There Be Monsters Amongst Us! A Mother’s Day Message

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It would seem that some people will do just about anything to satisfy their sexual lusts. The latest horrific installment of this dark human weakness occurred in Cleveland, Ohio. Yes, the infamous case of Ariel Castro is just the latest manifestation of this fact of life, that there be indeed monsters amongst us! Having kidnapped and held captive three young women—Gina Dejesus, Amanda Berry, and Michelle Knight—Castro used them as his sex slaves for almost a decade.

As if rape, threats, chains and ropes are not enough of a nightmare, according to Michelle Knight, when her pregnancies became noticeable, Castro would starve and the beat her, hitting her womb to induce an abortion.

But it would appear that Castro was not a total monster. I suppose even Frankenstein’s monster had his softer moments. After all, Castro wanted a baby girl born to Amanda Berry to live. Michelle Knight recounted that Castro threatened to kill her if she did not successfully play the midwife to Amanda Berry as she gave birth in a plastic kiddie pool. This child was named Jocelyn and she too escaped with her Mom from Ariel Castro’s house. The little girl now 6 years old has known nothing but the society of her captor-father and his sex slaves. I doubt that without God’s healing the psychological scares inflicted on these women will never fully be healed short of that peace that can only be bestowed by God’s Holy Spirit.

I pray that God our Father and Christ Jesus our Savior will be kind to you and will bless you with peace! Titus 1:4

The families in this poor Cleveland neighbourhood are stunned. Castro was a well-known integral part of that tight-knit Puerto Rican immigrant community. Ariel Castro is even remembered as having helping out during the search for one of his kidnapping victims and even went so far as to comfort the mother of Gina Dejesus at another occasion. Quite the act. The family of Ariel Castro, including his children and his two brothers Onil and Pedro, are also revolted at his kidnappings and rape and have publicly denounced him asserting, “We don’t have monster in our blood.” But as concerns the human race is that wholly true?

The two brothers of the Cleveland man accused of holding three women captive for about a decade say they have no sympathy for him. One called him a “monster” who he hopes “rots in jail.” http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/13/i-dont-care-if-they-even-feed-him/

Ohio prosecutor Tim McGinty said he plans to seek aggravated murder charges that could carry the death penalty:

I fully intend to seek charges for each and every act of sexual violence, rape, each day of kidnapping, every felonious assault, all his attempted murders, and each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies that the offender perpetuated against the hostages during this decade-long ordeal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22475771

The public has been rightly horrified by this extraordinary Cleveland monster, Ariel Castro. But don’t we tolerate our own mundane, nameless monsters who lead seemingly “normal lives” yet commit offenses equally worthy of “aggravated murder charges for terminating pregnancies.” Aren’t we, as a society, being hypocritical?

These mundane monsters, on an annual basis, terminate the pregnancies of about 100,000 unborn children in Canada and about 1,000,000 per year in the United States, albeit at the request of their own mothers! But are these “bio-waste” children any less children for being unwanted by their mothers? Just because such hard-hearted people don’t care about the innocents in utero, does that give them the right to torture and kill at will for their own convenience? Did you know that babies in utero feel pain?

This lack of a moral conscience, this ethical black hole when it comes to empathy was also the mindset of Ariel Castro, the “Cleveland Monster.” He didn’t want to be burdened by any unwanted children that came from satisfying his lust with Gina Dejesus, Amanda Berry, and Michelle Knight.

In Canada there is no law regulating abortion. A child in the womb can be legally killed up to the day he or she is actually born. Shouldn’t we as a society re-consider giving anyone the right to kill an innocent for the sake of her own personal convenience? I hope you wished your Mum a Happy Mother’s Day, yesterday! She kept you despite the inconvenience you inevitably caused her.

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“As close to Satan as can be”

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So, for your entertainment pleasure the American TV network NBC is offering you a new series called Hannibal. The new program is about the duplicitous Dr. Hannibal Lecter—psychologist, connoisseur, and gourmet cannibal. I suppose one of the “charms” of this new series will be the constant stream of new guest stars who make short on-camera appearances before being transformed into gourmet entrées for the “good” doctor’s dinner parties.

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen has been cast as the TV version of Hannibal Lecter. Mikkelsen confessed to some initial reluctance to take on the role when first offered it because he thought Anthony Hopkins had turned in such a consummate portrayal of the Hannibal character in the movie The Silence of the Lambs. But it would seem that the Danish actor found some thespian, if not spiritualist, inspiration to bring the TV Hannibal Lecter “as close to Satan as can be,” according to journalist Frazier Moore of the Associated Press. For Mads Mikkelsen, Hannibal the cannibal isn’t your classic psychopath or serial murderer. No, no, no! This is your charming, sophisticated fallen angel who sees beauty in murder and dining pleasure through cannibalism.

But what the heck, in Canada we don’t have to watch NBC to satisfy our inner cannibal. All we have to do is pick up the newspaper and read about the trial of Luka Magnotta, the Montreal gay pornographic actor, who murdered and chopped up a the Chinese student Lin Jun in May 2012, and then mailed the victim’s body parts to the several Canadian political parties and schools.

When police figured out through surveillance footage that the “perp” was Magnotta, they searched his apartment and found plenty of gruesome evidence. Written in red ink in his closet was the chilling statement: “If you don’t like the reflection. Don’t look in the mirror. I don’t care.”

Discovered, Magnotta had fled the country to Europe, but eventually German police apprehended him at an Internet café in Berlin while he was killing some time reading online news stories about himself. Like Mads Mikkelsen, Magnotta, was also trying to get “as close to Satan as can be.”

It beats the life out of me trying to figure out why the NBC executives gave a green light to the TV series Hannibal. But obviously they are convinced that a mass audience will find it entertaining to watch someone act “as close to Satan as can be.” Why are these TV big shots doing this? Don’t they understand the simple concept “monkey see, monkey do”? Can’t they understand what will result from promoting this spiritual darkness to their audience of millions of viewers? But that’s the point. Perhaps, they do understand.

Think about the moral darkness possessing the gatekeepers of America’s major entertainment corporations. Think about how these gatekeepers have used and are continuing to use the media as a tool for the changes they want to see. What do you think? Will you watch Hannibal on NBC? Or will you take your cues from another source. Jesus of Nazareth said this:

Your eye is the lamp of the body. When your eye is good, your whole body is also full of light. But when it is bad, your body is also full of darkness. Take care then, that the light in you is not darkness. Luke 11:34-35 Holman Christian Standard Bible

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Can a new Pope bring repentance to the Church of Rome?

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In a CBC radio interview I listened with interest to an intelligent, young, American Jesuit seminarian who prayerfully called on whoever might be the new Roman Catholic Pope “to lead us into a new age of integrity and to deliver us from hypocrisy—so that we can really be who we say we are!”

This aspiring priest believes it’s imperative for the Roman Catholic Church to really become faithful to Jesus Christ. To achieve this would require dramatic changes in order to bring that church into conformity with the way of life that the Son of God taught in both word and deed as recorded in the Scriptures.

Mission impossible? Well, that man’s not asking for much, is he? Repentance and change! Not easy but essential to both experiencing and living authentic Christianity as described in the pages of your Bible. But repentance/change is, after all, the profession of every individual Christian and every group of people who want to be a church “of God” in reality and not merely in self-promoting advertising.

A new pope is going to have his work cut out for him if he wants to bring the Roman Catholic Church to the biblical repentance that would please Christ. What with seemingly unending bad news arising from its on-going flood of clerical pedophile sex cases, and the Vatican Bank’s (the ironically named Institute for Religious Works) stinky reputation in banking circles as a go-to-place for money laundering by traditionally Catholic Mafioso types.

Also, one can’t neglect to add to this new pope’s to-do-list, actions to get to the bottom of the ongoing allegations of various forms of ecclesiastical corruption that include ugly bureaucratic turf battles among the Curia’s Cardinals, and—surprise, surprise—scandalous allegations that some of the papal staff formerly close to Pope Benedict XVI were embracing homosexual practices more enthusiastically than their vows of celibacy.

Wow, what a revolution of change and repentance would occur in the above situation if a new pope actually took his policy and doctrinal cue from biblical teaching about clerical marriage such as found in 1 Timothy 3:2 in order to get at the root of what’s causing that church to be rife with sexual abuse and perversion. But, don’t hold your breath.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that Massimo Franco, a columnist for Italy’s leading daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, describes the Vatican as being utterly dysfunctional in his new book “The Crisis of the Vatican Empire.” No wonder every employee working at the Vatican and all the Cardinals locked up in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new Pope are required to take vows of secrecy. What goes on at the Vatican must stay at the Vatican!

But then, what can you expect from an organization that would not even tolerate an individual’s religious freedom of conscience until the Vatican II Council in the early 1960s. Remember that the Roman Catholic Church has a long and bloody history written by its popes’ decrees. Those men who styled themselves as the successor of the Apostle Peter ordered Crusades to slaughter those they saw as “infidels” whether Muslim, Jew, or especially non-conformist Christian.

It makes you wonder when you compare Christ’s teaching to his disciples to the reality revealed by the Catholic Church’s own history.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” John 13:34-36 English Standard Version

Following the crusades, these same popes also formulated and launched a network of terrorism throughout the world, which persisted for almost 600 years and was known as the Inquisition. The Roman popes even authorized various forms of horrific torture by a papal bull entitled Ad Extirpanda in 1254 that would make the CIA’s use of waterboarding for interrogations look like playing tag football. Bloody, harsh, and violent were the Inquisitorial methods! The Roman Catholic Popes employed these tactics in order to enforce their monopoly on power and their domination over the expression of all individual Christians’ faith.

Is there something inherently flawed about the Roman Catholic Papacy—whether we’re talking about the office itself and/or its doctrinal claim to authority over Christianity—so that it can’t be reformed, no matter the initial decent nature of the man who might occupy the so-called “seat of St. Peter”? We all know this saying about the human condition: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Check out this series of four presentations discussing the foundations of church authority. Did Christ give the Apostle Peter and his successors authority as “vicars of Christ”? Does the Pope have the authority “to bind and loose” in all matters of doctrine and tradition? Where did Sunday/Easter worship originate and why? How has Christianity changed from what was practiced by the original Jerusalem Church of God during the first 100 years after the crucifixion of Jesus? All these questions and more are discussed and examined in four in-depth streaming video presentations on this subject.

Just click on: http://cogwebcast.com/sermons/video-archives/a-changed-christianity/

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Will the “right” man be elected as the new Pope?

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So Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Ratzinger, is resigning at the end of this month due to old age. Papal spokesmen assure us, repeatedly, that the still living and kicking but soon-to-be former Pope will not participate in the cardinals conclave in March to select his successor at this second-oldest, on-going “Christian franchise,” the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). Ah yes, we hear from the authorized sources the strict observance of the explicit “letter of the law”—the RCC’s canon law—in public.

But how should we weigh the “spirit of the law” aspects of such a statement? After all, such pre-emptive assurance of Pope Benedict’s non-interest in handpicking his successor is being conveniently offered to us by the employees of the same man who long-ran that secretive multi-national church corporation’s Holy Office of the Inquisition (better known more recently as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) before becoming Pope!

Should we trust a church hierarchy that still officially denies that it systemically covered up and “managed” for hundreds and hundreds of years the fall-out arising from its numerous priestly pedophiles? Granted, however, that we must acknowledge that the RCC will now apologize publicly for their priests’ licentious behaviour and pay compensation to victims. But still, should we trust them?

Actually, I admire Pope Benedict for this pro-active initiative to assure an orderly succession to the top job at the RCC. By resigning now while his mind is still sharp he can make a strong effort to influence the outcome of the cardinals’ vote. And it goes almost without saying that the “right” man to become the new Pope will be the one who will continue Pope Benedict’s conservative policies. Actually those policies are really just a continuation of those of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

Conservative Catholics are probably relieved by Pope Benedict’s succession gambit. They, like their last two popes, are wary of the moral relativism that is dominating the Western world at this point in time. They don’t believe that all is just a matter of personal preference and opinion. They believe that Truth with a capital “T” really does exist.

Since they also believe that the Pope has the authority to define doctrine in their church, and to make definitive statements concerning truth and falsehood; it is essential, from their point of view, that the “right” man be elected as the next Pope.

I don’t fault them for their logic. After all, if a new Pope was elected who had a secret agenda to institute “reforms” allowing gay marriage, ordination of women, abortion, euthanasia, and easy divorce—well, all would be lost for those supporting conservative values in the RCC. And that’s the flaw in the Catholic tradition of Christianity.

Catholics believe that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ—that he rules as a substitute for Christ and has final authority. In essence, the RCC makes a man and that man’s opinions the arbiter of what is Truth or falsehood.

The gospel of Jesus Christ, however, teaches something else:

Sanctify them [that is to say: purify, consecrate, separate them for Yourself, make them holy] by the Truth; Your Word is Truth. John 17:17 Amplified Bible

When Satan tried to tempt Jesus Christ to enact something, to follow a policy that would, in essence, make an accommodation to a personal preference or desire, Jesus rebutted the Adversary, making this statement on the real source of authority:

But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, “People do not live by bread alone [by any material or human means alone], but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:4 New Living Translation

The part of the Judeo-Christian scriptures that Jesus was quoting to Satan on this issue of the real authority to decide questions of Truth or falsehood is found in Deuteronomy 8:3. Godly authority to decide questions of church policy and all other questions of what is right or wrong is by Sola Scripture, which in Latin means by Scripture Alone. It is the Judeo-Christian Scriptures alone that reveal the Truth. It is never a question of merely any man’s or woman’s personal opinion or preference, whether that person is elected a Pope or not!

All Catholics, all Protestants all secular people, and all believers in other religions are eventually going to learn the answer to this question about where ultimate, legitimate authority rests. Most will learn the hard way at some time in the future. You can learn this right now and act on it to become consecrated to God as His own son or daughter—a higher spiritual office than any earthly Pope— if you will allow the Word of God to direct you into living in and by His Truth.

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In defense of our most ancient values & ideals

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Towards the end of President Barak Obama’s second inaugural address he argued:

“You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.”

I wholly agree with this inspiring proposition by the President. Barak Obama is indeed one of the most accomplished speakers of our time. Yet, I discovered as perhaps you did also that not all of Obama’s inaugural speech was equally inspiring. Nevertheless, believing the President to be a fair and open-minded man, I lift up my voice in defense of my brethren’s most ancient values and enduring ideals and call upon the President to re-consider the logic and the spirit of some of the positions he has taken.

The United States of America is at a crossroads. Time is quickly running out for the world’s dominant superpower and number one economy to set its house in order. There are several startling trends afoot in the nation that will humble it, if not bring it down completely, if not effectively resolved.

But as you begin your second term in office, Mr. President, you seem to give every indication that you misunderstand just how gravely wounded the nation is financially and politically, certainly— but especially, morally. The secular press tends to overlook the fact that it will be of the Spirit if the Flesh [the nation’s material well-being & future] is to be saved from the gathering crisis. After all, what was it that sustained Abraham Lincoln and the Union in their time of trial? Was it just their rifles and canons? Was it not the righteousness of their cause?

David Brooks, a conservative journalist working for the liberal New York Times, made this comment about your second inauguration speech:

I also think Obama misunderstands this moment. The Progressive Era, New Deal and Great Society laws were enacted when America was still a young and growing nation. They were enacted in a nation that was vibrant, raw, under-institutionalized and needed taming.

We are no longer that nation. We are now a mature nation with an aging population [Why we might ask? Is it because the vibrant potential of so many millions of our white, black, and Latino youth and their potential children have been sacrificed on abortion’s pagan altar of selfish convenience?].

Far from being under-institutionalized, we are bogged down with a bloated political system, a tangled tax code, a byzantine legal code, and a crushing debt [not to mention an appalling amount of fiscal corruption at the highest levels of American society]. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/opinion/brooks-the-collective-turn.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1358883569-pQYbbD/j2/ypooIiqVZgIg

Mr. President, what are you going to do to address this harsh, on-going, destructive reality sapping America’s strength?

Next is the urgently needed healing of the nation’s bitter political divide. Do you remember what Abraham Lincoln said: a House divided will fall? [Actually, Lincoln was just quoting Jesus Christ from Matthew 12:25]. Good will and a spirit of collaboration with a generous sprinkling of patriotism are absolutely necessary to enact desperately needed reforms. I sense that your speech fell short in this regard. It seems to me that it failed to reach across the blue vs. red divide. It did, however, stoke up the partisan spirit of your so-called “progressive wing” of the Democratic Party. Maybe that’s all your speech was intended to do.

Still, I consider it a failure to rekindle the spirit of collaboration desperately needed throughout America. This failure was symbolically evident by who was NEITHER present NOR accounted for at your swearing in. Where were former President George W. Bush, and the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney? Why weren’t they seated on the speaker’s platform beside you for the whole nation to see even a semblance of unity or brotherhood among the nation’s leaders? Couldn’t you find a few gracious words to speak in order to persuade them to come? Was extending the olive branch just too hard? Must it always be a zero-sum game? Is pride getting in the way of taking care of the nation’s urgent business? You know what they say about pride going before a….

The bad blood is obviously such that, ominously, most of the Republican delegation from the House of Representatives wouldn’t come to your big bash—even have a few free drinks! Such political bitterness in Washington, D.C. is systemically weakening America’s ability to meet the long-term challenge posed by a rising geo-political competitor like China.

As for addressing the nation’s moral problems, The Washington Times newspaper noted in its January 22, 2013 editorial:

Though the theme of Inauguration Day 2013 was “faith in America’s future,” the United States has seldom chosen a president more determined to separate the nation from its traditional reverence for faith, family and freedom. The proposition that individuals “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, is harder to see in the vision of Mr. Obama’s America where administrative agencies make choices for individuals, even down to the details of dictating the design of everyday household appliances….

The signature achievement of his first term, Obamacare, established the precedent whereby the White House can force citizens to purchase a service that had previously been a matter of personal choice. The health care mandate goes so far as to override the distinct choices of religious organizations, forcing them to provide contraception and abortion coverage against their will. This is a clear attempt to undermine the previously sacrosanct respect for religious freedom in American political culture.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/22/inaugurating-leviathan/#ixzz2IjlLTXSy

Now please, carefully consider this final point Mr. President. When you swore your oath of office with your left hand placed on the Bibles once used by Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln, you said:

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service.

You pointed out in your inaugural speech following this oath that the nation’s “freedom was a gift from God” though it “must be secured by His people here on Earth.”

And like previous American presidents, at the close of his inaugural address you invoked a blessing from America’s historic God, upon both people and nation, saying: “God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.”

I don’t think it would be too controversial to assert that the God you officially referred to was in fact the God of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. Not Allah. Not Buddha. Not one of the millions of the Hindu gods. Not John Lennon of the Beatles who once boasted that he was more popular than Jesus Christ, nor even the latest re-incarnation of some Marilyn Monroe Hollywood sex idol. America’s Founding Fathers and patriots overwhelmingly claimed the Bible’s God as America’s God. I’m sure you must know that.

But did you realize, Mr. President, that when you took this oath of office calling publicly upon the Bible’s God to be a witness and to hold you accountable, and claimed in your inaugural speech to want to govern our people by “our most ancient values and enduring ideals,” that there would be negative consequences if you did all this just for show—hypocritically.

And make no mistake about it, the Bible’s ancient values and ideals are indeed enduring because they are the Truth and are essential reading for anyone who wants the Bible’s God to give him or her a blessing of hope and peace in this life and, eventually, the fullness of eternal life—rather than a cursing, heart-ache, and futility in this life and then the emptiness of eternal death. As Jesus of Nazareth said:

Sanctify them [purify, consecrate, separate them for Yourself, make them holy] by the Truth; Your Word is Truth (John 17:17 Amplified Bible)

And…

“Man shall not live by bread [materialistic means] alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God [spiritual means]” (Matthew 4:4 English Standard Version).

In the Judeo-Christian Scriptures we see that there is a clear and repeated historic pattern of bad consequences that come when either leaders or people hypocritically claim God as their God, take oaths and invoke blessings using His name, but do not do what He commands. God does not consider such people to be guiltless even though they just say what they say because of tradition and the fact that they want to look good in public (Exodus 20:7). There are unpleasant consequences for such hypocrisy.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, freedom—we’re talking political, economic, and religious freedom—is always presented as being conditional upon obedience by the nation or leader who calls upon the Bible’s God. In other words, a leader or a nation that calls upon the Bible’s God as their God must be found living within the ancient values and ideals expounded in His law or face the consequences.

Consider, Mr. President Obama, this statement that you made in your second inaugural speech:

“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

Is the physical expression of homosexual love in a marriage allowed by man’s law truly equal to that of a heterosexual one, which is sanctioned by the Scriptures, in the eyes of the Bible’s God? Does the Bible’s God have a preference, or none at all?

The New Covenant Scriptures tell us this: “For the whole law [God’s law] is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Galatians 5:14 English Standard Version

Well, someone might argue, surely this Scripture justifies your proposition, Mr. President, because of what that person may subjectively feel about someone else. But does it? Is God’s standard of Truth based on subjective human feeling? Is it correct to say that as long as I just feel “love” for my neighbour then surely I’m okay in God’s sight whatever I do homosexually or heterosexually—that it’s all equal?

To answer this question one needs to know just how the word “love” is defined by the Bible’s God in the original languages in which the Scriptures were written and in its actual usage. To answer this question, if you really want to know, check out my online, streaming archived sermon series on love at:

http://cogwebcast.com/sermons/video-archives/finding-true-love-love-your-neighbour/

and

http://cogwebcast.com/sermons/video-archives/finding-true-love-self-love-or-selfishness/

and

http://cogwebcast.com/sermons/video-archives/finding-true-love-our-love-for-god/

You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.

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Have we lost our “Dear Abby” minds?

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I opened the newspaper today and read about the death of Pauline Phillips a.k.a. Abigail Van Buren of “Dear Abby” fame. While I was growing up the “Dear Abby” syndicated column was as much of interest to me as the thoughts expressed on the editorial page, and sometimes it was even more interesting than the front page for that matter.

But I doubt that today the views of “Dear Abby” or of her sister in advice-giving “Ann Landers” would be picked up as content suitable for publication by today’s mass media empires. You see, the Abby and Ann type of advice with its emphasis on moral absolutism—stuff like adultery, promiscuous sex, and lying always being wrong—is no longer fashionable among the “politically correct,” the elite gatekeepers of society who exercise considerable control over what is perceived as acceptable or not today.

You see for the power elite setting society’s agenda these days the advice of poor Abby and Ann are just too 1950ish. They are seen as being too judgmental. Why, they had the brazen nerve to write that pleasure and “doing your own thing” ARE NOT the final arbiters in determining what is right or wrong. Abby and Ann thought personal integrity and sexual responsibility actually counted for something. How foolish and naïve of them!

The passé commonsense preached by those Jewish ladies is perceived as being stuck in a time when actual biblical values were still taught in the churches and synagogues; and the Holy Scriptures were actually read even in the public schools— and portrayed in the movies and on television. Horrors! How antediluvian! How backwards!

But now in 2013 society has “progressed” or at least, moved on. Consider this sample of the post-modern enlightened social values being fostered at one of Canada’s most influential universities:

The University of Toronto, you will be edified to know, is “kicking off its annual Sexual Awareness Week” next Monday at a downtown Toronto club, the Oasis Aqua Lounge, where swingers are welcome. Facilitating the adventure is the university’s Sexual Education Centre (SEC), which arranged for students to pay only $5 a person instead of the $40 per person Oasis usually charges.

An exuberant Reddit user posted the information in a University of Waterloo forum thus: “U of T is holding an orgy, and you’re invited! You just need your student ID….”

As I said of Yale’s sex week, this tarted-up promotion of voyeurism “strikes me as nothing more than a forum conceived to proselytize the student body on the cultural virtue of dumbing deviancy down, and to shame students who adhere to traditional moral standards of reasonable restraints on sexual gratification.” http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/16/barbara-kay-university-of-torontos-pimps-r-us-program-offers-discounts-to-sex-party/

The Sexual Education Centre at the University of Toronto “is an affiliated levy group of the University of Toronto Students Union. Undergraduate students pay 25 cents a term for the services, and can opt out if they choose.

The group’s mission is to foster a sex-positive attitude in the greater U of T area, by offering information, programming, safer-sex supplies, and peer counselling in a welcoming environment. Their sexual awareness week includes a discussion on sex positivity, an interactive sex toy demonstration and an afternoon of pornography. The first event is the party at Oasis [Aqua Lounge]: the organization rented the club and lowered the price to $5 a person. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1315033–university-of-toronto-student-group-hosts-epic-sex-club-adventure

It would seem that a great many of us have lost, indeed, our “Dear Abby” minds. Our society hasn’t progressed. It’s merely degenerated down to the level of pagan Rome and its infamous orgies under the modern deceitful word-disguise of practicing a “sex-positive attitude” and having a healthy “sexual awareness.”

“I’ve got something to say. Is anybody listening? I’ve a warning to post. Will anyone notice? It’s hopeless! Their ears are stuffed with wax—deaf as a post, blind as a bat. It’s hopeless! They’ve tuned out God. They don’t want to hear from me. But I’m bursting with the wrath of God. I can’t hold it in much longer. “So dump it on the children in the streets. Let it loose on the gangs of youth. For no one’s exempt: Husbands and wives will be taken, the old and those ready to die; their homes will be given away—all they own, even their loved ones— When I give the signal against all who live in this country.” God’s Decree. “Everyone’s after the dishonest dollar, little people and big people alike. Prophets and priests and everyone in between twist words and doctor truth. My people are broken—shattered!—and they put on Band-Aids, saying, ‘It’s not so bad. You’ll be just fine.’  But things are not ‘just fine’! Do you suppose they are embarrassed over this outrage? No, they have no shame. They don’t even know how to blush. There’s no hope for them. They’ve hit bottom and there’s no getting up. As far as I’m concerned, they’re finished.” God has spoken. God’s Message yet again: “Go stand at the crossroads and look around. Ask for directions to the old road, the tried-and-true road. Then take it. Discover the right route for your souls. But they said, “Nothing doing.” Jeremiah 6:10-16 The Message.

Isn’t it funny that a message written almost 2,600 years ago is just as relevant today as it was to the people to whom it was first delivered? Human nature hasn’t changed much.

The people who scoff at the moral, ethical values taught by the Judeo-Christian Scriptures are creating their own future black hole of despair into which they are being sucked. Sex can be extremely pleasurable, which is why the earth’s human population has tended to grow rather than shrink over the millenia. But such pleasure without morality is just plain old-fashioned lust—not love!

Lust is a sinful behaviour, spiritually speaking according to the Judeo-Christian perspective. And in the end, those who become slaves to sin—yes, sin is addictive—lose all chance at finding the intimate happiness that flows from being with one’s true love, one’s soul mate. And, as it is written, anyone who becomes such a slave to lust also loses out on any chance of God’s gift of living eternally in His Kingdom of truth and light, because the wages of sin is death. Death is not living in an ever-burning hell (God is not a bondage freak), but rather death is the complete termination of consciousness and being, the end of all life (Romans 6:23).

Your average person is reluctant to consider his or her convictions, prejudices, and even superstitions. It is the rare person who has the curiosity and courage to look through the so-called “progressive” attitudes popular in this present society and turn away from them. In the Scriptures this is called repentance. Anyone who has been caught up in the sin of lust must repent of it to become part of God’s family and to take up what He offers to those who obey Him (Luke 8:21).

While the example of the University of Toronto student association that I cited here is an extreme—variations on, or echoes of that theme can be found reverberating throughout our society and its forms of entertainment. What starts on university campuses today becomes social mainstream behaviour tomorrow. This degeneration of sexual morals is the future of this society, a future that will be dark and violent due nation-wide moral bankruptcy.

As a whole, human beings are reluctant to admit error and so most embrace willful blindness to avoid doing so. But like the prophet Jeremiah, I would encourage you to take to the tried-and-true road of personal integrity and sexual responsibility as taught by the Scriptures. If you do this, you will keep both your “Dear Abby” mind and your happiness while others will lose whatever they think they have.

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Canada’s “Indian” problem refuses to go away

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In Canada it is no secret that far too many of our Aboriginal reserves—the so-called “First Nations”—which are governed by the Canadian federal government’s Indian Act of 1876, are dysfunctional places governed by a form of Aboriginal communism.

These “Indian” reserves are far too often places suffering a host of epidemics: substance abuse, sexual abuse, broken families, band-owned decrepit mouldy housing, tainted water, and bleak economies that provide few real, actually productive jobs. As a result of such a severe collection of seemingly intractable social ills, there exists on far too many of these reserves a staggering amount of state-funded welfare dependency and its corresponding emotional despondency.

These First Nations reserves are places where the youth suicide rates are far higher than those found among other Canadian youth. Far too many Aboriginal people living on such reserves have lost hope and are sunk in the backwaters of depression that are both out of sight and out of mind until some new crisis makes the mainstream evening news.

Under the Indian Act, Canada’s federal government has exclusive authority to enact legislation in relation to “Indians and Lands Reserved for Indians.” While the original Indian Act has been tinkered with many times over the years to remedy a variety of problems, the 21^st Century reality continues to be that many Aboriginals still live in an appalling, grinding poverty that touches every aspect of their lives.

Overall, Aboriginal people are dissatisfied with the reality of their “Indian status” existence, and this has recently flared into a series of what are called “Idle No More” protests, blocking some railroad tracks, border crossings, highways, ferry terminals, etc.

Without a doubt the lightening rod of the present Aboriginal protest has been the Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence, who set up her teepee on an island in the Ottawa River in mid-December near the nation’s capital. She’s fasting on fish broth and tea as part of a hunger strike that she proclaims will go on until Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and Queen Elizabeth II’s personal representative to Canada, the Governor General David Johnstone, come to meet her face-to-face and discuss the Aboriginal people’s historic treaty rights, in general, and the government’s failure to solve the problems of Attawapiskat in particular.

No one seriously doubts that our federal government is without some blame for the pathetic state of such Aboriginal reserves like Attawapiskat. BUT the old cliché that it takes two to tango is also without doubt. After all, for a very long time the Canadian government has been spending mountains of dollars trying to remedy some of the worst problems at Aboriginal communities like Attawapiskat. But the miserable status quo of deprivation and poverty, both materially and spiritually, persists. Why? Well, for example, let’s consider what has been going on in Attawapiskat.

To [Chief Therese Spence’s] chagrin, someone leaked an audit on Attawapiskat’s financial records, which reflected badly on her and her co-manager and romantic partner, Clayton Kennedy. It found that tens of millions of dollars can’t be tracked, due to faulty record-keeping. Although more than $100-million was poured into the community [of about 1200 people] over a six-year period, it’s hard to track where it all went because there’s little or no record. Though a lack of records doesn’t necessarily mean fraud, it also can’t be dismissed if the money can’t be traced. If there is no fraud, losing track of money on that scale suggests a worrying degree of sloppiness with tax dollars (Kelly MacFarland, “Theresa Spence’s careful woven cause starts to unravel,” National Post, Jan. 9. 2013).

The reality of the situation is that the present Aboriginal system of governance bears a major share of the blame for the situation on the reserves. Incompetence? Corruption? Selfishness?

A year ago CBC’s investigative reporter Adrienne Arsenault visited Attawapiskat and came away with these conclusions:

The idea that the destitution of far-flung First Nations such as Attawapiskat is a result of Ottawa’s neglect is wrong.
Ms. Arsenault’s reporting suggests that the real problem in Attawapiskat is Ms. Spence’s own incompetent leadership
In economic terms, Attawapiskat exists as a pure sinkhole for resources produced elsewhere.
We are always told that the preservation of reserves is a great way to maintain First Nations culture. But the opposite is true: The best way to destroy a group’s spirit of civic solidarity is to turn the economy into an outsider-funded cargo cult.
Ironically, Ms. Spence is far more popular with naïve, white Naomi Klein types who venerate her from afar as a sort of Gaian [pagan goddess] martyr than with the people who actually have suffered under her incompetence.
We have gotten to the stage in First Nations politics whereby you no longer even have to string a logical sentence together to connect a problem on the ground with Ottawa’s blundering or malfeasance (Cited from Jonathan Kay, “Six lessons from a brilliant, scathing, year-old CBC report on Attawapiskat’s mismanagement,” National Post, Jan. 7, 2013).

The Aboriginal leaders and their peoples who tolerate them must accept a good deal of the responsibility for their own problems. They are leading actors in this tragedy. They are not merely supporting actors or just passive victims of circumstances over which they have no active, decisive role.

If we in Canada are to truly change the situation on these Aboriginal reserves, then they must be transformed into genuine Canadian communities that live by the same rule of law and adopt the same best governance practices that are the standard or ideal of the rest of Canadian society. And this includes the requirement for transparency and appropriate accounting practices in Aboriginal communities.

Also, Aboriginal individuals should be freed to have the same opportunity to own their own homes, land, real estate, and businesses just like the average Canadian. It should be obvious that the present form of dysfunctional Aboriginal communism, as presently practiced, whereby no band member on a reserve can own his or her home is utter foolishness.

There is a solid moral case from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures for the elimination of the double standard that presently exists between what goes on at Aboriginal reserves and the greater Canadian society. We would do well to heed it!

You shall have one law for the sojourner and for the native; for I am the Lord your God” Leviticus 24:22 Revised Standard Version.

“You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns which the Lord your God gives you, according to your tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality; and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land which the Lord your God gives you, Deuteronomy 16:18-20 Revised Standard Version.

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Are you missing the lessons taught by the Sandy Hook massacre?

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“When there are no words in any dictionary to describe what happened in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut Friday, when things happen that surely not even the cruelest imagination could comprehend [oh yeah?], it is certainly time to go back to some kind of cultural Square One and reconsider everything to which we have somehow become inured.”

Those are the words of a regular columnist who writes for our local newspaper. He’s right! But that certainly isn’t going to be what happens, obviously. Rather it seems American society is going to have another round in the culture wars between Democrats and Republicans over gun control. It is only politically correct to focus on the tools used in the Sandy Hook slaughter and other massacres rather than looking more deeply into why North American society is spawning these young mass murderers. The guns are not creating the mentality and willingness to do such evil. They are just the means.

If the politicians really wanted to help our society become more peaceful they might instead peel off a few layers from our dysfunctional post-modern society in order to get a little closer to our cultural Square One—to discover the truth about why things are going wrong.

For instance why not consider the omnipresent use of violence in its many forms as our “entertainment.” Media producers are practically addicted to featuring conflict and fighting, blood and gore in our movies, TV, video games and in what passes as “sports.”

Or then again, maybe our public guardian angels might find the courage to turn over a few rocks to investigate the scurrying prescription drug bugs who are pushing their wares onto truly astounding numbers of youth and adults in order to “cure” them of mental disorders like depression, hyper-activity, schizophrenia, anxiety, and much more.

These days if our witch doctors can conjure up some term to describe an undesirable mental state, then some big pharma firm will soon have a potent psycho-active drug to sell to cheaply dope up the person with the new label. This makes private and public health care providers happy because it keeps their costs down. But have you ever read the extensive list of nasty, dangerous side-effects of these drugs? The economic-political commentator Doug Casey makes this observation about the use of these psycho-active drugs among those who have committed mass murder:

I predict that they’ll find that the 20-year-old killer, Lanza, was on Ritalin, Zoloft, Prozac, or some similar psychiatric drug. Most mass murders are proven to have been on these drugs, and the medical records are sealed for many other killers, so we can’t find out (Casey Daily Dispatch, “Doug Casey on the Fiscal Cliff,” Dec. 19, 2012, http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/doug-casey-fiscal-cliff).

But whether we’re talking about the pervasive presence of violence in entertainment, Prozac nation, or the American fetish for guns galore—these are just the outer layers of the onion. They are merely consequences. Side shows. Perhaps contributing causes, but not the deep down rotten root that led to the massacre at Sandy Hook.

But really, for the Western world, where do we find our cultural Square One? The real cause for what’s going wrong in our society? To find out we need to go back to the Bible. In the past a preacher might have said, “Blow off the dust on your Bible.” But, I dare say, that now many people no longer even have a copy of the Bible in their homes and even if they do, they don’t know—or care—what it says.

The Bible is a revelation. Which is to say, it contains divinely revealed knowledge that would otherwise be impossible for us to discover on our own. And this Bible begins with a book of beginnings called Genesis. This is our cultural Square One:

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man [and eventually, his wife, too] whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life [symbolizing spiritually discerned revelation] was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil [symbolizing materially discerned understanding]. The Lord God took the man [Adam, that is to say Mr. Dust who was Adam Lanza’s namesake] and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die….” Genesis 2:8-9, 15-17 English Standard Version

The serpent [the Devil] was the shrewdest of all the wild animals [an insult] the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” [Here the Devil uses a classic red herring ploy to deceive.]

“Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’” [This tree meant humanity was taking to itself the prerogative to determine what was “right” and what was “wrong” in their own eyes apart from God and His revelation that was then directly given to them, but which is now preserved for us in the Holy Scriptures.]

“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman [Big lies are the easiest ones to swallow. A snake first covers its victim with saliva before swallowing it whole. Neither our bodies nor our souls are immortal. See Ezekiel 18 verses 4, 20, and 27. We are merely physical beings subject to eventual death, cessation of all life unless God should intervene]. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.” Genesis 3:1-5 New Living Translation

Humanity as whole ever since has built societies based on their own material understanding, determining for themselves what is right or wrong apart from God’s revelation. The only exception being that of a man called Abraham and those relatively few of Abraham’s descendants who were illuminated by the divine revelation given to them. These individuals would become known as the “children of God” who took their inspiration from their Heavenly Father to, firstly, love Him with all their hearts, souls, and minds, and, secondarily, to love their fellow human being, their “neighbours,” as themselves.

A society that forgets to put a love for the God of the Bible in first place among all their priorities will most certainly soon forget to prioritize a genuine love for their human neighbours as well.

Those who take to themselves the right to determine right from wrong in opposition to the revelation of God—they have as their “father” the Devil—the being that first tricked their ancestors into eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good but also of Evil. The result is our present society, which is an inseparable, delusion having aspects that are both evil and good. The Sandy Hook massacre is a prime evil result that comes from one who rejects the divine revelation about loving with all his heart the God who created him. Adam Lanza also forgot if he ever knew that he was made in the Creator’s own image and likeness with a job here on Earth: to love his little and big neighbours as himself.

Those who have eaten the wrong “fruit” just don’t and won’t get it. They can’t get at the root of what caused the massacre at Sandy Hook and all the other mass murders going on. Jesus of Nazareth put it this way when arguing with those who insisted on rejecting divine revelation:

Why can’t you understand what I am saying? It’s because you can’t even hear me! For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies. So when I tell the truth, you just naturally don’t believe me! John 8:43-45 New Living Translation

God gives us all free moral agency. From which Tree in the garden will you eat?

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Words Spoken in “fun” Result in a Suicide

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It was just supposed to be good fun. Something to entertain their audience with a laugh. And, besides, they really doubted that it would work. Surely the receptionist at King Edward VII hospital in London, who answered their call at 5:30 a.m., would recognize their Australian accent. But the impersonation of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles by Aussie DJs Mel Greig and Michel Christian of 2Day FM fooled both the nurse/receptionist, Jacintha Saldanha, and the ward nurse who gave out a personal health update about the Duchess of Cambridge’s acute morning sickness.

I can imagine Greig and Christian high-fiving each other while on the air, for successfully pulling off their hoax. Of course, they aren’t the first to pull off such a “royal” hoax. In 1995 Canadian DJ, Pierre Brassard, fooled the Queen into thinking he was the then Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, for about 15 minutes.

However, Greig and Christian put out a public apology for impersonating the royals and invading their privacy, probably at the prodding of their radio station’s management. But, they hadn’t thought about the possible repercussions that their “fun” might have had on the two nurses they had tricked.

The royals know they are the objects of pursuit by clever paparazzi who chase them in order to feed the ever-hungry, personality-driven entertainment media. So being people in the public eye means they know they must roll with unexpected and perhaps laugh along with it. However, sometimes the dance between publicity hunters and the celebrity hunted ends tragically, as it did with Princess Diana.

Ordinary people trying to do their jobs the best they can, like you or I, aren’t schooled in the art of being held up to public ridicule or mocking. Sometimes words spoken in “fun” can be taken badly by the objects of that “fun.”

Today, we learned that one of the two nurses taken in by Mel Greig and Michel Christian’s hoax, Jacintha Saldanha, apparently committed suicide. Jacintha was a married woman with two children. Tragic. Sad. Heart-breaking. Who could have known she would take it so hard? Who could have known that words spoken in “fun” by another could hurt so much that it would cause such a reaction.

The royals William and Kate say they didn’t complain and have publicly said they are “deeply saddened” by this apparent suicide. The hospital management said they had been trying to help the two nurses through this difficult situation.

Unfortunately, words can and do kill even if the intention was all in jest. As the Apostle Paul once pointed out:

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers (Ephesians 4:29 King James Version).

This was the error of the Australian DJs Mel Greig and Michel Christian of 2Day FM. They spoke a corrupt communication with a deceptive purpose. I’m sure they regret the whole thing. From their pictures these two are quite young, which means they’ll have a long time to think about what they did.

It is easy to say the wrong thing, or to say something the other person takes the wrong way. Or maybe what is said is right, but the timing is all-wrong. The end result is that someone is hurt even if our intention was just to have a bit of “fun.”

How hard it is to ensure that what comes out of our mouths “minsters grace unto the hearers.” But this is the goal we all should have. When we speak and when we listen to our friends speak, let’s keep in mind the vital importance of considering the consequences of what we say. Unfortunately Greig and Christian didn’t help each other out in this way.

The right word at the right time  is like a custom-made piece of jewelry, and a wise friend’s timely reprimand  is like a gold ring slipped on your finger (Proverbs 25:11-12 The Message).

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General Petraeus, did you Betray Us?

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Mark Twain once wryly remarked—essentially—that to not keep up with the news was to be un-informed. But to slavishly believe all that the news media puts out means only that one becomes mis-informed. How much can we really believe about the various news reports concerning the General David Petraeus affair?

I mean, really, what am I to think of the fact that the nation’s former top spy, CIA director Petraeus, didn’t know how to keep secret his adulterous affair with Paula Broadwell?

And Broadwell herself wasn’t an ordinary—married—civilian biographer type who just fell in love with the object of her literary obsession. She was also a former U.S. Army intelligence officer! And she is also accused of having a “substantial” quantity of classified government data on her home computers.

General Petraeus, did you betray us? The American president assures us, “No.”

Can I really believe that Petraeus and Broadwell were, in fact, just silly and hormonal, acting like adolescent kids in high school? And, the timing of the Petraeus affair hitting the news, is it just a coincidence, what with Barak Obama just re-elected as president, and Congress wanting Petraeus to testify about the recent Benghazi terrorist attack that killed the American ambassador to Libya as well as several other American operatives? As Shakespeare might have penned in an updated version of Hamlet if he was alive and now writing: Something is rotten in America!

What’s really going on? Can we really know? What are we to make of the scent of skullduggery and adultery going on amongst the power elite of Washington? Is anyone among these leaders passionate about their people’s welfare and their people’s business rather than their own sexual and/or political passions?

Consider this warning from the prophet Isaiah about what lies ahead if we continue on the present path of collapsing morals and crumbling ethics exemplified by the Western world’s leader—America:

Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and raw wounds….

Your country lies desolate; your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence foreigners devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners….

Except the LORD of hosts had left us a very small remnant, we would have been as Sodom; we would have become like Gomorrah (Isaiah 1:4-7 English Standard Version, v. 9 Coulter translation).

Has Petraeus betrayed us? President Obama and the FBI assure us that it doesn’t seem the general passed any secrets to his lover—at least that’s what the paper trail seems to say, according to press releases from this power elite. But how about the pillow talk?

Regardless of national security matters, Petraeus the adulterer is no longer a good role model that Americans and their friends in the West can look up to for inspiration. Why even the Taliban is having a good laugh right now at the mighty Petraeus’ feet of clay. The shame of it all! Giving such a misogynistic enemy a reason to mock the former point man in the West’s battle against backward, vicious, Islamists!

Sadly, the Petraeus affair is just the tip of an iceberg that merely hints at the enormous danger lurking just out of sight under the official, politically correct waterline: the wide spread decay of the West’s morals and ethics, rotting the heart and soul of our Western civilization from the inside out.

For some time this soul rot has been spreading widely among both the leaders and the led. Throughout history, the loss of noble virtues and high moral standards of conduct have always been the accurate indicators of a societal weakness leading to a political entity’s decline and eventual collapse. Trouble and danger come because moral rot provides the ideal growth medium for tyranny and oppression to flourish. This holds true whether we’re talking about the imaginary Empire of Star Wars fame or today’s American Empire as well as the European Union.

But all is not lost. Hope remains. A small remnant yet perseveres and stands in opposition to this moral landslide. If you resist willful blindness and listen carefully, you might hear the few voices quietly speaking, giving this warning:

Beware! Those who promise you freedom from biblical morality and ethics offer you a politically correct license to commit sexual immorality. Be these seducers high and mighty or low and humble, they are but deceitful pied pipers who desire to lead you to a wasteland devoid of inner peace, intimacy, and personal happiness. They led Petraeus. And they are leading America also into utter ruin and disaster. Consider this warning by the Apostle Peter about such cunning pied pipers:

They have wandered off the right road and followed the footsteps of Balaam son of Beor, who loved to earn money by doing wrong. But Balaam was stopped from his mad course when his donkey rebuked him with a human voice.

These people are as useless as dried-up springs or as mist blown away by the wind. They are doomed to blackest darkness. They brag about themselves with empty, foolish boasting. With an appeal to twisted sexual desires, they lure back into sin those who have barely escaped from a lifestyle of deception. They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever controls you. And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before (2 Peter 2:15-20 New Living Translation).

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The World Tomorrow

with Jeff Patton

There Be Monsters Amongst Us! A Mother’s Day Message

“As close to Satan as can be”

Can a new Pope bring repentance to the Church of Rome?

Will the “right” man be elected as the new Pope?

In defense of our most ancient values & ideals

Have we lost our “Dear Abby” minds?

Canada’s “Indian” problem refuses to go away

Are you missing the lessons taught by the Sandy Hook massacre?

Words Spoken in “fun” Result in a Suicide

General Petraeus, did you Betray Us?