BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

What do Paulites and R2Kites have in common...

My dear wife says this post is only for readers who know what R2K is, have watched Ron Paul in a couple of the debates, and are familiar both with Woody Allen and Peggy Noonan's essay exposing him. Others would do well to skip it. PS: If you like Baylyblog and love Ron Paul, save yourself some grief and don't click through...

President Obama's totalitarianism...

Under the administration of President Barack Obama, the U.S. Department of Health has now declared that, by law, all health insurance companies will be required to provide birth control and sterilization, as well as drugs whose purpose is to kill unborn babies. Even self-funded health insurance provided by religious organizations who are opposed to this murder of unborn children will be required to provide these deadly pills.

Responding to the outcry, the Obama administration has decided to be magnanimous and provide religious groups an additional year to comply. In an effort to oppose this governmental oppression of babies' right to life and citizens' freedom of religion, U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry is sponsoring a bill--HR 1179--that would force President Obama to (at least) provide religious health care providers their right of conscience. Read more about it here.

Keep in mind...

Joseph Maraachli and the state's usurpation of parental authority...

Joseph Maracchli was the subject of an intense right-to-life battle in Canada last spring. Sadly, a couple months ago he died at his parents’ home in Windsor, Ontario. He was 20 months old. Andrew Henry wrote about Joseph on Baylyblog back in March. You may review the details here.

The number of similar cases will explode in coming months and years and there are important lesssons Christian fathers and mothers should learn. God has given parents the natural affection and compassion for their own children that no doctor can truly have no matter how highly trained or respected he may be.

This is not to say that parents are incapable of being neglectful of their children, but it's the exception rather than the rule. God’s good gift to children is parents who are loving and tender toward them.

The ever-increasing power and authority of government in our lives can only produce bad fruit, and the belief that a well-paid and benevolent bureaucracy can make better decisions than parents is wicked...

Roe v. Wade's 39th anniversary: The Lord's throne is in Heaven...

(TB: On the occasion of the thirty-ninth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I post this message. It would please me if you would take the time to read it. Thank you.)

I remain amazed that abortion could even become a political issue in a country with pretensions to being civilized. It is as if we were to debate the merits of legalizing cannibalism, with the liberal side chanting the slogan "Keep government out of the kitchen!"

There is no danger that the other side will ever be persuaded that it is wrong; there is, however, the very real danger that we will become discouraged, worn down, and inured to an evil that should always horrify and sicken us. The erosion of our consciences is surely part of the destructiveness of this abominable "procedure."   - Joe Sobran

The Lord'€™s Throne Is in Heaven

(For the choir director; a psalm of David.) In the LORD I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, "Flee as a bird to your mountain; for, behold, the wicked bend the bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" The LORD is in His holy temple; the LORD'€™S throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men. The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates. Upon the wicked He will rain snares; fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup. For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; the upright will behold His face. (Psalm 11:1-7)

Thirty one (now thirty-nine) years ago today, on January 22nd, 1973, the Supreme Court of these United States issued its infamous ruling, Roe v. Wade, in which the Court declared that a mother's intentional killing of her unborn child was a fundamental right guaranteed under our Constitution. Since that ruling, it has been a commonplace to observe that Roe v. Wade, the Court's repeal of the laws prohibiting abortion on the books of all fifty states, was simply the exercise of raw judicial power with a legal justification based upon a mist and a vapor--€”or as the Court itself might put it, emanations from penumbras.

Our Supreme Court: intentionally conniving at murder...

Since 1973, no one has made a name for himself defending Roe. v. Wade’s history, biology, ethics, logic, or justice; and only a few have been foolish enough to claim this ruling will stand the test of time...

Sex-selective abortion...

Through FB our longtime friend Al Stout writes:

Here is the argument… 

Abortion is a decision between a woman and her doctor. It is a matter of privacy, and the health of the woman is all that can be considered in these decisions. The fetus is not an individual life. It is not a person. It is a thing (sometimes a parasite) that cannot be taken into account by a third party to the abortion decision. An abortion is like a kidney, lung, or cornea removal.

Since the "thing" in a woman's womb is not a person, why are people upset abortions are performed for reasons of sex selection? For that matter...

The U.S. Constitution requires civil magistrates to protect the unborn...

Here's the simple truth stated by the man I most respect in matters Constitutional: "The federal government and its magistrates and officials have a duty to stop abortion under the Constitution, not just the discretionary authority to decide to do so."

Both the duty and the discretionary authority are denied by the curmudgeon libertarians muttering this and that out on the perimeters of our national political debates. This is why I do not trust them...

RCJR on Sanctify of Human Life Sunday; with notes on Pharaoh, Herod, and Margaret Sanger...

Now here's an excellent post by our dear friend recently widowed, RCJR. He speaks of the celebration of Christmas, the church calendar, abortion, and the upcoming Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. He asks if it's Biblical and confessional to require this observance in our pulpits and answers with a resounding, "No." I agree; the pulpit is not to be bound.

He goes on to ask whether it may be observed and answers with a resounding, "Yes."

My own suggestion is that you exercise two liberties at the same time and turn Sanctity of Human Life Sunday into Holy Innocents Sunday. You could preach on those little ones who died as Joseph took Jesus and His mother down to Egypt. Study Exodus 1:7-10 noting how Pharaoh's genocide and God's rescue of Moses is the antitype to...

Ugh, it's Christianity Today, again--this time weighing in against spanking...

Knives are necessary to cut meat and bread. Every once in a while, knives are used to kill people. Can we all agree knives aren't the problem? Please? Pretty please?

The abuse of a thing does not invalidate its proper use.

This truth has eluded the editors of Christianity Today. In a recent editorial they use the death of several children at the hands of their fathers and mothers as the spectre to soften readers up to their dogma that "corporal punishment ...should be employed miles short of abuse, without anger, and as an absolute last resort." From their perch in Moses' seat, these scribes declare about spanking that "the Bible does not require it" (emphasis in the original).

Think about this. The magazine that purports to be the voice of Biblical inerrancy and Christian faith in these United States has run an editorial declaring that the rod of discipline God Himself requires God Himself does not require. And if that sentence confuses you, all I can say is I couldn't figure out how to put it more clearly.

And if you're one of the pigheaded ones who balks against progress, just be sure you only use the rod as "an absolute last resort." 

But the Bible commands us to use the rod. God requires it...

Midwives, denominations, abortions, and my present political philosophy...

I don't write much about Indiana politics and government but it's caused me no small sadness to contemplate the term-limit-departure of our fiscally excellent governor a little over a year from now. Gov. Mitch Daniels will have completed his second term and will have to leave office.

If I am comforted in our loss of Mitch's magnificent fiscal leadership, my comfort comes from this: that his likely successor is a man, Representaive Mike Pence, who promises to govern with the same fiscal commitments while adding a theological framework to those commitments that promises to extend far beyond fiscal discipline, on to principles concerning many other areas of governance including the battlefields on which the destroyers of our nation and its states are focussing their revolution: sexuality, the Image of God in man, the origin and nature of sexuality and marriage decreed by our Creator in His Order of Creation, and so forth.

As you read through Daniels' penultimate State of the State Address delivered yesterday evening, you will gain a hint of why I respect him. He has been unflinching in disciplining the educationists of our state by a host of private initiatives that have finally brought competition into public education. True, he brags about over half of our state budget going to edcuation, and he seems to see higher education as an unqualified good. I disagree with both things as I disagreed with President Bush on similar matters. Mitch Daniels is not a wild-eyed enthusiast. He's a realist who really changed our state. Definitively. And reading, you'll see what difference it makes to each citizen of the state.

But there's something else I want to say, here.

Some thirty years ago, I was at the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly to oppose their denominational abortion policy. My dear Mary Lee was pregnant and, since we were in the habit of having home births, I'd called the midwest representative of the PC(USA)'s self-funded independent medical insurance plan to ask if they'd cover the cost of our midwife? It was awkward. He hemmed and hawed and said he didn't know and would have to get back to me on it...

Limited government, yes. Limitless bloodshed, no.

INTRODUCING A GUEST POST: A number of otherwise Reformed men are making the case that Federal laws against abortion are unconstitutional. They claim conservatives who call our nation's civil magistrates to stop the baby slaughter are the legal equivalent of liberals who claimed the Constitution as their authority for legalizing that slaughter. They announce there is moral equivalence between the two sides with each abusing the Constitution in the name of their own pet social issues.

So, as promised earlier today, here's an exposure of their argument written by a Presbyterian elder with significant appellate experience who currently serves in a high post of civil authority. Read it carefully and have the faith and courage to rise above these theological masters so once again we will expect of our civil magistrates, both federal and state, faithful protection of the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of each citizen whether he is black or white, rich or poor, old or young, born or unborn. (TB, w/thanks to...)

* * *

Limited government, yes. Limitless bloodshed, no.

Men advocating on behalf of the Tenth Amendment and stumping for federal indifference to abortion nullify the very principle they purport to champion. The Tenth Amendment says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Reserved to those people, that is, who aren’t selected for State-tolerated dismemberment in the womb...

A parable...

To those Reformed men ever vigilant to protect our form of government from being harmed by the passage of code banning abortion across our nation, a parable... (TB)

Here we have the Hutu father sitting on his porch holding forth on the boundaries of his property and the limits of his legal powers and obligations as a group of neighbors use machetes to hack to shreds his own Hutu son and Tutsi daughter-in-law and their eight children (his grandchildren).

But of course, the bloodshed is out in the street just beyond his property line...

Neglecting the weightier provisions of the law...

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. (Matthew 23:23)

One commenter calls our attention to the blog of a writer of economic treatises popular within some Reformed circles who, in the linked blog post, makes the case that Federal laws against abortion are unconstitutional and that conservatives seeking federal action to protect the babies is the legal equivalent of liberals using the Constitution to declare baby-murder legal. Both sides abuse the Constitution for their own pet projects, this Theconomist argues.

(PLEASE NOTE: The paragraph above has been changed substantially in order to clarify that I meant for the words below to be more general than personal; but also that I did not intend them to be read as applying personally to the commenter, Scott, who provided the link to the other blog.)

Here's my own limited response. In the next day or so, though, we'll post another response written by a Presbyterian elder with significant appellate experience who currently serves as a civil magistrate in an high post of civil authority.

* * *

To argue that the federal government doing something to stop the wholesale slaughter of the nation's millions of defenseless infants is usurpation of powers is the sort of heartless rabbinical self-justification we should expect from those who tithe their mint and cummin. I've said over and over again that the Declaration of Independence was the basis for the mounting of our nation's revolution and the moral and legal context from which our Constitution was birthed and has any meaning or purpose yet today. The central purpose of our Constitution is the protection of the nation's citizens--not the protection of states' rights--and when that central purpose is defied or denied, the rest is straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I've quoted the Declaration in this discussion. Its words are clear. If our federal civil magistrates' hands are tied in stopping the slaughter of our nation's fifty million wee ones...

"To say Santorum is soft on sodomy and abortion is beyond laughable."

This comment from a Presbyterian pastor named Benjamin Glaser who got his M.Div. in Pittsburgh and knows Santorum well (TB):

"The 17.6% loss against Casey is massively overplayed by those that dislike Santorum. 2006 was a bloodbath year for the GOP and most of that 17.6% can be attributed to it and the fact Bob Casey, Jr. was supported by many that loved his father. They seem to forget Santorum won 4 times before that in a heavy Democratic House district and in a heavy Democratic state, twice beating well-liked incumbents. 

"To say Santorum is soft on Sodomy and Abortion is beyond laughable. Santorum is the only candidate that will not allow abortions in the case of rape or incest. He lives his Pro-Life convictions both in his own life and in his opposition to abortifacients and birth control. He is also the only candidate that has spoken openly against gay adoption."

Ron Paul's living Constitution...

On tonight's debate Ron Paul saluted the emanations from a penumbra on which Griswold vs. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade hang. Congressman Paul says the right to privacy is constitutional. Wow! Some constitutionalist. Why didn't I know this?

A man claims to be a constitutionalist, and yet he believes this right is Constitutional. Think about it, though: libertarianism has to trump constitutionalism.

But to come back to the real world of words and sentences and meaning...

Santorum and Paul on child slaughter...

Here's an e-mail I received from an esteemed friend. (TB)

* * *

Thought I'd pass on to you a couple videos of Santorum's and Paul's responses on the question of abortion. I recently posted these on Facebook, noting that a comparison of their answers pushes me towards Santorum, and away from Paul. 

Santorum's answer is excellent.

Paul's answer...

Credo vs. paedobaptism...

Is this blessing then on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say, “faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness." How then was it credited? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised?

Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised; and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them, and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also follow in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham which he had while uncircumcised. (Romans 4:9-12)

One reader commented under another post: "Another interesting argument I came across recently from John Piper: When the New Testament church debated in Acts 15 whether circumcision should still be required of believers as part of becoming a Christian, it is astonishing that not once in that entire debate did anyone say anything about baptism standing in the place of circumcision. If baptism is the simple replacement of circumcision as a sign of the new covenant, and thus valid for children as well as for adults, as circumcision was, surely this would have been the time to develop the argument and so show that circumcision was no longer necessary. But it is not even mentioned."

My response: Weak argument although I'll take John Piper over John MacArthur any day when it comes to arguments against paedobaptism...

Please help...

Will you please help me?

When the publisher of Dad's novel, Winterflight, decided to take it out of print, I bought the 3,000 copies they had left in their inventory. With shipping I paid about $3,500 for them and I need to recoup that money. I've given away many of these books--some to some of you. But I can't afford to keep giving them away and I'd like to ask you to buy some for Christmas gifts, your church library, your public library, or as presents for your pastors and elders and senators and congressmen and doctors.

Winterflight is the perfect antidote to President Obama's grand scheme to move all medical authority inside the Beltway.

The book is about a hemophiliac who is dying because of nationalized health care...

Watch this video and stop using birth control pills...

One reader of this blog is a pharmacist in a western state who's struggling over whether to continue to dispense birth control pills from his pharmacy (he owns it). One of the methods birth controls pills work is by preventing the fertilized ovum from implanting himself on the wall of the uterus. Twenty-five years ago, a pharmacist showed me this truth matter-of-factly stated in his continuing education curriculum. So please pray for the pharmacist, that he will honor God and begin to refuse to take part in the murder of these unborn babies.

Another pharmacist I know, when faced with the growth in the use of ECPs (and if you don't know what those are, shame on you; they're the growth curve of the baby murdering business right now) changed his mind about when human life begins. Of course, like all life, human life begins at conception--the moment the egg is fertilized by the sperm. But to silence consciences, decades ago the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists changed their definition of conception, decreeing that from that point on human life would no longer begin at conception, but rather at the point in time when the fertilized ovum successfully implants himself on the uterine wall.

A pharmacist I used to consider a friend and brother saw ACOG one and raised them ten. A couple of years ago he changed his definition of the beginning of human life and now he has no problem fulfilling prescriptions for ECPs. But get this: he went further than ACOG. They say it's a human life at implantation, but he's decided it's not a human life until several weeks later. Maybe fourteen or twenty-one days--who knows?

Until then he thinks this living man bearing the Image of God isn't really living...

TidBITS, smartphones, music sales, newspapers, and Google+...

The only Mac publication I read is the Engsts' (not Angsts') TidBITS. If you use a Mac or iPhone, go ahead and subscribe now. It's free so just do it and you'll thank me. I've read TidBITS for maybe twenty years and it's the first place to go for accurate information on all things Apple.

The latest issue links to an interesting chart showing the relative obsolscence of Android and iPhone handsets by tracking their ability to take operating system updates. In other words the chart shows how long this or that phone is able to run the current version of its OS.

But once you look at that chart, keep clicking on Michael Degusta's other charts. Fascinating...

Two questions vs. ten cannons vs. what... (part 2 of 2)

Several months ago, in part 1 of this post, I wrote about the difficulty of calling men to follow Christ in an age which has reduced discipleship to constant repetition of the mantra, "I believe in Jesus." Though Scripture warns, "Without holiness, no man shall see God," modern evangelism leaves out the call to holiness or obedience.

In part 1 I mentioned the problems of using Evangelism Explosion's famous "Two Questions," to call men and women to Christ. Modern evangelism stresses belief and ignores obedience, leaving us without response when those we're seeking to evangelize claim to know Jesus as Saviour, yet show no fruit of the faith they claim.

In part 2 my intention was to introduce a system I grew acquainted with years ago when it went under the name, "The Ten Cannons of the Law." 

Taught by Ray Comfort, a man I respect, the Ten Cannons approach seeks to rehabilitate the Law of God as a primary tool in evangelism. I believe Ray Comfort's "Ten Cannons of the Law" now goes by the name "The Way of the Master."

The problem with the Ten Cannons/Way of the Master approach is that though it begins with the Law and thus is far superior to the average Evangelical call to salvation, it doesn't end differently. 

My nephew Joseph Bayly, pastor of ClearNote Church Indianapolis posted a comment earlier today about "The Way of the Master" that says everything I was going to say about the "Ten Cannons" and more. And so I happily place it here as the long-delayed conclusion to my initial post.

(DB)

_______________________________

First things first. The "Way of the Master" material is good in many, many ways. Most significantly, it correctly identifies the need to proclaim the law of God before offering people grace and salvation. Grace is graceless, and salvation is meaningless unless we see our guilt before the Holy God. And the 10 Commandments is ground zero for declaring God's law. This is something that has been lacking in many evangelistic "techniques" for some time. The 180 movie is also an excellent resource for ideas of how to interact with people and show them the horror of abortion. It gets at many truths, makes people think about difficult questions, and I'm quite thankful that it is available. I could spend more time talking about the good things, but these clearly demonstrate that I am serious when I say it is good in many ways. 

FAQ: about title changes...

If you've read Baylyblog for a while, you've learned that we make changes to posts after they go up. Some of those changes are to correct my failure to honor Jesus in my tone or arguments, some are because I catch typos, some are to correct factual errors, and some are to improve clarity. Well over ninety-five percent of those changes are made in the first hour following publication and are insignificant. Four of the remaining five percent are made in the first twenty-four hours and are usually insignificant. Less than one percent are made later than that and those late changes are almost always due to more significant mistakes, so when those changes are made, they're usually noted at the beginning of the post. Which is to say significant changes are always noted.

Blogs aren't hard print publications and one of the principal differences is that blogs aren't static. After a magazine is printed it's impossible to make a correction, but it's the work of a moment to correct a post. Some online publications are mirror images of hard print publications, so they follow hard print rules. Others have no hard print version and are able to make insignificant changes without facing the problem of a discrepancy between the article's hard copy and its online version.

Online publications should not be forced onto the Procrustean bed of hard copy rules. Hard copy and online publications are as different as night and day, so new wine should be given new wineskins.

I mention this because a web site has noted that I changed the title of a post published yesterday and they assumed my title change was due to readers e-mailing me with negative feedback...

Nations must face the blood shed by their fathers...

He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground." (Genesis 4:10)

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has taken the first step towards doing for the Cult of Mao what Kruschev did for the Cult of Stalin: he's publicly spoken of the terrible suffering of his own family at the hands of the Red Guards during Mao's Cultural Revolution. Melinda Liu reports: 

The Cultural Revolution remains a neuralgic political topic because it reflects poorly on Mao, who presided over that decade but is revered by many Chinese as their nation’s “Great Helmsman.” During that decade, youthful Red Guard radicals rampaged through the country, sowing violence and terror.... Even today, the government wiggles around Mao’s responsibility for the Cultural Revolution with an ambiguous formula that declares his achievements to have been “70 percent good, 30 percent bad.”

It's about time one of China's premiers officially acknowledges Mao's riot of blood. Chinese ignorance or silence concerning the over fifty million souls who were slaughtered by Chairman Mao is complicity in that slaughter and the perfect seedbed for more slaughter to come.

Christians who know and love Chinese must speak with our Chinese friends about Mao's slaughter as often as we speak with our American friends of the slaughter of the unborn. Jews aren't bashful...

Evangelicalism has betrayed the Word of God; let the dead bury the dead...

Another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.”

But Jesus *said to him, “Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.” (Matthew 8:21, 22)

Recently, a brother has been faulting me for writing that InterVarsity ought no longer to receive support from our missions giving--whether personal or congregational--and we ought to stop patronizing InterVarsity Press.

As he sees it, such recommendations display a number of spiritual defects in me including especially arrogance and overgeneralization. He points out that InterVarsity has many good chapters that have not yet evangelized for the sodomite perversion in the Name of Jesus and many staff workers who are still the old style of Evangelical Bible-believing Christian. As he sees it, I'm wrong to call for the end of InterVarsity and InterVarsity Press when there's still so much good being done by individuals on their payroll. So here's a short response that goes beyond the shorter responses I've made to him already.

InterVarsity has an illustrious past that includes both my father-in-law and my father holding key positions at the top of the organization. And even after leaving InterVarsity back in the early sixties, Dad sat on the board until around 1982. Then he resigned because he could no longer support the direction the organization was taking. That was thirty years ago and across those intervening years InterVarsity has gotten much worse. In what ways?

InterVarsity Press has been allowed to publish many heterodox and heretical books. Principally, InterVarsity Press has become a consistent advocate of the feminist heresy. It's not simply a matter of an occasional work here and there that pussyfoots around the boundaries on this issue, but rather a clear commitment to opposing God's Order of Creation. I've been party to several private e-mail exchanges between IVP's publisher and pastors and elders expressing concern over this rebellion deeply lodged in IVP's list for decades now, and the publisher has been dismissive of those concerns and the church officers expressing them.

This is no surprise since his parent organization, InterVarsity, has for decades been a proponent of the feminist heresy. IVP is simply a reflection of InterVarsity in this matter. Starting with my friend, Tom Dunkerton, back in the eighties, InterVarsity's presidents have been committed to rebellion against the Word of God's command that woman not teach and exercise authority over man...

Roman Catholicism is a medieval heresy...

Under the post, Repenting of parachurch, Baptist childhoods..., one comment elicited this response from your scribe. I posted it as a comment, there, but also put it here for the benefit of those who don't keep track of comments. (TB)

Brothers, allow me a few responses, although they must be hopelessly brief considering the weight of these matters.

>>Be careful when you sling around words like apostasy, idolatry (Per Calvin we're all "fabricum idolarum") and heresy.

We are careful. That is, careful--very careful--to keep them alive. The proper word to use concerning Roman Catholicism is 'heresy'. Read Joe Brown's Heresies. Reformed pastors and elders use this word following our Reforming fathers's example because Roman Catholicism is a system of doctrine that leads souls to Hell. Systematically.

The center of Rome's system is the merchandising of salvation through...

Changing minds about the wholesale slaughter of our nation's children...

Here's another helpful tool for exposing the genocide at the heart of our civil compact today in these United States. (TB, w/thanks to )

Let your yea be nay and your nay yea...

Now this is weird. I like Mr. Cain a lot, but what in the WORLD? (TB, w/thanks to Aaron)

What about women in combat...

Here is the Majority Report of the Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military whose recommendations were adopted by General Assembly in 2002. Being this report's principal author, naturally I commend this document to our readers. If biblical Christians today studied this report and by faith embraced its doctrine of Creation Order sexuality, it would be a significant step toward the restoration of the unity of the Church. Too, these United States would again have salty salt and lighty light in the public debate raging over the meaning and purpose of sexuality. (TB)

* * *

MAN’S DUTY TO PROTECT WOMAN

We, the undersigned, endorse the Consensus Report, while realizing that Report lacks unity on the crucial matter of whether the recommendations it contains constitute the church’s wise counsel or a Christian’s scriptural duty. Believing that this is a matter of scriptural duty, we have joined together in writing this report to the end that we might set forth with confidence and clarity the full counsel—both New and Old Testaments—of the Word of God concerning this matter. Our report attempts to summarize three areas of evidence, as follows:

First, God the Father wages war in defense of Israel, His Bride; Christ our Savior fights to the Death defending His Bride, the Church; the Holy Spirit calls men as officers to guard and protect His Bride; the duty to protect the Garden of Eden and the warning not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was given by God to Adam; husbands protect their wives, not wives their husbands. Thus we are taught the binding nature of man’s duty to guard and protect his home and wife.

Second, woman is the weaker sex and part of her weakness is the vulnerability attendant to her greatest privilege—that God has made her the “Mother of all the living.” Men are to guard and protect her as she carries in her womb, gives birth to, and nurses her children.

Third, we are to renounce every thought and action which tends towards a diminishment of sexual differentiation since God made it and called it “good.” [E.g. Scripture’s injunctions concerning women exercising authority over men (1 Timothy 2), women or men wearing clothing of the opposite sex (Deuteronomy 22:5), sodomy (Leviticus 20:15-16), etc.] Rather than a stingy attitude which minimizes sexuality’s implications, we ought to rejoice in this, His blessing.

It is our conviction that these areas, taken together, provide a clear and compelling scriptural rationale for declaring our church’s principled opposition to women serving in military combat positions.

When a man loves a woman, he will lay down his life to defend her, just as Christ loved His Bride and gave Himself up for Her. Men have proudly fulfilled this duty from time immemorial, demonstrating what A. A. Hodge in his commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith referred to as the law of nature, common to all nations, that is “unchanged” to this present day. Dying for their wives, regenerate and unregenerate men have done “by nature (the) things required by the law.”[1]

Hodge divides the Old Testament law into four categories...

A tsunami of precious equivocation...

It is the final sign of imbecility in a people that it calls cats dogs and describes the sun as the moon—and is very particular about the preciseness of these pseudonyms. To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. - G. K. Chesterton

A number of people have forwarded this clip in the past two weeks and it's been hard to know what to do with it. Keller's interview is about as bad as it could be. When the interview hit cyberspace, Keller issued an apology for one or two things he said. But his unfaithfulness to Jesus Christ and the Word of God was no momentary oversight or accident. It was a tsunami of careful, precise, well-placed equivocation, so the apology only made things worse.

For years, now, the Redeemer pastor has demonstrated a heavily nuanced and timid support for orthodox Christian doctrine...

A New York state of mind...

Good girls gone bad, the city's filled with them...

                - Jay-Z, "Empire State of Mind"

Here's a list of the fifteen zip codes in New York City that have the highest rate of abortion. The graph was created by the Chiaroscuro Foundation and it tells us Manhattan's Chelsea - Clinton zip code has the highest rate of child-slaughter in all of New York City.

The Chelsea-Clinton zip code is the zip code of Redeemer Presbyterian Church...

Turning the hearts of the fathers to their children...

Manly Christian love. But you could as easily call it manly Christian social action. Anyhow, it's perfect. (TB, w/thanks to Ben and Mike and...)

 

Official Christcentric Video- "Fight For The Children" from Christcentric on Vimeo.

Two questions vs. ten cannons vs. what... (part 1 of 2)

(This is part one of two; here's the second post.)

Anyone who is familiar with Evangelism Explosion's two diagnostic questions...

1. Have you reached the point in your spiritual life where you know for certain that if you were to die tonight you would go to heaven?
2. If you were to die tonight and God were to ask you, "Why should I let you into heaven," how would you answer?

...knows how very effective they can be at revealing a hope of salvation based in good works rather than faith in Jesus.

When D. James Kennedy began Evangelism Explosion in 1962, America's primary Christian influences were mainline Protestantism (whose denominations had reached their numerical peak in the 1950s) and Roman Catholicism. Despite deep sociological differences, these two branches of Christianity were united in teaching a salvation by works: the social gospel in mainline churches; the infused righteousness of Roman Catholicism.

Dr. Kennedy's "Two Questions" provided a powerful tool for addressing the error of both camps.

But Evangelism Explosion (EE) entered the scene at a tipping point in American religious history. For a hundred years America's primary Christian heresy had been the works-based salvation (semi-Pelagianism and Pelagianism) of mainline Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

Mother murders eight-year-old son, claims mercy-killing defense...

The defense sounds insane until you realize this is precisely the explanation tens of millions of mothers have used since 1973 to justify their murder of their unborn babies. His life was sad so I murdered him.

What we want to know is why this defense works with parents who murder their unborn and defective newborn children...

Fungus, yeast, and children...

National Geographic breathlessly announces: "Even after centuries of effort, some 86 percent of Earth's species have yet to be fully described, according to new study that predicts our planet is home to 8.7 million species. That means scientists have cataloged less than 15 percent of species now alive—and current extinction rates mean many unknown organisms will wink out of existence before they can be recorded."

So let me get this straight...

Francis Schaeffer's shame...

He who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself, And he who reproves a wicked man gets insults for himself. Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you, Reprove a wise man and he will love you. (Proverbs 9:7, 8)

In what world is it news when a man announces his Christian faith and leadership were only for the money and that he "faked it all the way?" In the Gray Lady's world where hypocrisy among pro-life Evangelicals is news fit to print because it somehow confirms their self-righteousness in promoting the slaughter of little ones and hating God.

My own father knew the elder Francis Schaeffer (they both attended Faith Seminary) and near the end of his life he became concerned about the anger and pride that characterized Franky's splenetic diatribes. So back in the early eighties, Dad wrote Franky a kind fatherly letter of admonishment. Franky never responded.

Years later, now, I'm in my late fifties and I realize how awful pride is and how very many nations, cities, churches, families, marriages, and men it destroys. It is the engine that drives that root of bitterness that corrupts many.

This is my way of saying that the real news about Franky is not that he's now confessing his whole life has been hypocrisy...

Perspectivalism and the sectarian political advocacy of R2K ecclesiastics...

It's glorious how God leads intellectuals to shout their blindness. Things the simplest plowboy sees clearly are obscured by the intellectual's highly nuanced mists and vapors, so the plowboy is left to his centuries-old occupation of making fun of them. He's not anti-intellectual--he's anti-intellectuals.

Plowboys aren't envious of the intellectual's degrees or salary or light teaching load or clean soft hands and time alone with books. And it's certainly not that the plowboy is careless with reason, logic, history, and right and wrong. He's as careful with his tax forms as any making-of-books man, and much more sophisticated.

No, it's not that the plowboy is stupid and thinks stupid is good. Rather, it's that he's got his feet planted squarely on the ground while the intellectual is up in the mists and vapors forgetting that he's made of dust and to dust he will return. The intellectual speaks from on high while the plowboy speaks from soil and manure. The Christian sizing both up may be able to grasp that the plowboy's perspective makes all the difference for his grasp of truth and his growth in righteousness.

Applications of these fundamental truths are everywhere.

R2K intellectuals are a special interest group hounding the nation's citizenry about their pet policy issue. They're a PAC whose primary work is not on K Street and in the halls of congress, but out across the land. They publish and yell and chivy and curdle and yap at and hector and dog their fellow citizens with their political dogma, and they do it in the Name of God citing His Word and Church as their authorities...

"Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord..."

It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate (in which) they ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth...

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord…

- Westminster Confession of Faith 23.2,3

But it often happens that the magistrate is negligent, nay, sometimes himself requires to be chastised; as was the case with the Emperor Theodosius. Moreover, the same thing may be said regarding the whole ministry of the word. Now, therefore, according to that view, let pastors cease to censure manifest iniquities, let them cease to chide, accuse, and rebuke. For there are Christian magistrates who ought to correct these things by the laws and the sword. But as the magistrate ought to purge the Church of offences by corporal punishment and coercion, so the minister ought, in his turn, to assist the magistrate in diminishing the number of offenders. Thus they ought to combine their efforts, the one being not an impediment but a help to the other.

- John Calvin, Institutes; 4:11:3

Observing radical two kingdom men in their atomistic machinations of this and that, only precisely there but absolutely not then or now, leads me to say that one of their gravest problems is that man is, by nature, given to worship. He was made for this.

If he will not bow to his Creator, he won't stop bowing; instead, he'll bow to idols. Scripture says "Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord," and the understood alternative is not the enlightened nation that has adopted an official no-god-at-all called "separation of church and state." If a nation does not have God as their god, they are in thrall to demons. And their subjection is not only as individuals, but corporately as families, cities, states, and nation.

There is the nation whose god is the Lord and there is the nation whose god is an idol of demons--those are the only two possibilities. Man was made to worship. He can't help himself.

Thus while R2K men are scurrying around trying to shore up the separation of church and state that they hope will provide us a few more years of peace, our presidents--both Democrats and Republicans--never stop constructing the temples and altars of Molech. And this is only to cite one example, albeit the bloodiest and most pathetic one...

The deafening silence...

This piece, "The Deafening Silence" by Nathan Ed Schumacher, demonstrates that the silence of Emergent and R2K men in the face of the wickedness and oppression in our public square is of the same fabric. Fear of man is a principle that knows no boundaries. (TB)

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. - Matthew 5:14

He that is not with me is against me. - Matthew 12:30

Qui non improbat, approbat [He who does not disapprove, approves]

Causae ecclesiae publicus causis aequiparantur [The cause of the church is a public cause]

-Maxims of Law

When Obama started his latest war in Libya, I wasn’t surprised – but I did start looking for some reaction from those in official senior positions of Christian leadership...

The wine of the passion of her immorality...

And another angel, a second one, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who has made all the nations drink of the wine of the passion of her immorality.” - Revelation 14:8

Son-in-law Lucas forwarded this interview on the future of the internet with Dr. Hamadoun Touré, General Secretary of the International Telecommunications Union. The ITU is an agency of the United Nations with a mandate to make sure the internet "runs smoothly, and that governments don't get in the way of their citizens' unfettered access to communications."

Dr. Touré recommends that countries avoid English if they wish...

Not to worry, Congresswoman Bachmann's resigned membership in her WELS church...

The Wisconisn Evangelical Lutheran Synod sees the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and raises them one. Or maybe ten.

In my former home of Pardeeville, Wisconsin, the WELS congregation was the dominant religious presence in town. When they called a new pastor, Mary Lee and I decided to invite him with his wife and children over for dinner. After a cordial introduction, we sat down at the table and I turned to him and said, "I've heard lots of things through the years, but let me ask you directly: do you pray, do I pray, or do we not pray at all?"

He answered, "You go ahead and pray and we'll sit by," and immediately his good wife turned to their children and said, "We're going to pray; fold your hands and close your eyes." God bless her.

We had a pleasant evening. During the conversation the WELS pastor told us his grandmothers was a godly Baptist and that he didn't pray with her, either...

The Declaration of Independence...

Some years ago I was reading the Times on the Fourth of July and noticed they'd reproduced a full-page copy of the Declaration of Independence. So I read it and couldn't stop thinking of the terrible oppression we tolerate and live under now as good, submissive citizens while patting ourselves on the back for ending "taxation without representation" and that pecualiar institution of slavery. Between a quarter and a third of our nation's unborn children have their blood shed by wicked men, today; our government approves of this bloodshed; and we Christians are at ease in Zion.

Read the Declaration of Independence and compare the oppression then with the government we have today. Men are not what they used to be. And I'm not just referring to that small group of Reformed men who have made a principle of having their religion an entirely private affair.

May God have mercy on us. (TB)

* * *

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...

WORLD enters the Promised Land...

Father Bill Mouser submitted this excellent comment under the post, WORLD's schtick.... Reading the original post may be necessary to understand this comment. (TB)

Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants. (Leviticus 18:24, 25)

Imagine for a moment Joshua facing Israel as it's perched on the east side of the Jordan river, addressing that nation this way:

"For the longest time I’ve struggled to put my finger on just what I believe about homosexuality. Or, for that matter, about incest. Or, for crying out loud, Moloch worship. Forty years ago, after all that sturm und drang at the foot of Sinai, I think I would have come down pretty solid on the line of “absolutely not.”

"But, I’m not sure I can say that anymore. Wait a minute: It isn’t that I think homosexuality, or incest, or Moloch worship, or anything else Moses wrote in Leviticus 18, is OK and is something YHWH overlooks or agrees with. But it is that I’m understanding a little better that what is commanded of us Jews is simply not the same as what we should expect from those who inhabit the land YHWH has given to us...

A graceful mother in Israel...

Watch this video and remember the proverb, "Where there's a will, there's a way." If Christians across this nation decided to tear down the altars to Molech tomorrow, abortion in these United States would end. Tomorrow. Without any bloodshed. And likely with only a few arrests. Truth is, we're too busy cultivating our spiritual hip quotient to care about the slaughter of hundreds of millions of little babies made in the Image of God.

(TB, w/thanks to Carole)

Red and yellow, black and white...

A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, Is God in His holy habitation. - Psalms 68:5

If Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, what judgment of His wrath must He be preparing in the face of the wholesale slaughter of our little ones? And what does it say about our love for Him that we claim to be His adopted sons, yet are unconcerned for these little ones He loves? Has He not told us He is a Father to the fatherless?

These little ones' blood flows day by day in your own city--just down the block from your church office and almost kitty-corner to the Kroger where you do your grocery shopping. When you're driving your car filled with much-loved children on your way to home school co-op, little babies are being ripped apart inside the brick wall of that building on your left three buildings back from the stop light.

Remember? Your God is a Father to the fatherless.

India's child murders are sex-specific. So many of her little girls have been killed that for every 1,000 boys under age six, there are only 916 girls. Most of them are cut apart while in their mother's womb. Some make it to birth, though, and are starved to death. Little baby girls with toothpicks for arms and everyone knows why...

Should Christians sterilize when facing genetic disorders?

Every time I do an Institutes study with college students at Christ the Word one of our favorite passages is the section titled "The Faith of Abraham" in which Calvin recounts the trials and sufferings by which God taught Abraham faith and weaned him from the world.

The section ends with God's command that Abraham sacrifice his son on Mt. Moriah:

But for a son to be slaughtered by his own father’s hand surpasses every sort of calamity. In short, throughout life he was so tossed and troubled that if anyone wished to paint a picture of a calamitous life, he could find no model more appropriate than Abraham’s! (Vol. 2, Ch. 10, Sec.11)

To be the source of your own child's death is a terrible form of suffering indeed. I was reminded of this section from the Institutes when I read recently of a Christian couple who took surgical steps to prevent further pregnancies after their number two child died of a rare genetic condition.

Despite our sympathy for parents who lose a baby, and despite a genetically-linked death appearing to arrive by the parents' own hands, we must ask whether such a response is consistent with faith in God.

My thinking on this matter is influenced both by Scripture and by personal experience. Tim's and my mother and father continued having children despite the death of our older siblings from genetic diseases. I suffer today from the same genetic disease (hemophilia) my oldest brother died of, and Tim and I had two additional brothers die as the result of another genetic disease (cystic fibrosis).

"I miss her, and the others we killed..."

Across Asia the vast majority of unborn children being murdered are girls. In India alone it's estimated over nine million have died these past ten years. Look at the graph from India's Census and it's clear the slaughter is changing the sex ratio of the entire nation. This doesn't bode well for the peace of India or neighboring nations...

the Onion on Planned Parenthood's bloodlust...

Thinking they're publishing a farce, the Onion tells the truth about Planned Parenthood.

(TB: thanks to Todd)

Bloomington's town fathers connive at PP's bloody hypocrisy...

Scott Tibbs is a faithful Christian man at the city gates crying out against the shedding of innocents' blood. I praise God for his presence here in Bloomington. Here's a letter he just sent to our city fathers:

(Bloomington) Councilors,

Back in March, I spoke at a city council meeting and said the social services funding process has become corrupted. Some of you were offended by this statement, but frankly I cannot see another way to describe it. The eight Democrats on the city council have taken what is supposed to be a program to help local social service agencies provide help to those in need and turned it into an avenue to provide a political endorsement to Planned Parenthood. For this, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

You gave a $5,000 grant to Planned Parenthood last June despite the fact that PP does not need the money and despite the fact that local charities without the backing of a billion-dollar corporation could use it much more. You gave PP this money despite the fact that you know that the national branch and all affiliates combined for a profit of $85 million. Even worse, you gave PP this grant despite the fact that you knew it would be used to cover up felony sexual abuse...

Standing in the gap; assassination of bin Laden...

Two posts from my son, Joseph Bayly, worth reading--the first on standing in the gap and the second on the assasination of Osama bin Laden.

Joseph and David Abu-Sara are leading a church plant in Indianapolis called ClearNote Church of Indianapolis. Listen to some of the sermons, here; I commend their ministry to you and your Indy friends and relatives.

(TB)

Indiana takes the lead toward stopping the massacre...

Here's a press release issued earlier today by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels announcing he'll sign Indiana HEA 1210 passed by the Indiana General Assembly earlier this week which will bring Indiana to the forefront of the national battle to end the horrific slaughter of unborn children called "abortion." Praise God for this very large step in the direction of justice and mercy restored...

From Dark Ages, Galileo speaks of literal interpretation of Scripture...

(Tim) It's central to our chronological conceit to reassure ourselves the Middle Ages were the Dark Ages crammed full of religious bloodshed, religious oppression of scientific progress, and the Plague. So we've all learned the lesson to keep church and state separate to the end that we won't have as many wars or as many people die in those wars.

Doing well are we? Paganism is the state religion almost everywhere and more people were sacrificed on the altars of paganism's idols (Communism, Zionism, Feminism, etc.) this past century than ever died from all the religious wars of the Medieval world combined.

But what of science? Our modern morality play smugly assures us the Enlightenment busted truth loose from the religious ignoramuses who had oppressed the great minds across many centuries. Finally we know it's not wrong to take the Pill, unborn babies aren't persons and can't feel the knives, the iPhone is cool, washing hands saves lives, you can make babies in the lab, you can end the war by blowing up the women and children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Earth isn't the center of the Universe.

"Poor Galileo! If only he'd lived today when every man finally knows religion has nothing to say to the state or the high priests of Science. The Bible's true when it talks about spiritual things--not political or sexual or scientific things. It's no history book or textbook on cosmology. It tells you how to feel--not what to think. Poor Galileo! He had it right and the church tried to shut him up. Stupid ignorant church. Stupid Dark Ages...