[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2uAYBOCAUQ&w=420&h=315]
By Daniel Downs
Jesus is risen!
Today, Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the Jew. The celebrants rejoice in his victory over the consequences of sin, which is death. For first century Christians, this fact was cause for hope for eternal life, and it is still cause for the same hope now.
But, what is life? Surely, it is more than bodily functions such as breathing, thinking, going here and there… In the book of Acts, the author recounts a forty-day period during which time Jesus renewed his relationships with disciples, family and others. Acts also presents an eyewitness account of Jesus’ ascension to heaven. His resurrection and ascension depicts the ultimate restoration of Jesus relationship with God.
Being redemptive, Easter is a celebration of the restoration of our relationship with God through Christ Jesus.
The first chapters of Genesis show us that a human relationship with God was the divine intention of the Creator. Because humans were created in the likeness of God, we have the capacity such a relationship. Genesis goes to depict the reason for human existence. In sum, we exist to serve the Creator by overseeing nature, which implies partnerships with other humans. When natural and holy, these relationships accomplish God’s purposes. For example, the family serves the need its members, establishes and perpetuated human society, and thus fulfills part of the divine plan. Economy and education actually are both natural products of inter- and intra-family relations. However, the complexity of the web of societal institutions creates the artificial need for governmental services beyond the basics. Government is composed of representatives of all related families of a given society, and those representatives serve to fulfill common need of all families. The common and basic needs include protecting the lives and property of those served.
A paternal government cannot exist when families are fulfilling their created functions and roles. Oppressive governments exist as a result of the death of moral relationships. Divorce is the result of moral crimes, and moral crime ends in alienation and death. The artificiality of modern institutionalized society is a major contributor to the alienation and death in society, its families, and the moral decline that produces it. Mutually beneficial godly relationships are the essence life now and forever.
America certainly needs a resurrection that only God and Jesus can perform.
Tagged America, Easter, God, Jesus Christ, purpose of life, relationships, resurrection.family
By Daniel Downs
An excellent editorial was published in yesterday’s edition of the Guardian, a U.K. newspaper. The editor shows how the short story Christ in Concrete relates the Good Friday story to past and present sacrifice of individuals that altered human history. The story was a thinly veiled account of the life and death of Italian-American writer Pietro di Danato’s father Geremio, who was an underpaid brick layer. Peitro likened his father life and work-related death on Good Friday to the Via Delarosa of Christ and his selfless suffering as a result of mindless capitalism. Christ in Concrete shifted the American mood, and Geremio’s death counts among those that have, to one extent or another, altered history.
The editor also mentioned the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc who burned himself to death protesting against the South Vietnamese government’s terrible treatment of fellow Buddhists. His death sparked a movement among the South Vietnamese people that resulted in the fall of the Ngo Dinh Diem’s government.
The editor is right the sacrifices of those men and of men like Jan Palach in Czechoslovokia in 1969 or Mohamed Bouazizzi in Tunisia in 2010 cannot be compared to the sacrifices of lives in Jihad.
They cannot even be compared to the sacrifices farmers, parents, spouses who sacrificed their lives so that their loved ones would survive the end of their life of farming. In the 1980s, Federal Reserve induced inflation caused many rural bank defaults and interest rates of agricultural loans to skyrocket. Farm loans encouraged by rural farm lenders has to be called in. Of course, most farmers couldn’t pay, resulting in bankruptcy. What urban bankers, investors and politicians didn’t realize was that farming is life to generational farm families. The end of farming meant the end of life. As a result, many unusual accidents occurred killing the head of the bankrupt farms. The benefit was the large insurance claims were be paid to their surviving spouses and children.
“The insecure economic world in which Geremio lived – and died – is back with us again, after a half century during which we thought we had made its return impossible. Our leaders, and those who influence them, are not malign. But they are inept, and they seem often to be uncaring.”
What the editor failed to mentioned is that Jesus Christ lived in a world dominated by the same kind of leaders who produced economic conditions that impoverished masses in Israel, Asia, Europe, and the rest of the world they controlled. The difference between Jesus’ death and those mentioned in the editorial is this: The sacrifice of the lives mentioned in editorial produced freedom and justice in their nations for a season, but Jesus’ sacrifice secured life for all people in all nations forever. The death and resurrection of Christ is source of the freedom enjoyed by West still today.
We fail to return to the source of our freedom at our own peril.
(The eidtorial can be read at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/06/good-friday-when-line-is-crossed.
By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger
Passover, and especially the legacy of Moses and the Exodus, has been part of the American story since the seventeenth century, inspiring the American pursuit of liberty, justice and morality.
The special role played by Passover – and the Bible – in shaping the American state of mind constitutes the foundation of the unique relations between the American People and the Jewish State. As important as are the current mutual threats and interests between the US and Israel, the bedrock of the unbreakable US-Israel alliance are permanent values, principles and legacies, such as Passover.
In 1620 and 1630, William Bradford and John Winthrop delivered sermons on the “Mayflower” and “Arbella,” referring to the deliverance from “modern day Egypt and Pharaoh,” to “the crossing of the modern day Red Sea” and to New Zion/Canaan as the destination of the Pilgrims on board.
In 1776, Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense (which cemented public support for the revolution), referred to King George as the “hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh.” Upon declaration of independence, Benjamin Franklin, the most secular Founding Father, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second third American Presidents, proposed a Passover theme for the official US seal: the Pillar of Fire leading Moses and the Israelites through the Red Sea, while Pharaoh’s chariots drown in the Sea. The inscription on the seal was supposed to be: “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God,” framing the rebellion against the British monarchy as principle-driven. The lessons of the Jewish deliverance from Egyptian bondage reverberated thunderously among the Rebels, who considered the thirteen colonies to be “the modern day Twelve Tribes.”
The 19th century Abolitionists, and the Civil Rights movement from the 1940s to the 1970s, were inspired by the ethos of the Exodus and by the Bible’s opposition to slavery. In the 1830s, the Liberty Bell, an icon of American independence, was adopted by the Abolitionists, due to its Exodus-inspired inscription: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10). Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), and her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe (“The Little Rabbi”) were scholars of the Bible and the Exodus. Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery in 1849 and freed Black slaves on the Underground Railroad, earned the name “Moses.” The 1879/80 Black slaves who ran away to Kansas were called “the Exodusters.” The most famous spiritual, “Go Down, Moses” was considered the National Anthem of Black slaves.
In 1865, following the murder of President Lincoln, most eulogies compared him to Moses. Just like Moses, Lincoln liberated slaves, but was stopped short of the Promised Land. France paid tribute to the martyred Lincoln by erecting the Statue of Liberty, featuring rays of sun and a tablet, just like the glaring Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the Two Tablets of the Ten Commandments.
In 1954, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. compared the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to desegregate public schools to the parting of the Red Sea. In 1964, upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King proclaimed: “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself. The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court centuries ago and cried, ‘Let my people go.’”
President Reagan mentioned (Reagan at Westminster, 2010) Exodus as the first incident in a long line of Western resistance to tyranny: “Since the exodus from Egypt, historians have written of those who sacrificed and struggled for freedom – the stand at Thermopylae, the revolt of Spartacus, the storming of the Bastille, the Warsaw uprising in World War II.”
In July, 2003, President Bush stated, in Senegal, that “in America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt, and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom.”
In March, 2007, President Obama said in Selma, Alabama that the civil rights pioneers were the “Moses generation” and he was part of the “Joshua generation” that would “find our way across the river.”
In 2012, the statue of Moses stares at the Speaker of the House, another statue of Moses towers above the seats of the Supreme Court Justices, a Ten Commandment monument sits on the ground of the Texas State Capitol and a similar monument will be shortly erected on the ground of the Oklahoma State Capitol.
In 2012, the leader of the Free World and its sole soul ally in the Middle East, Israel, are facing the most lethal threat to liberty since 1945 – conventional and non-conventional Islamic terrorism. Adherence to the legacy of Passover, marshaling the conviction-driven leadership of Moses, and demonstrating the Joshua and Caleb courage and defiance of odds, will once again facilitate the victory of liberty over tyranny.
Yoram Ettinmger was Israeli Ambassador to U.S. state governments. He is current the executive director of a U.S-Israel Initiative called Second Thoughts. This article was originally published in the Israeli newletter Hayom Israel on March 30, 2012.
Tagged American history, Exodus, freedom, higher law, Passover
By ICEJ
This is an unusual year… The Feast of Passover in Israel begins this coming weekend as Christians in the Western nations gather to celebrate Easter. The two holidays seldom coincide, but their significance is closely intertwined.
As we celebrate Easter this year, we should not only be enriched by the clear connection with Passover, but we should also remember the debt we owe to the Jewish people for giving us the Word of God, the roots of our faith, and most importantly our Messiah, Jesus Christ.
Here is an important truth… God has given us the opportunity to come into relationship with the Living God through Jesus and enjoy eternal life. While salvation first came to the Jews, we as Gentiles have been grafted in so that we can partake of Christ’s blessings.
Source: From an email by ICEJ (International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, Israel) on April 3, 2012. To learn more about ICEJ’s work in Israel, go to http://www.icej.org.
Posted in religion
Tagged deliverance, Easter, God, International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, Jesus, Passover
(El Paso, Texas) — In a letter to school officials at Bowie High School, which has come under fire recently for its tradition of having a pastor lead the football team in a pre-game prayer, John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, cautioned Bowie’s principal against ending all prayers before football games, particularly student-led prayers. As Whitehead pointed out, although the Establishment Clause limits government-sponsored religious speech, the First Amendment still fully protects student-led religious speech.
“Too often, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is erroneously interpreted to mean freedom from religion, rather than freedom of religion,” said attorney Whitehead. “Those who subscribe to the notion that society should be free from religion tend to use the principle of a separation of church and state as a bludgeon to eradicate religion from the public sphere. On the other side are those, like The Rutherford Institute, who believe that the First Amendment provides for freedom of religion and that the so-called ‘wall of separation between Church and State’—a term coined by Thomas Jefferson—was intended to refer to a wall placed around the church in order to protect it from any government interference with its rights to religious freedom.”
School officials at Bowie High School, which is part of the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD), recently received a threatening letter from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based organization claiming “to promote the constitutional principle of separation of state and church.” The group threatened Bowie with legal action unless the school ceases its practice of having a local pastor lead the football team in a pre-game prayer. The letter was reportedly prompted by a complaint arising over a 2010 YouTube video showing the Bowie High School football team in prayer.
Asked to weigh in on the matter by members of the community, constitutional attorney John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute wrote a letter to Bowie High School’s principal, Dr. Jesus Chavez, explaining that while it is not easy navigating the waters between the First Amendment’s Free Speech/Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, there are still viable options available to those who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights within the schoolhouse gates. In making his case for the legality of student-led prayers, Whitehead pointed to U. S. Supreme Court jurisprudence, as well as guidelines from the Department of Education on “Prayer in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools.” Quoting the Supreme Court’s ruling in Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, Whitehead noted that”nothing in the Constitution prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying at any time before, during, or after the schoolday.”
By Gene Mills
Gov. Bobby Jindal released the details of what the Wall Street Journal has called “the most significant and sweeping education reform in American history.”
The Constitutional charge answered in the Gov. Jindal Education Reform revisits the original goal of public education enumerated in Article 8 of the Louisiana Constitution: “The goal of the public educational system is to provide learning environments and experiences, at all stages of human development, that are humane, just, and designed to promote excellence in order that every individual may be afforded an equal opportunity to develop to his full potential.”
The moral imperative “to train a child in the way he should go” is respected in Gov. Jindal’s Education Package and answers, in part, the injustice of unequal opportunities. Dr. Wayne Grudem in Politics According to the Bible called “the permanent economic underclass, created by a lack of educational skills resulting in reduced earning capacity for life”—one of the greatest moral issues of our day!
Today, Louisiana spends $3.41 billion dollars on K-12 education, local government throws in another $2.5 billion and the Federal government adds to that equation with over $2 billion more. That’s nearly $9 billion spent annually to “educate” roughly 700,000 children, achieving the unfortunate 2011 ALEC national ranking of 49th in Achievement/Performance.
Gov. Jindal’s reform only addresses roughly $1 billion of the MFP that is directed toward currently failing schools. Forty-four percent of Louisiana public schools have received a D or F letter grade by operating a school where two-thirds of their students are at or below grade level.
To be certain, the breakdown of the traditional family is central to the educational predicament that Louisiana schools find themselves in. Reconciliation of the parent-child relationship, especially with regard to the “educational, moral, ethical, and religious training…and the discipline of the child” is foundational to any long-term solution.
For decades, educators of all varieties have heralded the need to involve and engage parents in their children’s education. Gov. Jindal’s Education Package finally proposes just that and more efficiently than any reform currently proposed.
Some voices, such as Melissa Flournoy of LA Budget Project, have echoed opposition. Central to their argument is the mistaken belief that “public financing of private education requires ‘accountability and testing’ similar to that which burdens the public system.” On the surface, that cry appears reasonable, but opposition and appearances are designed to redirect.
Accountability does exist in private sector education though: Parents decide success and failure in private education, and parents exercise their God given authority to direct the educational options for their child rather than an unrelated third party “expert” who specializes in systems. According to Gov. Jindal’s proposal, testing requirements exist too. Students who receive the scholarship program will be subject to the same LEAP test previous counterparts are subject to. The separation of children from state control is central to the individual success and the brilliance behind Gov. Jindal’s proposal!
Missing from the calls for “private–school accountability” is the moral reason why we are having this debate–the chronic failure of the current education system to fulfill its constitutional and moral responsibility to Louisiana children. Private education does not share its public counterpart’s history of decades of public funding, or perpetual shortfall. In fact, when a private school fails, it quickly liquidates and goes out of business.
When a public school fails, it gets a letter grade, a very recent development, a four- year grace period and time to organize its lobby, unions and some employees to obscure the “facts of their failure.” Unfortunately, when a school fails, the taxpayers don’t get a refund, parents don’t get zip code restrictions lifted, and the children still earn a 180-day sentence to keep appearing at their “failing” school.
I am of the impression that the cries for accountability and testing are a “poison pill” designed to cripple the Jindal education reform package. No church-run school would or should adopt the onerous and unproductive edicts, mandates, standards, test, philosophies, fees or red tape that so-called “accountability” imposes.
At worst this package of bills to some “big government bureaucrats” is a unique opportunity to pull a “hostile takeover” of religious and private education. The cry for “accountability” is misdirected. It is designed to stop “choice” or takeover private schools, but neither objective will receive the support of Louisiana’s faith community.
Gov. Jindal’s fact sheet spells out his plan. Lawmakers will be asked to consider the children not the systems of old.
Gov. Jindal’s education plan is deserving of our support. It’s time for the opposition to stand down while parents, pastors and principled policy makers fix this mess.
Gene Mills is president of Louisiana Family Forum, an organization committed to defending faith, freedom and the traditional family in the great state of Louisiana.
According to a report in Haaretz (February 29), “Police suspect that a group of ultra-Orthodox men brutally attacked a 70-year-old woman in her home in Jerusalem’s Nahlaot neighborhood on Monday, apparently believing her to be a Christian missionary. The victim spoke to Haaretz from Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Kerem, last night. She said that her attackers accused her of hosting secular, non-Jewish women in her home. The incident occurred on Monday evening around 9 P.M. A number of men in ultra-Orthodox garb forced their way into the woman’s apartment in the Haredi neighborhood. They tied the woman’s arms and then punched her on her body. The victim said the beating lasted half an hour, and that the intruders also vandalized her home before disappearing. She said the men stole her cell phone and computer. The woman, who lives alone, was left on the floor with a broken ankle, a shattered and bleeding hand, a swollen face and internal bleeding. The victim said that, just before the attackers started to pound her, they accused her of hosting secular women. She said that she holds such meetings to teach these women about Judaism. ‘I try to move them closer to Judaism,’ she explained yesterday. ‘The house looked as though there had been a pogrom in it,’ said Nahum Bernstein, a volunteer police worker who was one of the first on the scene. ‘It was shocking. We found an elderly woman tied on the floor, with bruises on her face, a fractured hand and a broken ankle.’ He said the woman was very confused, but managed to indicate that the attack had religious motivations. Jerusalem police searched the area after the incident. They are continuing their investigations.”
Source: Caspari Media Review, March 8, 2012.
By Raymond Ibrahim
Because it is now almost axiomatic for American school textbooks to whitewash all things Islamic (see here for example), it may be useful to examine one of those aspects that are regularly distorted: the Muslim conquests.
Few events of history are so well documented and attested to as are these conquests, which commenced soon after the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (632) and tapered off circa 750. Large swathes of the Old World—from the India in the east, to Spain in the west—were conquered and consolidated by the sword of Islam during this time.
By the standards of history, the reality of these conquests is unassailable, for history proper concerns itself with primary sources; and the Islamic conquests are thoroughly documented. More importantly, the overwhelming majority of primary source materials we rely on do not come from non-Muslims, who might be accused of bias. Rather, the foremost historians bequeathing to posterity thousands of pages of source materials documenting the Islamic conquests were not only Muslims themselves; they were—and still are—regarded by today’s Muslims as pious and trustworthy scholars (generically, the ulema).
Among the most authoritative books devoted to recounting the conquests are: Ibn Ishaq’s (d. 767) Sira (“Life of Muhammad”), the oldest biography of Muhammad; Waqidi’s (d. circa. 820) Maghazi (“Military Campaigns [of the Prophet]”); Baladhuri’s (d. 892) Futuh al-Buldan (“Conquests of the Nations”); and Tabari’s (d.923) multi-volume Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, (“History of Prophets and Kings”), which is 40 volumes in the English translation.
Taken together, these accounts (which are primarily based on older accounts—oral and written—tracing back to Muhammad and his successors) provide what was once, and in the Muslim world still is, a famous story: that Allah had perfected religion (Islam) for all humanity; that he commanded his final prophet (Muhammad) and community (Muslims) to spread Islam to the world; and that the latter was/is to accept it either willingly or unwillingly (jihad).
It should be noted that contemporary non-Muslim accounts further validate the facts of the conquests. The writings of the Christian bishop of Jerusalem Sophronius (d.638), for instance, or the chronicles of the Byzantine historian Theophanes (d.758), to name a couple, make clear that Muslims conquered much of what is today called the “Muslim world.”
According to the Muslim historical tradition, the majority of non-Muslim peoples of the Old World, not desiring to submit to Islam or its laws (Sharia), fought back, though most were eventually defeated and subsumed.
The first major conquest, renowned for its brutality, occurred in Arabia itself, immediately after Muhammad’s death in 632. Continue reading
Once part 1 is finished, nine embedded screens will appear. Click on the top left screen to start part 2.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qKQ1xXobJc&w=560&h=420]
Posted in family, politics, religion
Tagged American values, biblical values, economy, Election 2012, life, moral values, Ron Paul, value voter summit, war
