RELIGION

I had been asked to address the opening day assembly of a local Christian School. I came out of the chute fast as I usually do, especially with young people. In this youth-culture where everything is “extreme” I want to make sure that the audience knows that it is ok to be extreme for Jesus. I spent nearly thirty years dealing with kids and have learned that the best way to keep their attention is to.......

We are in trouble in America because the pulpits have gone silent. There are several different reason why this has happened but the greatest lie has been that one’s religion has no place in politics. For most of us, our religion frames our worldview, the way we see the events around us, and because of the tyrannical courts and their misapplication of the First Amendment, Christians have been forced to keep their views locked up inside their “stained glass fortresses.”

Since 1999, the OIC (The Organization of the Islamic Conference) has been pushing with the U.N the ‘Defamation of Islam’ campaign. The OIC isn’t a small fry committee trying to be heard in the U.N., but is being pushed by the 57, Muslim nation members in it and reflects the Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which is only reflected by Sharia law. That is how they want human rights defined and filtered through, Sharia law.

A people without God have no spiritual discernment and therefore have no wisdom. We clamor after the academicians and the so-called super intelligent and think their works brilliant. Yet everything that they turn their hand to carries the seeds of our ultimate destruction. God has drawn a veil between their conceptions and the ultimate outcome of their mind creations. Since they believe that God is an imaginary being or a senile and benevolent oracular and that they are the ultimate intelligence, gods unto themselves, they tamper with that which has been designed by an unlimited spiritual mind; the mind that created the Universe and all that is in the Universe including the Earth and every living creature upon the Earth.

The question put before us is one that America has not had to deal with since our fore founders broke away from England over 232 years ago. At that time, they needed to decide how to rid themselves of a ruling tyrant and replace their oppression with a form of government that offered total freedoms for its people. They succeeded for a little while, but our American history is spotted with greed through the opening, closing and reopening of a central bank. Given our current events, we are now being thrust into a new frontier. Super-sized “big brother” is watching. Every part of our lifestyle is being examined, whether we know it or not. Supermarket cards track our buying activity, credit and debit cards track our spending habits, video cameras are tracking every movement we make. We are safe from no one.

How did we get where we are? As I write, it looks as if our next President could be a mulatto named Hussein, raised as a Muslim, most of whose family is Muslim – who says in one of his books that when the feces hit the fan he will side with Islam – a man who may not even be a natural born American, a man who may be bi-sexual, a man who could be a member of the Communist Party. That all this could happen so soon after Nine Eleven is stark proof that we are in the midst of a revolution that has driven us insane.

Judeo-Christian Values in America have a basis in the Declaration of Independence: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'' Since the pursuit of happiness, as Sigmund Freud surmised, is tied to human love and to creative work and play, the principles of American Judeo-Christian Values can rightly be summarized as the honoring of God-given Life, Liberty and Creativity. This seed of American social justice was then fleshed out in the U.S. Constitution through reason and common sense, unencumbered by the dysfunctional religious and secular traditions, and laws of Old Europe. Our founding fathers separated church from state, but they wisely did not separate God from state; they acknowledged God as the source of our rights, and, in fact, they were careful to place Biblical morality directly into our founding documents and laws, and into our values and culture precisely to help prevent a future of totalitarian or tyrannical rule in America.

This "Manifesto" is full of contradictions. While its authors claim to trust the Bible, they flout God's warnings. They claim to exclude no one, yet they redefine and "repudiate" fundamentalists. They claim to speak for themselves, but their message demands global transformation and prophesies disaster if not obeyed.. They claim to follow "the narrow way," but they call for a broad, interfaith "framework" (new rules) for participating in the "public square" without offending anyone. By whose authority did this Evangelical steering committee draft this new social contract? It's not Biblical! Though it tells us that the Gospel freed us from legalism, it imposes man's rules and restrictions on God's people! That's legalism!

Since when are pastors, seminary students and ministry leaders immune to the seductive and intoxicating words of false teachers? If swayed with unbiblical instruction, worldly philosophies and pragmatic principles, will they not pass them along to their unsuspecting brothers and sisters in Christ who trust them for solid scriptural guidance? Then what do you suppose happens when a concerned church member speaks up and challenges the erroneous teachings that are brought in from said leadership? Well, I can tell you that all too often they're accused of causing division and disunity in the fellowship by questioning the leadership's authority and wisdom and are promptly shown the door.

The question of how the world's political and religious communities would respond if suddenly faced with visitors from beyond is something world religions and even the US Government has studied. Paul Davies of The Atlantic Monthly wrote in 2003 that the discovery of even a single bacterium somewhere beyond Earth could force mankind to revise its understanding of who we are and where we fit into the cosmic scheme of things. Davies speculated that such a find could throw the human race into a spiritual identity crisis that could leave some gasping for faith in God.