God has One Foot Out the Door [Part 2: Infanticide and the NEA]

The NEA issue, sad to say, appears dead. Future 'Piss Christ' artists were rewarded with another increase this year, courtesy of our annual tax 'contributions'. And the infanticide factories are well fortified, defended tooth-and-nail by the Democrats in the Judiciary 'Comedy, and our jaded 'justice' system, packed with enough stench to last a lifetime if they aren't weeded out with impeachment. [And that would require a super-majority.] In the meantime, our wonderful orgy bars, known as universities, continue to inject our young skulls full of mush with the same slime that led to our current situation. Our future leaders, they are called.

If Christian Conservatives and Jewish Conservatives fail to pry the eyes of voters open, to shock them with the sight of what lurks in the foulest shadows, then the voters will stumble in darkness, and God will leave our land. Some argue that God would not 'run away'. Of course not. His divine presence would linger quietly in a few hearts and homes, but little more than that. He is all-seeing and all-knowing, but God can make his presence fade to the point that many would feel a bite of cold emptiness they'd never felt before in their lives. Does that mean the Great Tribulation? I don't know. But I do know that God can essentially walk out the door. He's heading that way. And I don't blame Him.

If our king, the Voter, allows the sacrifice of tens of millions of innocent unborn on the alter of 'self' to continue with the blessings of 'Almighty Law', without any end in sight, how can we expect to keep God's presence strong in this country? If our king, the Voter, allows vile abominations, called 'art' by 'sophisticates' to be payed for with our taxes against our will via congress, how can we expect God to keep pouring down His blessings upon us? It is arguable that paying taxes is a sin when tax money is funding such trash, and yet not paying taxes could be called a sin. Such a paradox must make Satan happy, and the satan who dwells in the hearts of those who smirk at this vileness and laugh with sadistic glee.

The Free Republic search engine currently has two articles with the two words 'nea' and 'art'. Only one of those two articles was related with the National Endowment of the Arts. Just one.

House Backs Arts Funding, Snowmobiles; extra $15m for the NEA, National Endowment for Humanities

...The House voted 268-152 to pass the bill after earlier adding an extra $10 million to it for the National Endowment for the Arts and $5 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities -- the latest chapter in a long struggle over federal sponsorship of cultural programs.

The NEA, particularly, has been a flash point in America's so-called culture wars. Conservatives have argued taxpayers should not be subsidizing art, particularly art they often regard as obscene, while supporters of the agency say it is important for the nation's cultural vitality.

Thirty-five Republicans joined most Democrats in supporting the move, approved by a vote of 225-200. The House adopted the same increase last year, but the extra funds were eventually dropped in final negotiations with the Senate...

Seven posters expressed outrage: Brian S, Drango, gcruse, TonyRo76, Blkconserv, WhiteGuy, and logician2u. [I missed this one, or I would have said a few things, myself.]

Yes, the NEA issue, a surefire winner for the most cowardly members of the GOP, strangely appears dead. Just a decade ago, it was significant enough to be in the Contract With America. Then this year, the most demented tax funded organization in US history gets a spending increase!

I'll get back to the NEA, but infanticide is arguably far worse. Tens of millions, murdered, legally at that. Most Americans consider abortion to be repulsive. Here are some poll numbers:

* "A woman who feels that it's the wrong time in her life to have a baby" - 82 percent said abortion should be illegal.

* "A woman who cannot afford to have a child" - 75 percent said abortion should be illegal.

* "The father is unwilling to help raise the child" - 83 percent said that abortion should be illegal.

* "The mother wants an abortion but the father wants the baby" - 72 percent said abortion should be illegal.

When you bring up partial birth abortion, the support for a ban is astronomically high. There's only one barrier in the way of reducing abortion to 'rape, incest, life of the mother': the Legal Branch. The media and Hollywood were unable to sway us. Congress is even having trouble banning partial birth abortion! The Courts keep tripping us up. And yet, even in the case of rape and in most cases of incest, there are wonderful couples begging to adopt newborns.

Since the late '90s, there has been a super-majority in the House that jumps at every chance to ban the brutal, hideous act of partial birth abortion. And, there was a majority in the Senate. But Clinton vetoed the ban twice. Then came along the 106th Congress:

"...During the 106th Congress (1999-2000), the House approved a ban for the third time. In October, 1999, the Senate also approved the ban, but only after adding an amendment, sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), to endorse Roe v. Wade.

"The House and Senate had not yet resolved their differences on that bill when, on June 28, 2000, a five-justice majority of the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law that was similar to the proposed federal ban. In that case, Stenberg v. Carhart, the majority ruled that Roe v. Wade covered even the brutal practice of partial-birth abortion. Pro-life leaders in Congress subsequently shifted their focus to other issues for a time..."

We had a veto-proof majority in both houses, and then the Supreme Court stepped in to block the ban.

So, my friends, here is the problem: the Voter must decide who God is: is God a higher being? Or is God a black robed ghoul who crushes infants' skulls under his gavel? If the Voter, our King, decides that these federal judges should remain impeachment-proof, then our King is kneeling before those skull-crushing 'justices' in worship.

The battle goes on. A partial birth abortion ban was made into law, and a Federal Judge put the ban on hold [in the words of those who support skull-crushing judges]:

On November 5, 2003, President George W. Bush signed into law the first-ever federal ban on abortion, despite a June 2000 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found similar bans to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court case, argued by the Center for Reproductive Rights, struck down an essentially identical Nebraska law. To stop the new federal ban from taking effect, the Center filed a lawsuit in federal court in Nebraska on October 31 on the behalf of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case. Shortly after President Bush signed the new federal law, U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Kopf for the District of Nebraska issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the abortion ban. As a result, Dr. Carhart and the three other doctors challenging the abortion ban can continue to perform safe abortion procedures without fear of prosecution. "

LINCOLN, NE (Talon News) -- With the ink from the president's pen barely dry on a bill banning certain late term abortions, a Nebraska federal judge placed his own signature on a temporary restraining order blocking the legislation from becoming the law of the land. While the legislation also was challenged in New York and San Francisco, it was U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf in Nebraska who moved first to block the law banning partial birth abortions just minutes after President Bush signed it Wednesday.

"For years a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who are inches from birth while the law looked the other way," Bush told members of Congress and pro-life leaders assembled for the signing ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington. "Today, at last, the American people and our government have confronted the violence and come to the defense of the innocent child...

The abortion battle roars on. A minority of senators continue to filibuster key justices who might stop the baby killing factories from running at full steam. Their filibuster is unprecedented and desperate, buying time for a future president who knows who should be worshipped. The DNC continues to seek to get another president who will appoint more of those skull crushers onto the the bench, and the Voter, best I can see, is crying for prescription drugs and haggling for tax relief. God is going to leave this blessed land, ladies and gentlemen, if the Voter doesn't wake up to what is really important. How God has stomached this for so long, I'll never know.

As if infanticide were not enough, then there is the Abomination Factory, the NEA, using OUR TAX MONEY to mill out putrid and hideous depravities in the name of 'art'.

The National Endowment for the Arts began in 1965 as a government agency without funding during its first year. Funding increased to $170 million a year before AFA became involved in the issue. In 1989 American Family Association (AFA) became aware of a grant to an "artist" to fund a photograph of a cross submerged in the artist's own urine.

Since then there have been many examples of obscene and sexually explicit "art" depicting the homosexual lifestyle and denigrating Christ and the Christian religion. Using taxpayer dollars, Christ has been depicted as a drug addict and a pedophile. Some recent examples of taxpayer-funded art are: Christ as a homosexual who has sexual relations with his disciples in the theatrical play, Corpus Christi, that was performed at the Manhattan Theater Club in New York in the fall of 1998 A conference at New York University titled “Queer Publics/Queer Privates”, where a Drag Queen pretended to be a minister of the gospel named Saint Salicia and passed out pornography and denounced "fornication" A 1997 grant for a video by Women Make Movies titled “Bloodsisters”, which shows naked women beating each other with whips, blood dripping from bare breasts, gross body piercing and other scenes promoting the S& M lesbian lifestyle.

Since AFA began asking congress to eliminate funding for the NEA, the agency's funds have been reduced to $100 million per year. Contrary to the argument of some, AFA does not believe that the elimination of the NEA is censorship. Great art has existed for thousands of years without governments funding it. Furthermore, AFA believes that artists should be free to produce what they want - but that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for it.

Despite their promises to eliminate government funding for the NEA, Congress has refused to do so. There has been very little serious effort by our congressional leadership to discontinue taxpayer funding for this agency. AFA urges our supporters to contact their elected officials in Washington, D.C., and express their opinions concerning funding of the NEA.

Here is an alternate viewpoint [I lost the link source, which I guess is for the best]....

"..Perhaps inevitably, there was a backlash from those who felt threatened by a multicultural America. Since 1989 the arts community has faced an escalating attack on freedom of artistic expression. In the spring of that year Robert Mapplethorpe (a gay photographer whose work included images of sadomasochism) and Andres Serrano (a photographer of Afro-Caribbean descent whose Piss Christ featured a plastic crucifix in a jar of urine) became the first targets in what has become known as the culture war. First denounced by the then little-known “religious right,” these “blasphemous” and transgressive images-some presentations of which were funded in small part by public tax dollars-presented a significant political opportunity for Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) and his conservative cohorts..."

"...The war on the arts and culture is really a war on critical thinking, dissent, risk-taking, creativity, and democracy. With disinformation, sound bites, and defamation of character, conservatives have demonized artists, transforming them in the public mind into blasphemers and pornographers..."

"...The great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa said, “Being an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.” I believe our challenge is not to avert our eyes from what artists see..."

Hmmm.... not to avert one's eyes? That is what makes someone an artist? I think Akira Kurosawa and this writer should subscribe to Playboy and Penthouse and get out of the art business. So should our Federal government. Perhaps I deserve to have my tax money abased this way. I'm not a model Christian. But I know other people, righteous people, who deserve better. And more importantly, God does not deserve this!

There is one state, yes the majority of an entire state, that approves of this kind of art, with eyes wide open, sad to say.

"...At the crux of the political and religious struggle is Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary. Situated behind Plexiglas to protect it from assault, the spectacle of "Sensation" drew an assortment of remarks from the crowd but no gasps. The controversy fell flat on its face with this Friday afternoon crowd.

The most critical comment came from an eight year old after his mom pointed out the elephant "doo doo" on the picture. "Yuck," was all he could muster-up..."

"...Her [the Virgin Mary's] exposed right breast is a smooth ball of elephant dung - about the size of a grapefruit and also decorated with concentric circles of sequins and showing bits of grass that the cow had consumed. Fluttering around her are not the wings of angels but by what appears to be magazine cutouts of buttocks..."

"...To his credit, his use of use of elephant dung was not reserved to the controversial piece and it is not "splattered" or "spotted" with dung, as some newspaper accounts have said. However, nothing has been said in defense of the buttocks cutouts..."

It's impossible to sanely defend this artwork to Christians. The writer at the above website is really trying. But dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary is unacceptable, as well as the 'buttocks cutouts'. The majority of New Yorkers did not seem to care. They heard Hillary Clinton defend the use of government funds to display and promote the painting, and she was elected Senator of New York.

God is leaving, ladies and gentleman, unless the Voter wakes up. And as noted above, there are entire states where the majority will turn its their back on God even if their eyes are opened. We care, obviously, which is why we spend time on this forum. Some of us drive and fly to all corners of our nation, seeking to save it. Can we wake up our King? Can we point out the madness he, our King, the Voter, is allowing? It depends. Some of us care deeply, about pot. The right to smoke pot is the only thing that really drives some of us. Some of us care deeply about gun rights. I wholeheartedly understand that one, because if we lose God, we will need guns, won't we? In fact, we would never have enough guns, without God. I could go on, focusing on one splinter group after another. I'll wind up with one more-- my fellow conspiracy theorists. I tip my tinfoil hat to you, brothers and sisters. I'm one of you. But the greatest conspiracy, whether by design or not, is to separate the United States from God. That's the Big One. If we lose this fight, no amount of research in the secret realms of evil schemes will save our nation.

Parts of America is becoming more jaded. Thankfully, some parts are remaining more more clean, but for how long? That is what I'll discuss tomorrow. Please pray that the eyes of the Voters will open to what's most important, our submission to God.

Thank you, Arthur, for a thoughtful analysis of two disparate evils which afflict our nation.

The first, the corruption of the NEA and the propagation of evil by that organization, I see as a snake eating it's own tail. It's a big snake, but eventually it will consume itself.
I think we have to look at the mechanism of human psyche which brought this evil into being:
Without God, we humans get bored very easily.
God's people can sit in a field, pull apart a wild flower blossom and be awed and amazed at the subtle blend of colors and the delicate yet stable construction of each petal, all the while recognizing it as a wondrous creation of God.
Those without God never see the wildflowers except as an obstruction to their view.
These people are titillated by hedonistic desires which have nothing to do with God's creation.
The problem with hedonism is that, unlike the appreciation of the wildflower, it must be constantly refueled with newer and more exaggerated mental and physical pleasures.
Eventually the fuel supply runs dry, and nothing satisfies the craving.
Only God can supply us with a new and exciting life every minute of every day because His pleasures are eternal.

Abortion in any form causes a deep anguish that penetrates to my soul, and my recent and ongoing experiences with the little miracle named Logan intensified those feelings to an almost unbearable degree.
I would gladly give up my life to stop the abortion of one baby.
I believe the place to start turning around this madness is in the kindergartens and grade schools of this nation.
Every day our children go to public schools they are assailed with the liberal ideas which brought this travesty into being.
Parents must get involved in their children's school lives, and they must voice their opinions in the selection of educational materials from which our children learn.
By the time our children go away to a college or university they have already been brain washed to the point of acceptance unless they have a very strong Christian family unit for guidance. Most children don't have that.

As I said before and I fully believe, there is a division taking place in our nation today.
While we Christians occupy ourselves with the immediate problem of liberal, baby murdering judges, Satan is occupying the minds of our children.
When the wheat is separated from the chaff, let's make sure our children don't wind up in the chaff heap.

"If Christian Conservatives and Jewish Conservatives fail to pry the eyes of voters open, to shock them with the sight of what lurks in the foulest shadows, then the voters will stumble in darkness, and God will leave our land. Some argue that God would not 'run away'. Of course not. His divine presence would linger quietly in a few hearts and homes, but little more than that."

I'm not sure that Christian Conservatives and Jewish Conservatives can "pry the eyes of the voters open..." They have to be persuaded on their own. However, I believe that many Christian Conservatives may be waking up from their slumber with the "gay [homosexual] agenda" becoming so over aggressive in their pursuit of "normalizing" and trying to make their false lifestyle legal and acceptable.

There may be a backlash against this aggressive agenda come election time.

As for the "unjust judges" in our state and Federal courts who have turned the justice system into an oligarchy buy making laws and ruling the nation from the bench, Isaiah in Chapter 5:20,21 says this about them:

20. Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.

21. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
and clever in their own sight.

And this is the promised punishment as Isaiah speaks for the Lord:

24. Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw
and as dry grass sinks down in the flames,
so their roots will decay
and their flowers blow away like dust;
for they have rejected the law of the LORD Almighty
and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.

I believe that we are a divided nation like I have never before seen in my 50-plus years. But, that division seems to be "good against evil". Many are having to get off of the fence and declare sides: for light or for dark, for good or for evil, for God or against Him. The 'lukewarm' are having to get hot or grow cold.

Christianity is growing in public schools despite liberal secular humanist indoctrination...i.e. "Meet You At The Pole" over a million (it was reported) students praying at the flagpoles. Many student-led Bible studies and prayer meetings before and after school. All this despite those who would 'forbid the little ones to come unto Him". [There is a 'millstone waiting for their necks]. Home schooling is steadily rising. Christian schools and colleges are increasing, like Patrick Henry, Liberty University, Hilsdale, and Regent University, etc.

Christian / Jesus festivals are on the increase. Promise Keepers is still on the rise. Many leaders and staff in Washington [Representatives, Senators and other Federal Departments and agencies] have regular prayer meetings.

There is evidence of 'judgement beginning in the House of the Lord': first the Evangelicals [Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baker and others], then the Catholics [the exposure of homosexual priests], and now the Episcopal Church division-split-cleansing.

Dead mainline denominational churches and liberal doctrine churches are becoming empty, while Churches that preach the pure gospel and speak the truth with boldness are growing.

This country still sends the most Bibles, Christian aid workers and other aid from Christians to help ease suffering and spread the gospel of Christ around the world.

In spite of what has been widely reported, it has been documented the in truth and in fact, Christianity is growing faster than Islam or any other religion. This documentation has been laid out by authors such as Philip Jenkins in his book "The Next Chistendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" and by David Aikman in his book "Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power." This is due to contributions of Christian materials and media (SW radio & satellite TV) from the United States.

I agree with all Author has written, but I wonder about just how bad or evil we, as a nation, have become as a whole? Divided yes, but primarily evil and wicked with only a minority (or slight remnant) left following after the Lord endeavoring to keep His commands?

We are in an historic battle of good versus evil and perhaps all evidence points to this being the "last days" as described in the Bible.

We can see though that only a part is the nation's battle without: Christianity (Judiasm) against Islam (the spirit of anti-Christ). The other battle is battle within our nation for those who are for Christianity in truth (not name only) and those who are as the Apostle Paul describes them in 2 Timothy 3:1-5

Godlessness in the Last Days

1. But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.
2. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive,
disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3. without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control,
brutal, not lovers of the good,
4. treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God--
5. having a form of godliness but denying its power. Consider this: Israel becomes a nation again from the diaspora in 1948. Jerusalem is no longer 'trod under the feet of gentiles' but back in Israel's control as of 1967.
The statue of Daniel: head of gold Babylon, chest and arms of silver Medes & Persians, legs of bronze Greece, feet of iron mixed with clay Rome... We are the decendants of Rome which was not completely destroyed as the others and the United States is now in control of Babylon. That is a strange full circle.

Is evil real? Most people want to dismiss evil as a fairy tale, but what happened in the United States on 9/11 was an example of evil. The sniper incident last year that held the entire Washington DC area in terror for 3 weeks was an example of evil. The tens of thousands of babies aborted each day worldwide is an example of evil. Men and women around the world who plot to kill other people for whatever reason are an example of evil. EVIL IS NOT A FANTASY...IT IS REAL...IT IS A SAD PART OF THE HUMAN EXISTENCE!!!

First, understand that God is NOT the author of evil. Evil stems from the rebellious hearts of man. Man has to make choices throughout each day, to either obey God, or rebel against Him. Evil is a manifestation of that rebellion. Those who choose to follow God, make choices that build people up, advance the cause of God on this earth, are positive. Those who choose to reject God, make choices that destroy people, oppose the plan of God for this world, and are negative. To be blunt, those who follow God are good, those who choose to reject God are evil. This may sound harsh, but evil can ONLY come from those who are in rebellion to, and reject God!

Satan is the embodiment of evil. He rejected God and was cast out of Heaven, and his entire purpose is to oppose the work of God. Satan is the poster boy for rebellion against God/evil! The simple fact is that any time that you rebel against God in your life, any time that you reject His way, you contribute to the evil that is in this world. Evil ONLY EXISTS because of the rebellious hearts of man. As hard as this may be to accept, the fact is, every time that you reject God, every time that you choose to ignore God, YOU ARE SIDING WITH SATAN AND ARE CONTRIBUTING TO THE EVIL THAT IS IN THIS WORLD!

Society has tried to down play the existence of evil in our world. The way our society tries to make every excuse in the book to call evil anything but what it truly is....EVIL! The point I want you to understand today is that every time that you rebel against God, every time that you choose to reject God and not follow His way, YOU are contributing to the evil that is in this world.

The good news is this. The Bible tells us that in the end, God will wipe our ALL evil from this world. It will no longer be part of this existence. But until this time, we have a responsibility as His children to not only fight against the evil that exists, but to not contribute to it through the choices that we make each day. God is greater than evil, and one day, very soon, He will wipe evil away!!!

"Evil ONLY EXISTS because of the rebellious hearts of man. As hard as this may be to accept, the fact is, every time that you reject God, every time that you choose to ignore God, YOU ARE SIDING WITH SATAN AND ARE CONTRIBUTING TO THE EVIL THAT IS IN THIS WORLD!"

While I agree with your statement, I would differ, in that, EVIL exists apart from "the rebellious hearts of man".
As you said, Satan is the embodiment of evil. He is evil in it's purest form. Satan also has at his disposal one-third of the angelic host (now demons) that followed him in his insurrection against the throne of the Almighty.

The heart of man [a.k.a. his spirit] is either dead, empty and dark...a stone...and is wicked and rebellious against God until it is transformed by the Holy Spirit of God.

The heart of man [his spirit] is transformed from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh. Then the man becomes a new creation, created in Christ Jesus, all things become new and the old things passed away.

"To be blunt, those who follow God are good, those who choose to reject God are evil."

I would rather say that those who follow God by faith in the atoning scarifice of the Lord Jesus Christ are saved and have the Holy Spirit of God living in them. and those who choose to reject god are lost. Yes, their rejection and rebellion are evil, but they are more a destruction of themselves and to others. Those who are evil in the sense of the spirit of evil as their now chosen leader Satan, by his or his demon's influence carry out his mandate to "kill, steal and destroy".

But until this time, we have a responsibility as His children to not only fight against the evil that exists, but to not contribute to it through the choices that we make each day. God is greater than evil, and one day, very soon, He will wipe evil away!!!" Evil can be fought only to a point in the flesh with our choices in voting or our military might, etc. because the Apostle Paul states it's this way: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

And this is the way that Paul tells us how to properly fight evil by more than choices but THE GREATEST CHOICE:

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground,
and after you have done everything, to stand.
Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,
and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith,
with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Dead mainline denominational churches and liberal doctrine churches are becoming empty, while Churches that preach the pure gospel and speak the truth with boldness are growing.

Not too sure about this. The churches whose undershepherds preach as "a dying man to dying men" are very few and small. Churches that stress entertainment and cater to "felt needs" are growing, and I would submit are part of the problem by presenting a man-centered rather than God-centered Gospel. Small-God = culturally-irrelevant Chrisitianity. If church is merely a matter of entertainment, why not stay home and watch television? I've heard from two separate reliable sources (Dr. Joel Beeke and Dr. Beougher, here), that a sizable chunk of the populace believes that the Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham. 50% of people believe Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, and 12% believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. Sounds like it's time to turn off the boob tube and hit the books...

Some discernment is in order here. Which gospel is it that is growing? Until there's evidence that it's a God-centered, rather than man-centered, Gospel, the Gospel of free grace to unworthy sinners, I'm skeptical about its cultural-transforming efficacy.

Yes, we are wicked, all of us. "The heart is deceitful above all things and desparately wicked. Who can know it?" Jer. 17:9.

We are in an historic battle of good versus evil and perhaps all evidence points to this being the "last days" as described in the Bible.

We've been in the Last Days since Christ's ascension, and the next eschatological event we can expect is His return. At least, that's what the majority of churches - Catholic and Protestant alike - taught until Darby invented Dispensationalism in the 1800's, which has since become the dominant eschatoligcal hermeneutic of our age.

What is needed is Spirit-wrought revival, the likes of that experienced by the colonies in the 1700's through men like Freylinghuysen, Edwards, and Tenent. The best practical suggestion I saw was on the the last thread about picking a day to fast and pray. We need far more than gimicks, this is deadly-serious spiritual warfar, and Satan is indeed alive and active in the world, and man, apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, is Satan's pawn in the earth.

I fear if you think the points I set forth esp. about the irrelevance of the Church resulting from the shift from a God-centered Gospel to a man-centered one are outside the scope of the discussion, you are gravely mistaken and blind to a root cause of the problem. This is imminently relevant to Arthur's piece, "God has One Foot Out the Door", and the subtitle of this particular thread - "Infanticide and the NEA" - describes atrocities that were restrained in better times when the Church was stronger and more biblically rooted. There is a causal relationship and it's no accident that in states and nations where Christianity is weak, the tolerance for such abominations is strong.

In conversions you mentioned in nations openly hostile to Christianity, you are probably right about the genuiness of their faith. Faced with death, they must believe in the sovereign God who rules the Universe and trust in Him as they face torture, imprisonment, and even execution. But other groups - Mormons for instance - are also in the fields collecting a harvest.

In our case, in America, we're so used to being entertained that we've in essense subjugated the worship of God and even His very character to our whims. And a God like that - stripped of His holiness, righteousness and justice - leaving only His love, patience, and other attributes palatable to sinful human nature, is not the kind of God whose majesty will lead to the kind of cultural transformation that is so sorely needed in our own day and already occurred in the Reformation and the Great Awakening.

Therefore, this is one part of the discussion we ought not to overlook if we would have our nation repent of its wickedness.

One last thing I would say: A major mistake we (conservative Christians) make from time to time is to identify the problem as being "out there". Jerry Falwell got himself into hot water after 9/11 when he identified the homosexuals and abortionists as an ultimate cause in the terrible judgment that day. The problem is "in here", in the heart. We must ALL repent, not just the unregenerate heathen. Arthur won my respect by identifying himself as being far from a model Christian. I must do the same. Other Christians upon honest self-assessment would likewise do well. "Judgment begins in the House of the Lord."

God -vs- satan. God versus satan is like the Super Bowl Champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers playing against the best high school football team in the nation. As good as that high school team may be, they are over-matched in every area and have NO CHANCE to win. There is one scenario however, in which the high school team is able to win. That is if the Bucs don't show up for the game and lose by a forfeit. If you read the last chapters of the Bible, you know that in the end God will defeat satan and send him into the Lake of Fire for eternity (Rev. 20:10). Until that time, satan is a very real enemy that can only win when God is not present.

Sadly, this world that we live in, our culture, is NOT going to ever get better. The social issues that we fight like divorce, abortion, homosexuality, adultery, fornication, declining morals and ethics, drugs and alcohol, are never going to get better...only worse as time goes on. What has helped to feed this steady decline in our culture is the media. Radio, television, the Internet, movies, music, and publications. What fuels the media is advertising.

Satan is the "prince of the power of the air," and has slowly but surely WON the battle for the media which he uses to feed his lies to the masses worldwide 24/7. Satan has WON the battle in the advertising world which is the fuel the media machine runs on. As each day, each week, each month, each year passes, satan becomes more bold in using the media to fulfill his mission which is to kill, steal, and destroy the lives of people!

The reason satan has won this battle is simple, THERE NEVER WAS A BATTLE! Instead of going head to head with satan, Christians decided to not fight. What Christians have done in the last 40 years is like Moses not trying to cross the Read Sea. What Christians have done in the last 40 years is like David running from Goliath. What Christians have done in the last 40 years is like Stephen keeping his mouth shut. What Christians have done in the last 40 years is RUN FROM satan. We set up our own TV stations and networks, set up our own radio stations and networks, wrote our own books and magazines, made movies and music for ourselves.

We decided to NOT FIGHT for the mainstream vehicles that the people of the world are plugged into every day. Instead, we set up our own vehicles that are geared to only reach those who are already in the church. If people outside the church were "accidentally" reached that was fine, but these are vehicles clearly designed to take the message of Christ to the people of Christ and NOT to the world at large in which we live.

I have always loved I Kings chapter 18. There are lots of rich battles in the OT, like David and Goliath, the children of Israel against those people who denied the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But the account in 1 Kings chapter 18 of God versus the prophets of Baal is THE BEST! This was bigger than the Super Bowl. It was literally God -vs- satan. If it was a football game, it would have been 77-0! God wiped satan out. The great lesson here is two-fold. First, the people of God must be bold enough to pit God against satan like Elijah was, and second, God will NEVER lose!

We as the people of God have got to become more bold and not be afraid to take God outside the four walls of the church and into this lost and sinful world. Head to head with satan, God will win EVERY TIME!

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