FAITH: Ephemeral links by their common ancestry!

The CRIB's periodically fugacious ...

• Russell D. Moore at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary leads off his pro-life commentary with this ...

  Ross Douthat heroically engages the attempt to blame the meltdown of the Republican Party on pro-lifers.

  [NYT; Moore to the Point]


• CELEB TESTIMONY #1 - Celebrity testimonies give me a pain where the grass won't grow. Here is an entertaining testimony by a well-know celebrity ... and not a single mention of Jesus, sin, confession, forgiveness, or the need for a Savior. [Powerline; h/t Maggie's Farm]
  


• CELEB TESTIMONY #2 - Jessica Simpson wants to return to her roots ... will her public give her a chance? Based on her behavior and her words, I'm curious just who her father might be? [John 8:48; Christian Post]


• CELEB TESTIMONY #3 - Have you ever wondered about Willie Nelson's faith? Well, wonder no longer! [Moore to the Point]


• The Miracle of Hope ... no not BHO's, Angola's ... no not the country, the prison. Yeh! The one in Louisiana.
  
  We watched the documentary last night and was blessed. I wonder though how long it will be before the ACLU and the other God haters try to shut down the success of this faith-based effort? [Christian Post; buy the DVD at BrooklynTabernacle]


• Atheism vs Christianity; especially the latter as it relates to our nation's foundations from the mind of a critical thinker. [Hillsdale; h/t View from 1776]
  


• Montana is not that far from Oregon, so this is not surprising; what continues to be surprising is the arrogance of man. [FOXNews]


• Words have meaning; without words, there is no meaning; without traditional and historical words, traditions and history lose meaning, without which a nation has no meaning! [Telegraph UK; h/t Black Kettle]
  


• The Grand Duke of Luxembourg (a Catholic) is opposed to euthanasia (and so is the Vatican); refuses to sign a law permitting the practice. However, the Prime Minister (also a Catholic and leader of the country's "Christian" Socialist Party) endorses killing the unwanted and inconvenient; he is in a position to push legislation that would downgrade the Grand Duke's legislative role. Three cheers for murder! Yahoo! [Times Online; h/t Cranmer]

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PROPHETIC VOICE: Be assured America's respect for life will soon end after Europe falls!

If the gist of this report is true ... no rational reason to assume it's not ... then all we have to do is wait until the EU shoe drops, the cheap thud of the USA shoe won't be far behind ...

Pro-life and pro-family campaigners have been warned to expect the publication of documents, funded by the European Union, promoting abortion, euthanasia and other anti-life and anti-family practices. These documents will purportedly allow “zero tolerance for dissent,” in particular seeking to eradicate the right to conscientious objection. [LifeSite News; h/t Black Kettle]

If this continues at its present pace, I envision a Christian Masada on every continent at some point ... unless the Lord takes us up first (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

The movement towards removing the right of “conscientious objection” has also become a looming concern in the United States. President-Elect Barack Obama has promised to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), should it be passed by Congress. FOCA would force all hospitals and medical professionals to provide abortions, with no rights of conscientious objection.

The man calls himself a Christian but he is a fraud, a total fraud.

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PROPHETIC VOICE: The American Angle of Repose!

I've no idea why I'm writing this post; perhaps it's my "I told you so" ego; I no longer have any confidence that anyone is listening ... regardless, America is in danger of leaning so far left it will be unable to move back to the right.

There is a principle of physics (engineering mainly) called the "the angle of repose" and is related to "the angle of recline" ... its political application might be described like this:

The "angle of repose" in political philosophy is the maximum angle to which a political party/group may be tilted before its underlying principles give way (e.g., snowflakes prior to an avalanche).

Or "the angle of recline" in political philosophy is the maximum angle which a political party/group at rest may be tilted before it irrecoverably breaks the restraining friction upon which it rests, commencing to slide until forcibly stopped by an external force.

Another way to describe this danger is by way of illustration: in the state of Georgia there is a Civil War memorial called Stone Mountain, on the top of which is a warning sign and (I am told) a line painted beyond which the sight seer may not pass. This point is the point beyond which the visitor will be unable to return to a fixed position.

In the case of political philosophies, proceeding experimentally or vicariously beyond a particular point will always result in an irreversible forward motion and the inability to recover one's footing.

The linked post (and hundreds of others) at The Brussels Journal simple points out that Europe, in real time, has passed that point. It will, short of a continental civil war, never recover its once glorious footing. The inattentive citizens of Europe have had their freedom and liberty stolen in broad daylight by godless, leftist, self-absorbed bureaucrats.

The people of the United States of America are being manipulated by the same deranged leftist/liberal political philosophy ... I fear they've collectively passed or are in the process of passing America's unseen angle of repose or angle of recline.

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ISLAM: Call me an Islamophobe but ... !

Black Racists Recruited to Guide the Jihad | FrontPage
HT - The Iconoclast - New English Review

Some day, perhaps not in my lifetime, WWIII will commence. A war of the west against the evil empire of the east - Islam. Not everyone on either side will be in favor of this conflict but its commencement and conduct are not in the range of their control.

The North American theatre is well under way, with Canada going as Europe goes. The USA front has a unique character to ti ...

Many black racists ... are key figures in [a] “stealth” jihad, whose prime recruiting grounds are the U.S. prisons and mosques where inmates and worshippers alike are taught to embrace a radical Islam engaged in an apocalyptic battle against America.

The European theatre of this Third Jihad has almost resulted in a Eurabia, a union of the EU (not with popular support either) and the Arabian states of the Middle East (Israel was not invited ... go figure).

Our ally, Saudi Arabia, W's close desert friends, is footing the bill for the Jihad's foot soldiers in the land of the free ...

... Saudis ... have spent many millions of dollars funding a majority of America’s mosques, and have dispatched Imams from a number of Middle Eastern nations to settle in the U.S. as missionaries.

Faheem Shuaibe, an Imam at a predominately black mosque in California, says that Saudi Arabia has set up “a very deliberate recruitment process … trying to find black Muslims who had a real potential for Islamic learning and also for submission to their agenda” of Wahhabi extremism.

Some might say these clandestine enemies don't stand a chance against our intel services, but need I remind you of the 9/11, Iraq, and Taliban failures of recent years? I would suggest my fellow Americans not put much faith in either ourdomestic or our international operations.

Pakistani religious leaders Sami ul-Haq and Fazrul Rehman predict that “in the next 10 years, Americans will wake up to the existence of an Islamic army in their midst—an army of jihadis who will force America to abandon imperialism and listen to the voice of Allah.”

The belief among Muslims worldwide is that America is the new Crusader. The belief among black American racists is that all whiteys are still fundamentally non-reformable slavers.

Other black racist Islamists play less glamorous but equally significant roles as Imams at major mosques in the U.S.; as chaplains in prisons and jails; and as radical figures who haunt American higher education by advising and speaking for organizations such as the Muslim Students Association (MSA) on campuses across the nation.

Whatever audience they target, they speak a lingua franca of anti-white, anti-Semitic, anti-American hatred—all in the name of Allah.

The Judeo-Christian focus on the next life as opposed to the Muslim focus on this life is a powerful and dividing force; one that allows the former to coexist in this world, but forces the other to conquest of this world.

WWIII is coming, as sure as the sun will rise in the morning ... unless the sun that rises tomorrow is the Son that has risen.

End times, Eurabia, Europe,
Geopolitics, Islam, Jihad, Last days,
Muslims, Religion, Wahhabism, WWIII

EUROPEAN CONNECTION: Don't fence me in ... I'm religious and political?

Europe's first revolution | New Statesman
HT - Cranmer: MEPs: ‘The EU is of a secular and neutral nature’
We Are Losing Europe to Islam | Diana West : Townhall

America is going the way of Europe ... unbeknown to the majority of her citizens!

John Steinbeck's novella was titled - Of Mice and Men; but God said - of neither mice nor men ...

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.

But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.

2 Peter 3:3-10

But first a metaphorical interlude ...

Farmer Jones was content with his life's work: his terraced fields were solid and easily maintained; his dual-source irrigation system was state of the art; his stock fine and deep in DNA; his bio-seed stores unrivaled; and his children and grandchildren legally provided for ... a century at least if the wisdom they were taught ruled their lives.

But his neighbor was not so content, nor so wise: when the 100 year flood came, it took his poorly built terraces, polluted his wells, killed his stock, saturated his seed stores, and took the house and barns as a final thought. On their way to removing the new county road, the waters and the flotsam and jetsam undermined Jones' terraces and took his farm too!

Though the global financial crisis is the easiest correlation here, the demise of Europe as a viable Western ally will cascade across the sea and destroy all that is not destroyed by the fiduciary failure of our financial community.

So how is it that I see America following Europe's lead in to oblivion?

First, Europe's new leaders believe they can correct "mistakes" of the past (Crusades, wars, poverty, inhumanity, etc.) by ignoring almost 1,500 years of Christian influence.

Papal mutterings about this perceived "apostasy" have been increasing in volume for some time now - but what really infuriated the Vatican was the presentation, back in 2003, of the first draft of the ill-fated European constitution.

In its preamble, the authors had indulged themselves in a spot of root-tracing. Europe's debt to ancient Greece and Rome was solemnly acknowledged. So, too, were the achievements of the Enlightenment. About the Christian roots of European civilisation, however, there was nothing.

The implication was obvious: everything between Marcus Aurelius and Voltaire was to be reckoned mere backwardness and superstition. [...]

Today's secular Europe may well pride itself on having arrived at a post-religious state of moral and intellectual superiority - but it is no less Christendom's heir for that.

In the USA it is a popular recreation, and Starbucks' moment, to wax on about our evil and religious past, while revealing a severe case of anti-religious ignorance marinated in an unhealthy canister of secular arrogance; in so doing the secular humanist, not seeing the baby in the dirty water, throws it out.

What they conveniently forget in their snobbery is the existence of such grand institutions as Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Notre Dame, Loyola; the multiple and nationwide hospitals of the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, the benevolent work of the Amish, Mennonites, the Salvation Army, the Knights of Columbus, and the senior care and retirement facilities of manifold others, etc. and etc.

All undeniable foundational and historically relevant religious entities.

Second, Europe's new leaders believe they can get away with the former if they "ring-fence" all religions and politics.

... the con viction [sic] that the religious and political spheres should be rigorously ring-fenced - and even more rigorously patrolled - has widespread support in Brussels. As one group of MEPs protested, in an official letter of complaint to the president of the European Parliament: "The EU is of a secular and neutral nature."

Almost daily, in America, someone (usually a politician but also an entertainer or academician), somewhere stands to condemn all things religious, throwing the baby, the water, and the clean out together.

A good example of this attitude of the left is the fairness doctrine (it's believed by some that this abomination will be reinstated in the event of an Obama victory); this is nothing more than cristophobia in drag.

Third, Europe's new leaders believe there are no absolutes and are willing to institute a broad set of absolutes to stop belief in them.

Pope Benedict asked last year: ‘Is it not surprising that today's Europe, while hoping to be seen as a community of values, more and more seems to contest that universal and absolute values exist?’

Yet he ought to have made it clear that the EU has developed its own universal and absolute articles of faith which are not neutral, but decidedly anti.

If a state seeks to be neutral in the effect of its policies then it requires a greater level of state intervention to ensure that inequalities are negated. [Cranmer]

A refreshing wind in all of this elitist duplicity and stupidity is Benedict XVI's adamant stand against the EU Parliament's efforts to bury their heads in the sand.

Most of our (America's) cultural war has been fought on this battlefield ... sanctity of human life, separation of church and state, Constitutional law and legislating from the bench, capital punishment, free speech, etc.

Cranmer is with Pope Benedict XVI in his opposition to the EU’s militant secularism.

One cannot be ‘neutral’ in matters of religion - pretending to broker between ‘equal’ faiths and impartial in arbitration between competing worldviews - for that neutrality presupposes a higher level of knowledge and constitutes itself an article of faith. There is no neutrality to be had because neutrality needs as much justification as any other position.

Secular humanism has progressively become more absolutist in its quest to silence conservatives and people of faith by ridiculing the belief in absolutes ... and the irony seems to be lost on them.

Fourth, multiculturalism has been the weapon of choice for Europe and the European Union ... a weapon incapable of aiding in a suicide ... for combating the Third Jihad.

With Wall Street convulsing, and the White House race intensifying, the question "Who lost Europe" is on no one's lips, let alone minds. Indeed, the question begs another: "Is Europe lost?"

The answer to the second question is, "No, not yet." And losing Europe, I would add, is by no means inevitable. But that doesn't mean the continent isn't currently hell-bent to accommodate the dictates of Islamic law, bit by increasingly larger bit. Such a course of accommodation, barring reversal, will only hasten Bernard Lewis' famous prediction that Europe will be Islamic by century's end. [Diana West]

The USA has been duped into a multicultural stupor by leftists and special interest groups; Islamic groups have used this stupor to their advantage. If America doesn't wake up, it will have more than an illegal immigration problem.

The west faces increasing tension with the Muslim world. [...]

As the first decade of the third Christian millennium draws to an increasingly troubled close, the verdict of historians on its significance can already be anticipated. Two themes will predominate. The first, exemplified by the present carnage in the financial markets, will be the quickening of the west's decline relative to China and India; the second, not entirely coincidentally, will be the tensions in the relationship between the west and the Muslim world.

A bleak picture indeed ... for a nation so self-absorbed and carnal that it might well face a day not too distant when it cannot defend itself. A nation's military security is intrinsically tied to its economic security ... and as we found when Russia invaded Georgia, we're lacking in both areas.

Christianity, Europe, Faith,
Geopolitics, History, Multiculturalism,
Muslims, Politics, Religion

QUESTIONS: A few must be asked and answered?

Duly Noted: The Old Russia Is Back | The Brussels Journal

So, tell me,

Where was the intel that Russia was about to invade a sovereign neighbor?

Where were British, NATO, and American spy agencies? (At Muslim sensitivity training seminars in the Barbados I suppose!)

What did China know and when did she know it?

What did A'ma-n-eeda-job know and when did he know it?

Where are the anti-American voices in the UN today? Huh?

Where are all the leftists anti-war protesters now ... has anyone seen Cindy or Murtha?

What are the goals of the reconstituted Soviets? (Clearly the two breakaways were not their strategic objectives?)

Cold War II, Georgia,
Russia, WWIII

FAMILY: They can run but they can't hide!

Sometimes it pays off to read a less than exciting article all the way to the end; John Laughland's piece in today's The Brussels Journal was such a piece; his final paragraph is spot on!

Through left-liberalism, European nations have systematically destroyed the values which, as extended families, they once embodied. The admission into their midst of very large numbers of people who will never be part of the family aggravates what is already a serious problem of social dislocation.

The attempt to reverse this trend by emphasising values may be a laudable one, but it can never succeed because the liberal paradigm on which it is based is wrong. It assumes that human societies are comparable to private companies and based on contract, when instead they are in fact comparable to families and based on the principles of blood relationship and paternity. That is a something which no amount of political sophistry can hide.

Canada also joined in this social-engineering program ... since their bureaucracy is a far more liberal variant at the moment, the effects of their meddling with their culture, society, and traditions is having a far more dramatic effect.

Clearly the United States is seeing dramatic evidence of the leading edge of this liberal dysfunction ... God ordained marriage as the medium through which the family best performs. What is surprising to see is the mob denial of leftists and liberals as the evidence continues to poor in.

The role of immigration in this national disintegration is becoming clearer with time. God revealed His compassion for the foreigner in the midst of Israel, but He warned the nation not to allow him to run things or be a part of His worship until he himself joined Israel in that worship.

Christianity, Family,
Immigration, Marriage, Religion