He is Riisen. Alleluia!

Trevor Grant today, Easter Sunday, and writing for the American Thinker has a piece entitled Understanding Jesus' Mission The Resurrection of Jesus on the third day is the very reason that I am a Christian today. It comes as no surprise that a man might promote a more moral way of life. Doesn't Jordan Peterson do that today? And it comes as no surprise that as a result, evil men would want to silence Him.  Nor does it come as a surprise that a man will die after the torture and pain of the Roman's most extreme form of execution.  The surprising thing is He rose again from the dead.  That God, who needs nothing, which is the meaning of Holy, would do that for us, that is the wonderful surprise.  For in doing this great act of sacrifice, He has reconciled the world, and us, to Himself.  Alleluia!

 Grant puts it like this:

Unless you have a proper understanding of sin -- especially the sin in your own life -- you don’t really understand why Jesus came into this world, why He said the things He said, why He did the things He did, and why He died and was raised to life again. The first act of Jesus’ public ministry was His baptism by John. As Jesus came to the Jordan River, John declared (John 1:29), “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

Since the first humans decided that they wanted to “be like God,” the world has been plagued -- literally cursed -- by sin. In the healing of the paralyzed man at Capernaum (recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke), Jesus reveals the “sickness” from which human beings are in most need of a cure. After his friends went through the difficult work of getting their paralyzed friend to the roof of a crowded house where Jesus was teaching, and after they labored to lower their friend into the room so that he could get closer to Jesus, what were the first words out of Jesus’ mouth? As the Book of Mark records, Jesus, seeing the faith of the paralyzed man and his friends, immediately declared to the man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

If we fully understand our own sin, we will see that the things that supposedly "happen" to us are the result of our own sin, and that of others.  We can only thank God that he does not execute upon us the just temporal and eternal punishment we deserve.  For the true Christian, every moment of every day is an act of contrition and repentance.   But then we remember the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15: 11-32).  There is great rejoicing in Heaven when one returns.

Alleluia!  Alleluia! 

How Jesus Transformed the World

Yesterday Christians note the anniversary of the death of Jesus of Nazareth, our Savior, by crucifiction.  Tomorrow we will celebrate His resurrection, which means for us our salvation.  But, just as importantly as our salvation in the next life, is what Jesus has done in the here and now today. Jack Kerwick has an article at Townhall entitled How Jesus of Nazareth Transformed the World: Women and Children

The Gospels often show Jesus talking to women as if they mattered, as if they had brains, souls, as if they could understand and take action as adults.  To readers in the first century, this would have seemed shocking.  To us, we don't see it because we have been steeped Christianity from birth.  As well, Jesus loved children, and emphasize the special nature of each and every one.  Consequently,  Christians changed the laws to make exposing babies, and abortion illegal.  Homes were eventually established for orphans.  These have been often thought of as cruel institutions, but is it more cruel than starving to death, or turning to crime?  Christians also established education for children, again under the influence of Him.

Go read Kerwick's article.  Again, knowing history helps us put the true nature of things into perspective.  While no human institution can ever be perfect, if we understand the impulse that caused Christians to begin to change the world, we can see that it is because of the events that happened that first Easter day.  If you doubt this, perhaps it is time to repent, to :change your mind," and join us in our great Project.

People Who Object to Vaccines Do Not Have a Good Sense of History

Currently, a disease that I have not heard of in at least 40 years has made a come back.  When I was a child, every child eventually caught the measles, the chicken pox, and the mumps.  There was, to my knowledge, no vaccine for these childhood diseases.  Of course, everyone received the small pox vaccination, and thank God that method of saving people from small pox had been discovered some 50 years before.  Polio was still a scourge for many, and while all five of us had the polio vaccine, there has one young girl in our church who did not have the vaccine and had, as a result, contracted the disease. So, I have a healthy respect for the people who develop new vaccines, and I take the vaccine for the flu each year.  Having had a case of the flu several years ago, I really don't want to get it again.

There are people who have religious objects, based, I am convinced, on an erroneous reading of the Bible.  Christian Scientists believe that to accept medical hel is to show a lack of faith in God.  This sort of thinking though leads to such ideas as not having or using firearms, or not having a fire extinguisher in your kitchen, or indeed taking other steps to protect yourself.  On the other had Jesus says "you shall not tempt the Lord."   Still, I can understand these objections even though I think they are wrongheaded.

The objections I can not understand is the people who thing that somehow the vaccines present a greater risk than the disease they prevent.  But only a generation ago, some children died of these diseases.  Parents who want to protect their children from everything so not realize that their growing bodies need stresses to protect them later.  Using antibacterial soaps, and keeping children's environment sterile actually weakens their immune systems.

At The Federalist Elad Hakim writes that New York City Has A Good Legal Case For Mandating Vaccines As mentioned above, the God of the Bible does not want his people to not take reasonable steps to protect themselves. That is why Rabbis are saying they see no religious objections.  Orthodox Jews probably have many objections to Mr. De Blasio leading their city.  I would too.  but, this is not one of them.  

A Dire Omen

Today, the day after Notre Dame Cathedral shockingly burned in Paris, France, Dennis Prager writes a piece entitled Notre Dame Is An Omen. Prager doesn't say so, but the fact that this happened during Holy Week makes it all the more sinister As my gentle readers probably know, Prager is himself a Jew, but he recognizes the continuity between Jewish religious practices and Christian religious practices. While the Jews have rejected the Christ, we Christians hope and pray that one day they will realize that the long prophesied Messiah has indeed come. Martin Luther recognized that at the final Judgement, the Jews would be first in line to get into the Kingdom of God.

Prager writes that the symbol of the burning cathedral matches with the burning of Christian Europe and  the burning of Western culture.  In abandoning Christianity, Europe has invited the Devil into its affairs.  Prager writes:

It is as if God Himself wanted to warn us in the most unmistakable way that Western Christianity is burning -- and with it, Western civilization.

Every major Western (and one major non-Western) social and intellectual force has conspired to rid Europe of Christianity and the civilization it produced.

Within the Western world, the French Enlightenment -- the intellectual basis of the French Revolution and the modern West -- sought to replace Christianity, and religion in general, with secularism rooted in reason. No God, Bible or Ten Commandments is necessary for morality or meaning: reason (and science) will replace them.

..snip...

I don't know if a worker accident or a radical Muslim set fire to Notre Dame Cathedral (as they have scores of other churches around Europe). In terms of what the fire represented, it doesn't much matter. What matters is the omen: Europe is burning, just as Notre Dame was.

Please read the entire piece. With God, of course, all things are possible, and Europe may not be lost to Christianity. But it is a dire warning that between Islam and the Left, Christianity is on the ropes even here in the United States. Yet it is at such times that God shows his power.  When we humans have done our best to screw things up, God steps in to set things right.  It is always so because in the end, we know that God's Will will be done.

Gentle readers, I ask you to pray with me that God brings all Americans to recognize that we enjoy His blessings only so long as we acknowledge He who grants them to us out of Hes abundant mercy and love.   As Easter approaches, let all of us remember.

Terrifying Antisemitism at UNC

This is just sick, and I don't say that lightly.  I confront a lot of spiritual sickness in the world, buy this is one of the worst.  Thomas Lifson writes about  Terrifying Video on Antisemitic Conference at the University of North Carolina at the American Thinker today.

The old lies are circulating again.  Naturally, it is the Left that hates the Jews, and embraces Muslims.
Oh, and the Left hates Christians too.

Why?  Well, I have explained it before, and if you haven't figured it out yet, you probably won't get it now.  But it has to do with believing the Bible,  the Lord's commands, and in his Infinite Mercy.

 A conference celebrating antisemitism is of course terrifying enough, but to realize that it was government sponsored is more terrifying still.  This, it seems to me should be considered misappropriation of funds, and whoever committed these funds should be charged with such.

Gratitude is the Antidote to Malcontentedness

Dennis Prager asks the question Are Women Malcontents. He asks this after observing that all of the complaints in Betty Frieden's The Feminine Mysteque have been addressed. Women in America are in general anything but oppressed, and yet the Women's March attracted between 3 and 5 million marchers. This makes it the largest march in American history.

>But a big and troubling thought hit me while reading the book. In the 56 years since "The Feminine Mystique" was published, every complaint Friedan made regarding the situation of the American woman has been addressed. Few American women are forced into "housewifery." The few women who choose to place marriage and home over career have truly chosen to do so; it is the rare young woman for whom marriage and family are greater goals than a successful career. Nor do women any longer go from high school to the wedding chapel. They go from high school to college and often graduate school. In fact, far more women go to college than men.

Yet, if you were to listen to many American women today, you would think nothing has improved. Every women's group and millions of individual women say women are "oppressed" despite the fact that virtually nothing remains of the "feminine mystique" described by Friedan.

Prager goes on to point out that women, particularly college educated middle and upper class women are more than twice as likely as men to be depressed. So, what's going on here? Personally, I think it is a lack of gratitude.  If a person wakes up in the morning, and the first thing he or she does is thank God for the gift of another day, that changes your outlook.  If, when you start to complain, you stop yourself and begin to really count your blessings, you will see that your life isn't really so bad.

Remember, too, that those that seem to have a better life usually had to work very hard for it, and give up much of what you may think is important in your life.  You might have those things if you worked as hard as your neighbor, but what would you have to give up.  Is it truly worth it?

At 66, I am taking guitar lessons from a man who was in the professional music scene for many years.  Now, as a teenager, I was working in my Dad's business, learning that from the ground up, while going to school and preparing for college.  I didn't have a lot of time, or money for guitars and such.  He on the other hand practiced and played guitar for upwards of 4 hours a day.  We each gave up what the other pursued.  That is the nature of getting good enough to compete with the rest of the world.  I don't know about my instructor, but I am content with the choices I made.  And I am grateful to have the time and energy now to pursue other things.

Gratitude is the antidote to malcontentedness.

The Not So Wild West

Via The Captain's Journal we find this piece at Ammo.com: The American Old West: How Hollywood Made It "Wild" to Make Money & Advance Gun Control. Its a long piece but one that counters many of the the most common Hollywood memes.  For a more balanced look at history, please read the entire piece.

One of the principles this article makes clear is that in the absence of government, people made laws that governed themselves and others.  People made collective decisions and took actions for themselves.  There was no need for government.  Indeed, what these stories tell us is what conservatives have always said, the bigger the government, the less freedom for the individual.

Of course the other thing is that the streets of the Old West did not run with blood for the same reason that as "shall issue: concealed carry has advanced across American, modern streets do not run with blood.  Most people are reluctant to shoot another human being.  And back then more people at least paid lip service to Christian principles, even if the did not always follow those principles in the breech.

Americans have been misled about capitalism, Americans have been misled about the New Deal, and it’s become clear they’ve also been subject to many falsehoods about the Old West. History departments across America by and large have failed in providing their students with the right material to understand our country’s most cherished political practices. When institutions of higher learning drop the ball, it’s incumbent upon us to defend our history and culture by stepping up to ensure America has "an alert and knowledgeable citizenry" as President Eisenhower famously remarked. Learning the true story of the American Old West is one step in that direction.

Why?

Gentle readers may know that the Democrats are pushing gun control bills at the Federal and State levels.  There are several things on the agenda including so called "Red Flag" laws that would take your guns without due process, and gun registries so that future Democrat administrations know where the guns are and can more easily come and take them by force.

But Ben Shapiro points out a fundamental flaw behind these various laws.  At the Daily Wire, he pens a piece entitled Every Single Government Authority Failed at Parkland. And They Expect Americans To Forfeit Our Self Defense Rights To Them? Like so much else that Democrats propose these days, there is no logic behind these proposals. The answer to failed government is more government.  In the same way that whether the "problem" is global warming, global cooling, or just general climate change, the solution is always giving up our cars.

Shapiro goes through the litany of failures of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the more striking failures of the Broward County Sheriff's office.  Broward Sheriff's deputies were called no less that 39 times to the shooter's home.  I should also point out that had either office actually done what the law requires it to do, the shooter could not have gotten his weapons in an apparently "legal" process.  Of course that doesn't mean he could not have gotten them, only that he could have gotten them "legally."

Ben Shapiro then asks, quite reasonably:

Why in the world would a single law-abiding gun owner hand over his or her weapon to the same authorities that did nothing to protect the children of Parkland? Why would a single law-abiding gun owner turn over his or her capacity for self-defense to people who were incapable of defending children at every step of the way?

And why in the world should we blame the NRA, which literally had nothing to do with Parkland, for the failures of every institutional barrier to a massacre? Why should we blame law-abiding gun owners who didn’t shoot up kids for the failures of those who are paid to do stop evil monsters like the Parkland shooter? Why should we take Sheriff Steve Israel seriously when he blames lack of gun control, Dana Loesch, and the NRA, rather than his own radical incompetence and the radical incompetence of those under his authority?

Why indeed?

Note:  Ben Shapiro's article was published in February of last year.  I did not pick up on it until now.  Sorry.  None the less, it is very timely.

Avoiding A Civil War Requires Restoration of the Rule of Law

Today at the American Thinker Robert Vincent has an article entitled For Peace in America, We Must Return to the Rule of Law. I couldn't agree more. Along the way, he also makes clear that the current deep divide in America is not due to both sides. Rather, one side, the Left, has diverged in both the goals we aspire to, and the way we get there. They have, typically, thrown out the rule of law because it is perceived as slowing them down in their quest to achieve a socialist utopia. Conservatives have always held to the same propositions we do today: that our rights come from God, that the laws should apply equally to the rich and poor, to the connected and the those not connected. That if our successes were ours, then our failures are ours too. Vincent writes:

Those who try to explain America's current divisions by citing polarization into "extreme" camps miss a major aspect of the Trump phenomenon: Trump really doesn't represent an "extreme" political figure. The "extreme polarization" model might have more teeth if we had elected say, Ted Cruz, who is a doctrinaire conservative on every issue, but Trump really can't be accused of that; this was a major factor in his appeal. Like Reagan, he too was once a Democrat. He has taken positions that are very much at odds with the stereotype of the "Daddy Warbucks" image of a rapacious, uncompromising tool of Big Money portrayed by the Left. For example, just this past week, he overruled his education secretary and insisted that the Special Olympics remain funded. Though there has been some tinkering at the margins, entitlements have not been slashed. Though generally supportive of gun rights, he banned bump stocks and is favorably disposed toward "Red Flag" laws that are staunchly opposed by gun rights advocates. His SCOTUS appointments, while decidedly conservative, are hardly extreme right-wing ideologues.

The Left has simply become evil. That is not to say all registered Democrats or Democrat politicians are necessarily evil, but the national-level leadership of the party and their primary backers represent a genuinely evil, oppressive, authoritarian, and — not coincidentally — anti-Semitic program (under the thin veneer of vicious, rabid anti-Zionism). They either represent this mindset outright (e.g., vice DNC chairman Keith Ellison, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, etc.) or are unwilling to summon the elemental courage to oppose these trends effectively in their own party (e.g., Pelosi, Schumer). What is more, almost uniformly among their leaders — to include the likes of Pelosi and Schumer — they will stoop to any level of dishonesty and corruption in order to obtain or maintain power (e.g., the Stalinesque Kavanaugh "show trial" hearings, the vote fraud spectacles we saw in Florida and California this past midterm election, advocating for illegal aliens to vote, advocating lowering the voting age to 16, etc.). Most egregiously, there is the outrageous Mueller affair — along with the associated scandals of the previous administration (weaponizing the NSA for partisan political purposes, and so on), that even barnyard animals can see was an outright fraudulent and illegal attempt at reversing the result of a presidential election, and distracting from the very real crimes committed by the Obama administration and the Hillary campaign.

Consider also things like HR 1 that would essentially ensure no Republican ever got elected again, anywhere. It breezed through the House. It will be stopped by the Senate, of course, but consider a future where the Democrats hold both houses of Congress.

Consider not only the Mueller debacle, but the recent spectacle of the Jussie Smollett case. These examples illustrate what we "Trumpians" are really so fighting mad about. It isn't so much abortion, or gun control, or any of the other traditional conservative rallying points; it is the rule of law, the very foundation of what America was supposed to stand for. We are perfectly willing to peaceably debate the merits of all of these other issues in the public domain (assuming that there is a viable "public domain" in the form of an honest mass media, but that is another issue). We have already demonstrated during the previous administration that if we cannot have our way within the parameters of the ballot box, we will accept our losses and simply try to convince more voters to see things our way at the next opportunity. What we cannot and will not abide is an opposing side within our national community who insists on simply ignoring the rules, corrupting our national institutions, and trying to impose new "rules" designed to ensure that only its leaders and its agenda will ever prevail going forward.

...snip...

The collapse of the Mueller charade has served to move the hands of the civil war doomsday clock back a few notches, but now we need to see real criminals held accountable. Then perhaps we can talk about being one big happy national family again.

You know who these criminals are by now. It may seem petty that we want these people tried and convicted. But if there is to be peace and reconciliation, they must face the same justice system conservatives face.

Why Women Should Carry A Gun

You may not know that Kevin, of the Smallest Minority has been having health issues, so I was grateful to see that he is back at it on a limited basis.  Now, I do not check into Facebook, as it is a massive waste of time.  And from what I see and hear, the twitter crowd violates my own standards.  But Kevin is apparently a robust fellow and he brings us Why You Need A Gun. Go read the whole thing.

The writer of the piece apparently has a military background, and does security work.He is somewhat large and fit.  He knows how to subdue even an equivalent sized man.  His point is not that he needs a gun, so much as that women need a gun (and the training and will to use it) for protection from other men.  Yoy may never need it...but...it is better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

There are a number of things you do every day because you are a responsible person.  Thus you lock your car and take your keys with you, right?  You lock up your house at night.  Your gun and your other every day carry items are the same.  Think of your gun as another insurance policy.  Like a fire extinguisher for your kitchen, you hope you never need it.  But, better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

While we are discussing guns and women, a great site for carry gear for women is Dene Adams. Check them out.