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...

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...

Stop the sweetheart deal the wealthiest corporations are demanding of Congress...

Did you notice Google's protest today, shown to the right? I can't remember another time we've done this on Baylyblog but rich corporations' abuse of copyright has to stop. Join millions of others in registering your opposition to Senate 968 (PIPA) and HR 3261 (SOPA).

The corporate authors of this legislation are demanding the ability to take down any web site (including Craigslist, Wikipedia, or Google) that hurts their profits without prior judicial oversight or due process. You'll notice sites such as Wikipedia and Craigslist have joined Google in protest.

Register your opposition now. Stop this money grab by the likes of News Corp, TimeWarner, Comcast, Ralph Lauren, ABC, Juicy Couture, Chanel, Sony, Rolex, RIAA, and Nike.

And if you think SOPA solves a real problem, read this and this.

Odd allies of the protest include Nancy Pelosi and Ron Paul. The ACLU is right on this one.

(TB)

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Church officers and fathers who cover up sexual crimes...

"Fathers need to know this: avoiding the potential shame by not providing justice for your daughter is a cowardly act that will be forever remembered..." - longtime PCA elder and father of little daughters just found to have been raped by a relative

Here's an e-mail we received responding to the post "With the souls of sodomites destroyed, children are next...". As you will see, the e-mail is filled with horrors--particularly the horror of Christians who refuse to recognize the horrors taking over our homes and churches and to respond to them Biblically.

Since posting this and the previous piece, it's become clear to me that readership of this post has been small. And I believe this means sexual sin and the rampant fornication and pornography that are its seedbed will live on in the church, gaining ground while church officers and household fathers abandon their flocks and talk exchange blog posts and comments about family-centered churches and post-millenialism.

The predators love this.

So please, look again at the pull-quote at the top and ask yourself if you and your church officers are beyond it? If you're such good fathers, pastors, elders, deacons, and Titus 2 women that you don't need to find out what it means or how to respond to this failure of fathers filling our churches with bitterness? I'm sure no one relishes reading such a rebuke, but then do we really think the Corinthians enjoyed the Apostle Paul's letters?

Note particulary the father's statement about the cowardice of fathers who try to cover up the crime rather than protecting their children. This is the reality of my pastoral experience, over and over again. Our session submits the criminal to the civil magistrate. Always. Immediately. And so must you.

Living in a university community, over many years, now, ClearNote Church has been blessed by God with a good number of opportunities to be servants of reconciliation in these tragic circumstances. We would be pleased to serve your church's officers by providing support and counsel when you need help with sexual abuse and crimes against our Lord's little ones. Please feel free to contact us.

Now, on to the account...

Social security is D.C.'s cash cow...

The American Spectator's "Another Perspective" just ran an excellent piece titled, "What Would Reagan Cut?" The author is Bob Patterson, a close friend who served as the stated clerk of Northern Illinois Presbytery (PCA) back in 1991 when I transferred with my congregation from the mainline PC(USA) into the PCA. Since then, Bob has moved into writing on public policy matters and currently serves as editor of the Rockford Center's very helpful quarterly, The Family in America.

Two reasons to read this piece: first, everyone thinks cutting Social Security benefits is the only realistic way to address the deficit, but did you know that the payments you and I make into Social Security have long served as one of Washington D.C.'s principal cash cows? Bob reports that Social Security has long been producing a surplus...

Wives, submit to your husbands in everything but your work...

This piece written by a longtime Redeemerite does a good job of showing what complementarianism has always been and what the PCA has become...

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...

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...

Mass graves being dug in Sudan, but no response from US or UN...

Scott is a missionary to the brand new country of South Sudan. My son-in-law, Ben Crum, with his wife, Michal, and our daughter, Hannah, worked under Scott at an orphanage in South Africa several years ago. Since then, Scott's turned his attention to the Sudanese and I commend him to you for your support. He's a member of a PCA church in Asheville, but serves under the Reformed Presbyterian mission agency.

If you read international news, you know Sudan has been the center of much oppression and state-sanctioned murder for years, now. The slaughter was directed by the Muslims in the north against the animists and Christians who predominate in the south. With the secession of the south and the creation of South Sudan, international human rights organizations hoped to be able to turn their attention elsewhere. Sadly, though, large tensions remain--particularly what will happen with the oil-rich Abyei region which hasn't yet held a required referendum on which nation to join.

Scott just sent an e-mail asking his friends and supporters for help exposing atrocities being committed now a couple hundred miles north of him in Sudan. He attached the report below outlining mass graves being dug...

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...

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...

Going, going, but not gone...

Excellent Fourth of July exhortation from a patriotic pastor.

(TB)

For one family, this was a very sad Father's Day...

Here's a letter written by father of three, Tom Ball, explaining why he planned to set fire to himself. The letter was received by the New Hampshire Sentinel this past Thursday morning, June 16th--one day after Mr. Ball burned himself to death in front of the Cheshire County Courthouse in Keene, New Hampshire.

Despair is evil and suicide more so, but it's worth reading Mr. Ball's very long letter to understand the policeman/judge/social worker troika feminists have so successfully employed to destroy millions of homes, robbing many more millions of children of their fathers. Likely every last one of us reading this apologia knows at least several fathers who have been arrested or had their children taken from their home without warrant. And Mr. Ball is right--it will only get worse.

Note particularly Mr. Ball's failed efforts to get official stats on domestic violence arrests; but also his stats on the percentage of domestic batteries and murders committed by men and women. Our good readers must be reminded again and again that domestic violence is an equal opportunity employer.

(TB)

Calvin on a father passing his kingdom to his son...

It is a matter of such great importance for noble and wise princes to be set over the world by God. ...But so that such an extraordinary blessing of God might not be lost through the death of one man, as usually often happens, the succession of his son was added to preserve the situation for a long time, for he would continue and establish the order admirably set up under the father’s auspices.

Sometimes it does indeed happen that sons are not only unlike their fathers, but that when they have gained power...they allow themselves just as much freedom to violate the father’s laws, as if they were eagerly attacking the greatest of enemies. But God has generously provided for the kingdom of Denmark in this respect, that you are a most outstanding king, with the heroic stamp of your father’s nature, educated in his most virtuous discipline, having embraced the way of life delivered by him from hand to hand, as the saying goes, and think of nothing else but following in his footsteps.

However you have not only been chosen to be his successor to assume the office left vacant by his death, but also both adopted by his living and distinguished judgment, and given by the providence of God as an aide, on whose shoulders part of the burden may lie.

And I do not doubt that among the principle gifts of God...

The economics of feminism...

Sooner or later every faithful pastor joins the resistance movement engaged in mortal combat with the Feminist Reich. At long last, the shepherd finds it impossible to live seated in the heavenlies far above the screams and bloody carcasses rotting in our public squares and churches. Hell and destruction get to be too much for him, so he puts on his armor, grabs the Sword of the Spirit, and marches out to destroy the Devils of Hell whose mouths are dripping the blood of the sheep. War is finally declared and the shepherd marches out in defense of his flock!

As he enters the battle, though, it dawns on him that economics is one of the key battlefields. Yet he's never learned a thing about economics...

One quarter of our Bibles now printed by Chinese Bible monopoly...

"And now we come to a topic not mentioned on our schedule," smiles He, "condoms." Some nervous shuffling and coughing ensues. It slowly emerges that there are some in the group who have heard of condoms, but never seen one. Although He and his colleague Shao En have gone to lengths to approach the topic in a careful and sensitive way (this being day two of the workshop), some of the women are palpably embarrassed. In general, however, women prove to be the more daring of participants over these two days, learning fast and volunteering answers.

-Katrin Fielder reporting on her work for Amity Foundation; (emphasis not in original)

(By Craig French) Would you believe the above workshop was an outreach program provided by a Christian organization? The setting is China. Few of the participants own a Bible of their own. The “Christian” organization holding the workshop is Amity Foundation.

Amity Foundation is a not-for-profit non-governmental organization (NGO) that works cooperatively with the Chinese government providing sex education geared especially toward stopping the spread of AIDS. Besides condom instruction, they promote green initiatives, seek more equitable income distribution, do earthquake relief, and more.

But Amity does other work, also. It's likely they printed your Bible...

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...

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)

Rep. Peggy Welch refuses to vote in support of school reform and pro-life bills...

(Tim) Many of us at ClearNote Church have cast our votes for Representative Peggy Welch. Speaking personally, I have myself. These past few weeks, Rep. Welch has utterly failed the children of the state of Indiana.

Mrs. David Welch has been saying she's refusing to show up at the Statehouse in Indy because of her commitment to our children's education. In pol speech this means she's against Governor Daniels' reform of government schools. Governor Daniels wants the state to allow poor parents to use vouchers to escape bad school systems, but Rep. Welch and her fellow Democrats are always against school reform. Democrats get into office most consistenly through the votes of public school teachers and other government employees.

But what about our children? Rep. Welch tells us she cares for our children but she's utterly failed them, recently--and not only by opposing the reform of government schools.

While Representative Welch has been refusing to go to work at the Statehouse, House Bill 1205 seeking to take money away from our state's largest baby-slaughterer, Planned Parenthood, failed for lack of a quorom. This was Representative Welch's doing. The bill had made it out of committee and was ready for passage, but Representative Welch and her fellow Democrats cared more about opposing the Governor's reform of government schools than...

Sleepers awake!

(Tim: This from John Dvorak, nicely complementing E. Michael Jones' Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation & Political Control demonstrating the utility of pornography to keep citizens' docile. And believers? If we're drinking the grace patter tweeted by our Reformed luminaries--e.g. here and here--we're likely as fast asleep as the rest of them. How much more helpful the Gospels and Epistles would be if they were that short and graceful.)

'The Internet is now the opiate of the masses, replacing religion. People are riveted to their Facebook page. Do you really think that they can be made to "take up arms" as a flash mob to overthrow the government? Any government?

The Chinese recent action tells me that China's leadership doesn't get it, at all. This is ironic, because the Chinese culture was once forced into opium addiction, but they don't realize that this is a similar situation.

If they understood the opiate mechanism, they'd let the Internet flourish uncensored. It would quickly sedate the public into somnambulance. Cutting it off is like cutting off a supply of drugs, which angers the addicted and could cause a revolt...

Nationalized health care and parental authority...

(Andrew Henry) The conflict over Joseph Maraachli throws into stark relief our modern age's attack on the authority of fathers and mothers.

The circumstances are simple and painful. Several years ago, Moe Maraachli and Sana Nader lost their daughter, Zina, to a degenerative neurological condition. Her respiratory function deteriorated so severely that she was placed on a ventilator. Rather than allowing her to die in the hospital, her parents decided to take her home. A simple tracheotomy allowed her to breathe without the aid of a ventilator and she lived for six more months at home with her family before passing away.

Fast forward several years to the birth of Joseph. He was considered to be at high risk for the same genetic condition and was closely monitored as he grew. At four months old, he began having seizures and his parents worst fears were confirmed...

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...

Who Democrats are and what they do...

(Tim) Dear readers, don't miss the straightforward lessons these Democrats from Wisconsin and Indiana are teaching us right now.

When push comes to shove, have no doubt that being a Democrat is what matters to them--including Representative Peggy Welch of Bloomington. Have no doubt, either, that Democrats always fight for more money for public school teachers and other government employees. Public school teachers provide the votes that put the Democratic Party in office.

In fact, a good way to think of the Democratic Party is the party of death that lives off the votes of public school teachers who elect Democrat representatives with the understanding that their Democrat representatives will give them more money...

Proud as punch of Governors Walker and Daniels...

(Tim) If anyone cares about my opinion on a political matter, I'm proud as punch of the governors of our former home state, Wisconsin, and our current state, Indiana, taking on our public servants' unions. I've been a dues-paying member of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen and that was all I needed to know that unions have become corrupt. One day word came down from the men with the most seniority who worked the day shift that those of us working the swing shift--the new-timers--better slow down and cut our freight car repair production because we were making them look bad. -Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, Proviso Yards, car knocker and air brakeman, 1975

So bravo to Governor Daniels for this straight talk:

There may have been a time, a century ago, where public employees were mistreated and vulnerable and underpaid. If that was ever a problem, we have over-fixed it. Public employees in America--most decidedly federal employees, but everywhere--are better paid than the taxpayers that pay their salaries. -Gov. Mitch Daniels

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...

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive...

(Tim, w/thanks to David B.) South Dakota laws provide for the filing of murder or manslaughter charges in the death of an unborn child. Now legislators are trying to bring South Dakota's crimimnal code into conformity with their recognition of the personhood of the unborn such that the baby's mother and his relatives will be able to claim justifiable homicide when they act in his defense. Trouble is, people are up in arms that some freak like Scott Roeder will use the law to justify defending unborn babies from abortionists.

But the bill's sponsor, Phil Jensen, wants to make it absolutely clear: "This has nothing to do with abortion. This is a self-defense bill." Which, of course, leaves the question whether Jensen's bill would allow us to arm the babies so they could shoot any doctor who tries to kill them?

In self-defense, of course...

Steven Mosher and the latest Rwandan genocide: your tax dollars at work...

(Tim, w/thanks to Dan R.) Back in 1983, a young Stanford anthropologist was booted from China for blowing the whistle on China's forced abortion policy. Steven Mosher (not the Mosher of Climategate) had been in one of China's rural provinces doing Ph.D. research when he discovered China's government forced mothers to murder their unborn children.

Mosher publicized this great oppression and China's government responded by expelling him from the country. Standford University also responded by expelling Mosher from his Ph.D. program. The Chronicle of Higher Education did long articles on the scandal and, despite Stanford's attempt to defend their actions, those of us who read about the case as it developed learned a lesson about the limits of Academic freedom.

Shortly afterwards, Mosher published his best-selling expose of China's mass murders of the unborn, Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese; followed a few years later by Allan Bloom's best-selling expose of the Academy, The Closing of the American Mind.

For some years, now, Mosher has been doing excellent work at the Population Research Institute. Here's a recent example exposing the abuse of our U.S. tax dollars for the coercive sterilization of Rwandan men.

A young woman will lead them...

(Tim, w/thanks to Al) Live Action is the work of young men and women who use hidden video cameras to record those acts of Planned Parenthood that are still criminal. (The paid murder of unborn babies has been legalized.)

In this video, actors posing as a pimp and one of his women are coached by a Planned Parenhood worker in New Jersey on how best to carry out several criminal acts including how to bypass parental consent laws with their fourteen year old prostitutes.

Yes, Planned Parenthood is corrupt. We've always known that. There's no honor among thieves.

More corrupt even than Planned Parenthood, though, are the...

Murder-mongerers' next line of attack...

(Tim: concerning the legislation being proposed in the Washington State Legislature, an attorney friend writes...) I took a quick look at the proposed legislation in Washington. It's much worse than (what's being proposed) in New York. For one, the liability extends to any violation of the bill. In New York, the private right of action was limited to violations of the confidentiality provisions. It appears that this form of legislation is the new weapon of the Enemy. The legislation is getting traction because it paints pro life pregnancy centers as manipulative and deceptive - manipulative because they supposedly coerce women to take action during a vulnerable time in their life and deceptive because the centers purportedly cast the appearance of being medical facilities. 

Of course, this is a classic case of a round peg solution for a square hole problem, if there is even a problem. First of all, what is wrong with a center attempting to persuade a woman not to have an abortion, particularly a woman that voluntarily entered the center? Should we then enact laws that prevent pastors from preaching against abortion because there may be parishioners in the congregation that are pregnant and vulnerable to manipulation?

Rahm Emanuel's residency and President Obama's birth...

(Tim, w/thanks) Reading about the mess over whether or not Rahm Emanuel meets the residency requirements to run for mayor of Chicago reminds me of the continuing mess over President Obama's birth certificate. As I've said before, just produce it for us, already. It's constitutionally important!

But they don't produce it.

And "former Hawaii elections clerk Tim Adams has now signed an affidavit swearing he was told by his supervisors in Hawaii that no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate existed for Barack Obama Jr. in Hawaii and that neither Queens Medical Center nor Kapi'olani Medical Center in Honolulu had any record of Obama having been born in their medical facilities."

Then too, Hawaii's new governor, Neil Abercrombie, who ran on a platform including militant promises that, when he took office, he'd put the question of President Obama's birth certificate to rest once and for all, has taken office, done the research, and is publicly  admitting he can't produce the evidence.

Abortionists attack the compassion of pregnancy resource centers...

(Tim) In the State of Washington, a bill (HB 1366) is pending in the state legislatures that poses a severe threat to the godly ministry of love carried out by Washington's pregnancy resourse centers. Andrew Woodyard writes:

Apparently it's not enough for Washington State to be "pro-choice." It must become "abortion only."

President Obama: "Gonna be hard, but we're gonna do it!"

(Tim, w/thanks to Jim Lingo) If you'd like a good laugh, here's a lesson in what our public servants in Washington D.C. consider a significant budget cut.

I've got nothing to say, but it's OK...

(Tim, w/thanks) Readers will remember the Rev. Dr. Brian Lee of the CRC conservative split-off denomination, the United Reformed Church, wrote Baylyblog objecting (see comments) to our identifying him with that small group of Reformed men caught up in the Radical Two-Kingdom (R2K) error. One of many objections to our post was this:

You call me an "R2K pastor," and I admit that I don't know what that means in your blog lexicon. I do subscribe to a two kingdoms view, but you don't reference any of my views on that matter to justify this title. I am happy to have you engage with my views, but I don't see how throwing around this label without any justification is constructive to the cause of truth.

Here's more justification. And by the way, as you read Brian's piece, keep in mind that Pastor Lee wrote this sitting in the heart of Washington D.C., and that the parishioners he desires and works to get are our civil magistrates...

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...

R.C. Sproul Sr. on abortion: "Pastors don't want to touch (it)..."

R.C. Sproul Discusses the Issue of Abortion from Ligonier on Vimeo.

(Tim) As it happened, when R.C. Jr. commented here on Baylyblog earlier today commending Dan Phillips' excellent piece on marriage over at Pyromaniacs, that very minute I was finishing a partial transcription of this video he and his Dad did on the occasion of Ligonier reissuing R.C. Sr.'s book, Abortion: A Rational Look at An Emotional Issue. In this interview, R.C. Sr. says this is the one book out of the seventy or so he's written that had the shortest shelf life of them all. When the book was first issued twenty years ago, he couldn't give them away. Good Reformed men didn't want to read what he had to say about abortion.

Here are a few summaries and excerpts from the interview...