrong (evil). But, if you judge that the adulterer is going to Hell you have engaged in unrighteous judgment. You can righteously judge whether or not someone has broken a law of man or of God, but you cannot know if a person has broken a law of conscience.

Why am I talking about judgment in a politico-religious blog?

This exploration was spurred by something that Star Parker said in her book, "Uncle Sam's Plantation." She took the stance that much of the problems of poverty (and society) today is the replacement of the idea of right and wrong with the notion of values. She sums the idea in the following words,

“Life is chance, and values are relative. I can do whatever I think is right”

Then, she goes on to relate this idea to the actual behavior of a variety of individuals, including herself.

The events of the past several years reveal the natural consequences of a society embracing that philosophy. People blowing up federal buildings, mailing letter bombs or anthrax, disposing of live newborns in dumpsters—these are all acts that seemed right to those who carried them out. This type of moral relativism, taken to its logical extreme, can even justify using airplanes as human bombs to murder innocent civilians. I found it easy to reject the concept of faith because all absolutes were judgmental,

She found it easy to reject the concept of faith because faith introduces the idea that right and wrong can be absolutes instead of relative. And all absolutes are judgmental. And, being judgmental is being bad because we are told to "judge not."

Some of my children have accused my wife and I of being judgmental because we stated, without apology, that sexual promiscuity (heterosexual and homosexual) is wrong. They conflated our condemnation of the acts with a condemnation of the actor (their friend). Honestly, their confusion on that point is easy to understand. Many folks don't make the distinction between the act and the actor when they make or express their judgments. It isn't uncommon to hear someone say, "... he is a bad person, he did bad things."

The irony of my childrens' condemnation of my wife and I as "judgmental" is that they are probably the most judgmental people I have ever met. Those who don't agree with their views on social matters are almost universally determined to be bad people. Case in point, if someone opposes gay-marriage, they are a bad person, trying to deny same-sex-marriage proponents of their right to pursue happiness in their own way.

This is also consistent with the utter intolerance of atheists for religionists. A recent FB dialog I had with folks on that topic is illustrative. The response of atheists was that religionists should "just shut the f*** up." Profanity, vitriol and personal attacks while discussing a topic are hallmarks of bigotry and intolerance. Bigotry and intolerance are hallmarks of unrighteous judgment.

We also see this kind of bigotry and unrighteous judgment in the most ardent proponents of the LGBT movement and among racists (of any color). The key point here is to make sure that we are not having a beam in our own eye on the point of judgment, regardless of the size of the chunk of wood in someone else's eye. We cannot excuse our own bad behaviors by pointing to the bad behaviors of our opponents.

But, don't get me wrong here. I am not saying we should continue to let liberal bullies beat on us while we scream "forgive me, for I have sinned." Rather, we need to be very assertive and even confrontational without resorting to profanity, vitriol and personal attacks. We need to argue the cases for Constitutional Conservatism by pointing stubbornly to facts and remaining calm. When the bullies throw punches, we need to block their attacks and counter-punch with clear-headed facts and cogent arguments, rather than losing our temper and resorting to tantrums or purely emotional responses.

There is nothing inherently wrong with an emotional argument, as long as it can be backed up with facts. But bear in mind that an emotional argument without facts is just an opinion, not an argument.

For instance, you can say, "I know that people who live by Christian principles, live happier, more fulfilling lives." That is an opinion and an emotional argument. It may be right and I may agree with it or it may move me. AND when you can also cite unbiased surveys and studies that support your assertions, it moves from being simply an opinion or emotional argument into the realm of being a cogent, well founded argument in favor of your position.

To give you a counter example, consider the arguments of the gun-banners. They assert that banning firearm ownership, or severely limiting it makes society safer. This is an emotional argument and an opinion. The emotion is based on the fear of being harmed by someone with a gun. Unfortunately for the gun-banners, the studies and statistics show that banning or severely limiting legal gun ownership consistently results in higher rates of violent crime. Consider the current high murder rates of Chicago and New York where legal gun ownership is highly restricted, with those low murder rates in Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix where gun ownership is widespread and the right to carry is largely unimpeded.

Or, to take this back to one of Ms. Star's points, consider that every time the minimum wage is increased, the unemployment and underemployment among the most economically challenged people in this country increases. Employers, forced to pay more for each employee, cut back on the number of employees and pushes each employee still on the payroll to be more productive to make up for the folks who are no longer on the line, or they fire them all and hire robots instead.

Of course, the liberal answer to that last point is, "there oughta be a law against that." and then they try to push forward the nanny-state further by one more piece of ineffective, taxing piece of legislation.

But, back to the point about judgment, Ms. Star Parker says it well when she says,

“God is your source, not the government!”

We should look to God, He is our source. Look to His plan for our happiness (to bring to pass our immortality and eternal life [Moses 1:39]), and judge the actions of ourselves and others against that absolute measure of right and wrong, instead of using the changeable measuring sticks of society and government.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Don't Ever Fall In Love

Don't fall in love, ever.

Trust me on this. I have been married to the same woman for nearly 34 years now. We dated for three months and were engaged for one month. Doesn't that sound like falling in love?

Falling in love is like falling into a pit while wandering around the jungle of your life in the middle of the night. And once you are in that pit, if the fall didn't break your neck, you are not getting out without a lot of effort. And, while you are in that pit, you are easy pickings for any predator that comes along and targets you as their next meal.

And when the morning comes, and you wake up in this pit of love you have fallen into, you may not really like who you see in the pit with you. Your new love-pit-partner may not be as physically attractive as they seemed in the dark of the night when you landed in the love-pit with them. S/he may not be as witty or smart as you thought. In fact, s/he may seem like the Heart song "White Lightning and Wine" was written about them, "In the morning light you didn't look so fine. Guess you better hitchhike home." Or like the premise of the movie "Coyote Ugly", which is based on the notion that sometimes, when you wake up the next morning in bed with an ugly stranger, you feel like a coyote caught in a trap and are willing to chew off your own arm to get out of the trap.

Hollywood movies and romance novelists like to promote wonderful, feel good stories about people falling in love. In the books and movies, the romance is fast, the attraction is nearly frantic and overwhelming. The characters are helpless to stop themselves from being caught up in the excitement and romance of the moment and "wham" they fall in love.

Unfortunately in many cases there is one or more spouses involved too. And then, sometimes, the love story turns into a suspenseful murder story. Like "Body Heat" where Kathleen Turner and Willliam Hurt fall madly, frantically, passionately in love with one another, but she is married to an older, rich man who refuses to just die off and leave the two lovers to the passion and romance that they so much deserve. Or, perhaps you prefer "Against All Odds" where Jeff Bridges is the pro football player, Jeff Bridges, is hired to find the runaway girl friend (Rachel Ward) of James Woods. At least in this movie, Ward and Woods aren't actual husband and wife, instead they are just embedded in a long-term romantic relationship. Still, the love triangle acts like a black hole, sucking Bridges and Ward into its inescapable pull, and predictably destroying them in the process.

The bottom line of these scenarios is that someone is going to have their life ruined (or ended) because two people believe that falling in love is the greatest thing, and that love must conquer all.

Of course, who can forget "Fatal Attraction" where when Michael Douglas realizes that the passion of his affair is not as good as the steady relationship with his wife, he breaks things off with Glenn Close, only to have her stalk and physically threaten both him and his family.

But those cautionary tales still make the "stolen water" of adultery look sweet.

A foolish woman is clamorous: she is simple, and knoweth nothing.

For she sitteth at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city, to call passengers who go right on their ways:

Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: and as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.

Proverbs 9:13-18

And again, they promote the notion that love is the ultimate arbiter of what is right and wrong, because whatever brings together two people who love each other, that cannot be wrong. Right?

Even Biblical apologists at times try to gloss over the disastrous effects that came from David's taking of Uriah's wife Bathsheeba to his bed.

Falling in love also is a wonderful marketing ploy, not only for books and movies. It tends to be the main fuel for the whole Valentines Day industry. How many ads do you hear around then that talk about "falling in love" or "falling in love again?"

Now, after reading this much of my rant against falling in love, and given what I said at the start about my own whirlwind courtship and lengthy subsequent marriage, you may think that I am just a jaded, joyless, old curmudgeon, speaking from the depths of a bitter marriage. That couldn't be further from the truth.

I am a hopeless romantic and I really, deeply love my wife and am happy to be married to her. When the work day is over, I always hurry home to be with her and there is no one else I would rather spend time with than her. But, we didn't fall in love. We did something much hotter, stronger, more satisfying, and longer lasting than falling in love. We chose to love each other, and we do it over and over again.

You see, the Hollywood and 5th Avenue marketing geniuses' ideas of love is not love, it is really just passion and sex.

Passion and sex are powerful sales agents. And, they are much more easily conveyed in ads, movie trailers and movies than is love.

Don't get me wrong, there was, and is, plenty of passion involved in the courtship between my wife and me. But, we never let the passion push us into prematurely, or unthinkingly, deepening our relationship. We both looked very carefully at each other and decided if we could stand the idea of being with each other every day even after the good looks and youth have faded away. Fortunately for me, she thought she could still enjoy being with me.

You could say that we followed the dictum that says, "before you get married make sure you have your eyes wide open. After you get married, keep them half closed."

So, my wife and I were definitely, strongly attracted to each other. But both of us looked beyond the moment, the attraction and the passion, we looked beyond the whole "falling in love" thing. And we decided we could love each other even when the heat simmers down and the bloom is off the rose.

Since then, we decide to love each other every day. Just as when we were courting, I think about her during the day. Sometimes she texts me or I text her, just because and just to let the other know they are in our thoughts. We say "I love you" every day, more than once. And we mean it.

We don't let others come between us, not friends, not in-laws, not any attractive people at work. Not even our children.

We successfully managed to keep our romance alive through raising five children to adulthood. During those years, we never forgot that the kids were there because of the marriage, not the other way around.

Now, we are "empty nesters." And our romance is still burning as hot as it ever was. We may not be quite as energetic lovers as we once were, but real quality can make up for a lot of low-quality quantity. And even today, we sometimes find ourselves a bit "frantic" for each other.

I know it isn't the sort of thing to sell movies and romance novels, but it is the sort of thing to build long, happy and fulfilling lives with.

Don't ever fall in love. Instead, take control of your life and choose to love. When two people choose to love each other, they never run the risk of falling out of love. Because love isn't something that happens to you. Love is something you choose. to do.

And while we are on the topic, let me say a few remarks about marriage.

The LGBT crowd has recently made quite a bit of noise about marriage. What I find humorous about their dogged push for legally recognized marriage is that it comes after decades of denigration and dismissal of marriage as anything meaningful among the heterosexual community. I find that funny because those who should have been champions of marriage have been among its biggest detractors.

Of course that diminution of marriage has largely come from the sector of the heterosexuals community that wants to enjoy all the benefits of sex without being hampered by the obligations that come with it, both naturally and legally.

Linda and Richard Eyre recently published a good article pointing out how the hetero community has largely discarded and denigrated marriage.

"... among the 96 to 98 percent of heterosexuals, most seem to be devaluing or completely disregarding the value of marriage. The largest threat to our society and to our economy is not the way people define marriage, but how enthusiastically and committedly they participate in it."

The LGBT community values marriage primarily because of the legal benefits it affords them. Some value it because it also represents a level of commitment (legal, financial and otherwise) that goes beyond any heartfelt private or public exchange of vows which is only binding "as long as you both shall love" and the dissolution of which carries no more negative impacts than some heartbreak and some disappointment or disapproval among your friends.

The biggest vocal opponents of marriage are radical feminists. The biggest silent opponents of marriage are hedonists. And of course, Lucifer as I have mentioned in earlier posts.

Marriage, legal, binding marriage, provides a framework for the work of a lifetime.

It provides a foundation on which the emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being of children can be based to give them the best possible chances of success in this life. Don't just take my word for it. See what all the studies have shown about the effects of a nuclear family, or its absence, has on the lives of children.

Children raised in intact married families are more likely to attend college, are physically and emotionally healthier, are less likely to be physically or sexually abused, less likely to use drugs or alcohol and to commit delinquent behaviors, have a decreased risk of divorcing when they get married, are less likely to become pregnant/impregnate someone as a teenager, and are less likely to be raised in poverty. ("Why Marriage Matters: 26 Conclusions from the Social Sciences," Bradford Wilcox, Institute for American Values, www.americanvalues.org/html/r-wmm.html)
Children receive gender specific support from having a mother and a father. Research shows that particular roles of mothers (e.g., to nurture) and fathers (e.g., to discipline), as well as complex biologically rooted interactions, are important for the development of boys and girls. ("Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles," 2006, www.princetonprinciples.org)
A child living with a single mother is 14 times more likely to suffer serious physical abuse than is a child living with married biological parents. A child whose mother cohabits with a man other than the child's father is 33 times more likely to suffer serious physical child abuse. ("The Positive Effects of Marriage: A Book of Charts," Patrick Fagan, www.heritage.org/Research /Features/Marriage/index.cfm)
In married families, about 1/3 of adolescents are sexually active. However, for teenagers in stepfamilies, cohabiting households, divorced families, and those with single unwed parents, the percentage rises above 1/2. ("The Positive Effects...")
Growing up outside an intact marriage increases the chance that children themselves will divorce or become unwed parents. ("26 Conclusions..." and "Marriage and the Public Good...") * Children of divorce experience lasting tension as a result of the increasing differences in their parents' values and ideas. At a young age they must make mature decisions regarding their beliefs and values. Children of so called "good divorces" fared worse emotionally than children who grew up in an unhappy but "low-conflict'"marriage. ("Ten Findings from a National Study on the Moral and Spiritual Lives of Children of Divorce," Elizabeth Marquardt, www.betweentwoworlds.org)

Marriage also provides the framework for the physical, social, mental, financial and spiritual health of the spouses. Together, spouses can better prepare for retirement, both financially, physically, and emotionally. As they work together, they can divide and conquer the challenges of life. Together, they can manage to pool resources and build wealth needed for both the fun and responsibilities of life.

And, by the way, married people get more sex than single people. Just in case you were thinking that wasn't the case. And, contrary to sitcoms and Hollywood movies, when there is a foundation of years of trust and intimacy, and a commitment to each others' pleasure, the sex can be much, much better and more mind-blowing than the tawdry, shallow stuff that you may be seeing on HBO or pay-per-view.

And those who advocate cohabitation, living together, as a trial run for marriage, don't have a leg to stand on. One, the statistics show that most cohabitations don't end up in marriage and of those that do, they are as likely to end in divorce as those where cohabitation did not precede marriage.

"Couples who lived together before marriage tend to divorce early in their marriage. If their marriage last seven years, then their risk for divorce is the same as couples who didn't cohabit before marriage."

http://marriage.about.com/od/cohabitation/qt/cohabfacts.htm

And, those hedonists love to get the advantages of marriage that come through cohabitation, without being tied down with all those pesky legal, social and financial obligations that come with marriage. In other words, they get to have the milk, without buying the cow.

And, if you are among those who think that premarital sex is okay, stand by for another article in the future. But in the meantime, consider this. What happens if you don't measure up to your spouse's former lovers? Now, you have predisposed your marriage to have difficulties over sex, which could easily result in infidelity and divorce.

Even free sex isn't free. You are likely to pay a heavy price for it, sometime in the future.

But, to return bring this all back to my main point. Sex is not love. Love may be manifested through sex. Marriage needs sex to reinforce the bond between spouses. But sex is not the point of marriage either.

Falling in love is really falling in lust. It is about the powerful urge to have sex with someone else. That powerful urge is a natural and God-given thing. But, it is not to be taken lightly. While it is highly pleasurable, its primary purpose is not pleasure. Its primary purpose may not even be to produce children - given that most of the time it takes a lot of sex to result in one pregnancy.

Sex is given to help bind us closer together as man and wife. Love is given to help us channel sex into the ways that build instead of destroy lives. The only proper channel for sex and love is marriage between a man and a woman, where commitment, both legal, moral and financial, allows us to give our all in the bedroom and beyond to our spouse.

Falling in love is a lie. It is a pit of destruction. Choosing to love, and choosing to love only your spouse each and every day, is an elevated highway to profound happiness and success, both mental, emotional, spiritual and physical.

Monday, July 20, 2015

A Gift From Nicholas Cage

Do you remember the scene in the Nicholas Cage movie National Treasure where Cage puts on the glasses with strange colored lenses, invented by Benjamin Franklin, and suddenly he can clearly see all the hidden clues on the map?

Today, if you will accept it, I will give you a pair of those kind of glasses that will allow you to see the hidden clues in the trends around us and begin to make sense of them.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints has a book of scripture that they call The Book of Moses (part of The Pearl of Great Price). In the first chapter of that book, the 39th verse God tells Moses, "For behold, this is my work and my glory - to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."

If you don't get the distinction between immortality and eternal life, allow me to explain. Immortality means to live forever with your spirit and body inseparably joined to one another. And Eternal is one of the names of God, so Eternal Life means to have the kind of life that God has.

But, don't take my word for it alone. Here is what Dictionary.com says about immortality:

immortal condition or quality; unending life.

Contrast that with what it says about "Eternal Life."

This expression occurs in the Old Testament only in Dan. 12:2 (R.V.,"everlasting life"). It occurs frequently in the New Testament (Matt. 7:14;18:8, 9; Luke 10:28; comp. 18:18). It comprises the whole future of the redeemed (Luke 16:9), and is opposed to "eternal punishment" (Matt.19:29; 25:46). It is the final reward and glory into which the children of God enter (1 Tim. 6:12, 19; Rom. 6:22; Gal. 6:8; 1 Tim. 1:16; Rom.5:21); their Sabbath of rest (Heb. 4:9; comp. 12:22). The newness of life which the believer derives from Christ (Rom. 6:4) is the very essence of salvation, and hence the life of glory or the eternal life must also be theirs(Rom. 6:8; 2 Tim. 2:11, 12; Rom. 5:17, 21; 8:30; Eph. 2:5, 6). It is the"gift of God in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:23). The life the faithful have here on earth (John 3:36; 5:24; 6:47, 53-58) is inseparably connected with the eternal life beyond, the endless life of the future, the happy future of the saints in heaven (Matt. 19:16, 29; 25:46).

Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary

Now before you go and get all "God Maker" on me, just hold off and keep listening, at least until the end of this post. Then, after you give it some consideration, feel free to disagree all you like. But, I haven't given you the gift yet.

Another thing we learn, both in The Book of Moses and in The Holy Bible is that Lucifer, or Satan or the Devil if you prefer, is as real as Jesus Christ and God the Father. You actually cannot believe in Jesus Christ and not believe in Lucifer. After all, Jesus fasted forty days and then was tempted of the Devil.

Now, the whole cloven hoof, forked tongue and tail thing is just pure fairy tale. Lucifer was a son of God, just like you and I are. The difference between us and him is that he thought he was smarter than God. Okay, some of us may have that in common with him now, but we didn't when he made a name for himself.

The Book of the Revelation of Saint John, commonly known as Revelations, mentions that "there was a war in heaven" and that Lucifer was cast down into the earth, along with those who followed him. Without going into the whole reasons why he got in a fight with God, let's just focus on the fact that his rebellion got him kicked out of Heaven.

Now, we are almost to the gift part, so hold your mind open a little longer.

Lucifer is understandably bitter about how things have gone and his fondest hope is to screw things up and ruin God's whole day. What better way to do that than to destroy his "work and glory?"

If you accept that God wants to make us immortal and give us eternal life and that Lucifer is real, and real angry, then you can look at the entire course of human history as an ongoing struggle between these two opposing forces. On the one hand, God wants immortality and eternal life for us. On the other, Lucifer wants to deny us immortality and eternal life.

And, before you start feeling a victim here of forces outside of your control, please realize we have the freedom to choose for ourselves and that our entire purpose here is to be tested to see if we will choose the path that leads to eternal life, or not.

This is the gift. A lens which allows you to begin to make sense of not only human history, but the trends of our times.

The crazy conspiracy theorists have one thing right, there is a grand conspiracy behind much of what is going on. But the Grand Conspirator is Lucifer, an undying son of God, cast out and determined to make a wreck of our lives. And because he is undying, he can promulgate his conspiracy from generation to generation by influencing and wooing followers, both witting and unwitting, to promote his tactics and plans.

Now, the challenge you face today is this, can you use this lens to look at anything in the world around you and begin to discern the true motives behind the trend?

I will give you one trend to look at right away. Then, you will have to do more on your own.

We cannot become immortal if we never become mortal. In other words, if Lucifer can prevent God's children from ever being born in this world, he will have succeeded in his purpose to thwart God. Now, think about trends like abortion and same-sex marriage. Do you see how they suit the purposes of Lucifer in trying to prevent the immortality of God's children?

Now, add to the mix things like war, which not only cuts many lives short and warps the lives of many others while spreading misery, it also kills lots of people who can then never have children.

Disease and plagues, likewise.

If you use this lens, you will see things very differently. The radical feminist movement, for one.

Radical Feminists (not people who say equal pay for equal work) have promoted an agenda that advocates not only the abolition of marriage as an institution, but promote that women shouldn't have sex at all and if they are weak and must give in, it should only be with other women. In short, they would be happiest if men did not exist at all.

The same is true for radical environmentalists - again, not those who say we need to be kind to our world and use our resources wisely - they think the world is better off without people. The folks at PETA advocate that a rat is the same as a dog is the same as a child. In other words, they place no higher value on human life than they do on that of any animal. In fact, because people eat animals, they think less of humanity than they do of cows. Of course, they conveniently overlook the fact that all life on this world is sustained by the ending of another life. The wolf or man kills the cow and eats it. The cow in its turn eats plants, which kills the plant. But I digress.

The whole "population bomb" crowd who in the 60's predicted we would have food riots in NYC by the 90s's have been preaching population control based on the totally disproven, and patently false premise that the world food supply is going to be less than needed to prevent starvation and world war.

These movements that have a net effect of advocating the elimination, or dramatic reduction of humanity are clearly seen through this lens of long-term struggle between Lucifer and God as chess moves by Lucifer to restrict the number of God's children who can gain immortality.

Failing to prevent all births, Lucifer has to implement additional plans to thwart that whole "eternal life" thing.

What do we need to do to qualify for eternal life? Well, the list is short, and long, depending on how you look at it. The short version is do what God says we should. The long version is do ALL that God says we should.

Lucifer has several ways to win at this part of the game.

If he can convince people that God doesn't exist, then it is pretty much game over for those folks. For those who believe in God, if he can convince them that Lucifer doesn't exist, then they will let their guard down and be likely to compromise and imagine up a god that suits their own likes and dislikes. And the list goes on and on.

Three of his most insidious and powerful tactics are:

Make it look like so much fun to do things we shouldn't while making doing good things look very boring, unimaginative, and unfulfilling.
Make it look like doing good is highly restrictive, a severe loss of freedom. In contrast, he makes doing things we shouldn't look like the real exercise of freedom.
Make doing things we shouldn't do look like we are doing good and make doing things we should do look like we are doing things we shouldn't. In other words, get us to think that evil is good and good is evil.

- On this last point it is worth noting that the whole support of gay marriage uses this tactic quite successful by conflating that struggle with the civil rights movement of the 60's.

The Civil Rights movement was all about what Jesus said was the second most important thing we should do - treat others as we would have them treat us.

The institutionalized discrimination against people of color was a shameful way to treat fellow chidren of God. It punished and castigated people, not because of their behaviors, but because of the color of their skin.

In likening the gay marriage movement to Civil Rights, the supporters of gay marriage made an issue of choice and turned it into an issue of birthright. I know many, including at least two of my own children, will take issue with this last statement. Never fear, I will give that subject a whole article on its own. But that is for another day.

When you have the ability to use this lens, the sweep and sway of human history as well as the social trends of yesterday and today begin to fall into a pattern and make a more predictable flow. Furthermore, if you believe in God, it begins to give you a road map to better navigate the buffetting winds of the times and to prepare for what is coming next, because we know that Lucifer will not retreat or relent in his onslaught, and we will continue to pick up the tempo and ferocity of his assault on those who believe in God and are trying to do what He has commanded.

Disclaimer and Warning

This blog expresses My views on religion and politics, they are NOT the official views of any religious or political organization.

Feel free to comment. However, if you leave a comment, mind your manners. CIVIL discourse is the order of the day. That means no profanity or vulgarity and no personal attacks. If you want to insult someone here, you had better be very polite in how you do it, and not use any profanity or vulgarity in the process.

Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks are the hallmarks of bigotry and bigotry is the hallmark of an intellectually insecure argument.

My God and Government