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Men Without Chests

It is simple: good people don’t commit murder. Murderers do!  Multiple mass shootings over the last few years, and especially recently, have caused a great sense of frustration among citizens, yet the only message coming from some politicians is about reducing the number of guns in society. They never address the fundamental issue which is that guns in the hands of good people never cause a problem, and in fact often save lives. Yet law abiding citizens are always the target of Leftists’ gun control laws.

Americans have always had an abundance of firearms. Guns are not the problem. People willing to commit violent crimes is! The problem of mass shootings in America will not be corrected with changes in the laws, but rather with changes in hearts.

The multiple shootings of young people which have occurred over the last few years are worse than tragic. But sadly, they are the logical consequence of a society in denial regarding mankind’s sinfulness and in rejection of God’s authority. From the first murder recorded in Genesis 4 to the recent rampage on the campus of Michigan State University, every one of these killings is a direct assault upon God the Creator and a rejection of His command not to commit murder.

It is irrational to think that we can pick and choose which of God’s commandments we obey and which we flout.  Why would we expect young people to selectively obey God’s 6th commandment when we collectively scorn them all?  Why should young people listen to anything our leaders say when those leaders lie, cheat, steal, and advocate for the killing of the unborn and euthanasia for the elderly? The left has ridiculed America’s founders, the Bible, God, and everyone who promotes historic Judeo-Christian virtues. They then wring their hands in faux dismay when people violate those same virtues. C.S. Lewis got it right when he wrote, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

We could expand on his point: We deny truth exists yet get angry when people lie. We mock integrity and are overwhelmed by crime. We say “follow your heart” but are then appalled by people’s selfishness. We scorn God and are surprised by the violence and chaos of a godless society.

Do the Leftists who promote expanded drug use, defunding the police, removing God and the Bible from culture, who trash America’s history and replace science with woke nonsense, not understand what they are doing? Are they well-intentioned but mistaken? Sadly, no!  They know exactly what they are doing and why! Their goal is not a better culture with healthier, happier citizens but rather a godless society that becomes so chaotic the citizens plead with them to take control and bring order even if it means totalitarianism.

But we know better because we know God, we love the truth, and we understand how it all ends! Psalm 2 addresses leaders and citizens who think they can free themselves from God’s principles and cast off his sovereign lordship, “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: The Lord shall have them in derision. . . .” And ultimately, He will “dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

We who love God do not fight this battle with the weapons of men, but with truth. While battles rage on, the ultimate victory has already been won. Jesus Christ won it over 2000 years ago with his death on the cross, and His resurrection!

It would be quite humorous, if it weren’t so ironic, to witness Leftists, who hold such power in American culture, pose as martyrs claiming to “speak truth to power!”  No, at the moment it is Christians, who are the butt of comedians’ late-night jokes, who are mocked and scorned on every hand, who are sued for living their convictions, who are speaking “truth to power.”  Every forum of public discourse and power is dominated by the left.  Government, education, the Media, Arts, Hollywood, Big Tech, business associations and more are firmly controlled by Leftists.  It is a testimony to the power of truth that these Leftist powerbrokers are doing everything they can to silence the few dissenting voices that remain, even as those voices have virtually no cultural power!  It may also be evidence that these Leftists know, in spite of their protestations otherwise, that truth is not on their side!

What are we who love and proclaim truth to do?  We must not yield an inch.  We must make no apology for the truth.  We must shun the methods of the Left.  We must live and act with grace. Scriptures are not merely poetic when they proclaim, “the righteous are bold as a lion,” but “the wicked flee when no one pursues,” (Prov. 28:1).

Jesus Christ told His disciples that they are “the salt of the earth.”  Salt has many beneficial uses, one of which is to inhibit decay.  No one can deny that America is in the state of moral decay pushed by the Left.  However, because of our resistance to this decay, we are hated.  Our presence, words, and actions are irritants and even obstacles to the decadence being promoted by influential God-hating Americans.  In contrast to the “men without chests” being created by the Left, Christians reflect the eternal principles and authority of the God who has redeemed us.  So, if we are to inhibit the decay of our culture, in practical terms, how are we to do that?  We cannot change people’s hearts.  God, alone, does that work.  But we can and must proclaim the message of the Gospel and live so as to represent Christ well.  The Apostle Paul told his young protégé, Timothy, to “. . .reprove, rebuke and exhort. . . .” all who would hear him.  These things do not make a person popular, but they do make him faithful and most effective in confronting the decay that is the ongoing result of Adam’s sin.

If you are a born-again Christian, you, too are “the salt of the earth” and have the grave responsibility to oppose the direction of our culture.  You cannot shrug it off as belonging to someone else.  The immorality, violence, and victimization of children we are witnessing is not an accident but the intentional repudiation of God, the Bible, and righteousness, and God has called no one to be spectators of the conflict!  We all have a high calling on our life!  You can’t afford to sit this out.

The confused and addicted all around us do not need “support” or agreement from us to be happy. They will only be happy when they come to agreement with God, repent of their sin, and trust His grace and forgiveness.

This is truly the message of hope every person on earth needs!





Gun Control Won’t Work

In 2016, there were 11,004 gun homicides in the United States, Additionally, 10,497 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes. Why do leftists demonize guns but are silent when it comes to alcohol’s role in DUI deaths?

Some big government types want new legislation severely restricting gun purchases. But it won’t work.

On August 12th, a convicted felon walked into the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago and open fired with a rifle; that same day in California, a convicted felon shot and killed a Highway Patrol Officer; and on August 14th, another convicted felon with an extensive criminal history of weapons opened fire on Philadelphia police officers, wounding six.

Current gun laws did not stop these criminals who are already legally barred from possessing a firearm from using guns to attack others.

We should stop the feckless politicking and political correctness and admit that we have a cultural problem. We should look at the rise in secularization, family breakdown, drug abuse, mental illness, identity-politics and demand personal responsibility and accountability.

By the way: With the legalization of weed, the numbers of intoxicated drivers and deaths will certainly increase in the coming years, as will violence-related marijuana-induced psychosis.

Forgetting God and his ways have consequences.

Read more: Guns Are Not the Ultimate Cause of Mass Killings (by Laurie Higgins)



Early Bird Special Expires Soon!
We are looking forward to welcoming Rev. Franklin Graham to our annual fall banquet on November 1st to share his faith, concerns about the secular culture and his vision for our country. Don’t delay in getting your tickets, as our early bird special expires on Sept. 2nd!

Learn more HERE.




Fort Hood, Gun-Free Zones and ‘Progressive’ Insanity

They say that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Not true. It does if you stand high atop a cliff’s edge waving a lightning rod above your head during a thunderstorm. In fact, in the unlikely event you survive the first strike, it’ll keep right on striking until you climb down.

So-called “gun-free zones” are lightning rods for mass murder. It’s time we climbed down from the cliff’s edge.

America mourns yet another needless and preventable mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. When will gun-grabbing liberals learn?

In a blunt and provocatively titled, though well-reasoned post, submitted shortly after Wednesday’s shooting, Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft charged: “Obama Is Responsible for Latest Fort Hood Murders – Still a Gun-Free Zone.”

Wrote Hoft:

“In 2009 Islamist killer Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist, fatally shot 13 people and injured more than 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas. Fort Hood was a gun-free zone.

“Hasan reportedly screamed, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ as he committed his mass murder. …

“Barack Obama termed this Islamic terrorist attack ‘workplace violence.’ Complete lunacy.

“After the first mass killing nothing changed. Fort Hood is still a gun-free zone. President Bill Clinton’s gun-free policies are still in place.

“Today there was another mass shooting at Fort Hood. Soldiers were told to take cover and hide like cowards as a crazed gunman shot at least 14 Americans on base. The shooter, Ivan Lopez, then shot himself in the head.

“These deaths are the result of failed policies. These deaths are the result of a dangerous ‘gun free zone’ policy.

“The Obama administration is responsible for this mass shooting. They witnessed this before. They didn’t learn a thing. Gun-free zones are death zones,” concluded Hoft.

Of course, no one but Ivan Lopez is responsible for his own horrific crimes. Still, this Obama administration is likewise responsible for its own criminally horrific incompetence.

By maintaining his demonstrably failed “gun-free zone” policy at Fort Hood (and anywhere for that matter), Obama may as well have beckoned: “Hey, would-be mass murderers, we’ve still got some unarmed soldiers here. Come and finish ‘em off!”

This president is undeniably culpable. His reckless insistence upon preserving this obtuse, liberal – but I repeat myself – gun-grabbing policy rendered defenseless, once again, the fine servicemen and women of Fort Hood. It kept in place the same mass-murder-rich environment in which Nidal Malik Hasan committed the first Fort Hood “fish-in-a-barrel” soldier hunt.

And the only people surprised are you gun-control nutters.

Here’s the thing about liberalism, which is really cultural Marxism, euphemistically tagged “progressivism”: It’s never worked and it never will. It can’t. It’s a material impossibility. “Progressivism” can no more work than can one answer a nonsense question like, “How big is blue?” As with all similar such humanistic efforts to achieve a man-made earthly utopia, “progressivism” is a hopeless non-starter.

Why? Because “progressivism” is utterly detached from reality. There’s truth, and then there’s “progressivism.” Central to every single “progressive” policy, without exception, is the fatally flawed denial of the existence of sin – of man’s fallen nature. There’s also a stupidly stubborn refusal to acknowledge the reality of moral absolutes. “Progressivism” is built upon a utopian, relativist house of cards; and when that house comes crashing down, the results are often deadly.

This past Wednesday America witnessed liberalism’s deadly results first hand. A public policy that intentionally disarms American citizens – much less American soldiers – is a policy that creates a pond full of sitting ducks; this, whether we have a terrorist behind the trigger, or a government with designs on tyranny.

Notice a trend here? What do Sandy Hook Elementary, Aurora, Colorado’s Century 16 theater, Columbine High, Fort Hood No. 1 and Fort Hood No. 2 all have in common? They’re all “gun-free zones.”

Oh, if only, rather than “gun-free zone” signs, each of these terror Ground Zeros had had a sign reading: “Staff heavily armed and trained. Any attempts to harm those herein will be met with deadly force.”

Might some of those beautiful souls have still died before one or more well-armed good guys could take out the well-armed bad guys? Perhaps. But how many precious lives could have been saved?

Albert Einstein famously quipped that the definition of “insanity” is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In that sense, “progressives” are insane.

Or, if not exactly insane, they’re certainly no Einsteins.

I’ll admit that many “progressives” are generally well-meaning and decent people. I even have a handful of “progressive” friends who’ve yet to see the light. I love ‘em, but they still want what they can’t have, at least not until that glorious last trumpet sounds.

They want heaven on earth.

It’s not for lack of sincerity that “progressives” are destroying America and putting lives at risk.

It’s for failure to grasp reality.


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