Turning The Economic Crisis Into A Political Crisis

Karl Marx

Is there any difference between the following two quotes? “A new revolution is possible only in consequence of a new crisis,” and, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity.”

The only difference between the two statements is the person quoted. The first quote is from Karl Marx. The second quote is a recent statement by Rahm Emmanuel, the new White House Chief of Staff for President-elect Obama.

Think about it. The economy is tanking. Industries are on the verge of bankruptcy and the stock market is very unstable. Unemployment is also up. Yet, Rahm Emmanuel wants to use the crisis to experiment with doing things that could not be done except for the crisis. Karl Marx saw a crisis as an opportunity for political revolution in which the government seizes control of property and business. Emmanuel’s secular progressive friends see the economic crisis as an opportunity for government to expand its power and control over the economy. The end result is the same.

Governments have historically used a crisis to create a state of fear among the populace in order to deceive them into granting the government more power to save the helpless citizens from a perceived catastrophe. The current man-made global warming myth is a good example of this strategy. When enough environmental laws are passed, the end result will be control of the economy and a drastically reduced standard of living for the average American.

The instability of the stock market is due to the government’s interference in our economy with the bailout. This is the same Congress who helped create the crisis to begin with by forcing lenders to make bad loans to minorities who could not afford them. Investors are uncertain about how the government will interfere next. The best thing that Obama could do for our country right now is to announce to the country that taxes will not be raised on anyone and the bailout has gone as far as it will go and is now over.

Are 401(k)s In Danger From The New Administration?

Plans for a second multi-billion-dollar economic stimulus package will have to wait until the new president takes office in January. Congressional Democrats admit that current White House opposition leaves the proposed package dead in the water. Of course, since the last economic stimulus package had no real impact on the economy, there is no reason to believe that this new package will have any effect either. But rather than accepting the futility of a “bail ‘em all out” government, spendthrift liberals will simply wait for Barack’s coronation before throwing billions more taxpayer dollars down the rabbit hole.

The plan to redistribute wealth will not stop at the gates of the “rich,” a term that is being redefined downward with each passing week. Private retirement accounts are now in the crosshairs of liberal social engineers such as Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City, who proposed that the government confiscate 401(k)s, IRAs and other personal retirement accounts and convert them to so-called Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, which would supposedly earn a fixed three-percent annual rate of return. Ghilarducci admitted, though, that participants would not “earn a real three-percent return in perpetuity.”

Read more. . . .

Devotion To The Lord’s Cause By Charles H. Spurgeon

If we, as a church, do not continue to be as prayerful and as earnest as we have been, the Lord may justly make us like Shiloh, which he deserted, until it became a desolation where not one stone was left upon another. Nay, I venture to say, if we do not progress in earnestness; if you, my hearers, do not become more than ever devoted to the Lord’s cause; if there be not more and more of an earnest missionary spirit stirred up and nurtured among us, we may expect the Lord to turn away from us, and find another people who shall more worthily repay his favors. Who knoweth but ye may have come to the kingdom for such a time as this. Perhaps the Lord intends, by some of you, to save multitudes of souls, to stir up his Churches, and to awaken the slumbering spirit of religion. Will ye prove unworthy? Will ye say, “I pray thee have me excused.” Will ye not rather, in looking back upon the plentiful harvest of souls reaped in this place, consider that you are in debt to God, and therefore give to him the fullest consecration that believers can offer, because of the crowning mercies which we as a Church receive. “Thou crownest the year with thy goodness.” (Sermon, “Thanksgiving and Prayer”)

Do You Think To Repent In The Last Hour?

Quoting T. DeWitt Talmage

“Have you ever seen a man after living a life of sin and idleness worrying to repent in the last hour? I have seen that spectacle. If you had ever seen it you would not try to repeat it. Why, it is most inopportune. There is the physician standing with the medicine, and here is the lawyer standing with the half written will; and the bells of eternity are tolling at the passage of the soul from the body; and all the past is surging upon us, and all the future; and angels are flying through the room, and devils are plotting for the overthrow. The man is a fool who adjourns repentance until the death hour.” (Sermon, “The Question of Questions”)

A Song Written For A Calvinist Wife

Constitutional Limits

Quoting Walter E. Williams:

“If we don’t know the constitutional limits placed on Congress and the White House, politicians can do just about anything they wish to control our lives, from deciding what kind of light bulbs we can use to whether the government can take over our health care system or bailout failing businesses. We just think Congress can do anything upon which they can get a majority vote.”

General Robert E. Lee’s Call To Prayer

“Soldiers! We have sinned against Almighty God. We have forgotten his signal mercies, and have cultivated a revengeful, haughty, and boastful spirit. We have not remembered that the defenders of a just cause should be pure in His eyes; that “our times are in His Hands,” and we have relied too much on our own arms for the achievement of our independence. God is our only refuge and our strength. Let us humble ourselves before Him. Let us confess our many sins, and beseech Him to give us a higher courage, a purer patriotism, and more determined will; that He will convert the hearts of our enemies; that He will hasten the time when war, with its sorrows and sufferings, shall cease, and that He will give us a name and a place among the nations of the earth.” (August 13, 1863)

The Great Global Warming Deception

When science and politics mix, you have a right to be skeptical. The result is always a pseudo-science which reflects a philosophical view or social trend rather than legitimate science.

Quoting Walter E. Williams:

Americans have been rope-a-doped into believing that global warming is going to destroy our planet. Scientists who have been skeptical about manmade global warming have been called traitors. . . .

The global warming scare has provided a field day for politicians and others who wish to control our lives. After all, only the imagination limits the kind of laws and restrictions that can be written in the name of saving the planet. Recently, more and more scientists are summoning up the courage to speak out and present evidence against the global warming rope-a-dope. Atmospheric scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, “It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming. . . .”

Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an environmental physical chemist, said warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history … When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists. . . .”

Continue reading here. . . .

A New Year’s Devotion

Ray Stedman

“After this Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so he died, old and full of years.” (Job 42:16-17)

The book of Job ends on a note of contentment and peace. Job was probably about seventy when the book opens, so he is an old man. What a picture of peace, a contented man. God had greatly blessed him.

Before us stretches a new year, a new beginning. The old is past, put away forever. God invites us always to forget about all the distrust and fears, all the anxieties of the past, all the resentments we have been holding against others, all the grudges, all the criticisms–to put them away and begin again.

The question that hovers over us as we close this book (and I feel it deeply in my own heart) is, “On what basis am I going to live in this new year? Will it be on the old basis of it-all-depends-on-me, do-it-yourself goodness before God, trying my best to be pleasing to God and meaning it with all my heart but never realizing the depths of evil with which I have to deal?” Or will I accept the gift of God that is waiting for me every day, fresh from His hand, a gift of forgiveness, of righteousness already mine, of a relationship in which He is my dear Father and I am his cherished, beloved son, and in which I therefore have provided for me all I need, all day long, so that I may say no to evil and yes to truth and right?

Will it be on that basis? If it is, this will be a year in which my life will be characterized by peace, fragrance, and beauty. And so will yours. Or, if we insist on living it on the same old basis, we will find ourselves like these friends of Job, arousing the anger and the wrath of God. Though He is patient and merciful, our only escape will be to repent of our evil and rest upon the righteousness of our perfect substitute and return to God for the blessing that He is waiting to give. That is the choice before us, every one of us. How are we going to live in this new year?

Lord, thank You for this new year that lies before me. I choose You. I choose to depend on You, trust You, and accept from Your hand all that You would give me.

This daily devotion was inspired by one of Ray Stedman’s sermons. Please read “The New Beginning.”