BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

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...

Drab homes give birth to art idolatry...

(NOTE FROM TIM BAYLY: A large part of this post has been removed. A young man objected that I was replacing one idolatry with my own more sophisticated one, and I thought it best to pull the post rather than allow readers to concluding that I am promoting idolatry.)

Here's an interesting explanation of the worship of artists spreading through the PCA by way of Covenant, MNA, and Redeemer clones. George Bernard Shaw points out that this worship has its origin in artless homes and childhoods...

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...

Jonesing for bestiality...

For truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be lov'd needs only to be seen.

- John Dryden

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

- Alexander Pope

It took about twenty years for Evangelicals to change our view of sodomy from horror and shame, to tolerance. And now we've moved beyond tolerance to a mincing advocacy that masquerades as Christian sensitivity and compassion.

Ten years ago, Covenant Theological Seminary's professor of theology and Christian ethics, David Jones, was telling the future pastors of the Presbyterian Church in America that sodomy was a victimless crime that should be legalized. He was so far above fear of administrative discipline by Covenant's president or trustees that he took his liberation movement into the pages of Christianity Today. It was in those same pages that Tony Campolo's wife promoted sodomite marriage as a better alternative to sodomite promiscuity. Both positions demonstrate a similar (and I can't stand this word) mentality.

Covenant didn't condemn Jones' jonesing for the repeal of sodomy laws and Tony Campolo didn't silence his wife, so now these destroyers have won...

It was the worst of Times...

Hating God's large laws (think the Seventh Commandment), the New York Times is hard at work promulgating her own infinitely small ones. Think for instance of the need to divest ourselves of evil toys.

Traditionally, toys were intended to communicate parental values and expectations, to train children for their future adult roles. Today’s boys and girls will eventually be one another’s professional peers, employers, employees, romantic partners, co-parents. How can they develop skills for such collaborations from toys that increasingly emphasize, reinforce, or even create, gender differences? What do girls learn about who they should be from Lego kits with beauty parlors or the flood of “girl friendly” science kits that run the gamut from “beauty spa lab” to “perfume factory”?

The rebellion against such gender apartheid may have begun.

Girl toys are responsible for gender apartheid. So says the New York Times. With its newspaper of record such a nag, could anyone really be surprised that Manhattan's most marketable church is pervasively androgynous? (TB)

 

Feminism, homosexism, and veganism: The Grand Conspiracy

An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule on their own authority; and My people love it so! But what will you do at the end of it? (Jeremiah 5:30, 31)

You may want to dismiss it as looniness, but this assault against God's Order of Creation is rebellion against the God Who made us. It's not naive or misguided. It's evil. Attacks on God's Creation Order are all around us and we must recognize that each of them is a part of Satan's conspiracy to grease the descent to Hell.

Feminism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God made Adam first, then Eve. Thus those who conspire to place woman in positions where she teaches and exercises authority over man are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Homosexism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God made Eve--not Steve--for Adam. Thus those who conspire to legalize sodomy and promote sodomitic unions are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Veganism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God created adam alone--both Adam and Eve--in His Own Image. He did not create animals in His Image. Thus those whose morality has descended to Veganism and the claim of personhood and legal standing for animals are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Satan has conspired to paint each of these revolutions a pretty face. Feminism is a long-overdue correction of patriarchal oppression. Homsexism is a long overdue correction of homophobic oppression. Veganism is a long-overdue correction of speciest oppression.

Satan has also conspired to silence the Church of Jesus Christ... 

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...

Andrew Marin is a wolf...

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. (Acts 20:28-31)

In response to my warning against the heresies promoted by InterVarsity and its publishing house, InterVarsity Press, a man commented that he'd been involved with InterVarsity and now has a sodomite son who has found a church where he can be at home as a gay man. He went on to comment that he's read IVP's Love Is an Orientation by Andrew Marin and found it a "balm to (his) soul," so he recommended it to our readers.

Marin's book is preciously wrong and one day Marin and his publisher will give an answer for seducing many away from repentance for their bondage to sexual perversion. I responded to this man...

Another (yawn) minced confession at the PCA's Redeemer Presbyterian Church...

"To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence." - G. K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men

Here we have a wedding ceremony of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Manhattan.

Presiding over the service on the congregation's right wearing a suit is a male pastor (Scott Sauls) who formerly held his credentials in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church--a Reformed denomination that approves of female pastors and elders.

Presiding over the service on the congregation's left wearing a minister's robe is a female pastor.

Wedding ceremonies not being sacramental among us Protestants, one might argue it doesn't matter much if female pastors co-officiate with male pastors...

Grandview Elementary School evacuated to ClearNote Church, Bloomington...

Grandview Elementary Evacuates to ClearNote Church from Good Shepherd Band on Vimeo.

The past several hours here at ClearNote Church, Bloomington, we've hosted four to five-hundred children from Grandview Elementary School across the street from us. Around 1:30 this afternoon the children and their cooks, aids, teachers, and Principal Lily Albright were evacuated while the Bloomington Fire Department investigated a smell that seemed to point to a gas leak.

The bathrooms are entirely inadequate but the rest is working out fine. Although it's cold and raining outside, the children and their teachers are warm and dry and happy and singing in the sanctuary (sadly, not Rock of Ages or The Son of Man Goes Forth to War).

On the next page is a pic of our Monroe Country Community School Superintendent Dr. Judy DeMuth leaving the church...

Would I support our daughters enlisting in the military...

Several days ago under the post of the Majority Report of the PCA's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military (AISCOWIM), I'd been asked whether I would support our daughters enlisting in a non-combatant position in our U.S. Armed Forces, today? Here are the questions, along with my response. (TB)

Question from Sue: Tim, Could you answer a question about women in the military that I don't think is addressed in your/your committee's report? What is your position about women serving in military in non-combat roles...

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...

"Turn him loose. He's no threat..."

Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. (Matthew 5:37)

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was proclaimed to you by us... was not yes and no; but in him was yes. (2Corinthians 1:19)

An older pastor I respect is not opposed to women elders and pastors, yet I count him a close friend and listen to him carefully. Trained at Pittsburgh Seminary, he spent most of his life serving calls in the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA). Now though, like many of us, the PC(USA)'s promotion of sodomite pastors has led him to leave the denomination.

A few minutes ago, I received this e-mail from him in response to the video clip of Tim Keller being interviewed by Martin Bashir concerning the exclusivity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Heaven, and Hell. He wrote...

Vandy students have hissy-fits over open-air calls to repentance...

Back when I was an undergrad at UW-Madison, I was strengthened in my faith by the open-air preachers on Library Mall.

Once I was privileged to protect one of the men when the student body vice-president, Leon Varjian (see pic above from the famous Lady Liberty prank) assaulted him. Varjian was pelting the preacher with eggs. Clearly it hurt, so between Varjian's trips back to his wagon to stock up (he had many dozens), I picked the eggs out of his stash and smashed them on the pavement.

Varjian got mad, but back then I was a longhair and I think he realized if he could batter a man with eggs, I could batter the sidewalk. So he stopped what he was doing and I stopped, too.

Another time a man was picking the preacher up from behind and humping him while the law enforcement officers watched and laughed...

"A minister with a Scripture..."

A few days ago, Tim Keller used his own Gospel Coalition blog to issue an apology for this very bad interview he did back in 2008 in conjunction with the release of his The Reason for God. The matter came to light only now because the video of the interview was only just released by Veritas Forum. Keller's apology is good in that apologies generally are; but it's bad in that some aspects of the interview that are most unfaithful to Scripture aren't addressed by the apology.

Noting this, I submitted a comment under the Gospel Coalition's announcement of the apology. The comment appeared for a few minutes, then was removed. Five days ago I submitted a request to the Coalition's e-mail asking them to...

"For the wrath of man shall praise you..."

Here's the manuscript for the sermon I preached the Lord's Day following 9/11 ten years ago, and then again yesterday on its tenth anniversary. I should add that the manuscript usually serves only as my loose outline for the preaching of God's Word.

Aunt Elaine helped build the World Trade Center...

For six years ending late December of 2006 when she went to be with the Lord, my Dad's sister, Elaine Bayly, lived with us here in Bloomington. She arrived just days before 9/11 and she brought a personal perspective on that day because she'd spent years of her life building the World Trade Center. Thus 9/11 and Aunt Elaine have always been bound together in our family's memory.

Aunt Elaine spent about seventy years in the same apartment on Parsons Blvd. in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens and for a number of those years she worked as a secretary for the project manager of the construction of the World Trade Center, the Tishman Company.

Elaine was personal secretary to Tishman's number one and number two men on the project and her dear friend Abe Levine (number two holding the position of Deputy Construction Manager) provides this account of Aunt Elaine's work there.

We had nine secretaries, but at the World Trade Center she was the personal secretary to the man at the top and the second in command. She took shorthand at a mile a minute. We turned out hundreds of letters a week.

We had documents that ran forty to fifty pages, and some of them had to be done over again, every single week—like the minutes of our official meetings. She did those and she did them to perfection—like a masterpiece. They were full of technical stuff (we were doing engineering) and they were always done to perfection.

The other girls all looked up to her. Everyone respected her. When she did a letter, it was a masterpiece. No one else was like that.

It was extremely hectic at the World Trade Center. One day we were having a meeting with the Port Authority—all the bigwigs...

The 9/11 suicide mission of Lt. Heather Penney...

They didn't know it at the time, but Todd Beamer and his fellow stalwarts on Flight 93 saved the life of one woman intent on taking theirs--Kamikaze style. Ten years later, the Washington Post broke the story (in its "Lifestyle" section, of course):

Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.

The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.

Except her own plane. So that was the plan.

When they ordered her to scramble, did anyone know whether or not Penney was pregnant? And if she was, did they ask her little baby if he was willing to die on his mother's suicide mission?

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...

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...

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...

Houses vs. palaces...

In Exodus 20:23-25 God tells Moses to warn the people of Israel that they are not to fashion gods of silver or gold for themselves. He then immediately goes on to say that altars to Him should be made of earth, or if of stone, uncut stone because by wielding their tools on His altar they will profane it.

Can we miss the relevance of this passage for our church houses today--and for our methods of preaching the Word? The danger of mistaking human craft and opulence with the glory of God is no smaller today than in the days of Moses. And lest we forget, God commanded that the place of His worship be a tabernacle rather than a cathedral, a house rather than a palace.

Consider God's response in 1 Chronicles 17:1-15 after Nathan prematurely assured David that God was pleased with his desire to build Him a house:

Government-gone-hog-wild: keep your eye on the bill...

The battle over money going on between President Obama and the House of Representatives is worth watching because, for years to come, it will be used as an example proving something. Just ask Newt Gingrich.

Exactly what it proves remains to be seen and is largely a function of the degree to which those of us who oppose government-gone-hog-wild make our voices heard in support of what the freshman class and Speaker Boehner are trying to do.

So, good citizens, speak up.

Last night in his plea for support of unlimited government, President Obama said:

Most Americans, regardless of political party, don't understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare before we ask corporate jet owners and oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don't get.

To understand such deceptions...

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...

Redeemer's bondage to cosmopolitan conceit...

“Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name..." - Genesis 11:4

...if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment... - 2 Peter 2:6-9

We make it a habit to say less than we know when we oppose ministries and their leaders here on Baylyblog. We don't want to overreach. This has been true of our criticisms of Redeemer Presbyterian Church and her pastor, especially.

Back in the early nineties we first started recommending Redeemer to souls moving to New York City, and by now we have close to two decades of listening to those men and women who have become a part of Redeemer's congregations.

Our second thoughts about Redeemer started seventeen years ago...

Impeach the judges...

The substance of this post is the text of a recent e-mail discussion I was copied on between two friends of Baylyblog--one a prof and the other an attorney employed as a civil magistrate. Note particularly this statement in the first half of the discussion: "our biggest worry is of a corrupt government whose police violate our civil rights."

There's no doubt this should be the greatest concern of believers, today.

Christians consistently have failed to recognize that every accretion of power and authority to the civil magistrate comes at the expense of the authority and freedom of the mediating institutions of the Church and family, not simply the freedom of the individual. Typically, political conservatives worry only about individual liberty, but the freedom to obey Scripture and exercise authority in the Christian home and Church is under sustained attack, also, and is every bit as serious a usurpation of authority as our loss of individual freedom.

God has ordained authority in the households of the home and Church, and the denial of freedom to those institutions to govern themselves according to Scripture is growing year by year and is a central part of the decline of the West we have experienced. Yet sadly, there has been almost no warning given by our church and home fathers.

The State is our Savior-Protector/Provider and the more dependent the State renders her citizens, the more those citizens will place their faith in the god of the state rather than their own personal gods. And so we arrive at the place where America's most popular gods, whether Mormon, Roman Catholic, or Protestant, pose no particular threat to the state's bipartisan and unilateral commitment to destroy any person or institution blocking the path to her glorious dominion...

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...

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...

So this hip-hop star walks into our art gallery and he's like...

Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. (Malachi 4:5, 6)

(NOTE: helpful obscenities ahead) Almost always, an absent father, father-hunger, and hatred define The New Yorker profiles of the purveyors of our Godless culture. Here we have a profile of the hip-hop group, Odd Future, and its best rapper, Thebe Neruda Kgositsile (alias Earl Sweatshirt) who at the time of the song's release was sixteen years old. From The New Yorker's profile, "Earl Sweatshirt begins one track by sneaking some autobiography into...

Excellent comments...

Several excellent comments have been made here and you'll want to read them.

(TB)

Blah blah blah blah blah I blah blah would blah blah blah definitely say blah blah blah blah blah...

Once again, we have that paragon among unreforming preachers asked about his take on sex--this time homosexual marriage.

Lauren Green of FoxNews did the interview March 28, 2011, as part of the Justice Event hosted by Redeemer's Hope for New York, Diaconate, and Grace & Race ministries. The place was packed, bases were loaded, bottom of the ninth, the pitch floated in waist high...

InterVarsity's partner, SAGE, holds another pro-sodomy event (part X)...

Can two walk together, except they be agreed? -Amos 3:3

In their recent outreach meeting featuring former staff worker William Campbell promoting sodomy, InterVarsity enlisted the campus organization Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Equality (SAGE) as a co-sponsor of the event.

This past week SAGE sponsored another event titled "GenderF**k." Billed as "a gender-inclusive drag show with no restrictions on gender presentation, sexual orientation or birth sex," the audience found it all quite delightful. Argenta Peron gushed, “It’s awesome because of the fact it’s not just a drag-show. It expresses a vision of what gender really is.”

We haven't heard if InterVarsity co-sponsored this event, also.

(TB: this is tenth in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten] responding to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at an Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011.)

Why U.S. Armed Forces burned Bibles and where it leads...

If you have children, watch this video with them and use it to explain the world we're leaving behind and the very different world that's coming at us full-tilt.

(TB)

IV gags the Bible at IU/InterVarsity event promoting sodomy (part IV)...

(Tim: this is fourth in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven] responding to to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at a Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011.)

“The unique Divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness and authority of the Bible.”                         - InterVarsity’s Doctrinal Basis

Sola Scriptura is a cornerstone of Protestantism. From the beginning, Protestants have objected to the idea that we can know God and what He commands from any source other than His divinely revealed Word. As the Westminster Confession puts it: “The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture” I.10

Of the many things that were wrong with the event “Jesus and the end of Homophobia” hosted by Indiana University’s InterVarsity chapter, the most disturbing was the silencing of God’s Word. As a Protestant, Evangelical organization, InterVarsity is supposed to be committed to the Bible. It is supposed to be committed to the Bible because it is in the Bible that God speaks to us most clearly. If we have a question about Who God is and what He requires of us, the Bible is where Protestants turn for the answer.

But that is not what happened at last week’s event. Last week, InterVarsity sponsored an event where the Bible was not allowed into the discussion. God was not allowed to speak through His Word...

Remove IV from your church's missions budget: Indiana University chapter of InterVarsity promotes sodomy (part I)...

(Tim: this is first in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven] responding to to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at a Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011.)

Back when David's and my father and mother, Joe and Mary Lou Bayly, were living on Mass. Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they were InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's (IV) first staff workers in New England, it would have sickened them to know their children would live to see the day when IV was advocating sodomy in the Name of Jesus Christ and His Word. That's what happened this week here at Indiana University.

IV brought in a longtime IV staff worker (he recently left IV staff) to speak against homophobia at a special attention-getting series of public meetings and that man promoted sodomy in the Name of Jesus Christ, His Church, His Word; and certainly in the name of that parachurch organization known in this country as IV. They're the sponsor of Urbana and they own the book marketer that does the best job of promoting the feminist heresy within the Evangelical world, InterVarsity Press.

Weird, isn't it? I mean, that an organization and its publishing arm would use the Name of Jesus to obliterate the meaning of sexuality in society, the home, and the Church concerning the relationship between the sexes would then go on to work to obliterate the meaning of sexuality also in the matter of how body parts go together? Check out the caption under the pic: the Indiana Daily Student got this one right.

Honestly, I thought IV would try to keep these two parts of Gods' Creation Order separate so the scandal of giving in on the second would not undercut the massive progress they've made in destroying the first. Do you think people might be on guard now that it's obvious its full-out sexual anarchy IV's committed to? Or do you think IV will be able to finesse the matter, claiming it's a one-off and purely accidental that in this particular chapter and speaker, feminism and sodomy are both promoted?

Yes, yes, of course. I know IV's leadership will claim that this is an anomaly...

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...

Rob's hell: the Times gets it about right...

(Tim, w/thanks to Mick) The Gray Lady reports on the controversy surrounding Rob Bell's forthcoming book attacking the Bible's teaching on Hell:

Judging from an advance copy, (Bell's) 200-page book is unlikely to assuage Mr. Bell’s critics. In an elliptical style, he throws out probing questions about traditional biblical interpretations, mixing real-life stories with scripture. Much of the book is a sometimes obscure discussion of the meaning of heaven and hell that tears away at the standard ideas.

Then we have this expert witness aiding and abetting the enemy:

Would I vote for Governor Daniels if he runs...

"Across my lifetime I've been voting for men who claimed to be anti-abortion but after taking office did nothing to oppose the slaughter. I'm tired of it. I don't want to be lied to any more. Daniels isn't lying to me."

(Tim) Readers will remember my basic rule about voting: I won't vote for a county dog-catcher who isn't pro-life.

That said, if I were to make an exception, it might be for our Governor Mitch Daniels. A few months ago I got a call from an Iowa man long involved in Iowa politics asking my thoughts on Daniels for president? A couple friends work in the Daniels administration and since that conversation I've been thinking about a potential Daniels candidacy quite a lot. Here's a piece from the Wall Street Journal that has it about right...

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels believes he faces a taller challenge as he ponders a White House run: Could voters warm to his message that the country is doomed unless it slashes its debt and radically revamps the popular Social Security and Medicare programs?

In any other year, a campaign platform that gloomy would render a politician toxic. Today, with concerns over the nation's fiscal health on the rise, the Indiana Republican's wonkish bravado is making some think he is a good fit for the moment.

If the time is indeed right for Mr. Daniels's get-tough message, the angry budget standoffs in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and New Jersey are also shining a new light on his credentials as a messenger. Mr. Daniels rescinded collective-bargaining rights for state employees six years ago—long before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker caused a firestorm by putting the same issue on the table.

Mr. Daniels also cut spending, trimmed the state work force to its smallest in decades, and turned a yawning deficit into a surplus, with only scattered outbursts of popular anger along the way.

He has emerged from all this with high marks from voters, and a profile that sets him apart from the other Republicans mulling a possible 2012 run. An array of conservatives, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, would like to see him enter the 2012 race.

He's the only potential candidate "who sees the stark perils and will offer real detailed proposals," Mr. Bush said last week in praising Mr. Daniels before a Florida business group. Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey on Thursday heaped almost identical praise on his Indiana counterpart.

So would I vote for Governor Daniels if he ran?

Daniels' commitments concerning what he calls "the social issues" are clear and firm...

President himself declares Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional...

(Tim) Our President and his Attorney General have finally decided openly to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress. Congress says its constitutional but the President says it isn't. The New York Times reports the President has determined that...

Another manly hero for our time...

(Tim, w/thanks to many) Joel Northrup wrestles for Linn-Mar High School in Marion, Iowa. Wrestling's big in Iowa--something like football in Massilon, Ohio--and Joel had done very well, making it to state. But lightning struck.

Joel drew Cassy Herkelman as an opponent and decided to forfeit. He released this statement explaining his decision:

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Cassy and Megan (Black, the tournament’s other female entrant) and their accomplishments. However, wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times. As a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most of the high school sports in Iowa.

Is anyone surprised a young man who's retained some modicum of sexual modesty today is a homeschooler? Is anyone surprised the secularists consider this...

Art ministry today: cool and hip...

(Tim) Whether in the U.S. or Western Europe, Reformed hipsters have fallen in love with art. For communicating the Gospel, preaching is out and art is in--it's the great white hope. Draw the Gospel. Sculpt the Gospel. Paint the Gospel. Use words only if you must.

David Baker is a student here at ClearNote Pastors College who, with his wife Marta and their children, were raising support under the Presbyterian Church in America's Mission to the World when God led them to move to Bloomington and begin training for pastoral ministry. David's a painter and he'd been headed to Dublin, Ireland, where he planned to be a part of an MTW team there, and to focus on the arts community. Recently, David corresponded with another MTW missionary in a Western European country about the arts movement within MTW and the PCA.

* * *

Dear (John Doe),

I should give you a brief background and update on what we are doing. As you may know we were on the path to work in arts ministry in Dublin, Ireland with MTW. We took a 5-year leave-of-absence from MTW for education and because of some other issues that made it clear that the yoking with the Irish church was not a good one. I'm now a pastor in training at ClearNote Pastor's College in Bloomington, Indiana. I continue to make art and I participate in a local gallery. I love using God's gift of artistic talent to His glory. He gives us these gifts.

When we were working on support raising we spent time with various churches around the country and we got to hear and see a lot of what was going on in the the arts ministry movement.

Wise as serpents, harmless as doves...

For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing no little business to the craftsmen; these he gathered together with the workmen of similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that our prosperity depends upon this business. You see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that gods made with hands are no gods at all. Not only is there danger that this trade of ours fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis be regarded as worthless and that she whom all of Asia and the world worship will even be dethroned from her magnificence.” When they heard this and were filled with rage, they began crying out, saying, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:24-28).

(Tim) The newly inaugurated governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, said this inside a Christian church from that church's pulpit during a worship service: "Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother." 

ABC reports:

A spokesman for the Anti Defamation League said the governor's comments were "stunning" and "distressing" and were tantamount to proselytizing.

"It is stunning to me that he'd make those remarks. It's distressing because of the suggestion that he feels that people who aren't Christian are not entitled to love and respect. On the day that he is sworn in as governor, he's sending a statement to the public saying if you're not Christian you can't be with me. From our point of view that is proselytizing for Christianity and coming very close to a violation of the First Amendment."

Let me keep reminding us that the much-ballyhooed separation of church and state that lulls a certain type of naive Christian man to sleep is a figment of our imagination and this becomes more clear each day. What was meant by freedom of religion by those who wrote and adopted our U.S. Constitution was freedom to acknowledge and worship the Only True God according to the leading of our own consciences. It was never meant to allow Islam or the fools of evolution who say there is no God the same protection as Christians. This is a simple historical fact and is avoided at all costs by those who live in a dream world and desperately want to believe secularism is a tolerant religion.

Exactly like the ancient Roman Empire, America's laws and civil magistrates and the schools they force us to fund are supremely religious and utterly intolerant. The religion is secularism and it's committed to outlawing true Christian faith. Those Christians who think they will be allowed to practice Biblical faith under secular civil magistrates are blind to the reality of their own lives as well as the lives being prepared for their children and grandchildren...

Check it out...

(Tim) Just a note to direct readers to this ongoing discussion some may find helpful.

"Some of New York City's most prominent religious leaders" mourn city's aborted babies...

(Tim, w/thanks to Matthew M.) Religious leaders in New York City came together this past week to speak out against the pervasive slaughter of unborn children in their city. Of every one hundred babies given by God to women of the city, forty-one of these precious little ones are murdered by abortionists. (The figure is 48% in the Bronx, 38% in Manhattan; here are the stats.) The Sun reported:

Some of New York City’s most prominent religious leaders are making a public demand for answers as to why decades of social welfare programs aimed at making abortions a rarity have not only failed, but failed so dramatically.

The leaders — spanning Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant clergy — issued their demand at a press conference today at Manhattan. They said they are galvanized by new data showing that some 87,000 abortions were performed in New York City in 2009, a figure that accounts for 41% of all pregnancies across the five boroughs that year. That 41% rate is nearly double the national average.

“The Statue of Liberty should be the symbol of this city, not the grim reaper,” declared the current archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, the Most Rev. Timothy Dolan.

Which religious leaders joined in the public lament? The New York Times...

Gagging Scripture and Scripture's Author...

(Tim) I've long believed that Christians are foolish to leave Scripture out of debates in the public square--most often from a misguided sense that quoting God's Word is offensive and carries little or no weight. But what could carry more weight than the Word of God written? Who could carry more weight than our Creator? The Apostle Paul wasn't squeamish about resting his argument on Genesis 1 when he spoke to the Areopagus.

This doesn't mean I think it unwise to make arguments from nature, but when at least half of the citizens of this representative constitutional democracy believe God's Word is God's words, keeping the Bible out of the public square is foolish.

Which brings us to the subject of this post. Here's an e-mail exchange between Scott Tibbs and the editor of our local paper's letters to the editor. If two transvestites take off their wigs in public protest of three bass getting shredded when a speedboat's propeller exceeded DNR regulations for size and speed...

A primer on the R2K novelty, with a note on Servetus...

(Tim) If Baylyblog readers have not been warned off the R2K novelty yet, check out this detailed critique of R2K by Pastor Nelson D. Kloosterman of Community United Reformed Church here in Schererville, Indiana. Also this R2K critique by Pastor Steven Wedgeworth. Finally this post and comments by Pastor Wedgeworth following up on his critique and answering some objections.

Way down in the comments, an exchange occurs between Doug Wilson and Darryl in which, several times, Doug raises the spectre of the wholesale slaughter of unborn children in these United States. Yet Darryl never seems able to look full in the face of the obscene bloodthirstiness of the modern secular state from which he takes such comfort and security.

Imagine the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition...

Darryl Hart's emanations and penumbras...

(Tim: responding to Darryl Hart's efforts to shield his R2K novelties behind the Indiana Constitution, an Indiana attorney writes...) Reading Darryl Hart’s comments on this post, you might get the impression that the Indiana and U.S. Constitution grant freedom to blaspheme and commit idolatry. They don’t.
 
The two sections he cites from the Indiana Constitution say nothing about blasphemy or idolatry. Section 5 provides: “No religious test shall be required, as a qualification for any office of trust or profit.” That means no religious test shall be required to qualify for any office of trust or profit. Section 6 provides: “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution.” That means no money may be drawn from the state treasury to benefit any religious or theological institution.
 
If you search the debates on the revision of the Indiana Constitution (1850), you won’t find the word “blasphemy” anywhere in the 2,107-page record. (You will find the word “idolatry”—in a quote from Bentham decrying the technicality, obfuscation, and hyper-formalism of the law “that make a man doubt the reality of the object spread out before his eyes.”) Don’t take the word of a historian or lawyer for it. Go to Google Books and see for yourself. (Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution for the State of Indiana (Volumes I and II).) At Indiana’s 1850 constitutional convention, there were no debates over or hurrahs for liberating the blasphemer from the dark night of his oppression. Nor will you find in Indiana any subsequent judicial hocus pocus creating a right to blaspheme.
 
By the way, you will find the Framers’ habitual use of Scripture...