"Freedom" in the U.S.? Don't Make Me Laugh!

by Al Benson Jr.

After the 9/11 debacle, (whoever was responsible for that) President Bush got on tv and said that the terrorists that did it hated us because of our freedoms. At that point my first thought was "what hogwash." And as the Bush administration went along after 9/11 they made more than sure that American citizens would never again be burdened with too much freedom and to do that they gave us the Patriot Act. It has gone downhill from there.

By the time our current commissar came along to inhabit the White (Red) House he had promised us that he would fundamentally "transform" the United States and would have the most "transparent" administration in history. This line didn't even deserve to be rated as hogwash--it was even below hogwash. I probably couldn't come up with a term for it that wouldn't get me shut down so I will leave it to your imaginations. Suffice it to say that I, long ago, had given up believing the political fertilizer slingers that assured us we were living in a "free country." I knew they were lying and so did they--but they did it with such a straight face that most folks, less suspicious than me, bought into it. The "land of the free and the home of the brave" has been transformed into the "land of the freeloader and the home of the brain-dead." And it hasn't been accidental. It's part of the agenda.

I've been waiting for the Christian Church to wake up and realize what has happened. Mostly, it ain't happening. Most Christians I've come across don't know and they don't want to know. After all, if you can't trust your government then who can you trust? That's their rationale. Anyone who tries to tell them, for their own good, what's going on is automatically a "conspiracy theorist" or a "right wing nut." They haven't got time to be bothered trying to defend their liberties so they can pass them along to their children and grandchildren. That's not important. Half of them, or more, feel that they will be "raptured" out of here before it gets real sticky and so they don't have to be bothered doing anything about our problems. The rest feel so strongly that the Lord is in control (which He is) that they don't have to be bothered doing anything to combat evil in the world--the Lord will take care of all that. They are just along for the spiritual ride. The Church has been lulled to sleep in the last 150 years, due to apostasy and planned neutralization. It once stood for something--now it falls for everything.

Just today I read an article by John Whitehead, from his web site entitled Kick Open the Doorway to Liberty: What Are We Waiting For?  It's in the commentary section of the Rutherford Institute web site.
Mr. Whitehead seems to feel the same frustration that I do about where the country is going and about the almost total lack of concern of most people.

Mr. Whitehead noted that: "Everything this nation once stood for is being turned on its head. Free speech, religious expression, privacy, due process, bodily integrity, the sanctity of human life, the sovereignty of the family...the right to self defense, protection against police abuses...private property, human rights--the very ideals that once made this nation great--have become casualties  of a politically correct, misguided, materialistic, amoral, militaristic culture." Again, this is NOT by accident. It's not just "happening." And he also says: "Why should we Americans have to put up with the government listening in on our phone calls, spying on our emails, subjecting us to roadside strip searches, and generally holding our freedoms hostage in exchange for some phantom promises of security?" Good question. But let's be realistic here. The promises of "security" (prisons are secure, too) are nothing more than a way to get Americans to surrender their God-given liberties without a fight. It's a lot less bloody if the government can convince people that it is "protecting" them instead of taking over their lives to fulfill the socialist agenda of the One World Government crowd in Washington and New York.

And if you think this isn't really happening, that it's not really that bad, take a look at a National Review article, (www.nationalreview.com) by Alec Torres for January 1, 2014. Mr. Torres wrote: "When President Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. was ranked the sixth freest economy. It is the only country in the world to have recorded a loss of economic freedom each of the past seven years.  Since 2006, the U.S. has 'suffered a dramatic decline of almost six points, with particularly large losses in property rights, freedom from corruption, and control of government spending,' according to the report. 'Substantial expansion in the size and scope of government, including through new and costly regulations in areas like finance and health care, has contributed significantly to the erosion of U.S. economic freedom. The growth of government has been accompanied by increasing cronyism that has undermined the rule of law and perceptions of fairness."

Now I don't always agree with all the National Review says, but in this case, Mr. Torres has nailed it pretty accurately. Your freedom and liberty and economic status had seriously deteriorated since the advent of the current Marxist regime with its promises of "transparency."

Although there are lots of folks who don't like what they see happening and are concerned by what has more and more become a rogue administration, their main response has been to gripe a little and that's it. Christians, in the main, don't have anymore of a clue than anyone else, and sad to say, lots of them don't want one. For them to realize what's going on would mean that they would have to, as Christians, take some responsibility to take a stand against the evil they see around them--and that's just too much trouble nowadays. Lots easier to tune in the upcoming "Reality" show and forget about the rest. Just "let George (or Barack) take care of it--which is just what they've done and now they don't like the results.

Mr. Whitehead, at the conclusion of his article asks: "Where are the Sons of Liberty, the Committees of Correspondence and the insistently courageous  city councils now, when they are crucially needed to bring back the Bill of Rights that protect every American against government tyranny worse than King George III's? Where are the citizens demanding that these doorways to liberty be opened? What are we waiting for?"

Well, Mr. Whitehead, what they are waiting for is the "rapture" to take them out of all this so they won't have to do any of the things you mention here, or else they are waiting for the Lord to do it all so they don't have to get involved and get their hands dirty. Either way, what we've mostly got here, not totally, but mostly, is a do nothing church that just can't be bothered and that doesn't want to believe it's as bad as some have told them. This country will probably be judged for their attitude, and that's not a pleasant thought.

Where Is the Church Headed Now—And should we resist the trip?

By Al Benson Jr.

Earlier this week someone sent me an article from Relevant Magazine entitled: The Presbyterian Church Votes to Recognize Same-Sex Marriage. The headline is slightly misleading because all Presbyterians have not voted to endorse or accept same-sex (sodomite) marriage. No doubt the “progressive Presbyterians” have accepted it, but us Neanderthals in many Presbyterian churches have not, and will not, in accordance with God’s Word, accept this.

Actually the article is referring to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or PCUSA as most of us call it.  This denomination has been drifting leftward by degrees for decades now and so such a move was not totally unexpected. According to the Relevant article: “While the office of the General Assembly is still awaiting official tallies, it appears that a majority of the 171 presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have approved a change to the current description of marriage in the PC (USA)’s Constitution.”

Unfortunately, the liberal Presbyterians are not the only ones in the church that are pushing this perversion. In another article on www.relevantmagazine.com  the headline reads: Rob Bell: The Church Is ‘Moments Away’ From Accepting Gay Marriage. The article went on to say: “He (Bell) went on to say the church was risking irrelevance by holding off on an embrace of gay marriage. ‘I think the culture is already there,’ he said. ‘And the church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from 2,000 years ago as their best defense…’.” Look at his last statement. Do you realize what he’s saying here? He’s calling into doubt what the New Testament has to say about marriage because it doesn’t seem “relevant” to him. Where does that put him in regard to the authority of Scripture? If he can dismiss the truth of Scripture that easily because it doesn’t conform to what the world believes, I would suggest that, in the long run, maybe he is irrelevant.

In another article on www.standupfortruth.com  Rob Bell is noted as part of the Emergent Church movement, which the article describes this way: “The Emergent Church movement is a progressive Christian movement that attempts to reduce or eliminate Christian doctrine in favor of experience and feelings. Most do not believe man can know what is absolute truth, and believe God must be experienced outside of traditional biblical doctrines.” This is just another version of “if it feels good do it.” No doctrine, no absolute truth, just experience and feeling. These people are the Transcendentalists of the 21^st century. Emerson and Thoreau would have loved them! The article notes some of the leaders of this movement—among whom are Rob Bell and Rick Warren (“whom many of these leaders point to as their inspiration for the Emergent Movement.”) Does this help you to understand why Warren’s name was linked with Obama’s during the 2008 presidential farce?

It would seem that the arrogance and egotism of some of these apostates (and that’s what they are) knows no ends. In a brief article on www.beginningandend.com  the following was noted: “In a stunning sign of the growing apostasy—the rise of the false church in Christianity that no longer treats the Bible as its final authority, Reverend Oliver White of Grace Community United Church,  came on the radio show of Fox News Host Sean Hannity to proclaim that Jesus Christ was ‘wrong’  on the issue of homosexuality and gay marriage. White, speaking for Jesus Christ, said, with respect to the issue of gay marriage no longer being a sin: ‘If Jesus were alive today, I think he would be more inclined to say: you know, I didn’t know it all’…” There’s a photo of Rev. White at the top of this article holding what appears to be a big Bible—but then, with Rev. White’s attitude toward Jesus, maybe it’s really an enlarged version of The Humanist Manifesto. Here’s a man who thinks he knows more than Jesus Christ. Another 21^st century Transcendentalist! Who says Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, and all the other unholy “isms” died in the 19^th century? Some of them may have taken a little breather, but they are back, alive and well today and their practitioners are back, fooling another generation of “useful idiots” who have never read their church history anymore than they have their American history and so they continue to make grandiose pronouncement while not knowing upside down from inside out.

You have to wonder why more preachers don’t stand up and expose this stuff. Too many have been bemused into a “all I’m called to do is to preach the gospel and I don’t want to get involved in politics” stance. This absolves them, so they think, from having to do anything about the abysmal spiritual condition of the church in our day. If they don’t know anything about any of it then they can’t deal with it, and so they continue on with a truncated version of John 3:16 and never, and I mean never, get beyond that. Nothing against John 3:16—it’s foundational, but if you never get past  the foundation then the house isn’t going to get built and you’ll live in the cellar forever. That’s one problem I have with the Scofield Bible Notes. They teach Christians to stay in the cellar because that’s all they will ever be.

Another problem for the cellar dwellers is the501c3 syndrome, which says that if any church, anywhere, makes even the remotest political statement about anything, then they will lose their tax exemption. Churches today are hide-bound by this and scared stiff to say anything that might “offend” the ruling elite and cost them their exemption. An article on www.hushmoney.org noted that “Churches were only added to section 501c3 of the tax code in 1954. We can thank Senator Lyndon B. Johnson for that.  Johnson was no ally of the church.  As part of his political agenda, Johnson had it in mind to silence the church and eliminate the significant influence the church had always had on shaping ‘public policy’…For a 501c3 church to openly speak out, or organize in opposition to, anything the government declares ‘legal’ even if it is immoral (e.g. abortion, homosexuality, etc.) that church will jeopardize its tax exempt status. The 501c3 has had a ‘chilling effect’ upon the free speech rights of the church.” The article noted that LBJ was a “shrewd and cunning politician who seemed to well-appreciate how easily many of the clergy would sell out.”

Now the IRS routinely warns churches during election years not to deal with where candidates stand on any issues and so the threat is always there.

So this seems to be where the church is headed—intimidated by the IRS, scared stiff of losing their tax exemptions, inundated with false preachers who tell us that sodomy and other related sins are okay and that we wont be “relevant” unless we dump biblical teaching and embrace all the latest perversions. Thank the Lord there are some churches that don’t buy into this bovine fertilizer, but there are too many that do. The pastors that promote this rank apostasy are leading their congregations astray and there doesn’t seem, in many cases, to be enough spiritual discernment among the congregants to grasp this.

At the risk of offending the current seekers of “relevance” I would go back and advocate what the Scripture says in 2^nd Corinthians 6:14-18 to Christians in our day. If you are in a church where this kind of thing is permitted or encouraged then separate yourself from that church and find one that believes in and trusts the Holy Scriptures. Staying in apostate congregations will do nothing more than make you “two-fold more the child of hell” than you were before. I can understand wanting to help and love sinners, but accepting their perversions as normal does not help them, in fact it may well do them eternal harm.