The Rights Of Men

Quoting Mark Alexander:

On July 4th of 1776, our Founders, assembled as representatives to the Second Continental Congress, issued a declaration stating most notably: “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. … That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

In other words, our Founders affirmed that our rights, which are inherent by Natural Law as provided by our Creator, can’t be arbitrarily alienated by men like England’s King George III, who believed that the rights of men are the gifts of government.

Reagan On Our Gallant Veterans

Quoting President Ronald Reagan:

We’re gathered today, just as we have gathered before, to remember those who served, those who fought, and those who — those still missing, and those who gave their last full measure of devotion for our country. We’re gathered at a monument on which the names of our fallen friends and loved ones are engraved, and with crosses instead of diamonds beside them, the names of those whose fate we do not yet know. One of those who fell wrote, shortly before his death, these words: “Take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own. And take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.”

Well, today, Veterans Day, as we do every year, we take that moment to embrace the gentle heroes of Vietnam and of all our wars. We remember those who were called upon to give all a person can give, and we remember those who were prepared to make that sacrifice if it were demanded of them in the line of duty, though it never was. Most of all, we remember the devotion and gallantry with which all of them ennobled their nation as they became champions of a noble cause.

Confident In Future Grace

John Piper

From the pen of John Piper:

Grace is not only God’s disposition to do good for us when we don’t deserve it. It is an actual power from God that acts and makes good things happen in us and for us. For example, Paul says,

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10)

God’s grace was God’s acting in Paul to make Paul work hard. So when Paul says, “Work out your salvation,” he adds, “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). Grace is power from God to do good things in us and for us.

This grace is past and it is future. It is ever cascading over the infinitesimal waterfall of the present from the inexhaustible river of grace coming to us from the future into the ever-increasing reservoir of grace in the past. . . .

The proper response to grace you experienced in the past is gratitude, and the proper response to grace promised to you in the future is faith. We are thankful for past grace, and we are confident in future grace.

Continue reading. . . .

The Constitution And The Economy

Walter Williams

Quoting economist Walter E. Williams:

“Thinking about today’s massive deficits, we might ask: Where in the U.S. Constitution is Congress given the authority to do anything about the economy? Between 1787 and 1930, we have had both mild and severe economic downturns that have ranged from one to seven years. During that time there was no thought that Congress should enact New Deal legislation or stimulus packages along with massive corporate handouts. It took the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt administrations to massively intervene in the economy. As a result, they turned what might have been a two or three-year sharp downturn into a 16-year depression that ended in 1946. … Here’s my question: Were the presidents in office and congresses assembled from 1787 to 1930 ignorant of their constitutional authority to manage and save the economy?”

Read more. . . .

How To Overcome Temptation

Quoting columnist Cal Thomas:

“I once asked evangelist Billy Graham if he experienced temptations of the flesh when he was young. He said, ‘of course.’ How did he deal with them? With passion he responded, ‘I asked God to strike me dead before He ever allowed me to dishonor Him in that way.’ That is the kind of seriousness one needs to overcome the temptations of a corrupt culture in which shameful behavior is too often paraded in the streets.”

Life And Freedom

Patrick Henry

Quoting Patrick Henry:

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Fort Hood Soldiers Murdered By Political Correctness

It is very interesting to me that when the story of the Fort Hood massacre hit the major news outlets, it seemed that the primary goal of the mainstream media was to portray that the 13 dead and 30 wounded were victims of a poor guy who had a psychological break-down. We were told over and over that this incident had nothing to do with terrorism or radical Muslim beliefs.

Now we learn that coincidently he attended the very controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia (2001) at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists. The preacher at that time was Anwar al-Awlaki who has been accused of supporting attacks on British soldiers and encouraging terrorist organizations.

Col. Terry Lee, who worked with the killer, said Major Hasan had said, “Muslims shouldn’t be fighting Muslims.” Back in June, when a Muslim convert assassinated a U.S. soldier at a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas, Col. Lee said that Major Hasan seemed happy about the event and that he was confronted by other officers.

One psychiatrist recalled a lecture Hasan gave when he was a medical resident at Walter Reed. “It freaked them out.” These lectures are supposed to focus on a particular disease or disorder and recent research or treatment options. Instead, Hasan reportedly harangued the doctors and staff about what the Quran taught about non-believers going to hell, being scalded, beheaded, etc.

The evidence certainly indicates that Major Hasan was committed to radical Islam and growing increasingly hostile to the American military. People were increasingly aware of his ideology and yet he was not discharged from the military.

This was not a sudden psychological break-down. Hasan’s actions prior to Thursday demonstrate that he had thought this action through and made plans. Last Thursday, Major Hasan drove on to the base, smuggling with him two guns, a semi-automatic fn 5.7 millimetre known as a “cop killer”, and a revolver. He bought the fn 5.7 in August from the Guns Galore store in Killeen, across the street from the mosque.

Witnesses say he shouted “Allahu Akbar” — Allah is great! — before opening fire in the crowded building where troops were waiting to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, both wars that Hasan angrily opposed. “Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor,” he reportedly said earlier this year, referring to the U.S. — the country he swore to protect.

The politically correct mindset continues to ignore the nature of the enemy we are facing in radical Islam. It has infected and hindered the conduct of our military and intelligence agencies. If Major Hasan had not been protected as a Muslim by political correctness, he would already have been discharged from the military and this tragic event would never have taken place. Political correctness is self-deceiving and it is painfully obvious that our military leaders have been pressured to enforce political correctness to a greater degree than sound military procedures and discipline.

But, what should we expect? Common sense has been expelled from the halls of congress.

Apocalypse Fever

In the words of Gary DeMar:

“Charisma magazine provides news, analysis, prophetic commentary and teachings for charismatic and Pentecostal Christians.” Lee Grady, who came out of the Maranatha movement of the 1980s, is its editor. Since I don’t follow what goes on among charismatics, I can’t comment on all the diversity of opinion that’s in the movement, and there is a lot of it. . . .

Troy Anderson’s “Last Days Fever” in the October issue of Charisma [is] a good attempt at sorting out various views on the subject of the last days. Instead of promoting speculation regarding the last days, Anderson presents several opinions, even including preterism: “Peter Wagner, president of Global Harvest Ministries, is an adherent of partial preterism, believing most end-times prophecies were fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.” Wagner is the author of Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World published by Chosen Book in 2008. . . .

Continue reading. . . .

Spurgeon On Sovereign Grace

In the words of Charles H. Spurgeon:

“Oh, sovereign grace my heart subdue;

I would be led in triumph, too,

A willing captive of my Lord,

To sing the triumph of his Word”?

And have I not myself heard you say in your heart—”Jesus, Jesus, my whole trust Is in thee: I know that no righteousness of my own can save me, but only thou, O Christ—sink or swim, I cast myself on thee?” Oh, my brother, thou art drawn by the Father, for thou couldst not have come unless he had drawn thee. Sweet thought! And if he has drawn thee, dost thou know what is the delightful inference? Let me repeat one text, and may that comfort thee: “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” Yes, my poor weeping brother, inasmuch as thou art now coming to Christ, God has drawn thee; and inasmuch as he has drawn thee, it is a proof that he has loved thee from before the foundation of the world. Let thy heart leap within thee, thou art one of his. Thy name was written on the Saviour’s hands when they were nailed to the accursed tree. Thy name glitters on the breast-plate of the great High Priest to-day; ay, and it was there before the day-star knew its place, or planets ran their round. Rejoice in the Lord ye that have come to Christ, and shout for joy all ye that have been drawn of the Father. For this is your proof, your solemn testimony, that you from among men have been chosen in eternal election, and that you shall be kept by the power of God, through faith, unto the salvation which is ready to be revealed. (Sermon 182)

Oregon Refuses To Give Chemotherapy, But Offers Assisted Suicide Instead

It doesn’t take much for assisted suicide to go from a supposedly humane option to a cost-saving device, especially when the state is paying for the medical care. One patient in Oregon got a letter that made this all too clear. The same letter that rejected her request for life-extending chemotherapy, offered her “physician-aid-in-dying” instead. In other words, Oregon would rather see her die than try to give her a longer life.

Read more and see video. . . .

 

The Secret Life Of Christ

Andrew Murray

Quoting Andrew Murray:

You doubtless have never repented having come at His call. You experienced that His word was truth; all His promises He fulfilled; He made you partakers of the blessings and the joy of His love. Was not His welcome most hearty, His pardon full and free, His love most sweet and precious? You more than once, at your first coming to Him, had reason to say, “The half was not told me.”

And yet you have had to complain of disappointment: as time went on, your expectations were not realized. The blessings you once enjoyed were lost; the love and joy of your first meeting with your Savior, instead of deepening, have been faint and feeble. And often you have wondered what the reason could be, that with such a Savior, so mighty and so loving, your experience of salvation should not have been a fuller one (Abide in Christ, p. 11).

The New Testament scholar William Barclay reminds us that abiding is a relationship in which we have “constant contact” with Christ. He writes:

The secret of the life of Jesus was his contact with God; again and again he withdrew into a solitary place to meet him. We must keep contact with Jesus. We cannot do that unless we deliberately take steps to do it. . . For most us us, it will mean a constant contact with him. It will mean arranging life, arranging prayer, arranging silence in such a way that there is never a day when we give ourselves a chance to forget him.

Politics

Quoting British publisher and writer Ernest Benn (1875-1954):

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”

 

Keith Mathison’s Top Ten Books

Keith A. Mathison (M.A., Reformed Theological Seminary; Ph.D., Whitefield Theological Seminary) is dean of the Ligonier Academy of Biblical and Theological Studies and an associate editor of Tabletalk magazine at Ligonier Ministries. He is the author of Dispensationalism: Rightly Dividing the People of God?; Postmillennialism: An Eschatology of Hope; The Shape of Sola Scriptura; Given For You: Reclaiming Calvin’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper; and From Age to Age: The Unfolding of Biblical Eschatology. He is editor of When Shall These Things Be?: A Reformed Response to Hyper-Preterism and associate editor of The Reformation Study Bible.

1. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion.

2. Martin Luther - Commentary on Galatians.

3. Robert Bruce – The Mystery of the Lord’s Supper.

4. John Owen – The Mortification of Sin.

5. The Nicene Creed, The Chalcedonian Definition, and either The Three Forms of Unity or The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms.

6. F. F. Bruce – The Defense of the Gospel in the New Testament.

7. Geerhardus Vos – The Pauline Eschatology.

8. Neil Postman – Amusing Ourselves to Death.

9. J. R. R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings.

10. Although it’s not a book, I would encourage every Christian to read and re-read John Newton’s letter “On Controversy.”

Read more. . . .

Journalists Without Shame

From The Desk of Jim O’Neill:

[W]e simply must stop believing the misinformation, propaganda, misdirection, obfuscation and outright lies that the Far-Left has spread, and is currently spreading. I’ll give you a case in point.

The White House is currently spreading the lie that the only reason that any mention of “senior counseling” is in the Obama-Care bill, is because a Republican, Senator Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia), insisted on it. This is typical left-wing misdirection.

This is what Isakson himself, had to say about it, “The White House and others are merely attempting to deflect attention from the intense negativity caused by their unpopular policies. I never consulted with the White House in this process and had no role whatsoever in the House Democrats’ bill. . . .”

And how about the “doctor” at Representative Jackson Lee’s town hall meeting. You know Lee—the Congresswoman who, at one of her town hall meetings, chatted on her cellphone while a cancer survivor tried to speak to her.

It turns out that the “doctor” who praised Obama-Care at Lee’s town hall meeting, isn’t a doctor at all. She’s merely an o-bot for the Far-Left. Perhaps you’ve seen the picture of “doctor” Maria Isabel sitting at her Obama campaign desk, under a Che Guevara flag.

The point here, is that you absolutely, positively, unequivocally, cannot trust anything that comes from the Far-Left and/or the Obama Administration. They’re liars, and they have honed their skill at it to a fine sheen.

So why, you might ask, isn’t the MSM (main stream media) up in arms about any of this (we know why the ACLU doesn’t care). The answer, of course, is that they are for the most part indoctrinated obama-ites. They media might as well be wearing invisible WWOD (What Would Obama Do) bracelets—or more to the point: What Would Obama Have Us Do.

Most of those who ply the trade these days, are pitiful excuses for “journalists.” They have destroyed what was once a respected profession. “Finally…have you no shame!”

Continue reading. . . .

The Consequences Of Government-Controlled Medical Care

Thomas Sowell

From the Pen of Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell:

“Any serious discussion of government-run medical care would have to look at other countries where there is government-run medical care. As someone who has done some research on this for my book ‘Applied Economics,’ I can tell you that the actual consequences of government-controlled medical care is not a pretty picture, however inspiring the rhetoric that accompanies it. Thirty thousand Canadians are passing up free medical care at home to go to some other country where they have to pay for it. People don’t do that without a reason. But Canadians are better off than people in some other countries with government-controlled medical care, because they have the United States right next door, in case their medical problems get too serious to rely on their own system. But where are Americans to turn if we become like Canada? Where are we to go when we need better medical treatment than Washington bureaucrats will let us have? Mexico? The Caribbean?”

Obama’s “Science Fiction” Advisor

Written by Gary Bauer:

Many people are totally perplexed by the Obama Administration’s push to impose a massive “cap and trade” tax on energy production in the middle of a severe recession. By President Obama’s own admission, “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket.” Cap and trade will kill jobs in energy-intensive industries like manufacturing, hike consumer prices on virtually every product, and may well push America over the brink from recession to depression. Why are we doing this? It could well be that President Obama is acting in part on the recommendations of his science advisor, Dr. John Holdren.

CNSNews reports that during the 1970s Holdren was an advocate of “de-development”. What is “de-development”? It’s exactly what it sounds like – a radical idea to destroy America’s economy, especially its industrial base, via environmental regulation. These “progressives” literally wanted to take us backwards in time economically. Don’t believe me? Consider this passage from his book:

“The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided to every human being.”

He goes on to label certain technological advances as undesirable, things like “fission power, giant automobiles, plastic wrappings, genetic engineering, disposable packages and containers, synthetic pesticides…”, and adds that “the halcyon days of unquestioning public acceptance of technological ‘progress’ must disappear forever.”

In other words, capitalism is out; communism is in. Government bureaucrats and central planners will provide you a “decent life,” presumably with plenty of candles to light your hut. At least Holdren had enough common sense to understand that his workers’ paradise might present a major challenge to economists. That’s because centralized government planning doesn’t work. That’s why the Soviet Union no longer exists. I don’t want to try to recreate that failed experiment in socialism here.

The Obama Administration, with the support of most Democrats in Congress, is pushing a cap and trade scheme that will redistribute wealth through higher energy taxes on businesses and successful families and greatly facilitate the “de-development” of the United States.

Believe it or not, it gets worse. [Several] weeks ago I told you about Holdren’s support for “compulsory population control laws,” including “compulsory abortion.” Here’s more about his view of human life: “The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”

Did you catch that little nuance? In Holdren’s mind, a living baby “during the crucial early years after birth” is not yet fully human, but “will ultimately develop into a human being.” That kind of dehumanizing rationalization naturally leads one to support “compulsory abortion” and euthanasia. To the central planners, each life is not an asset, but rather a liability to Big Government’s bottom line. The passages in the ObamaCare bill about “end of life” counseling for our senior citizens could have been plagiarized from one Dr. Holdren’s books.

It’s shocking that this man survived the vetting process. Administration officials, including President Obama, should be forced to explain his appointment. Members of Congress should take every opportunity to put this man on the record about his beliefs. If Holdren does not repudiate his own writings, he should be forced to resign.

Divine Sovereignty

Quoting A. W. Pink:

It has been well said that “true worship is based upon recognized greatness, and greatness is superlatively seen in Sovereignty, and at no other footstool will men really worship.” In the presence of the Divine King upon His throne even the seraphim ‘veil their faces.’ Divine sovereignty is not the sovereignty of a tyrannical Despot, but the exercised pleasure of One who is infinitely wise and good! Because God is infinitely wise He cannot err, and because He is infinitely righteous He will not do wrong. Here then is the preciousness of this truth. The mere fact itself that God’s will is irresistible and irreversible fills me with fear, but once I realize that God wills only that which is good, my heart is made to rejoice. Here then is the final answer to the question (concerning our attitude toward God’s sovereignty)—What ought to be our attitude toward the sovereignty of God? The becoming attitude for us to take is that of godly fear, implicit obedience, and unreserved resignation and submission. But not only so: the recognition of the sovereignty of God, and the realization that the Sovereign Himself is my Father, ought to overwhelm the heart and cause me to bow before Him in adoring worship. At all times I must say, “Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight.”

The Act Of Achievement

Quoting novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand:

“Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution — or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.”

The Making Of A Christian Myth

Written by Joel McDurmon:

The quest to present Jesus Christ as anything other than what the apostolic tradition has always known Him to be began in the early Church era and has resurfaced many times throughout history. Every generation has had its eloquent unbelievers who lash out at Christ, and ours is no different. It should not surprise us, then, to see a rash of such books break out upon the face of popular religion in our time. The depraved heart cannot stand the idea of a sovereign God who created history, rules it, entered it Himself, conquered it from within, and will judge it at His own determined finale. Above all, pagans want to escape the idea of final judgment. So they look for a cover, an excuse, anything to justify their skeptical jihad. They need something to cover their sin; but the only cover man could ever muster was a fig leaf, and nothing has changed. So the books of excuses roll forth.

I have in my possession just such a book, this one entitled The Jesus Mysteries: Was the “Original Jesus” a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (from here on out TJM). From the fraudulent artifact on its cover to its lopsided bibliography, the book is a work of modern mythology. The authors attempt to persuade the reader that Christianity as we know it is nothing but the vestige of ancient pagan mysticism that has been shorn of all its magical value by the fossilizing power of the Roman Catholic Church. They argue (if what they do can be called argument) that Christianity originally developed from the ancient pagan mystery cults and that Jesus Christ probably never existed as an historical person, but as a legend and myth. Later Christians simply believed—ignorantly, the authors imply—that the hero figure of their myth actually did exist, die and rise again. According to the Freke-Gandy thesis, this naive group, whom they persistently label “literalists,” grew in power and influence until the true mystical Christians were pushed out and eventually stamped out by force. These ideas, of course, have been argued in detail since the nineteenth century. Despite the authors’ claim that they stand “boldly” against “taboo” and the “conditioning of our culture” (TJM, 2-3), they offer nothing cutting edge. Even their tilted rhetoric recalls the hauteur and nose-turning of Madame Blavatsky. Like all of its predecessors, TJM fits the pattern of all fig-leaf excuses: when it was first sewn together it created a big stir as the latest in atheistic and gnostic fashion; but the first stout wind of critical judgment exposed the lightweight sham.

Continue reading. . . .

Caging Christianity

Written by Gary DeMar:

There are numerous Christians who believe that a personal, private faith is all the gospel requires. Os Guinness described this as “The Private-Zoo Factor,” a religion that is caged so that it loses its wildness. When true Christianity is applied to any part of the world, it blossoms far more fully and colorfully than any other worldview. Contrary successful worldviews must borrow from the Christian worldview in order for them to work. When pagans stopped believing that they lived in “an enchanted forest” and that “glens and groves, rocks and streams are alive with spirits, sprites, demons” and “nature teems with sun gods, river goddesses, [and] astral deities,” at that moment the world and everything in it changed. Everything seemed possible within the boundaries of God’s Providence and law. A Christian worldview made science possible and civil government ministerial rather than messianic. Stanley Jaki, the author of numerous books on the relationship between Christianity and science, comments:

“Nothing irks the secular world so much as a hint, let alone a scholarly demonstration, that supernatural revelation, as registered in the Bible, is germane to science. Yet biblical revelation is not only germane to science—it made the only viable birth of science possible. That birth took place in a once-Christian West.”

Continue reading. . . .

Religion And The Government

Gouverneur Morris was a Revolutionary Officer, signer of the Constitution, Diplomat, and US Senator.

There must be religion. When that ligament is torn, society is disjointed and its members perish… [T]he most important of all lessons is the denunciation of ruin to every state that rejects the precepts of religion.

Your good morals in the army give me sincere pleasure as it hath long been my fixed opinion that virtue and religion are the great sources of human happiness. More especially is it necessary in your profession firmly to rely upon the God of Battles for His guardianship and protection in the dreadful hour of trial. But of all these things you will and I hope in the merciful Lord.

The Alternative To Tyranny

Quoting President Ronald Reagan:

“The Founding Fathers established a system which meant a radical break from that which preceded it. A written constitution would provide a permanent form of government, limited in scope, but effective in providing both liberty and order. Government was not to be a matter of self-appointed rulers, governing by whim or harsh ideology. It was not to be government by the strongest or for the few. Our principles were revolutionary. We began as a small, weak republic. But we survived. Our example inspired others, imperfectly at times, but it inspired them nevertheless. This constitutional republic, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, prospered and grew strong. To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world — nothing more and nothing less.”

Michael Horton And “The Gospel-Driven Life”

Reviewed by Nathan Pitchford:

What exactly is Christianity, and what are its proper and necessary effects on our daily lives? According to Horton, Christianity is not pietism, social activism, personal transformation, or religious experience, it is first and fundamentally gospel – “good news”. And really grasping that dramatically changes how we pursue the life of a Christian. What do people do when confronted with real news, that is really good? When the front page headlines announced “Victory in Europe” on May 8, 1945, people forgot themselves, embraced strangers for sheer joy, danced in the streets. They had been confronted by objectively true and external good news, and the effects were immediate and obvious. But Christianity, bringing the objectively true announcement of a historically-verifiable triumph over sin and Satan, is usually met with no such response. Why is this?

Horton’s response to this dilemma is sagacious, clear-sighted, and foundationally remedial. The basic problem of contemporary Christianity is that it is no longer defined by the objective gospel, which turns us away from ourselves to the Christ who really saves, but instead, in a myriad of ways, facilitates our natural bent to be “curved in on ourselves”. While touching upon the problems, which he has already diagnosed in more detail in his earlier book, Christless Christianity, he goes far beyond mere fault-finding, and serves up a well-thought-out and gospel-saturated cure.

Continue reading. . . .

We Need Christians With The Convictions Of The Reformation

Charles Spurgeon

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

Beware of a religion without holdfasts. But if I get a grip upon a doctrine they call me a bigot. Let them do so. Bigotry is a hateful thing, and yet that which is now abused as bigotry is a great virtue, and greatly needed in these frivolous times. I have been inclined lately to start a new denomination, and call it “the Church of the Bigoted.”

Everybody is getting to be so oily, so plastic, so untrue, that we need a race of hardshells to teach us how to believe. Those old-fashioned people who in former ages believed something and thought the opposite of it to be false, were truer folk, than the present timeservers. . . .

Yes, and as these gentlemen always find it unpleasant to be unpopular, they soften down the hard threatenings of Scripture as to the world to come, and put a color upon every doctrine to which worldly-wise men object.

The teachers of doubt are very doubtful teachers. A man must have something to hold to, or he will neither bless himself nor others. (Sermon: “Laying the Foundations”)

The Salem Witch Trials And Historical Perspective

From the pen of Dinesh D’Souza:

“And the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch burnings? Contemporary historians have now established that the horrific images of the Inquisitions are largely a myth concocted first by the political enemies of Spain-mainly English writers who shaped our American understanding of that event-and later by the political enemies of religion. Henry Kamen’s book The Spanish Inquisition is subtitled “A Historical Revision”, and it is a long book, because Kamen has a lot of revising to do. One of his chapters is called “Inventing the Inquisition.” He means that much of the modern stereotype of the Inquisition is essentially made up. How many people were executed for heresy by the Inquisition? Kamen estimates that it was around 2,000. These deaths are all tragic, but we must remember that they occurred over a period of 350 years. Religion-inspired killings simply cannot compete with the murders perpetrated by atheist regimes. Taken together, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch burnings killed approximately 200,000 people over a five-hundred year period. We have to recognize that atheist regimes have in a single century murdered more than one hundred million people.” (What’s So Great About Christianity)