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Godfather Politics |
- Do Christian Republicans ‘Pervert’ and ‘Cheapen’ Religion?
- Is Obama Supporting a Tax on the Poor?
- Could 2012 Be the Year of the Apocalypse?
- Vladimir Lenin: ‘Destroy the Family, You Destroy the Country’
- Health Insurance Premiums Increase to Pay for Research
- America’s Most Admired a Sign of Moral Decay and God’s Judgment
Do Christian Republicans ‘Pervert’ and ‘Cheapen’ Religion? Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:31 PM PST On Tuesday’s Bill Press radio show, former MSNBC anchor David Shuster mocked Tim Tebow, quarterback for the Denver Broncos, and Christians in genera: “I think what happens is when a politician or a figure like Tim Tebow — and I know that Bill Press has mentioned it on the show — but when a national figure, sports celebrity, politician wraps themselves in religion I believe that they diminish the significance of that religion. That instead of it being something sort of somber and serious and deep they almost pervert it and they cheapen that religion.” I have to agree. But a couple of points need to be made. First, Tim Tebow has not wrapped himself in his religion. This is where liberals get so much wrong about Christianity. A person’s Christian faith isn’t like a shirt or jacket that can be put on and taken off. The Bible says that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Second, if anything, Tebow’s faith has been understated. It’s the media that made such a big deal about his faith. Every time he did anything that was faith related, the press went mad with rage. When Planned Parenthood heard that he was going to appear in a Super Bowl ad with his mother, they went on the attack. Tebow’s faith is not any more prominent than that of Bethany Hamilton, the young girl who lost her arm in a 2003 shark attack while surfing. Her Christian faith was a constant in her life. The film Soul Surfer (2011) was made about her life. Third, it isn’t unusual for people who hold to a religious worldview to wrap themselves in their religion and do it a disservice. In fact, a study of the Bible will show that it happens frequently. Jesus was most critical of the religious leaders of His day. Take a look at Matthew 23. This is not Jesus “meek and mild.” But to compare Tebow’s public displays of faith with those of the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day is to compare apples and oranges. In fact, Tebow exercises his faith by doing the good deeds that Jesus condemns the Scribes and Pharisees for not doing, and he doesn’t do these deeds under the bright lights of the publicity cameras. Fourth, critics like Press and Shuster don’t care about diminishing the significance of religion or cheapening it. What they really want is a religion that is all personal, ethereal, and other worldly. They don’t want a religion that has anything to say about this world, especially when that religion takes on the liberal idols of the day. According to a radio editorial some years ago, “a man’s religion and the strength of his conviction are his own personal matter,” therefore “religion should not interfere with politics.”[1] This is the way liberals think. They believe they and they alone own politics, and it’s not that they are opposed to mixing religion and politics; they welcome it as long as it’s their religion that’s doing the mixing in order to support and expand their liberal agenda. Notes:
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Is Obama Supporting a Tax on the Poor? Posted: 29 Dec 2011 04:17 PM PST Just before a long Christmas weekend the “Obama Justice Department issued a legal opinion that permits states to set up nonsports Internet gambling.” The opinion upends decades of opposition and “contrary decisions, but its real effect will be on the poor (and young) who suffer the most from gambling.” People only suffer the ill effects of gambling if they gamble. If you don’t gamble, you won’t lose any money gambling. If you don’t eat more calories than you burn, you won’t get fat. Like almost all social conditions, personal responsibility is the key. The Christian Science Monitor gets it right: [B]ringing Internet gambling to America would hurt the poor, who are most affected when people lose money in government-approved games of chance such as state lotteries or casinos – not to mention the way it would reinforce a belief that one’s future depends on “luck” instead of individual merit. But Obama is a Democrat. He knows that gambling adversely affects the poor more than any other group. In effect, he is supporting a self-tax on the poor. Gambling is for fools. More people lose than win. If it were any different, it wouldn’t be gambling. The people who make the money are the people who build the gambling establishments and the states that reap the tax revenues. There are some drawbacks. When there is an economic downturn, economies built on gambling and the entertainment that goes with it suffer. Nevada is a case in point. It has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Unemployment is near 13.5 percent. The high school graduation rate inNevada is 58 percent, the lowest in the nation. In 2009, the collegegraduation rate in Nevada was 35.8 percent, just above the last-place state Alaska. Why? Young people can make more money working in Vegas. Consider lotteries. Most people are net losers. If they weren’t, the states that set up lotteries wouldn’t be making billions of dollars a year in after-tax money from people who play the lottery. And who are the people who play the lottery? Mostly it’s people who can’t afford to play. Consider the following results from aSouth Carolina study:
South Carolina’s 2008 lottery study showed that more than 50 percent of Pick 3 and Pick 4 players were black. Similar statistics were found for Texas. “Players making under $12,000 a year spent three times as much as those pulling in over $100,000 and nearly double those making between $75,000 and $100,000. ($19 a month for the under $12,000 respondents, vs. $6 a month for those over $100,000; and $10 for those earning between $75,000 and $100,000.) High school dropouts who reported playing at least one game within the past year spent nearly three times as much as those with graduate degrees and almost as much as those with some college. Everybody knows that lower income people use a higher percentage of their discretionary income to play the lottery. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for lotteries. I would like to see the replacement of the income tax with a national lottery. Given the statistics on who pays taxes and who plays the lottery, taxation would be more equally distributed. And because I’ve never played the lottery, I wouldn’t be paying any income tax.  |
Could 2012 Be the Year of the Apocalypse? Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:15 AM PST I’ll go out on a limb and say “no,” the apocalypse will not happen in 2012. There are several reasons I’m almost certain. First, the Greek wordapokalupsis means “to unveil, uncover, lay open what has covered up.” The first verse in the book of Revelation reads: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must shortly take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John” (Rev. 1:1). The word itself does not convey calamity but clarity. The forces of evil do not win in an end-time battle to rival all battles. Second, “The revelation (apokalupsis) of Jesus Christ” describes “the things which must shortly take place.” The word “shortly” means what it means for us: soon, before long. The book of Revelation does not describe events that will take place in the distant future but events that were on the horizon for Revelation’s first readers because, as John is told, “the time is near” (1:3). Greg Stier, the author of “Apocalypse: Could 2012 Be the Year of Christ’s Return?,” begins his article with Revelation 22:7: “Look,” Jesus says to John, “I am coming soon!” (Rev. 22:7). Keep in mind that this was written nearly 2000 years ago. “Coming soon” refers to a judgment coming of Jesus what was near to those who first read Revelation. This is why John could write that he was a “fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus” (Rev. 1:9). John persevered through the period of tribulation that Revelation describes as the church has done for 2000 years. While citing Revelation 22:7 that Jesus said He was “coming soon,” Stier jumps two millennia in the future for the fulfillment: [T]here are true signs of the times on a global scale from economic turmoil to military tensions to religious conflicts. The Eurozone has transformed into a financial roller coaster and the “Arab Spring” has been carried over into Winter. A crazy dictator died and now his unknown son rules the nuclear-enabled roost (AKA “North Korea”). All of this sounds like iron mixed with clay (Daniel 2:43) mixed with the plot from a Left Behind DVD to me. So will 2012 be the year of Christ’s return? According to Grant S. Osborne in his commentary on Revelation, the Greek word taxu “does not mean Christ is coming ‘quickly’ but ‘very soon’ (as in 1:7; 22:7).”[1] It’s not that when Jesus comes it will be fast; it means, as it meant to the first readers of Revelation, that He was coming in short order to bring an end to the old covenant order. Stier misses the point because he misses the timing and the message of Revelation. He ignores the time indicators in the first chapter (Rev. 1:1, 3, 7) and the last chapter (22:10, 7, 12, 20) of Revelation. Revelation illustrates what was going to take happen to the nation of Israel, events described by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) and by the Roman-Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus (A.D. 37–100) in The Jewish War, a history of Jewish revolt against Roman occupation (A.D. 66 to 70). For a study of this topic, see the books Is Jesus Coming Soon? and Last Days Madness. Prophecy pundits for centuries have pointed to world conditions to argue for a near end of all things in their day claiming that Revelation was the basis for their views. They have a 100 percent record of being wrong. Such speculation leads the faithful to believe that imminent destruction is inevitable and nothing can be done to stop it. While the forces of good look for an imminent end, evil forces plan for greater expansion of their influence. The problem, therefore, is with those who have the goods to change society. The forces of evil win by default. It’s time that Christians stop with the end-time hype and speculation and get to work in taking back lost territory surrendered to the destroyers of culture. We’ve seen the harsh realities of wars, famines, earthquakes, and the like, and we are still here. The former Soviet Union was a bigger threat than Iran or North Korea. North Korea can’t even feed its people and light its cities. Yes, Iran could launch a nuclear missile, but it would be the last thing Iran ever did. The Arab Spring is turning into an Arab Winter of discontent. Notes:
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Vladimir Lenin: ‘Destroy the Family, You Destroy the Country’ Posted: 28 Dec 2011 11:40 PM PST Marriage and family were the very first covenant relationships established by God with man. The first wedding took place in the Garden of Eden and started with Adam and culminated when God formed Eve from Adam’s rib and then joined the two and gave them instructions for their roles in marriage. From the beginning of man’s existence, the family unit has been the most stable and important structure of all time. It not only serves for procreation, but the very structure of the family actually helps to hold nations together. It is the foundation for many of our morals and character. It defines men, women, boys and girls and teaches them values and lessons that will shape the rest of their lives. A number of socialists and communists have often said that to destroy a nation, first destroy the family. Over the past 60 years, the family structure in America has been attacked and eroded. The number of fatherless homes is epidemic. The number of homes with un-wed couples is growing at an alarming rate, even within Christian circles. The biblical role of the father as being the spiritual head of the house has been effectively destroyed by the constant belittling and ridicule seen on prime time TV. Father knows best has been replaced by mother and daughter know best and dad’s an idiot. Now, the courts are re-defining the very terms of ‘marriage’ and ‘parents’. In California, the courts are now turning away from the traditional definition of parent as one of biological or adoption origin to something completely perverted. Case in point is the ruling passed down by the Third District Court of Appeal that gave custody of one woman’s biological children to her ex-lesbian lover. The ex-lesbian lover is a colonel in the US Air Force Reserve. Before ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ was repealed, she did not file any action to legally adopt her girlfriend’s children, for fear it would end her military career. The couple has since separated and now that she doesn’t have to hide her perverse and sinful lifestyle anymore, the colonel filed for custody of her ex-lover’s biological children and the court granted her request saying that she acted more like a parent than the real mother, even though she had initially put her military career before the children. The court basically changed the definition of ‘parent’ to ‘de facto parent’ in their ruling. In North Carolina, a lawsuit has been filed against the requirement of having to file for a state license in order to get married. The people behind the lawsuit claim that such a requirement violates the US Constitution and the supposed separation of church and state. Founder of Liberty Counsel, Mat Staver warns that the lawsuit could lead to a multitude of sinful lifestyles,
If this North Carolina lawsuit is granted any credence, it will lead to the complete annihilation of the definition of marriage as we know it. The court rulings in California are already re-defining the role of the parent. To see the long range impact these ruling will have on our nation, all you have to do is recall the words of Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin when he said,
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Health Insurance Premiums Increase to Pay for Research Posted: 28 Dec 2011 11:13 PM PST Everyone who has health insurance have seen their premiums dramatically rise over the past couple years as a direct effect of Obamacare. To those of us without health insurance, we’ve seen the cost of obtaining it becoming more out of reach than ever before. While premiums rise, coverage decreases. To add to the rising costs, did you know that your premiums are about to increase again come January 1, 2012? The federal government will add a fee to your coverage that is designed to pay for medical research. They are going to charge you for research to determine what medicines and treatments work best for various medical conditions and illnesses. The results of the research will ultimate determine what medicines and treatments will be covered by the government controlled health insurance industry and which ones won’t be covered. Even though everybody reacts differently to the same medicine and treatment, the government’s research will eventually narrow the field of options. If you are one of those that don’t respond to the cheaper and more popular treatments, you’ll be out of luck. If you can find a doctor to give you the unapproved and uncovered medicine or treatment, you’ll be forced to pay for it out of pocket. An example could be a treatment for something that the government panel says should be treated with a specific drug. But say you had hepatitis 30 years ago and that approved drug affects your liver function to the point that it will be dangerous for you to take. You find out that there is a drug you could take that does not affect your liver functions, but this drug is no longer approved because of the research panel that you are now paying for. You may or may not be able to get the right drug and if you do, you will have to pay for it out of pocket. Aren’t you glad that we have the Affordable Care Act better known as Obamacare?  |
America’s Most Admired a Sign of Moral Decay and God’s Judgment Posted: 28 Dec 2011 11:03 PM PST The annual USA Today/Gallup Poll list of the top ten most admired men and women has been released and the top choices show a growing trend towards the moral decadence and decay of America. This year’s top ten are: Men 1. Barack Obama 2. George W Bush 3. Bill Clinton 4. Rev. Billy Graham 5. Warren Buffett 6. Newt Gingrich 6. Donald Trump 8. Pope Benedict KVI 9. Bill Gates 10. Thomas Monson In the men’s column, we have someone who supports and endorses anti-Christian lifestyles and who also has been actively destroying free America and illegally occupies the office of President; a man who had extra-marital sex in the Oval Office; one of the wealthiest men in the world who supported the Occupy movement; and a so-called prophet of one of the largest cults in the world. Women 1. Hillary Clinton 2. Oprah Winfrey 3. Michelle Obama 4. Sarah Palin 5. Condoleeza Rice 6. Laura Bush 7. Margaret Thatcher 7. Ellen DeGeneres 9. Queen Elizabeth 9. Michele Bachmann In the lady’s column, we start with the wife of a sexual pervert, who is pushing United Nations anti-Christian and anti-American policies onto the American people and who also endorses anti-Christian lifestyles here and abroad; a woman who has become one of the biggest snobs in country and who treats Secret Service and White House staff like they are dirt beneath her feet; and a lesbian who flaunts her sinful lifestyle on television and advocates gay rights. While some on the list are worthy to be admired and looked up to, more people are showing up who are anything but admirable. Some of those on this list should be on the Top Ten Most Deplorable instead of the admirable list. But Romans 1:18-31 tells us that God is judging our nation because not only do people lead sinful and homosexual lifestyles, but the those in charge approve of the lifestyle. God gives us the leaders we deserve and when we become of nation of moral decay like ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, we get leaders like the Obamas and Clintons and perverted celebrities like DeGeneres to admire, look up to and envy.  |
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