I could be REALLY, REALLY opening a can of worms here, but...............I like that!!Check out this article by Chuck Baldwin..........a snippet is here:
"A real Christian patriot would never allow his country to be taken over by a gaggle of elitist goons bent on stealing his liberties--including his religious liberties--without doing everything in his power to prevent it. A real Christian patriot is active, alert, engaged, zealous, and committed to preserving liberty."
What do you think? Does "anticipation of Christ's Second Coming excuse personal neglect, indifference, and downright laziness?" Or are them fightin' words?
z
48 comments:
This goes back to the old argument that if God didn't intend us to have free will, then how could anyone be held accountable for our sins?
Given that we do have free will, I suggest that the Almighty would require something of us.
Psalm 10:18...to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
Does "anticipation of Christ's Second Coming excuse personal neglect, indifference, and downright laziness?"
Absolutely not!
No man knows the day or the hour.
Furthermore, we are commanded to "be busy about the Lord's work" before He comes. TMW, I'm sure, can cite chapter and verse.
I've always thought that "anticipation of the second coming" is often an excuse to be as profligate as possible.
Never mind real problems the end is near.
"Never mind real problems the end is near."
We do address real problems: abortion, terrorism, liberals, feminists, you name it.
I look at the anticipation of the return of Christ in the way I would be looking for a visit from my Dad. He says in a general way when he was coming to visit and during this state of waiting I'm going about my business making sure and preparing for the time he gets here.
It's with that enthusiasm and zealousness I go about doing the Lord's work and all the while watching in expectation for His return. The work of a saint isn't finished until they have either passed away or the return of the Lord.
"I must work the work of Him while it is day; when night comes no man can work."
Blessings.
"A real Christian patriot is active, alert, engaged, zealous, and committed to preserving liberty."
These are the true fighting words.
It's what we leave our children and grandchildren that I think about most. And I fear for them. If we are good people and God fearing, how can we sit by and do nothing?
How can we accept that our children will look back and say, "why did they do nothing?" "Why didn't they fight back, resist?"
We are responsible for protecting liberty for our children. We are responsible for teaching them it is just and right to resist evil. Doing nothing is permission for evil to exist.
Pris
The Apostle Paul expected the return of Christ at any moment. What if he has stopped and just waited? As AOW says, we do not know the day not the hour and we are called to be busy about the Lord's work. For me , this would imply creating an environment which would provide the freedom of evangelizing the lost and caring for the weak of this world.
So, yeah, fighting words!
I'm not aware of Christians, real Christians (as opposed to "liberal" Christians or Christians in name only) being lazy about the situation in this country, or using prophecy to excuse it. I don't know who he has in mind.
"Real" Christians?
Who defines a "real Christian"? Seems it's something like "real American".
See that's the deal. That's why you are being marginalized. People get a little fed up with the arrogance.
"Now is the time to fight..." Patrick Henry.... a real Christian Patriot!...
The 'Black Regiment' (pastors) Patriots.. who signed the Declaration and were party to the Revolution...
I go with their example...
C-CS
CJ, you are correct there no such persons called lazy saints. That is an Oxy-moron, that's is if they are true saints of the Lord Jesus, and not just those people following for the fish and the loaves.
Blessings.
No, it's not like "real American," it's the difference between those who truly believe, truly have faith in Christ, truly follow the Bible, truly live for God, as opposed to those who live for this world while periodically warming a pew. Nothing arrogant about it. Lots that's arrogant about those who get "fed up" though.
Cj, "truly follow the Bible".
Right there you have an issue.
First, that's dogma and you can't present dogma as truth.
Second, by using "truly" you open it to definition and yours is simply not necessarily the "correct" version.
You are quick to judge and loathe to be judged.
Kevin, very interesting PSalm for this, particularly that it includes 'terror'...
Always...That's exactly right....'be busy' or something like that...Not 'roll over and play dead...' Plus witnessing should be in full swing these days. If people don't want it, don't accept it...FINE. Just to put out a kernel of ideas is a good idea,.
Ducky, Did you write this article? That's pretty much what he says. Try it...you'll find it interesting.
CJ! The truth is that MANY MANY Christians STAYED HOME FROM THE ELECTION saying that nothing we could do would matter, that the end is near, anyway, etc etc ..TRUST ME. Many of the blogs had statements like that, that's why I told you about them.
I.H.S...this whole article is geared toward Christians who feel the time's near and they are sitting down until it happens..
Ducky, the bible is DOGMA and can't be presented as TRUTH? Just what does the Pope base his liturgy on? What's he based ANYthing on!? He would probably be quite amazed to hear that.
"real Christian" is a kind of odd way of putting it and sets us up for comparison and belittlement, etc. And it shouldn't. Anyone who believes in the life of Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins and rose again, etc....is a Christian. Some Catholics even believe it......
Are you so averse to being called a REAL CHRISTIAN? Seems like it's almost distasteful to you usually...is that right?
Ducky, the definition of a 'real saint' i.e. christian; can't truly be defined in words but is in fact defined by the life an individual lives. The life of a saint is directed by the Spirit of God and that life will find it's place inside the scripture.
However, all this takes place at the regenerational stage of the individual, and unless a person is regenerated i.e. reborn; trying to find the words to define this life will fall upon ears like yours I'm afraid.
z, it's based on dogma. The faithful accept it as truth.
Rule 1: FAITH IS NOT A GUARANTEE
>>>CJ! The truth is that MANY MANY Christians STAYED HOME FROM THE ELECTION saying that nothing we could do would matter, that the end is near, anyway, etc etc ..TRUST ME. Many of the blogs had statements like that, that's why I told you about them.<<<
That is a foolish reason for staying away from the election if that truly was the reason for many. Apparently I wasn't following those blogs. A Christian should know that we are to hold the fort until Jesus comes back, not go to sleep on the job.
HOWEVER, SOME who didn't vote made that choice for a very different reason, that is, they couldn't in all good conscience vote for either party. A refusal to vote for a partial evil such as any acceptance at all of abortion or any compromise on any other of God's laws in this world is not a LAZY choice, and it has nothing to do with prophecy. And by the way, Alan Keyes, A CATHOLIC, DUCKY, made that choice.
Ducky, please explain, Rule1: Faith is not a guarantee.
Blessings.
Ducky, if the 'faithful' don't accept it as truth, and you apparently, don't....are they Christians? And then, how? I'm truly interested in your response.
Is there no definition of Christian, Ducky? If so, what would yours be?
CJ....some would say those who stayed home because they couldn't vote for 2 'evils' were not good stewards for not having stopped the worst evil in their minds....not weighing both and realizing the choices aren't good but there is one much less upstanding in the eyes of God...just thought I'd throw that out for discussion. Good Stewards, I'd have thought, make decisions that might not always be easy or fun or even seem right.
Simply this I.H.S. that we can't "know" the "truth" of a religious belief.
Someone said, a famous astronomer, I believe, that faith removes our condition from the realm of farce and gives it the grace of tragedy.
It's critically important and I wouldn't want to live without it but we can't ever fully understand the void.
But we need faith.
"Logic is doubtless unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who wants to go on living." -- Kafka
We also need faith.
Some do believe that it's right to vote for the lesser of two evils and if that's what their conscience dictates to them I'm not going to argue with it, I'm just going to say that others couldn't vote for the slightest concession to abortion on the basis of their conscience, and that's not a lazy choice.
hey duhkkky,
Rule 1: FAITH IS NOT A GUARANTEE
it's the evidence of things unseen
and as long as you're wishy washy about truth no one is safe
Ducky, I distrust the notion of faith in the abstract. Seems to me you have to say what the faith is IN or it is meaningless. Some people have faith in science for instance.
I don't believe that Ducky, I believe you can "know" the "truth".
John 8:31-32
Blessings.
CJ, I am a Slav.
You can't remove mysticism from our religion. It's in our DNA.
But it is a wildly different idea than belief.
You may believe in the scientific method as a guide to certain truths about the physical world but it isn't useful in say the matter of grace.
Me too, IHS. Faith IS the door to the truth if it is the right kind of faith.
Absolutely CJ, absolutely.
Ducky, there are many kinds of mysticism, even mysticism based on faith in God's gift of His Son for our salvation.
Your language is so abstract as to be meaningless I'm afraid. You still have to answer, "Faith in what?" And "Grace given by whom for what purpose?" Grace and faith aren't simply properties of the universe.
Well CJ, you aren't going to care for the answer but grace is the grace to persevere in the face of apparent nihilism.
Now the logical question would be how does that separate me from one of Samuel Beckett's characters.
Yeah, that's a hard one. Personally, I resolve it with a faith in the institution of the church and the gospel as guides to a kingdom that is grounded in community and not the Nietzschean alpha male.
A way out of the nihilism. A vision. It's a wonderful gift and I thank God for it.
It leads to a socialist view of the world and I offer no apologies.
It leads to a path out of the dilemma of Old Testament morality which is "act justly but you can pretty much do whatever you please to anyone outside the tribe".
I prefer to try to make the tribe larger because we aren't sufficiently evolved to be just to those who are "outside the tribe". The culturists don't like it? Tough, they are going to be the most difficult to integrate anyway.
I also put a great emphasis on the arts because they can move us beyond the limits of logic and "truth". Wittgenstein talked about "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." He meant that the arts are the way to get to that other side that is closed to logic and reason.
That's it in a nutshell. If you bothered to read it, thank you.
I.H.S. - A man came upon St. Francis hoeing his garden. He asked St.Francis what he would do if he knew the world would end tomorrow.
St. Francis replied: I would continue hoeing my garden.
I'd continue to work as well, Sue.
Blessings.
Just because one may be a Christian is no mandate to refuse to defend yourself or prepare for the future of your country. Freedom isn't free, to include the freedom of your speech, freedom to write as you please, freedom to defend yourself, freedom to keep your very own hallowed country safe.
BZ
"The Garden of Eros" by Oscar Wilde:
Methinks these new Actaeons boast too soon
That they have spied on beauty; what if we
Have analysed the rainbow, robbed the moon
Of her most ancient, chastest mystery,
Shall I, the last Endymion, lose all hope
Because rude eyes peer at my mistress through a telescope!
What profit if this scientific age
Burst through our gates with all its retinue
Of modern miracles! Can it assuage
One lover's breaking heart? what can it do
To make one life more beautiful, one day
More godlike in its period? but now the Age of Clay
Returns in horrid cycle, and the earth
Hath borne again a noisy progeny
Of ignorant Titans, whose ungodly birth
Hurls them against the august hierarchy
Which sat upon Olympus; to the Dust
They have appealed, and to that barren arbiter they must
Repair for judgment; let them, if they can,
From Natural Warfare and insensate Chance,
Create the new Ideal rule for man!
Methinks that was not my inheritance;
For I was nurtured otherwise, my soul
Passes from higher heights of life to a more supreme goal.
Lo! while we spake the earth did turn away
Her visage from the God, and Hecate's boat
Rose silver-laden, till the jealous day
Blew all its torches out: I did not note
The waning hours, to young Endymions
Time's palsied fingers count in vain his rosary of suns!
Interesting, Ducky, thanks for the thoughtful answer.
I see that you are using "grace" in more of a colloquial sense than the formal sense or Christian sense -- as an attribute of your own with no particular or no known source, or something like that.
". . . grace is the grace to persevere in the face of apparent nihilism."
So would I be right to say you feel your experience of reality would best be understood by philosophical nihilism, but that somehow in spite of that you have a sense that life is worth it anyway -- although you are hard pressed to say exactly what it is that gives you that sense?
"Now the logical question would be how does that separate me from one of Samuel Beckett's characters."
I'm not familiar enough with Beckett to know what you mean.
"Yeah, that's a hard one. Personally, I resolve it with a faith in the institution of the church and the gospel as guides to a kingdom that is grounded in community and not the Nietzschean alpha male."
So you are answering the nihilistic position you believe reality deserves, or the existential absurdity of life as experienced (since God died I believe is how that went), with an irrational clinging to something that gives you hope in this empty meaningless world? (Nietzsche's answer to the absurdity was the Ubermensch but you prefer the answer of a hope you can't find in reality but believe in implicitly or something like that?)
I'm just trying to grasp this because your language does remain quite abstract.
So,
"...faith in the institution of the church and the gospel as guides to a kingdom that is grounded in community ..." is your
"... way out of the nihilism. A vision. It's a wonderful gift and I thank God for it."
So now you are saying what your faith is in and it's the institution of the church and the gospel ... A blind faith then, in you know not quite what but it gives you a blind hope that things aren't quite as empty as they appear? It's hard to see what "the institution of the church" would offer you except perhaps as a symbol of something you don't quite grasp. And when you say "the gospel" I'm not really sure what that means to you. But then you do go on to say:
"It leads to a socialist view of the world and I offer no apologies."
So your faith in the church and the gospel leads to a socialist view of the world. Could you say how you derive that view from those two influences?
"It leads to a path out of the dilemma of Old Testament morality which is "act justly but you can pretty much do whatever you please to anyone outside the tribe"."
Hm. Well, that view of the Old Testament is seriously open to question but I don't want to follow too many rabbit trails here. Suffice it to say, I guess, that you object to something you think of as a self-centered tribal morality and you blame this on the Old Testament?
"I prefer to try to make the tribe larger because we aren't sufficiently evolved to be just to those who are "outside the tribe". The culturists don't like it? Tough, they are going to be the most difficult to integrate anyway."
You are a true one-worlder, and somehow all this is the result of your "faith in the institution of the church and the gospel" as you understand it, which you haven't really defined.
Perhaps your thinking is more widespread than I was aware and may explain why some at least are attracted to this idea.
"I also put a great emphasis on the arts because they can move us beyond the limits of logic and "truth". Wittgenstein talked about "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." He meant that the arts are the way to get to that other side that is closed to logic and reason."
This too is a matter of faith? What do you then find on that "other side?"
"That's it in a nutshell. If you bothered to read it, thank you."
Well, I did read it and tried to think about it and I do now know at least how you are using the terms faith and grace and they are very far from the Christian use of them. But otherwise I still don't really get it and it's nebulous enough that I can't really formulate a clear criticism either.
Except maybe to suggest that if you thought more about the consequences of some of what you believe, one-worldism and socialism for instance, you might come to a different conclusion than you do by accepting what your rather amorphous faith leads you to.
I was SO happy when I came to recognize that through the Christ of the Bible faith is a substantial thing that puts absolutely everything in real historical perspective, makes sense of human existence in a way philosophy never came close to.
"Just because one may be a Christian is no mandate to refuse to defend yourself or prepare for the future of your country."
Under some circumstances, following the teachings of Jesus, it may in fact be a command not to defend yourself, and to commit your country to His hand through prayer.
"Freedom isn't free, to include the freedom of your speech, freedom to write as you please, freedom to defend yourself, freedom to keep your very own hallowed country safe."
God blessed us with that kind of country. At some point it may be that normal human efforts are not equal to preserving it. We may have passed that point. The freedom is only given us while we live according to God's will and the nation has been leaving that for decades now. The only solution at this point is REPENTANCE and turning back to God. THEN we may have our country back. All the other efforts are likely to be in vain.
Follow Vera, mr. ducky, but never too closely.
This too is a matter of faith? What do you then find on that "other side?"
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God
Sue, excellent story to prove the point.
All great conversation and I hope to find the time to really get in there and digest it all...all of it. I will, later.
Thanks so much, I was hoping we'd all learn something about each others' faith through this piece. Well worth consideration, I think.
SUE...where is your blog? I missed it last night and again today. I'd be sorry if you've closed it.
OK Ducky, if I ask you to give your definition of God I know we'd just continue going around in circles, so End of Discussion.
z - Thanks for asking. It had been a year and my blog had a lot of original stuff, not discussion, and I felt I was not doing as well as the first nine months.
I am writing short stories and composing music to my poetry and needed the time. Not that I'm not spending the time otherwise reading blogs!
After that long 'Thomas Jefferson' post I wondered if a faith blog might be interesting - just to talk over individual faith.
CJ's last comment would be great to have on a faith blog - the definition of God.
I want to add to my other comment - we would discuss our faith, or lack of.
Sue, that could be very interesting... I know SEVERAL bloggers who'd enjoy that. Some have started faith blogs and haven't posted in a while. Perhaps they can contribute their thoughts in that way at your site.
I would welcome that.
I'm glad you're here, too, by the way.
CJ. Good luck. I've asked pointed questions of Ducky and got no response. He's smart and interesting, I wish he'd take the plunge and continue the discourse.
I've started and abandoned I don't know how many blogs myself. Even though I may pursue one for quite a while I never get to the point where I start inviting visitors. Sometimes a few materialize out of the cyber ether but that's about it.
I've closed a few but lately I decided I'm not going to do that, just leave them there because they represent a LOT of work. They're just going to sit there whether I post on them or not.
I've found many abandoned blogs like that on the internet, some intentionally so. Someone may leave a note saying the blog is full of information on such and such a topic and they're leaving it there while they go on to something else.
In my case it's not that intentional; probably multiple personalities and I just have to wait for the one that goes with that particular blog to show up again. :)
OK Ducky, if I ask you to give your definition of God I know we'd just continue going around in circles, so End of Discussion.
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Wise idea, a verbal definition is difficult to say the least.
One of the reasons we need other means.
I could define God sufficiently I believe, Ducky. One doesn't have to get into the ineffables to do that much, at least if you believe in God as He has revealed Himself in the Bible.
We are not to see what is in another man's heart. The Bible gives the guideline for what it takes to be a follower of Christ, not Chuck Baldwin.
I think I might have missed the point. I do have relatives who take the attitude...why worry? we know who has won the real victory in the end. Yes, we do. But like many of you have said, no man knows the day nor the hour when Christ will return.
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