Lord's Day 20

53. Q. What do you believe concerning the Holy Spirit?

A. First, He is, together with the Father and the Son, true and eternal God.[1] Second, He is also given to me,[2] to make me by true faith share in Christ and all His benefits,[3] to comfort me,[4] and to remain with me forever.[5]

[1] Gen. 1:1, 2; Matt. 28:19; Acts 5:3, 4; I Cor. 3:16. [2] I Cor. 6:19; II Cor. 1:21, 22; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 1:13. [3] Gal. 3:14; I Pet. 1:2. [4] John 15:26; Acts 9:31. [5] John 14:16, 17; I Pet. 4:14.

Tags: federal government

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Right now, take off one of your shoes or whatever foot covering you may presently be wearing. If you are wearing a sock, remove that also. Now reach down to your little toe and feel just how little skin and meat covers the bone.

I know that may embarrass you, but do it anyway, this is important.

Surely I can do it later?

Yes you can, but the point here is to impress you that you won’t be able to rest peacefully until you do this little toe exercise. Furthermore once you have complied, hopefully you will realize you just lost some control of your life, not knowing fully where that lack of control may lead. Is that a good thing, or a bad boo-boo, depends on who or what orders you are following.

In this case it is just an exercise in story telling, but sometimes we just must trust our judgment and live with the consequences. In this case I just want to tell you about what many have considered a miracle. For I want you to believe in miracles, even if you are a hard-core skeptic; or—just thank your lucky stars. What I am trying to do is imprint on your mind; sort of shoot you in the foot, so that you take this week’s presentation seriously.

It was probably late October or early November, just before basketball season during my senior year in high school when I shot myself in the foot. I was deer hunting somewhere out in the woods with my dad and my uncle Vern. We were walking down a narrow trail covered with about an inch of icy snow; I was in the middle, but I don’t remember who was leading, for events were about to change radically.

I was carrying my grandfather’s old 30-30, a Model 94 Winchester, pointed down to the ground; it was old enough for the bullet tube to not reach to the end of the rifle’s barrel. Suddenly there was an explosion and I felt my foot driven into the frozen ground, black carbon gunpowder residue sprayed out indicating the barrel’s rifling, except when I finally moved my foot, the footprint was really as white as snow.

I don’t remember much more until we got to the hospital, except the impact of a 180 grain 30-30 bullet makes me never want to be shot again. Today most factory loads for the 30-30 are not that heavy, but it seems that bullet is forever etched into my mind.

Tags: God, guns, education, religion, Religionless Christianity, Cold Conflict, Debt Debacle, USA, Dry Bones Valley, Barack Obama, Glenn Beck

Lord's Day 19

50. Q. Why is it added, And sits at the right hand of God?

A. Christ ascended into heaven to manifest Himself there as Head of His Church,[1] through whom the Father governs all things.[2]

[1] Eph. 1:20-23; Col. 1:18. [2] Matt. 28:18; John 5:22, 23.

51. Q. How does the glory of Christ, our Head, benefit us?

A. First, by His Holy Spirit He pours out heavenly gifts upon us, His members.[1] Second, by His power He defends and preserves us against all enemies.[2]

[1] Acts 2:33; Eph. 4:7-12. [2] Ps. 2:9; 110:1, 2; John 10:27-30; Rev. 19:11-16.

52. Q. What comfort is it to you that Christ will come to judge the living and the dead?

A. In all my sorrow and persecution I lift up my head and eagerly await as judge from heaven the very same person who before has submitted Himself to the judgment of God for my sake, and has removed all the curse from me.[1] He will cast all His and my enemies into everlasting condemnation, but He will take me and all His chosen ones to Himself into heavenly joy and glory.[2]

[1] Luke 21:28; Rom. 8:22-25; Phil. 3:20,21; Tit. 2:13, 14. [2] Matt. 25:31-46; I Thess. 4:16, 17; II Thess. 1:6-10.

Tags: Benghazi

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There is a dawning of a new way we humans look at our lives and the material world around us. That new dawning will not just allow us to enjoy our lives more, but will also address our most troubling human attribute. That human attribute can be defined in many ways, but it boils down to our lack of security in a world in which we really control little, if anything.

That seeking of security, malaise from fear, and our valiant and vain attempts for that control, we could call the twentieth century, maybe the Progressive Age, where we knew we could do things bigger and better than we had done previously. We falsely believed we could create heaven here on earth. Little did we know in our attempts to harness the wind and millions of other programs that stroked our vanity, as Solomon said, they were vanity; just chasing after the wind.

In his book Theodore and Woodrow, Judge Andrew Napolitano uses the term the “Progressive Era” and other closely related concepts. While our American version of English is one of the most imprecise languages on the planet, it seemed to me that his references were always in the past tense, yet he never seemed to name the present or a future era.

As difficult as it is for me, one of those primitive Neanderthals from a bygone, or different era, I got to thinking. What I came up with was really for that last century we have had three distinct eras, with surprisingly little overlap. If we keep Napolitano’s concept of the past progressive understanding, it is not that hard to see, it was defined by the two world wars, the Great Depression and the New Deal.

Following closely on those heals, or deals; we have what I have defined as the Cold Complex. This is really the Cold War era, and contrary to President and General Eisenhower’s desires, it is really about the ascendance of the Military and Industrial Complex; or perhaps bigger in all forms, are always better for human security.

During the Cold Complex the United States fought wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as other less important armed conflicts. Simultaneously with the attempted Vietnam counterinsurgency, we tried to create a Great Society, leading to Nixon’s need to close the gold window in 1971, thereby creating a world of fiat currencies, which were required to create the next evolving era, a little over a decade later.

Could it be the weaknesses of today’s Republican Political Party and what we now define as conservatism, who find their genesis in the belief that Ronald Reagan was a messiah figure? This is somewhat similar to the views held by today’s defined liberals: A messianic belief that Barack Obama will finally be able to evolve the nation into a grand collective democracy. Whatever that mumbo-jumbo security blanket means.

Tags: progressivism, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Dwight Eisenhower, Cold Conflict, Debt Debacle, Collectivist Elitists

Lord's Day 18

46. Q. What do you confess when you say, He ascended into heaven?

A. That Christ, before the eyes of His disciples, was taken up from the earth into heaven,[1] and that He is there for our benefit[2] until He comes again to judge the living and the dead.[3]

[1] Mark 16:19; Luke 24:50, 51; Acts 1:9-11. [2] Rom. 8:34; Heb. 4:14; 7:23-25; 9:24. [3] Matt. 24:30; Acts 1:11.

47. Q. Is Christ, then, not with us until the end of the world, as He has promised us?[1]

A. Christ is true man and true God. With respect to His human nature He is no longer on earth,[2] but with respect to His divinity, majesty, grace, and Spirit He is never absent from us.[3]

[1] Matt. 28:20. [2] Matt. 26:11; John 16:28; 17:11; Acts 3:19-21; Heb. 8:4. [3] Matt. 28:18-20; John 14:16-19; 16:13.

48. Q. But are the two natures in Christ not separated from each other if His human nature is not present wherever His divinity is?

A. Not at all, for His divinity has no limits and is present everywhere.[1] So it must follow that His divinity is indeed beyond the human nature which He has taken on and nevertheless is within this human nature and remains personally united with it.[2]

[1] Jer. 23:23, 24; Acts 7:48, 49. [2] John 1:14; 3:13; Col. 2:9.

49. Q. How does Christ's ascension into heaven benefit us?

A. First, He is our Advocate in heaven before His Father.[1] Second, we have our flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that He, our Head, will also take us, His members, up to Himself.[2] Third, He sends us His Spirit as a counter-pledge,[3] by whose power we seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, and not the things that are on earth.[4]

[1] Rom. 8:34; I John 2:1. [2] John 14:2; 17:24; Eph. 2:4-6. [3] John 14:16; Acts 2:33; II Cor. 1:21, 22; 5:5. [4] Col. 3:1-4.

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Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.”
Genesis 8:20,21

Bringing this ancient Bible report into the present, while there are those who say our current turmoil is being cause by God’s judgment of our heathen ways, others say, we need to double down on the past to positively change the future. The reality is that we have planted and tended the seeds of our own destruction and any harvest that we may reap. Ultimately we have only ourselves to blame.

There is plenty of blame to go around, across the spectrums of society. Fundamentally we are lazy, self-centered; and expect others either to not notice, or to celebrate our decadence. Which brings us to the source of the ultimate fruit of the human personality: If Absolute Truth exists, then seeking other ends are not only folly, but eternally fatal.

The Audubon Lake bird watching area begins about a quarter of a mile to the north of where I am writing this. As part of the channel scablands, these flood events are known as the last major geological changes to happen on earth. The sign in the parking lot says something along these lines:

About 13,000 years ago a great post Ice Age flood, with waters hundreds of feet deep washed out this basin and continued down through the Crab Creek drainage eventually reaching the Columbia River south of Interstate 90, near Wanapum Dam, 163 miles away.

That makes the total flood channel about 170 miles long and brings up some significant questions. Namely how did those “hundreds of feet deep” get there, for at an elevation of about 2510 ft. it is down hill in three directions, east into Deep Creek and North into Spring Creek, which show no adjacent catastrophic flooding. That flood channel only occurs to the west and then to the southwest in Crab Creek.

Furthermore if that flood had occurred 13,000 years ago, the exposed basalt approximately along the three-way drainage divide, should be covered in locally produced topsoil. To say the wind blew it away only begs other questions. The Ice Age Floods Institute overlay of Google Earth clearly shows these basalts and the flood channel as described. If you wander through those basalts, they are just covered with moss and lichens and it seems that what topsoil present blew in from elsewhere and is held in place by plants.

I mentioned last week that I don’t believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old, but with evidence like this, younger, closer to a Bible Noah, rather than older seems the best deductive fit; unless you have been brainwashed into an atheistic evolving worldview, that by its science, precepts and theology makes everything older than the human mind can logically comprehend. Taking this even deeper into catastrophism, even if you assume the 13,000 years above is correct, that means my place up on the Kettle River was then buried under maybe five thousand feet of glacial ice. That is climate change you really can believe in.

Tags: Genesis flood, Social Darwinism, USA, Collectivist Elitists, Alan Greenspan, Glenn Beck, God, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lord's Day 17

45. Q. How does Christ's resurrection benefit us?

A. First, by His resurrection He has overcome death, so that He could make us share in the righteousness which He had obtained for us by His death.[1] Second, by His power we too are raised up to a new life.[2] Third, Christ's resurrection is to us a sure pledge of our glorious resurrection.[3]

[1] Rom. 4:25; I Cor. 15:16-20; I Pet. 1:3-5. [2] Rom. 6:5-11; Eph. 2:4-6; Col. 3:1-4. [3] Rom. 8:11; I Cor. 15:12-23; Phil. 3:20, 21.