The American Christian’s Armageddon
Last week, Senate Democrats tried to force a vote on the Equality Act on the Senate floor. In the words of the Alliance Defending Freedom, for Christians, the "Equality Act" is legal Armaggedon. If this bill ever becomes law, it will destroy religious freedom in America. You need to pay close attention to this issue and oppose it at every level and at every opportunity.
What is the “Equality Act”?
The “Equality Act”—in its simplest form—adds “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes to already existing federal nondiscrimination laws. This would prohibit employers, individuals who rent out apartments in their homes, preschools, and even religious schools and organizations from making choices based on basic biology, bodily privacy, and their beliefs about the nature of marriage. It would apply to every single recipient of federal financial assistance (including every public school and almost all colleges and universities.) And though “nondiscrimination” sounds good in the abstract, in practice this law poses a serious threat to women’s rights and religious freedom.
Learn More: What You Need to Know About the Equality Act
David Jeremiah warns modern church is entertainment-driven social organization afraid of controversy
Pastor David Jeremiah, the senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, CA, recently urged the Church in America to stay true to its biblical calling and warned of the trap of trying to be relevant at the cost of it biblical teaching.
“The Church is coming under attack; it’s forgotten what the Church is supposed to be,” Jeremiah, founder of Turning Point Radio and Television Ministries, told The Christian Post. “We’re not an entertainment service; we’re not here to see how close we can get to what the world does. But there’s so much of the world in the Church and vice versa that we can’t tell a difference. We have to hold to the truth. We have to get nourished. If it’s not happening, you’re a social organization and not a church.”“There’s an incredible motivation on the part of everyone to be successful, and a lot of times people program their churches to see how many people will sit in the pews on Sunday,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with getting people there, as long as you share the Gospel. But there’s no glory in just a number.”“Don’t worship at the attendance altar,” Jeremiah advised. “A lot of good things happen in churches when there aren't huge numbers but the pastor has prepared a good message and there’s worship. We get off on this thing that we have to be bigger than the guy down the street and how to get more people in the building. When you’re focused on that, you’ll never preach anything that’s controversial and you’ll always be trying to figure out how to get more people to come.”“Here in California, we see interest on the part of millennials and younger for the Bible and for truth,” the pastor said. “Most of the time, we see statistics about how people are leaving the Church, but in many respects, young people are demanding more truth, more teaching, and less entertainment. They’re not interested in shallow expressions of religion.”“Christians have two major markers in their lives: When they become Christians, and when they go to Heaven. But most Christians don’t know what to do in between those two markers, and that’s because churches don’t teach them,” Jeremiah said. “The whole idea that God expects us to build character in our lives is a foreign thing to so many people because it hasn’t been taught and explained from our pulpits.”
The War over America’s Past Is Really about Its Future
In an effort to scrub American History of anything that is not considered politically correct by today's snowflake brigade, the leftists are systematically destroying our nation's foundation and collective memory. The leftist narrative states that America is a racist, no-good, misogynist, paternalistic, capitalist wasteland founded by crooks and scoundrels. Instead, the leftists offer Americans the hope of a new socialist utopia. In destroying our past, the leftists are dooming America to repeating the mistakes of previous socialist/totalitarian "utopias" that are now on the trash heap of history. It was George Santayana (1863-1952), who stated, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."Victor Davis Hanson takes aim at the atrocities being committed by leftists revisionists:
In their radical progressive view — shared by billionaires from Silicon Valley, recent immigrants, and the new Democratic party — America was flawed, perhaps fatally, at its origins. Things have not gotten much better in the country’s subsequent 243 years, nor will they get any better — at least not until America as we know it is dismantled and replaced by a new nation predicated on race, class, and gender identity-politics agendas.In this view, an “okay” America is no better than other countries. As Barack Obama once bluntly put it, America is exceptional only in relative terms, given that citizens of Greece and the United Kingdom believe that their own countries are just as exceptional. In other words, there is no absolute standard by which to judge a nation’s excellence.About half the country disagrees. It insists that America’s sins, past and present, are those of mankind. But only in America were human failings constantly critiqued and addressed.America does not have be perfect to be good. As the world’s wealthiest democracy, it certainly has given people from all over the world greater security and affluence than any other nation in history — with the largest economy, largest military, greatest energy production, and most top-ranked universities in the world.The traditionalists see American history as a unique effort to overcome human weakness, bias, and sin. That effort is unmatched by other cultures and nations, and it explains why millions of foreign nationals swarm into the United States, both legally and illegally.These arguments over our past are really over the present — and especially the future.If progressives and socialists can at last convince the American public that their country was always hopelessly flawed, they can gain power to remake it based on their own interests. These elites see Americans not as unique individuals but as race, class, and gender collectives, with shared grievances from the past that must be paid out in the present and the future.We’ve seen something like this fight before, in 1861 — and it didn’t end well.
Abortion debate: Whose rights take precedence?
The abortion debate has hinged on a crucial question: is the baby in the mother's womb a human being? The pro-life advocate says a human baby is a person and has a fundamental right to life, while the pro-abortion advocate argues that "the fetus" is not a human/person and therefore the woman's right to bodily autonomy is greater than a fetus' right to life.While the question of personhood is another false narrative created by the pro-abortion advocacy groups, I found this quote from the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights incredibly ironic given the strong pro-abortion stand of the UN during the last 45 years. I quote from an article by Katherine Ranck via The Christian Post:
The Preamble of this declaration recognizes “the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (Emphasis mine). The rights protected by this declaration, among many others, include the right to life, the right to freedom, protection against torture or cruel punishment, protection from discrimination, and the right to be recognized everywhere as a person. As members of the human race, the unborn deserve these same rights and protections. The final article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.” Abortion is an act “aimed at the destruction of . . . the rights and freedoms” of the preborn child. The right to life, the right not to be discriminated against based on their size, development, location, or dependency, the right not to be tortured, and the right to personhood.This now begs the question, which right receives precedence? Many advocates for abortion claim that because of the nature between the woman and the child (fetus), they cannot both have equal moral and legal rights. Unless one holds to a Darwinian ethic of “survival of the fittest,” where the stronger have the right and obligation to overpower the weaker, ethics and our legal system call for a higher moral obligation to protect the most vulnerable among us. The Oxford Dictionary defines a vulnerable person as “[A person] in need of special care, support, or protection because of age, disability, or risk of abuse or neglect.” The United Nations has an entire section dedicated to the rights of children and the most vulnerable, being the disabled (children, women, migrants, the poor, minorities, etc.). The Preamble to the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 defines “child” as, “every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier” and notes that there needs to be “particular care” extended to the child “Bearing in mind that, as indicated in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, ‘the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth’”
Abortion is not acting out of one’s own right to bodily autonomy. It is acting to take away the human rights of another person. This does not make the woman any less human. This does not take away a woman’s rights. It only forbids her from taking away the rights of another person. As members of the human family, the preborn have the right to live, to grow, to thrive. They have the right not to be poisoned or town limb from limb. The have the right to be protected. Our society and our nation have failed to ensure that ALL humans’ rights are protected. The most vulnerable of all humans have been disallowed their rights. Enough is enough. It is past time to demand that all humans, all members of the human family, are awarded the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley: "We Don't Need Any More Brown Faces That Don't Want To Be A Brown Voice"
This quote from Rep. Ayanna Pressley demonstrates the ideological use of racism and intersectionality in today's culture. If I can summarize that Ms. Pressley is saying in my own words, "if you are black and don't hold to the leftist narrative, we don't want you. If you are brown and you don't hold to the leftist narrative, we don't want you, etc." In other words, race only matters to leftists when it supports the leftist narrative.This is why gay, Asian photographer, Andy Ngo, can be beaten by Antifa thugs and in Portland, OR and the mainstream media essentially ignore the incident. It doesn't fit the leftist narrative. Understand when you watch or read any of the mainstream media elites, you are hearing and seeing propaganda from the leftists coastal elites that currently control media, entertainment, and academia.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) speaks at Netroots Nation conference on Saturday: "I don't want to bring a chair to an old table. This is the time to shake the table. This is the time to redefine that table. Because if you're going to come to this table, all of you who have aspirations of running for office. If you’re not prepared to come to that table and represent that voice, don’t come, because we don't need any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don't want to be a black voice. We don't need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don't want to be a queer voice. If you’re worried about being marginalized and stereotyped, please don't even show up because we need you to represent that voice."