Opus 2026-335: More Salt, Please

What do you do with a piece of meat that has gone bad?  I am sure you have had the experience of finding something in the back of the fridge that is slimy, green and disgusting.  We tend to throw it out, or at least I do.  You may make it into a haute couture delicacy and convince people it will change their lives.

I was shocked to learn that before refrigeration people did not throw out a side of beef that was turning green.  I was told that they would find a sharp knife, remove all the green and cook up what was underneath.  In other words, you did not need to throw out the entire side.  What was underneath could be salvaged.  That is what God did repeatedly with Israel.  They had gone bad.  They were slimy and disgusting.  Picture a group of people who had bought into the idea of throwing their babies into a raging furnace.  Not a pretty picture.

God cut them off.  He would repeatedly find that He needed to cut again and cut deeper.  That is the bad news which we should take seriously today.  The church thinks of themselves as the body of Christ.  That body does not include the slimy decomposed gunk on the outside.  God will find it necessary to cut that off.

There is a point in preserving meat where adding salt will allow it to last longer.  America has been in that status for a long time.  True believers have provided enough salt for God to withhold His hand of judgement.  I am not sure how much longer we will be salty enough.

The good news is that not only will God bring us into eternity with Him but His promises still apply to the faithful remnant that remain.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-331: A Place for the Law of Moses

The purpose of the law was to civilize barbarians not offer eternal life.

Human beings take a lot of training.  Think back to when your children were born.  What would our country look like if they were not trained and civilized?  In fact, we have video of the results.  Go to the many cities that have been overrun by Antifa and BLM in the past decade.  This is what happens when you have a large group of people who never were taught to fear God or deny themselves.  It isn’t utopia, it is dystopia.  

If God had drawn His chosen people out of the middle class of Omaha, Nebraska in 1950, most of the Law of Moses as we know it would not be necessary.  Those people knew how to maintain a culture and give stability to family, city and nation.  But they would not be going to heaven.  Jesus still would need to go to the cross.

Don’t confuse the purpose of the law and the place of faith.  Read the Psalms.  David would praise the law but he was clear that it was not the law that saved him but his trust in God’s faithfulness and mercy.  The law will always have a place.  Some people will need it more than others.  Salvation still remains a gift we cannot earn.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-164: Middle Class Morality: Pillars of Culture

A post on Powerline titled “6 Pillars of Civilization” gave some basic information that we all need to embrace.  This is extra true in the current climate of depricating the contributions of Western Civilization.  I don’t know if they are original to the writer but they are something to consider.

The six,

–Monogamy
–Free enterprise
–Representative government
–Universal education (reading/writing)
–Scientific method
–Monotheism

Most Americans of previous generations would read this list and say, “Of course.”  They would accept those as normal.  All of them are assumed in cultures based on Christianity.  In fact they are demanded.  Not so much the rest of the world.

Take the Muslim world.  The only one of these that they would embrace is monotheism.  What are the results of one out of six?  Poverty.  Ignorance.  Violence.  Tyranny.  Millions fleeing.  Not a very good return on investment.  Much of the same can be said for the third world countries that reject Christian foundations.  There are some exceptions like Japan but even they operate on principles developed in Christendom.

Notice I said “previous generations”.  I am not so sure that the current generations would endorse the list.  What that should tell us is that the benfits of the list will soon fade away.  In a business the trust that is developed by years of honesty and responsible practices lead to profits and a repeat customer base.  When the proprietor begins to cut corners and reduce value the business ends up closing down.  A good example is Panera Bread.  It used to be a go-to stop and now it is almost empty.

What does the future hold?  That depends on the values and priorities we adopt.  Choose wisely.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-134: The Elephant in the Room

I just finished listening to a podcast by the guys at Triggernometry as they interviewed Lionel Shriver.  It was an interesting discussion about what is going on in the UK and USA in regard to the attack on our traditions and cultures.  What I found frustrating was the way in which they continually ignored the elephant in the room.

Maybe a better metaphor might be the Viper on the chair or the dirty diaper in the corner.  They totally ignored the biggest problem, which is spiritual.  When asked about the motives of the progressive mindless masses they came up with all kinds of charitable concepts but they left out the point that they are living in the service of evil.  They never mentioned the ideology of Islam and ignored the hatred of Christianity on the left.

The problem with the pink haired women who are attacking ICE agents is not their lack of fashion sense.  It is not that they believe they are doing something noble.  It is that they have committed their souls to the service of Satan.  They think they are working toward a better world but in focusing on their target they totally ignore what is also down range.

One of the laws of gun safety is to be aware of what is behind what you are shooting at.  A police sniper will not shoot at a gunman in a playground full of children because his bullet willl probably go through the killer and hit a child behind him.  These people rioting in the streets are not fighting for something; they are just destroying.  That brings a big smile to Satan’s face.

The problem with the Islamic terrorists is not that they believe women should dress with more modesty.  It is not that they want to pray in the streets.  It is not cultural, it is spiritual.  They worship a god who believes it is glorious to murder women and children.  I would say “innocent people” but according to their belief, none of them are innocent.

The people doing all the violence are either atheists or Muslims.  To be honest I don’t think there are any pagans involved.  They have a better contact with the eternal.

You can’t fix something until you admit it is broken.  It is not a cultural problem.  It is a spiritual problem.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-120: Politics Matters

The idea of submerging your personal interest in individuality into the good of the whole sounds very noble, however, it is totally antithetical to western values.  In Christianity, you have an individual who comes before God and stands before God as an individual.  It really doesn’t matter his ethnic group, his social standing, his sex or non-sex.  You stand before God by yourself.  You are judged by yourself.  In socialism, the individual is dissolved into the good of the whole and what you want is of absolutely no consequence.  You will be brainwashed to the point where you will agree and think that anything is right as long as the Dear Leader tells you so.  If you need a reminder about this, you can read the final chapter of 1984 where Smith starts, declaring his love for Big Brother .  Take that over to other religions.  Hinduism and Buddhism are a good example of where this goes because their ultimate reality, their ultimate goal is Nirvana where they as an individual disappear into the vast sea of the Force.  You as an individual cease to exist.  That is the goal.

These young airheads that are so excited about socialism seem to forget that in the end socialism really doesn’t care what they want or doesn’t care about them.  They are expected to sacrifice everything and they do so.  But they think in the end they are going to be in the elite, in the managerial classes, the ones who are getting the cream from the top of our skim milk.  In reality, they will get whatever is left over and whatever the elites decide they want them to have.

It’ll be a sad day when they wake up in their social paradise.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-114: Curses

We often fail to differentiate between taking the name of the Lord in vain and foul language.  Most of us raised in a Bible believing church or aware of social graces have learned to temper our language.  I don’t know how many times I would hear people say, “Pardon my French.”  I would smile and point out that it was really Anglo-Saxon.  I was raised not using four letter words and it sticks with me.

Others, not so much, and we have apologists who try to make the case that four letter words are not evil.  To them it is not a sin to cuss.  Okay.  With that in mind I found these verses interesting,

Psalm 109:17-18 (KJV) 17 As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him. 18 As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

I was just reading my daily Psalm.  I have read it hundreds of times, but this time it stood out to me.  It seems to be saying that foul language will sink down into your bowels and bones.

I am not sure how to apply that but my feeling is that it can’t be good.  I don’t think David is trying to make a doctrinal statement but it is in the inspired word.

I am not sure that I can say the upper classes swear less than sailors.  Maybe so.  I can say that in polite conversation the person who is at the top of the ladder will have a much more genteel vocabulary than someone who is drinking Bud Lite.  Is there a correlation between vocabulary and success in life?  Is there a tie in between foul language and health?  I have no idea but this would seem to indicate that there is a relationship.

Of course it could just be poetic license. 

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-113: Headlines: Conflict of Interest

The recent headlines coming out of New York proclaim the Muslim population is trying to ban dogs from Central Park.  We come to an interesting conflict of special interest groups.  On the one side, you have the Muslims with their attitude towards dogs.  On the other side, you have people with various emotional problems, but have service animals.  Now I don’t know all the details about the Muslims in New York, but it’s a classic example of the way in which the Muslims when they get to a certain percentage of the population, began demanding that everybody else adapt to their way of life.  Expect it in a city near you if this continues.

This demonstrates the way in which Islam lives out totalitarian government at work.  In a totalitarian government, you expect everyone to conform to what the elite declare because it’s good for the whole. The individual is submerged in the good of the whole.  Your personal opinion is only as important as the power you possess to force it on others.

Will guide dogs and emotional support animals survive?  Not if sharia law has its way.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-021: Demographics and Decline

One of the themes that comes up on my YouTube algorithm has to do with the demographic collapse that is coming to China.  There are a lot of doom and gloom predictions about how the Chinese have been faking their population statistics for years and that they are running out of young people.  The idea is that there is no younger generation to work the jobs that are going to be necessary to keep the economy going.

Like so much fake news it’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not.  It seems to be this is one of the common themes across many countries right now.

What I’m wondering about is how their suppression of Christianity plays into this and how the Christians have been conforming or non-conforming in the area of the one child policy.  Historically the Christians adopted the same view of abortion and fertility that the Jews had.  During the time of Rome, the population was also decreasing in the Roman areas.  Into that world came the Jews with their many children, and the Christians followed along that priority.  Now, if we move forward to the decline in so much of the world, but specifically China, I wonder if the Christians in China have been ignoring the limitations on having children, and thus are increasing not only by conversion, but by fertility.

I would assume there is no way of really knowing.  Getting honest statistics out of a communist country is even harder than getting the Epstein files released.  There are too many vested interests involved for clarity.  In spite of that it does seem like this might be a wave of the future.  I hear a lot about how many are converting to Christianity in China and how the church is growing.  It could be their attitude towards children and family are part of that and if you put it all together, it would be interesting to look forward to hundred years and see if the demographic changes of the next century cause China to emerge as a dominant Christian country.

Speculation can be fun, but it doesn’t give us assurance about what is actually going to happen.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-007: Deport Criminals, Not Muslims

We tend to forget that religious toleration is part of our heritage.  The first amendment to the constitution is one example and what is often overlooked is the clause in the Constitution that says that a religious test is not to be required for office.

That does not mean that the vast majority of Muslims could not be deported.  Keep in mind that McCarthy was right.  He was vilified by the press and rejected by people who should’ve been supporting him because they didn’t look to see what he was saying was true, they just reacted, emotionally, and to be honest, to protect their own hides.  The government was full of communist.  They were spies, they were infiltrators, they were committed to destroying our way of life.  The fact that they were doing nothing at the time means you could’ve labeled them “moderate” communists.

At the same time all you need to do is read their founding documents.  The communist were very open about destroying America.  If you read the Quran, you can find that it is also very clear and open about destroying non-Muslim cultures.  So far that applies to us.  It may not apply to most of Europe anymore, but we still have not been totally overtaken.  Think of the things that are involved in Islam that are more political than religious.  Take Sharia law.  Keep in mind that Islam does not separate religion from government.  We do.  When you combine the two and insist that the two can be combined, you become a criminal.  You are outside the law.  You can be deported.

If you have a so-called religion, which allows you to have multiple wives in a country which makes that illegal, you are a criminal.  If you believe that, you can kill your daughter because she went out with a pagan or a Christian, and you do so, than you are outside the law.  You are a criminal.  If you believe in chopping off hands for stealing, you violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the constitution.  You can go on.  And keep in mind that even the “moderate” Muslims are believers in this book.

Oh yes, and throw in the fact that that book gives them the right to lie about what they believe or what they will do in the future.

We also need to consider the original intent.  That’s one of the rocks that we like to stand on and it’s a good rock.  The original intent of not having a religious test was so that Episcopalians could not keep Baptists out of office.  It had absolutely nothing to do with banning members of the communist party, who followed it like a religion, taking a stand against the KKK, which was a religious position or saying that Muslims cannot serve in areas that are dangerous to national security.

We need to wake up while there are still roses to smell.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-002: Chosen People Syndrome

I think that ancient Israel was impressed with themselves because they were the chosen people.  God had said that He picked them.  That much is clear.  He also said he didn’t choose them because of their sterling qualities, but they were chosen.

I think they fell into the trap of thinking just because God chose them, their theological professors had declared them enternally secure, and that God was so rigid and immutable that once he declared them chosen, nothing could unchoose them.

What a tragic place to be.

How did that work out for you Israel?  When the Chaldeans were descending upon Jerusalem, were they still sitting there sticking in their thumbs and pulling out a plum and saying what a chosen boy am I?  Judging from what scripture tells us many of them didn’t even stop drinking and partying until the enemy was actually breaking down the gates.  At that point, it was a little bit late to repent.

I sometimes think that our modern theologians fall into the same trap.  They seem to think that God is bound by the system that they have put together.  They think that God has to follow their charts and graphs.  They think they have the final word from God and since God by their definition is immutable, they’ve got the winning hand.  Do they feel like they have five aces in a poker game?  Unfortunately God seems to be playing a different game and five aces in a poker game can get you shot.

I don’t think it will work out any better for us than it did for Israel.  God’s patience amazes me, waiting for Israel to respond, hoping for repentance, reaching out time and time again, and being rejected.  It should be very revealing when God says that He doesn’t care about the sacrifices.  He’s more concerned with obedience.

If God is immutable, then remember those people that say if He doesn’t punish America, He’s going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.  I think you could take that statement and substitute the church.  You might be getting closer to where we are today.

Think of your position as more being the waitress in the restaurant rather than the customer.  How many times has a customer ordered the wrong thing and when he realizes the mistake, changes his order, and gets what he really wants.  The waitress doesn’t have much choice in the matter.  God is the customer.  The customer is always right, even when he decides he wants his fish grill instead of fried.

Are you chosen?  So was Judas and look how that worked out for him.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-609: Trying to Upstage God

One of the YouTube offerings that I have been looking at somewhat regularly is offered by a man named Anton Daniels.  He represents what I believe or want to believe is a growing number of blacks with conservative values who are speaking up and actually engaging their brain instead of just their emotions.  He’s definitely off the plantation.  He also is not on my plantation, so his views are not always what I would want, but he is speaking intelligently.

He will show bits of TikTok videos and things like that where people are saying a lot of nonsense and then he will analyze it.

What came to my mind as I was listening to one today was the lady who was on his TikTok blurb was talking like God was actually a part of her life.  She mentioned God a number of times and used some of the jargon that would make you think that she’d at least been to church.  She was, according to, her 60 years old and according to the camera was still a very attractive lady.  Makeup can do wonders.  As she described your frustrations, underneath it all what came out to me in my interpretation was it the 60-year-old woman was out looking for love in the wrong places and was upset that she was finding nothing but a bunch of men who were looking for easy hook ups in the right places.  What she considered the wrong places were the right places for them.  I assume she was talking about bars and places like that which I would have no idea about.  She seemed to go out fairly regularly.  She mentioned at one point that she kept track of all the people she’d been with.  She’s been divorced for seven years and sounds like she’d been looking pretty hard.  Now, if she had not brought God up, I would have just kind of blown it away and said Ok, here’s another randy broad out looking for a man who will really love her, whatever that means.

That made me think back to the number of times that the host of this podcast had mentioned God or made reference to Christianity and to moral values and such.  At the same time, I’ve never heard anything other than the occasional jargon which would make me think that he had a personal faith in Jesus Christ.  He seemed to be basically an old school, cultural Christian, who knew the words, but not the Word.  Again, this is not a major criticism that I’m making of him.  Where I’m getting to here is the way in which so many people are quite comfortable talking about God and I keep wondering what God are they talking about.

I see the same phenomenon in a lot of the pagan conservatives such as Douglas Murray, Joe Rogan and such.  They seem to believe there is a God; they acknowledge that.  They seem totally confused about who this God is.  If you’ve ever read meditations by Marcus Aurelius, you’ll find that he is all over the page when it comes to his spiritual convictions.  At one point, he is a polytheist.  At another place he is a pagan monotheist.  At another place, he will talk about reincarnation.  It depends on his mood for the day.  If you read the right sections, you might even think he was a Christian.  It’s kind of like people who could talk about cars. 

Now when I talk about cars, it’s usually pretty generic.  If money was not an object, I might get myself a Rolls-Royce and cruise.  More realistically, I might go for a Cadillac Escalade.  It would be necessary that money would not be an object because I would need the kind of roadside assistance and mechanics who know what they’re talking about and would keep me moving.  In reality, the world I live in right now, I’m driving a 2002 Mercury Marquis, which I bought two or three years ago.  It’s running well.  It’s reliable.  It doesn’t embarrass me by it looks.  It has everything I need.

Now go talk to somebody who is really convinced that Chevys are better than Fords.  Or someone who is convinced that a Lexis is the most reliable car in the world.  They are true believers.  They know their cars and they know what they think it’s the best.  That person would be the parallel of the true believing Christian and in this case, I would be an example of your pagan who wants the benefits of religion, but doesn’t want the price.

I pray that some day they will know God as God.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-448: What Did You Expect?

The wrath of God gets a lot of bad press.  People accuse the so-called “God of the Old Testament” as being angry and hostile.  You would be angry and hostile too if people that you had picked out to bless did nothing but ignore you or spit in your face.  People tend to forget that the wrath of God is not an arbitrary emotion based on having a bad day.  The wrath of God is more than deserved.

We just finished going through a section of Jeremiah where God is explaining the punishment that He is going to be administering to Israel.  The punishment does not take place in a vacuum.  Consider that Israel has been ignoring God’s law for hundreds of years.  They’ve been building idols in the temple.  Adultery, fornication, shady business deals, oppression of the poor, these are all business as usual for Israel.  The real miracle is that God has held off as long as He has.

Fortunately, for us, God’s wrath is balanced by His patience and His mercy.  When I think of what my short life would have been like if God were in the business of looking for excuses to throw thunderbolts, I can shudder.  I’m not sure I would’ve made it more than a few minutes past the age of accountability.

I find myself almost begging for God to express His wrath towards the God haters in our culture.  When you look at all of the child molesters, serial killers, doctors mutilating children, parents inflicting all kinds of drugs on their children and such I wonder how God restrains Himself.  Evil will be punished, but at the same time, God is quite willing to forgive those who genuinely repent.

Pray for revival.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-420: Sugar Coated Evil

I had a conversation recently with a very nice lady.  She seemed to be gentle and kind and wanting the best for everyone.  She was soft spoken and I’m sure that she could have given you a good presentation on how we should love our enemies and how God is love and so forth.

She was what I am calling sugar coated evil.

The issue that got us going was homosexuality.  She had a friend, possibly just an acquaintance, who had been to seminary and was giving her some song and dance about how the Old Testament was geared for those days and had nothing to do with us today.  She had several examples, but the one that stood out to me was the condemnation of homosexuality in the Old Testament.  She seemed totally unaware that Paul also addressed this in the book of Romans.  She mentioned how Jesus never talked about it.  She was listening to this seminary graduate.

All I could really tell her that she could hear was, “You’ve been lied to.”  I don’t know if she heard even that.  I don’t know if she understood what I was saying.  I’m relatively sure she didn’t accept it.  I turned to Romans and read verses in chapter one where Paul is very specific about homosexual behavior.  I told her that in some of the list of actions that will keep us out of heaven he also addresses it.  The only answer she had was that if they were born that way, and God made them that way, then it can’t be wrong.

I pointed out to her that God made me also and I’m certainly not perfect.

We ran out of time, but I see this kind of thinking going on when we deal with Islam.  Islam is not a religion of peace.  There may be some uninformed Muslims whom we would consider moderate, but generally speaking they probably don’t have any idea what the Quran says.  I who cannot read Arabic and have no indication of what it actually says, can read in the different translations that it is not a religion of peace.  And yet we have all these people who want to believe that it’s just a few radicals that are causing the problem.

I would say that they are “sugar coated evil”.

People like to act like they know what they’re talking about but they are generally lazy and don’t want to be confronted by what makes him uncomfortable.  I have yet to meet anyone who has read the Quran.  It is readily available in many translations and can be read in your spare time.  I read mine on a month of vacation in preparation to have to teach it in seventh grade history.  It didn’t keep me from doing anything I wanted to do on vacation.  The same is true of such things as the Communist Manifesto.  The information is available, but people are too comfortable to access it.

Beware of the sugar coating.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-397: Speaking Truth to Denial

Have you noticed how people have a genuine fear of the truth?  This came up in a recent discussion where the person I was talking to did not want to call evil, evil.  He kept coming up with synonyms or excuses.  I finally pointed out to him that it is very common at least in the book of Proverbs, to call evil, evil, to admit that evil is evil.

Why don’t we want to call evil by its name?  Because there’s always going be someone around us who says you shouldn’t say that, it’s not kind, you’re going to drive people away.  As a result, we don’t drive them away.  They leave in boredom because we don’t have anything to attract them.  We need to speak truth.  Not truth to power, but truth to denial.

Think of all the areas where we don’t want to come right out and say that things are evil.  We don’t want to mention homosexuality as evil.  Everybody always brings up a family member or a friend who is the nicest person in the world and is homosexual.  How can it be evil?  You could ask the same question about the sociopath who has learned how to function in society.  He is still a sociopath.  He is still not to be trusted.  Good manners and smooth talk do not overcome the evil.

You can make a list: transgender, Islam, corruption in government, censorship for you own good.  Add whatever you want.

So we can at least start by not being afraid to use the word evil.  We are surrounded by it.  When we see professional medical people who are supposed to be committed to do a no evil, butchering the bodies of adolescent children because they have had some perverted adult convince them they are the wrong sex, we need to call it evil.  Why?  Because it is.

Of course, we need to be careful that what we are calling evil is evil by an absolute standard not just by our personal preference for the moment.  That again, as I’ve said many times, is something that we have to base on the witness of scripture and of the God we serve.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-377: The Manipulation of Fear

Fear is a powerful force in our lives.

Most of us can deal with fear when there is something concrete to be afraid of.  If I know there is a bear roaming in my neighborhood I can still think clearly and make good choices.  Number one is don’t go walking my dog.  That is double since I don’t have a dog.  If you are a soldier in combat there is every reason to fear but millions of men have dealt with that.

The fear that gets us is the unknown.  I used to be afraid of the monster under my bed.  It didn’t do any good to look underneath with a flashlight.  He was good at hiding.  I eventually came to accept there was no such thing and the fear departed.  I can now walk in the dark both inside and outside the house and not worry about anything but tripping.

The big problem comes when forces beyond our control conspire to manipulate our fear.  What comes to mind is the recent panic over a virus that got a lot more publicity than it deserved.  At first there was the fear of the unknown.  The powers-that-be lied to us from the very beginning.  After two months I knew it was all a lie.  How?  I paid attention.  Remember the two cruise ships quarantined in Tokyo harbor?  They represented two perfect petri dishes for the incubation of danger of the disease.  On one ship no one died.  On the other seven.  Those are not the numbers of the biggest plague since the black death.  It is more on the level of the seasonal flu.

Facts were ignored and warnings were multiplied.  Of all the advice given the only one that had any value was to wash your hands and we should have already known that.  Masks were useless.  It said so right on the package.  Distance was a product of the imagination.  Did the virus die after traveling six feet?  The deceit grew as we were offered safe and effective treatments.  They were neither.  

The manipulation worked.  I still see people in the grocery store with masks and that look in their eye.  The game is being played again.  The warnings are starting up.  Lucy has her football out and all the Charlie Browns are ready to punt.  The list of fears is long and often unnoticed.  It includes climate change, warnings about things like salt and coffee, standing up against men in women’s sports and the nonsense of the TSA.

Christians are more resistant to this manipulation, or they should be.  When it comes to fear of a virus that can kill us we are aware of where we go when we die so it is not as big a threat.  We have a general trust in the hand of Providence and the work of the Holy Spirit.  We are aware of the amazing immune system that God designed for us.  

This reduced fear is why Christians were leaders in the Underground Railroad and Civil Rights movement.  It is why they volunteered to care for the sick in times of epidemic.  It is why we staffed the early hospitals.  Many died but the fear was kept in check by trust in a higher power.

That is another reason why the cultural Marxists are out to destroy the church.  We stand in the way of their goal of global domination.  They will keep trying.  We will keep resisting.  It means that every believer is a member of the resistance.  

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-373: The Rule of Law

In listening to a podcast of Socrates in the City with Eric Mataxas interviewing Konstantin Kisin, one of the points made was that an important foundation of western culture is the rule of law.  This does not exist in the historical cultures of anywhere else in the world.  The rule of law is firmly based in the Old Testament, where it talks about not showing partiality and treating strangers properly.  I don’t know that it’s anywhere in the New Testament in the same way however it’s not necessary to have it in the New Testament because it is anchored in the old.

More and more intellectuals like Kisin, Douglas Murray and Tom Holland are conceding that Western civilization was rooted in the values of the Bible and the liberties we take for granted will wither away as Christianity is pushed to the sidelines.  The problem is that they don’t think that what the Bible has to say about Jesus is important enough to embrace.  While I welcome their positive feedback I also know that it won’t stand the test of time as it is.

Western Culture did not become strong because of philosophical principles or moral standards.  Those were strong because the citizens of Europe embraced the conviction that Jesus is Lord and the Holy Spirit gave them the influence to mold a society with the rule of law, among other things.

What we need is revival not just admiring the obvious when the Muslims and the pagans are coming for your head.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-334: Course Correction

As we look at each one of the great teachers in the Bible, each dispensation if you would, they are not giving a totally new teaching, at least that’s not the point.  The point is that the people who are supposed to be following God, are wandering off on a tangent, and need to be brought back on task.

Consider Moses updating the message of Abraham.  Abraham was called and given a promise that his seed would be a blessing to the world.  There wasn’t much more at that time except the ritual of circumcision.  I would suggest that Abraham was aware of Noah and the basic expectations of what has come to be known as the seven laws of Noahide.  The problem emerged when the children of Israel moved to Egypt and spent 400 years.  During that time they became slaves and my theory is that they forgot all about the God of Israel.  Moses had his work cut out for him.  That is why God gave him the law.  There were the moral and theological aspects of the law such as are found in the Ten Commandments.  There were also instructions on how to live like civilized human beings such as the banning of marrying your sister and basic sanitation.  Consider the difference between Christian culture today and pagan culture when it comes to the value of human life.  The groundwork was laid in the law.  

The lessons of Moses were constantly ignored until you get to David and Solomon.  That brings us the teaching that is done in the Psalms and Proverbs.  David is constantly praising the law.  He refers to righteousness and the loving kindness of God.  He prepares the way for Solomon to build the temple.  People seem to need physical things and now they had a place to worship Yahweh.

After David you had Solomon who started well but degenerated back to the level of the Canaanites by the time he died.  The history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel is one failed king after another.  In the South with Judah you had a mixed bag but the general tenor seemed to be that the people were constantly going back to the pagan gods and rejecting the standards of God.  The message of the prophets was a constant attempt to get them back on track.  The captivity got them to focus but they turned to legalism and ritual rather than the living God who called them.

Then we have Jesus.  Note that Jesus said he did not come to destroy but to fulfill.  We hear that but we don’t understand what He was facing.  Judaism had become Rabbinical.  The Rabbis were very serious and disciplined but they were locked into the Talmud rather than the scripture.  The oral law was superior to the written law.  They knew what the law of Moses said.  They knew about David.  In spite of that they kept adding new nooses to the law by adding to the Talmud with their interpretations.  We see it today in the fact that practicing Jews reject the idea of a cheeseburger.  Why?  Because the Bible says not to cook a baby goat in its mother’s milk.  What does that have to do with a cheeseburger?  In reality nothing, but in Rabbinical Judaism, everything.  

Jesus called Israel back to God and claimed to be the Messiah who would fulfill the law and the prophets.  As a reward He was crucified.  The church was born on Pentecost and began the journey of faith again.  Then we come to Paul.

Consider Paul with his teaching on grace.  He wasn’t negating everything before that.  He did not come up with something totally new.  He was getting the church back on track.  There was almost immediately a trend back to embracing the law instead of living by faith.  A group of Christians called Judiasers were teaching that Gentiles needed to be circumcised.  If allowed to continue it would have expanded to the whole law again.  Paul and the others we have in the New Testament could not allow that.  They were refining, and focusing what it meant to believe, and the eternal God and His son Jesus.

And all of my prior teaching, he said, focused on the Resurrection, because without the resurrection everything was empty.  We are now on the other side of the cross, the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit.  We now have it all.  As the angry parent yelled to his rowdy children down stairs, “Don’t make me come down there again.”

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-327: Too Soon?

Has the Muslim invasion of Europe gotten serious too soon?

If you look historically at the times where Islam has tried to conquer Christendom you find that each time they’ve been backed by massive centralized governments with all the armies and resources that you can imagine.  In the West they when the French turned them back at the back of Tours an empire backed the armies of Islam.  They continued to fail as the Christian armies of northern Spain push them south back across the straits of Gibraltar.  In the East in the 1600s the armies of Islam tried to conquer Vienna and were turned back by the timely we arrival of the Polish Winged Hussars.  Again they had all of the resources of the Ottoman Empire at their beck and call and they still are not able to do it.  That was 1683.  Read that date again.  That was after the KJV was written, the Pilgrims and just before the Glorious Revolution in England.

The flames of conquest are being stoked again.  We see violence in France, Germany and other areas.  The rabble-rousers are pushing.  They are upping the ante and going for broke.  But is it too soon?

As far as I can see for all of their military might when it comes to bombing Israel there are no nations rooted in Islam that are strong enough to take on the countries of Europe.

I guess the real question would be, “Is Europe ready to surrender and be turned into a Muslim enclave or will there be enough people who refused to go along with that?”  Examine what’s happening in England.  The people are just rolling over and playing dead.  Will all of Europe follow their example?  Will the United States?

Interesting times.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-307: Die Heretic

“Die heretic” is the punch line of one of the great all-time jokes.  If you don’t know it, try to Google it and see what you can find.  It’s funny because it’s based on truth.  We are so quick to demonize others on small issues.  There was a time in history when being called a heretic carried the death penalty.

We are no longer in a time like that. Does that mean that we should be free to use the term again?  I think so.

Why was heresy considered such a serious problem and previous ages?  It’s because people actually believed that having the wrong theology could send you to eternal damnation.  It wasn’t just a laughing matter.  It wasn’t just a difference of opinion.  It was eternal.

And one of the reasons why you were serious about getting rid of people who taught false doctrine was that they had the potential of polluting your children and your descendants.  It wasn’t to defend you.  You recognized heresy when you saw it.  You could take care of yourself.  Your children, however, often go through those times when they are susceptible to false teachings, whether they be theological, political, economic, or history.  If you doubt that, take a look at the kids coming out of school today, who are taught to hate America and how terrible this country has been in history when that is the opposite of what they should be taught.  It’s not a laughing matter.

So I would be willing to start using the term heresy again.  I don’t know that I’m ready to start killing people over it.  Even in Bible times, the death penalty was not administered frequently.  But it would certainly lend credence to the seriousness of the issues.

There are other serious words that we need to get back into using.  Treason and traitor come to mind.  How about pervert?  How about liar?  How about lazy?  For that matter we even could start using the word riot again.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-303: Celebrity Quest

I just listened to a discussion between Michael Shellenberger and Zuby.  One of the topics that they discussed is one that I’m seeing more and more in the world of celebrities and scholars.  It is the show called Quest for Spirituality.  It’s never phrased as a return to the God of the Bible, or embracing Jesus, or becoming what God wants us to be.  It’s always phrased in general terms of “spirituality”.

Sometimes they will talk about how vital the cultural foundations of Christianity are to civilization.  Sounds serious.  What they leave out is the fact that Jesus is central to Christianity.  We’re watching a another case of redefining vocabulary.  For a long time we have talked about the materialistic world as opposed to the spiritual world of Christians.  Now the materialistic world is reaching out and embracing, or stealing, our concept of being spiritual and of the spiritual world.

Be aware.  Nothing is really changed.  What used to be called the materialistic world of the enlightenment was really a rejection of the things of God while embracing of the standards and values of Satan.  Satan is quite willing to disguise himself as an angel of light.  He is quite willing to co-opt a lot of the good things about our faith as long as he keeps people from embracing Jesus.

It’s still the same old story.  Anything but Jesus.  Anything but submission to the God of the universe.  Anything but removing us from being the center of our world and from thinking of ourselves as gods.  As long as we are at the center, Satan is happy.  He realizes that there are only two real choices.  We can introduce artificial ingredients, preservatives, GMO grains and all kinds of other things, but we never can get to the real thing because that would remove us from the center.  The Enlightenment was not about thinking, or being willing to consider facts.  The early scientists, who took us into the scientific revolution, were believers for the most part.  It was only when the culture of scholars rejected the centrality of God that the full enlightenment came on and started destroying western civilization.

Satan and his minions rejoice.  The answer to our problems is not celebrity spiritualization.  The answer is the same it has it is always been, submission to God and accepting Jesus as our savior.  It seems simplistic, but so is knowing which way to turn the faucet when you want the water to come out.

homo unius libri