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"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32
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Author:  Frederick Meekins
Bio: Frederick Meekins
Date:  September 8, 2014
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Topic category:  News

Headline Potpourri #60

Professed Communist Van Jones insists that unarmed Black males have been gunned down all summer long. No doubt primarily by other Black males.

So if it is established that the police officer in the Missouri shooting was defending himself, does that mean Southern Baptist propagandist Russell Moore intend to recant his racial pandering and instead publish a blog column on the need to respect law enforcement?

A Black Muslim serial killer has murdered four Whites in what this maniac considers retaliation for American hostilities in the Middle East. Does Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention intend to address and repent of how he has swallowed a portion of the Marxist swill that only Whites are racist?

On an episode of Issues Etc, theologian John Warwick Montgomery remarked that, since most Christians have tended to be conservative Republicans, they do not acknowledge the social needs of people. Or is it that they offer solutions other than that of a bureaucratic statist behemoth to address these concerns? For example, it is doubt that the throngs in Detroit on the verge of having their water turned off are tottering on the edge of starvation or material destitution. Many would just rather spend what money they do have on the latest smartphones, tattoos, or body piercings.

In a sermon on the mistakes of modern evangelism, one pastor criticized another for enunciating how, when the one pastor gets to Heaven, he wants to shake the hand of Jesus for all that Jesus had done for him. One supposes such a gesture lacks sufficient formality by shrinking God down to human size. Can't there be some kind of middle ground? God is indeed God. However, by placing God at such an unrelatable distance, such pastors should not be shocked and horrified when average believers feel there is not much comfort in prayer or have trouble conceptualizing a God that cares about them so much that He has numbered every hair on their heads. There can indeed be a danger in bringing God down to our level. However, there is just as much danger in failing to emphasize the extent to which the Lord of Heaven humbled Himself for our ultimate benefit. “Suffer not the little children” is not a verse that applies solely to children in the literal sense of chronological biology.

More Obama administration functionaries attended the Michael Brown funeral than Margaret Thatcher’s. Guess she wasn’t Black enough.

Would Albert Mohler be as quick to suspend judgment and "lead with empathy" if it was the campus of Southern Baptist Seminary looted rather than downtown Ferguson? Mind you, this is the same religious propagandist that will condemn you as a street whore if you aren't married by the age of 23.

Albert Mohler suggests that Christians should suspend judgment and “lead with empathy” in regards to the Ferguson, Missouri insurgency. This same theologian is certainly quick to judge young Christians not married by 23 years of age who otherwise keep their pants on and don’t pop out a litany of bastards. But church youth aren’t usually the kind to burn things to the ground when not lavished with an increasing number of government handouts.

In a comment in a Youtube video, Brian McLaren remarked that no network is as ideological as Fox News. As if Al Sharpton, Rachel Madow, and Laurence O'Donnell are delivering a Joe Friday recitation of “just the facts”. Laurence O'Donnell openly admits to harboring socialist tendencies. Chris Matthews at one time would get a tingle running up and down his leg every time he would hear Barack Obama speak. Anchor Melissa Harris Perry at one time appeared on air wearing tampon earrings. If this is what Brian McLaren considers bias free news, he is more a religious shill for partisan causes than Pat Robertson in the hay day of the Christian Coalition or Jerry Falwell at the zenith of the Moral Majority. Fox News cannot be held responsible if very few rational people want to watch MSNBC.

Contrary to a Facebook post by Howard Kurtz, how is Burger King legally moving its operations to another jurisdiction “avoiding taxes”? Does he also hold that the Supreme Court was correct in remanding Dredd Scott to the custody of his master? Should the geezers that move to Florida be accused of finagling their way out of snow removal duty?

Note something will you. Pastors are often fond of the text that our love for Christ should be so intense that our love for family should look like hate in comparison. But never in this exposition do they have backbone to preach that our devotion to Christ should be so singular that our love for the organized church in comparison to that of her Christ should also look like hate. Miley Cyrus’ homeless VMA date still probably has fewer body lice and communicable diseases than she does.

A new Department of Transportation regulation would require automobiles to broadcast speed, direction, and position. While we are at it, why not also require sensors recording how often you pass gas, scratch your backside, or get slightly aroused by the immodestly dressed tramps strutting down the street.

In a sermon titled “The Gospel Demands Sacrifice” posted on Youtube, the President of the Southern Baptist International Missions Board criticized Christians that understand our eternal reward as Heaven rather than the fullness of Christ. This condemnation was enunciated because of this exegete’s aversion to OTHER people possessing what he dismisses as stuff (in other words the property imperative). However, we are beings created to occupy space and in constant need of a plethora of things to keep that embodied existence ongoing. It is further reinforced that if we do not reach Heaven as our destination in the Afterlife, that our eternity will be one of unending agony in the most painful ways in which we can possible conceive. If that is how we have been deliberately designed by our Creator and what He has decided to reveal to us regarding the comprehensive metaphysical reality, is this response really something we should be chastised over? Perhaps this pastor’s underlying issue is that we retain a sense of individuality once this life is completed rather than an existential obliteration in a Nirvana-like state he terms “the fullness of Christ”.

A pastor assured that a difference of opinion is not necessarily wrong. Does that include when there is a difference of opinion over matters that are not clearly discussed in the Scriptures but over which the pastor not only hands down pronouncements as if they were but stops just short of calling down divine retribution upon those questioning these opinions?

A somewhat prominent homeschool ministry is suggesting that churches should assume a more direct role in the care of the elderly. So what safeguards will be put in place to ensure that the disbursement of these provisions won’t be manipulated in a form of doctrinal coercion? For example, would a church refuse to provide granny with her heart medication unless she agrees to no longer wear slacks or toss out the Jesus painting hanging in her room if she belongs to a particularly legalistic congregation? Likewise, in such a world, what is to prevent the elderly from joining a church not because it is a reflection of their theology but rather because it is more generous and lenient in terms of its charitable goodies?

A somewhat prominent homeschool ministry is suggesting that the children of the elderly ought to be the ones responsible financially for their aging parents and required to plan accordingly. They can do so by setting aside a significant portion of their tithe dollar that would have otherwise gone to institutionalized churches or the foreign mission field. Why not? Throughout this podcast discussion, one of the Biblical texts emphasized was James 1:27, admonishing that true and pure religion is that which cares for widows and orphans in their distress. Nowhere does the passage say anything about these funds having to be funneled through denominational middlemen that claim their cut for services rendered. Why can’t assisting your own elderly be some of that overlooked serving God in America asked about by Ann Coulter? Why does it only count for God when the helping hand is extended beyond your own family and especially into the slums of the Third World?

How are Ceelo Green’s tweets about rape any more repugnant than the lyrics belting at 100 decibels from automobiles driven by the average Obamavoter no one is supposed to exhibit any suspicions of? The Black music industry puts out ditty after ditty referring to women as “bitches” and “hoes” and you’re the bad guy if you notice it. One of them publishes a Tweet manifesting how this socialization might manifest itself and, to quote Heath Ledger’s Joker, everyone loses their minds.

A Facebook meme depicts predestination as a railway track one rides along. The advocate of free will and choice is pictured as riding along in a coal car, mistakenly holding a map detailing the numerous paths which the individual can decide to follow. If that is the illustration one desires to believe in and promote, what one is saying is that God alone is at fault for what ultimately becomes of the individual that has no control over anything whatsoever. For example, using the train track as the paradigm, should this coal car over which the individual can exert no influence whatsoever derails with the passenger being profoundly injured, what the proponents of the illustration are saying is that the passenger is at fault rather than the one that laid the track and sent the car careening towards the destination. Likewise, if the individual cannot do anything whatsoever to alter the destination at the end of the track, there really is no reason after all to tell them beforehand where it is that they are headed.

After saying that he intended to destroy ISIS, President Obama clarified that what he really meant was to manage the ISIS problem. So in saying that he intends to manage the health care system and the U.S. economy, what President Obama really means is that he intends to destroy the health care system and the U.S. economy.

Homeschool activist Kevin Swanson in a 9/2014 broadcast suggested that Christian civilization might stand a better chance after America's collapse. But by that does he mean a generalized Christianity that respects economic liberty, private property, and individual theological conscience? Because often in environments characterized by profound social upheaval it is the most doctrinally strident expressions of a faith or creed that end up imposing their peculiarities not through reasoned persuasion but rather through the force of violence.

Contrary to a suggestion of what might be done to reform America, literal 24 hour around the clock prayer vigils are not required. Aren't such gestures more the worship of prayer rather than the One that prayer is supposed to be directed towards? Is God such an egomaniac that He is going to refuse to grant national revival or restoration unless he is constantly spoken to during those hours He has designed most to be sleeping through? Are around the clock prayer vigils so much about the God of Heaven or the finite human beings organizing such spectacles?

To President Obama, saying ISIS is a manageable problem means that he will be whisked away to an underground bunker while you will be left to deal with your own fester sores oozing with puss should there be a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack.

In a sermon on the purpose of the church, an Orthodox Presbyterian pastor remarked that the believer does not have the right to determine their own mission. It depends what is meant by that. One is not free to pursue a lifestyle in violation of the parameters of the “Thou shalt nots” of Scripture. However, within those boundaries one is free to “work out one's own salvation in fear and trembling”. If you zigged into one legitimate career instead of zagging into another, on what grounds can Jesus get ticked off at you unless He deliberately tells you what to do in the areas marked by considerable individual choice and preference?

Homeschool activist Kevin Swanson condemned as “traitors to the cause of freedom” World Magazine for publishing a story drawing attention to a number of homeschool students believing they were not served well by that pedagogical modality. Swanson is correct that those with a Christian worldview ought to expose the deficiencies and abuses of the secularist system. However, if one's loyalty is to God's truth and just not those claiming to be on your side, aren't those that were possibly mistreated in the name of religion also allowed to verbalize their concerns so as to better protect the movement from falling into Satan's snares? If entire ministries can be established to expose the dangers of the public system, what is wrong with someone doing the same regarding the underside of private and home education? True freedom must remain vigilant to protect against both the overly and areligious.

Isn’t griping about people’s griping itself a form of griping? Interesting when a pewfiller makes a negative observation the verbalization is condemned as “complaining”, “bickering”, or “murmuring.” However, when such pronouncements are enunciated from behind a pulpit, they are categorized as the “sharing of a concern” or “admonition”. Average Christians are told to keep their innermost thoughts and concerns to themselves unless they are confirmation about how peachy-keen everything is. They are then reamed a new one if they fail to articulate sufficiently incriminating confessions during the intelligence gathering exercise known as the taking of prayer requests.

If the Southern Baptist Convention is posting articles in Spanish not simultaneously translated into English, how do we not know that these are not postings on how to eliminate White people and English speaking Americans? Think I’m crazy? Often Yasir Arafat would brownnose in the name of peace in English while continuing in his Arabic tirades how it was his intentions to drive the Jews of Israel into the sea.

A pastor enunciated from behind the pulpit that Communism was not inherently in opposition with Christianity. Rather, only that ideology’s anti-religious accretions were evil, not necessarily the systemic imposed material equality. But doesn’t that violate the dictum of “Thou shalt not steal”? And what about the Biblical truism of a workman being worthy of his hirer? Furthermore, if everyone was to be given the exact same allotment, why should anyone break their backside or put forth anything beyond minimal effort?

A pastor announced from the pulpit that, if he was around during the American Revolutionary War, he could not in good conscience necessarily support the Independence movement. The ministered based his position on Romans 13:1-7. In this passage, it is taught there is no authority but that which has been established by God. But the question must be asked who determines what constitutes the established authority? In some parts of Syria and Iraq now, would that be the ISIS jihadists? There are reports that, despite their faults, these pieces of human excrement are attempting to provide certain levels of government service. Elsewhere in the sermon, the pastor let it slip that he accepts the rights provided by government. If that is his political theology rather than the position that fundamental liberties as articulated by the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution exist above the institutions of government and are bestowed by God upon the individual as a result of being created in the image of deity, on what grounds does this pastor bemoan the atrocities perpetrated by ISIS if they constitute the power God is allowing to prevail in these particular geographic areas?

A pastor condemning Christian support of the American Revolutionary War insisted that the Founding Fathers were not so much intending to implement Scripture but rather John Locke which was instead “philosophy”. But is not hostility towards philosophy itself a philosophy? Without context, philosophy is itself like a gun in that it is morally neutral. It becomes good or bad dependent upon the character and the intentions of those wielding it. It is near impossible for any nation other than the theocracy of Ancient Israel to implement Scripture directly. As such, the only way to do so is through a PHILOPSHY deduced from the principles contained within the pages of Holy Writ. Granted, the Founding Fathers were far from perfect in terms of their individual belief systems and professions of faith. However, as John Warwick Montgomery points out in The Shaping Of America, even if the Founders did not set out to provide the nation with a system of government explicitly Christian in origin, what they did provide draws profound inspiration from that specific faith tradition.

It was said that we should be willing to pay the price for obeying God rather than man. However, that does not mean turning yourself in at police headquarters or going out of one's way to provoke martyrdom.

President Obama insists that his plan to eliminate ISIS could take years. No doubt, this could very well result in his attempt to promulgate an executive order circumventing the Constitution (like so many of his other) insisting that he is not bound by presidential term limits.

By Frederick Meekins

Frederick Meekins
Issachar Bible Church & Apologetics Research Institute

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Biography - Frederick Meekins

Frederick Meekins is an independent theologian and social critic. Frederick holds a BS in Political Science/History, a MA in Apologetics/Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary, and a PhD. in Christian Apologetics from Newburgh Theological Seminary.


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