Red Flag Warning: Response to Laura C Keeling’s poster about Jesus’ return

Some thoughts in response to Laura C. Keeling's Poster about Jesus' return show below.

General consideration. Typical straw man argument designed to generate a feeling of guilt by Christians.  All Christians eagerly await the return of Christ, but because all Christians hate brown-skinned, non-English speaking, Middle Eastern immigrants, all Christians thwarted Jesus’ return out of His fear of being crucified again by all of His followers.  The unthinking reader is to click ‘Like’ in agreement. Kind of like a universal public confession of sin. Painless and totally meaningless.

Hogwash. Here’s why Keeling’s missive is wrong:

1)   The moral condition of Jesus’ followers has no bearing on the second coming of Christ.  When the Father says it time, it will be done. Period.

2)   Having all followers of Jesus being sinless is not one of the prerequisites to his return.  Actually it’s impossible: For all have sinned. For all will sin. For all will keep right on sinning until the time of Jesus’ return.

3)   God does not change His mind.  Only on one occasion did God do an about face. This was in Exodus, when God decided to blot out the Jew due to their unbelief and start anew with Moses as his model. Moses begged God not to do so, and God relented from His wrath.

4)   God has made it quite plain that He hates those that worship a false god and idols. The Christian and Jewish God is not the same as the god of Islam.  As study of the Islamic god, Allah, would reveal this god has few of the character traits of God of the Bible.  Given that 99% of brown-skinned, non- English speaking, Middle Eastern Immigrants worship in the cult known as Islam to the extreme whereby the slightest negative word regarding their ‘prophet’ results in rioting and beheadings, no doubt God would hate this practice. He would love the people, but abhor their sin.

5)   Jesus was not crucified because of the color of His skin or inability to speak the common tongue of his day.  Those of His own ethnicity crucified him because His theology was radically different than the accepted view at the time. While radical, it still met every test of what it means to be a follower of the God of Abraham, Issac, Moses, David, Solomon, right down to Jesus himself.

6)   Hate is not necessarily a sin. It is how one hates and the action taken therein that may make it sinful.  From the NASB Exhaustive Concordance there are 93 instances of the use of the word “hate” within the Bible. Many of them are things that God specifically “hates”, therefore in general to hate something is not automatically a disqualifier for Jesus’ return, nor for His acceptance of a believer.

7)   Most followers of Jesus do not ‘hate’ brown-skinned, non-English speaking, and Middle Eastern immigrants. What they do ‘hate’ are the actions perpetrated by some brown-skinned, non-English speaking, Middle Eastern immigrants.  Further Christians should hate actions by any ethnic or nationality behaving savagely.  Christians should ‘hate’:

§  Peoples who perpetuate their religion or political theology at the point of a gun, who say, “convert or die”.

§  Peoples who persecute those who align with different views of religion and/or political thought.

§  Peoples who imprison in mass based on race, ethnicity, or political view.

§  Peoples who denigrate women and treat them as chattel.

§  Peoples who organize flash mobs for the purpose of sexually assaulting women.

§  Peoples who physically or sexually assault children.

§  Peoples who deny basic human rights to others different than themselves.

§  Peoples who standby while the above actions and others are perpetrated in the name of their religion or political belief.

§  Peoples whose barbarity is far beyond the pale of acceptable civilized behavior within the community of nations.

8)   Christians who hate these behaviors should use the Gospel of Jesus Christ to turn those who are willing away from such practices and embrace a theology more inline with the character of God the Father as revealed through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  Non-religionist can do likewise in adhering to the golden rule of treating all with respect just as they desire respect.

We are doomed to the future of our pasts and equally our future will become our past, until the Lord of time comes, when He shall make all time new.

Red Flag Warning: I was Wrong.

I was Wrong.

During the presidential election of 2012 the Watchman wrote a blog entry entitled What I see in Mitt that I don't see in Barack (10.19.12). It featured an assessment of the two men running for the highest elected office of our nation and the leader position that is the most powerful one in the world.  I wrote about those aspects of the two men, Mitt Romney and current President Obama, comparing their qualifications and most importantly a judgment as to their fitness for the presidency. My conclusion:

"Lastly, but not completely as I keep finding more about Romney that I admire and less from Obama, I see Romney as a man of faith.  I am not a Mormon, but I am aware of their disciplined lives and their single-minded faith that God is God of the universe and we all must await His judgment. I see Mitt as a humble man before his God. I don’t see that at all in Barack."

However, I was totally wrong. Way off base. As it turned out, with President Obama holding on to his office,  Mr. Romney whom I regarded the better candidate, retired from the field of campaign battle, defeated and slunk back into the shadows of life.  I felt then and recognize today Mr. Romney was the better man for the job, yet he lost.  As the Eagles so eloquently sang, "Get over it".

Yet I can not do so, as my words back then come back to haunt me. I had concluded President Obama did not have, nor display the high character required of a national leader set on the world stage.  That aspect of the conclusion was spot on.  Since January 2013, he has continued to lead at the lowest possible level of acceptance by any modern measure. Where I was wrong in my assessment was the degree of his lack of character. Off by an order or so of magnitude!

The negative evaluation of his lack of character can be summed up in his response to the death of Justice Scalia. His avoidance of the Justice's funeral expresses the callowness of his moral values. It places on display for the entire world just how vacuous his inner core values. Petty and shallow. His absence transcends the death of the Justice, when we should rightly honor the man's service with focused attention on his record, instead, just like a immature child who stamps their feet to get attention, the issue becomes about the absent President.

His action, sets in concrete the certainty his legacy of disdaining basic values of our nation. To honor those who serve, even though one might not agree with their position or opinions. But this is not the first sign of the President's disrespect for American values.  His abuse of the executive order process is a finger in your eye approach to governance. Instead of working with the congress to achieve his goals, he appears to enjoy issuing edicts to circumvent the laws of our nation.  His unilateral recognition of Cuba and renewal of relations with the unrepetant communist nation is a thumb of the nose to American policy and former Presidential leaders who stood for freedom and liberty.  The President's big announcement the United States will take in so called 'refugee' from the Middle East without at least discussing the action with congressional leaders displays his contempt for that body as well as for the States that will be burdened to execute the care and settlement of the refugees. Adding to these examples, we observe a President who enjoys the game of racial division, class warfare, and disrespect for those who serve in law enforcement.  And then there is his fantasy last budget, filled with big promises of wads of cash for his pet projects, most of whom have spectacularly failed in previous efforts, but did enrich his supporters, and adds still more mountains of debt upon the $19T our nation owes to others. A man of character would not demonstrate such attitudes or promote with fanfare his low class actions.

So with realization of error, should we not all examine our decision on electing such a flawed individual and vow not to do so again?  Think before you vote.

The Watchman

RED FLAG WARNING: Assessment and Predictions

Assessment and Predictions
M.R. Bradbury, The Watchman

It is the end of the first fifteen years of the new millennium.  The human condition remains about the same as when the clock ticked past twelve those fifteen years ago. We still have widespread poverty, hunger, greed, corruption, barbarity, and hate.  At the turn of the century there was hope that maybe, maybe, we’d passed into a new age. One that would usher in a global community where one man respected another and all would rise to meet the challenges confronting our world.  Alas, perhaps, it was but a misbegotten dream, a folly of hope, and blind ambivalence to the true dark nature that mankind still harbored deep within the realms of his soul.

I remember the night of Y2K.  My daughter and her husband came to our house in case the feared meltdown of the PC world actually came about.  We all stood outside and having previously procured some fine cigars and bourbon, we proceeded to watch the sky come alive with fireworks and the sounds of many pans being beaten with metal spoons as the time approached.  When the clock on the TV banged out the countdown we held our breath, clutched our drinks, and steeled ourselves for the TV to go black.  But nothing happened. The TV still blared out the Auld Lang Syne as always.  Relieved that we were not relegated to the 1800’s, we toasted the New Year and New Century.   Then we noticed the old dead pine tree in the yard behind our house had caught fire from fireworks.   Such a great metaphor for the next dozen or so years hence, the old burned away with nothing to replace it with.

I share that story in light that life and love continues onward for each individual and despite the ways and waves of the world, we tend to live as we always have depending on our own efforts at survival.  Looking at the past year with that perspective, not much really has happened to affect how most humans live out their daily lives.  This is very true for Americans.  We have continued in 2015 to rack up every higher amounts of material stuff, that we use occasionally, but not necessary for our survival.  The amount of waste still being generated by the average North American household, including from those of the so-called environmentally aware, is staggering.  Our, myself included, rate of consumption of every possible natural resource from Al to Zn and every compound imaginable can only be seen as catastrophic for the long term sustainability of Earth and our existence. 

In 2015 humans continued to kill one another.  And be not mistaken, it is not the guns, bombs, knives, clubs or whatever tool used that is the cause of these deaths, but the true source of motive remains the angry hearts of the Cains against the Ables.   Boiled down it still comes to the basic premise that came between two brothers; hatred generated by greed, envy, jealousy, and the need to be honored over another.  In this past year we have seen one Islamic group rise to commit horror upon horror, all in the name of their god, sadly expending their resources and energies in a level of barbaric savagery not witnessed since Nazis gassed and burned Jews or the rape of Nanking.  And in so doing, not one bit of improvement in the lives of their own people have occurred, still living in mud huts with poor sanitation and hunger lurking just at the doorway.  The community of free nations with the power to stop the savagery has done little to nothing.  And like a metastasized cancer, this barbarity is spreading abroad in other Muslim nations, where the Muslim majority hide fearfully in their homes while the beasts run wild to destroy and extort fealty to their illegitimate cause.   The civilized world ignores this plague to their peril. 

The year of 2015 also brought into focus the tyranny of thought.  Who would believe in a nation wrought from a revolution that resulted in the most free society in world history would have children begot who disavow the liberties that so many have died to protect?  The rise of ‘safe places’ within institutions of “higher learning”, where unpleasant thoughts can be filtered out and no one must critically think about contradictory theory from their own held misconceived ideas, is a display ignorance, superstition, and bears resemblance to the dark middle ages of Europe where true progressive thought was crushed by petty tyrants only desiring to protect their personal fiefdoms.  The irony of the ‘safe place’, totally missed by those who clamor for such protections, is there is no safe place. None. Zip. Nada.  The minute one exits the ‘safe place’ they will be bombarded with civilization’s crushing realities brought on by the intolerance of human against human.  And those who champion the ‘safe place’ where they segregate from the mainstream of society, only further isolate themselves from reality and thus limit their ability to affect the very change they desire.  The word engagement is lost on this generation. The new word is withdrawal. They are abandoning the quest for change and hermit like hiding away in a filtered, digital game unreality.  Such leads those with corrupt hearts left unchallenged to grow as tyrants.

Lastly, but not necessarily in any greater importance than the others listed above nor those not commented upon, we saw in 2015 the continued practice of infanticide through the abortion of human children.  Planned Parenthood alone proudly proclaimed to have murdered 323,999 infants. How honored they must feel at such a ghoulish feat.  We have in effect conducted a WWI each year since 1972 with the same economic and cultural impact that the war had on all nations involved at that time.  It is pretty safe to conclude given such on going rate, we, and those nations that practice abortion, will never economically recover nor ever gain the moral greatness they once experienced. 

In 2015 the climate change acceptors rallied to foist off their doomsday predictions of a 1.7 degree C (3.06^o F) (1) increase in global temperatures in 120 years from now.  Their view is nothing less than the catastrophic end of all living life on the planet should this increase come to pass.  The hysteria was ratcheted up to a foaming frenzy at the big Paris enclave of climate change worshipers.  The result was another, yet another, agreement that could not be seen for all the smoke and mirrors that reflected a big fat nothing.  The real message was from those who have to those who have not, and in the end greenhouse gases will continue to pour forth every bit as much as it has from day three.  The truly tragic aspect of this wasteful attack on the windmills of climate change is missing those environmental disasters that are here now and must be address since anyone of them could result in far greater destruction occurring before we reach 2136. Things like ocean pollution where trash islands as large as Texas float about diminishing the life giving UV light critical to plankton, the keystone source of food for all sea life; Water sanitation throughout the world; Elimination of disease bearing insects; Soil fertility to improve crop production; Cures and antidotes for HIV and a host of other terrifying human diseases. These and others are far greater threats now, today, to humanity than a slight temperature rise far into the future.  If these current challenges are not resolved now, there may well be no one around in 2136 to read the thermometer.

So what holds for 2016’s for citizens of the Earth?  Tragically, humanity will experience more of the same we’ve seen in 2015. We will still see brother against brother, nation against nation, and one civilization against others.  Instant communication will continue to stir the caldron of fear and envy, pitting humans against one another.  Instability in economic, politics, religion, scientific, and cultural affairs is rising globally.  It is as if the tinder is dried and primed for the spark to ignite an all consuming fire, sweeping the good along with the bad and only after it has raged to a smoldering remnant will we know peace once again.

For us in America, regardless of who wins or loses in the great presidential race, not much will change in our daily lives. Birth, taxes, and death will continue to be the order of life, with material accumulation and consumption dominating the years in between birth and death.

We no doubt will redouble our efforts to watch what we say lest some sensitive being is offended and we are ‘outed’ as some kind of disgusting dirty thing to be banished from society.  Feeding at the federal, state, and local trough will continue, unabated, with treats and freebies doled out to whomever is the winning side.  Americans will continue to squander its inheritance with nary a thought to tomorrow or even the next generation.  The multitude of special interests will selfishly fight for their slice with accusations and recriminations, growing more discordant, radical, ugly, and coarse with each volley.   We will find the perennial victim classes continue their efforts at dragging down all to their sniveling level, denying those who can critically think and therefore flourish remain well within the clan, daring not to go against the victim tide, lest they too be “outed” or ‘Tom’d”.

We will at a year from now still be scurrying about like frantic ants trying to buy, buy, buy, buy, and buy more and more and more.  All because we’ve become so big, so massive, so gargantuan of an all-consuming hive of sloth, addicted to the next technical gizmo that sucks down resources like a black hole.  Will anyone stop in the middle of the world's largest outdoor store and scream out, ‘When will it stop?”

Well it will. Just like a baseball that is thrown hard will speed toward its target until inertia fails against the pull of gravity and it hits the ground, so will our human systems ultimately crash.  Reality has this nasty habit of occasionally rearing its ugly head and crushing the dreamers and apathetic.  Since we continue to fail to learn the lessons of the past, not only are we doomed to repeat them, but with each cycle the process become more horrific, with outcomes that numb the human conscious. In 2016 we stand just at the very near edge of something like this occurring. The stars and planets seem to be aligning in such away that the history we have wanted to avoid repeating is about to dump us into the next do-loop. We will be sucked into the great abyss with the rest of the global community, to slosh around in the blood and gore until we too are spent.  Those that survive will say, ‘Never again’, as once was said in decades past, only to do so again and again.

However, there is one outlier that could change everything.  There does remain some reason to hope the future predicted will not come to pass, at least not yet.  Hope remains in Christ Jesus.  Despite the trials and travails being born by Christians around the globe, even in the face of on-going persecution there is light in the darkness.   It is the light of the faithful to pray and obey.  The prayers of the righteous avail much and so by the millions we pray for the staying of the hand of evil by the power of God.  We obey his call to pray unceasing for the least sheep of the pasture who are hungry, cold, unprotected, and wounded. We can pray for the peace of God to come upon those misled into evil, to sooth their savage souls and to turn their energies toward aiding their fellow citizens.  We can pray the eyes of those who are blinded by their ignorance and selfishness will see the light of what is right and true, then make their decisions based on righteousness.  And Christians must pray for courage to stand and be known for who we are, sinners saved by grace and blessed to share the good news of Christ’s offer of salvation, honored to help restore the greatness of our people, and by our action lead them from repression, through redemption, and to restoration. 

Unto The King!

(1) https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html

RED FLAG WARNING: Welcome To New America

Welcome To New America
By Mark R. Bradbury, The Watchman

It is has been 16 score and 19 years since the founding of our nation on July 4, 1776.  The men who met in Philadelphia's Independence Hall on those hot muggy May and June days could never have imagined how different the country they founded and pledged their sacred honor to would change in the intervening 339 years. Very much gone is their idea of liberty, justice, and the pursuit of happiness that once burned within their patriot souls.  The old America is gone. The New America has come.

What is this New America espousing so radically different than the Old?  First and foremost is the loss of liberty.  In the Old America, one could freely believe, as he or she desired as moved by their creator. Their faith led them to flee from the religious tyranny of Europe, to find safe haven in a new and challenging world.  Except for a very small minority, most faithful were tolerant, loving the sinner, but hating the sin, attempting to live within the broad bounds that God set for humans.  In the New America, all this has changed.  President Obama in his second inaugural address said, 

“Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way…” 

Today, in the New America, liberty means suppression.  Citizens of faith can no longer state in good conscious, that they cannot perform acts they consider to be antithetical to their faith values.  Rather, they are now forced by the long arm of the law to do that which offends their sincerely held faith values.   In the New America, the slightest sense of offense of one group is grounds for squashing the liberty of others. University speech codes and the plethora of victim identification courses crush objective discourse.  Many residents of New America do not want to hear/read words of an opposing paradigm, but only what tickles their own ears and makes them feel loved.  Thus the First Amendment's liberty of speech, religion, and press is nullified by political correctness run amuck.

The New America is experiencing rabid redistribution of wealth, from those who have to those who have not.  The Old America could not envision laws that dispensed with the rights of accused nor the taking of property as in the days of British Colonial Royal decrees.  As just one example, the New America has such a law, Civil Forfeiture Act, in which innocent citizens are deprived of trial, seizure of property, and must prove their innocence to a non-judicial IRS, a la the French approach to justice. Added to these egregious actions, the tax system created is used to perpetuate the division of classes in such a manner that one born at one level has little hope of rising to a higher level. And even more appalling, the system is set so as to ensure a lifetime of subservience to the state, else lose the 'support' needed for 'life'.  Old America rejoiced at John F. Kennedy’s call for patriotic service to the nation.  New America celebrates what can be gotten from the state. The Old America of self-determination is buried under the weight of the government handout in the New America. 

New America is for the here and now.  Consumption and lust for the material goods of what makes life good is the driving force behind the New America.  Rather than 'build' it our selves as of old, we just buy it from foreign nations, driving up our debt and in some cases enriching our enemies. In the Old America, the leaders of those times were fearful of national debt, as well as the sweet promise of easy credit. Rightfully so it now seems.  In the New America, citizens think nothing of buying stuff well beyond their need and simultaneously, and self-righteously, brag about their recycle tote they wheel out to the curb on trash days.  The Old America really did know how to 'make-do', 'reinvent', 'reuse', and dare we say, 'share'.  In the Old America, if a neighboring farmer's bailer broke down, he could count on help from the fellow down the road.  In the New America, we just go to the bank, take out an equity loan, and buy new equipment made in China.

In the New America, humor is thought to be a string of four letter words.  In the Old America there was Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Jack Parr, Jack Bennie, Lucile Ball, Carol Burnett, Tim Conway, Johnny Carson and so many other great, clean mouthed, and brilliant humorists.  The New America is a humorless society of cynical drones, addicted to their ipads, autos, and themselves. The jokes are dry and witless, couched in political correctness that stifles the laugh reflex.  The music is soulless as well. Rock and Country is gone with songs of superficial angst of a mean boyfriend, swinging around on a wrecking ball half naked, or consists of repetitious shuddering of poorly laid lyrics advocating hate or death to almost any authority.  The Old America was 'This Land is my Land', 'If I had a Hammer', 'My Coat of Many Colors',  'Okie From Muskogie', 'Why I Wear Black', 'Hello Trouble', 'Your Cheating Heart', 'He Stopped Loving Her Today', and hundreds of ballads about hardworking men and women who scratched out a living from the coal mines of Kentucky to the once vibrant fruit farms of California. Old America had a deep, earthy, soul.  New America is about as superficial as wet onion paper.

New America is not a pretty place, especially in the urban centers.  The New America says 'Why should I clean the mess around me. That's the government's job.'  The Old America took pride in doing things its self. It did not need government to clean up the trash in front of people's homes, they did so themselves. The Old America painted their homes and fixed their roofs, mowed their yards and if needed helped their neighbors.  In the New America, we hire it done. Need a green lawn, hire True-Green to spray chemicals every month. Hire a lawn care company to mow. Hire a painter to paint. Fake a claim for insurance to fix the roof and hire someone to do it for you.  In the New America we change data to fit our preconceived hypothesis of millionaire political-scientists who bluster impending climate doom.  In Old America, science upheld the integrity of data, sought real answers to real problems.  Old America solved complex challenges.  In New America when facts don’t fit the line, we simply ignore or change the facts. In New America words no longer mean what they mean, but what the elite want them to mean to fit the politically correct narrative.

In the New America, we want it now. We want it big. We want it better.  We want it safe.  In the New America we want no risks. In the old America we wanted liberty. So we took risks. We didn't take out wagon insurance before leaving Westport, Missouri on the Oregon Trail. We knew it would take months to arrive on the west coast and there was no guarantee we'd get there in one piece. In Old America the achievement was not placing a man on the moon, it was devising a way to get Apollo 13’s crew back with untried solutions and seat of the pants flying. In Old America, we wanted better, but willing to work for it our selves. We wanted more, but always willing to give. Big to the Old America was just enough to keep it simple and affordable. In Old America an open space concept was considered the great outdoors.  In New America open space is the view from a granite topped counter into the vaulted spacious living room with a fake fireplace, LCD TV, connected to the family room and wet bar, leading to the attached three car garage protecting autos mostly not made in America along with staggering debt payments for all the above.

In the Old America, we believed in our selves and our country. We knew we had warts, blemishes and hideous birthmarks. Things we're not always perfect with harmonious relations. But for the most part and for most Old American's we trusted one another and shared our hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow, both for our selves as well as our children and grandchildren. Dr. King gave us a vision of what could be, not the nightmare of what was past.  In the New America, we hardly lift our heads from the latest game app on our iPhone as the TV blares out a scene that our grandmothers would have blushed over. Restaurants are filled with families for a night out together, but each person self absorbed by their iPhone mobile FaceBook/Twitter action.  In New America we talk more and communicate less.   In the New America it is about ultra-sensitivity of person, correctness of speech, safety from uncomfortable truths, trigger words of implied micro-aggressions, and crippling narcissism where my right trumps your right, my hate trumps your hate. The Old America embraced tolerance and real innovative, critical, thinking. The New America asserts repression and ditches tried and true values.  

The Old America was Norman Rockwell. The New America is the Crucifix stuck in a mason jar of urine.  The Old America is dead and gone.  Welcome to New America. Enjoy, while it lasts.