Job: Suffering and Spiritual Warfare - Part 2

Job: Suffering and Spiritual Warfare - Part 2

“Struck down, but not destroyed”

By Berit Kjos - January 31, 2010

http://www.crossroad.to/Victory/articles/job/2-pain.htm

“As your days, so shall your strength be.” Deuteronomy 33:25

Born in 1867, Amy Carmichael determined early to follow God—no matter the cost. She brought His love to hundreds of women in the slums of Ireland then shared the gospel in Japan until her health broke down. Finally God led her to southern India, where she taught a small team of faithful Indian women. Riding in a bumpy oxcart, they braved unthinkable dangers as they told about Jesus in village after village.

One hot, humid day a terrified little girl ran toward Amy and flung herself into her arms. She had been given to the local Hindu temple as a “bride” to the Hindu gods—a well-guarded temple prostitute taught to serve the demands of male worshippers. Her escape was truly a miracle!

From that day on, Amy knew her God-given mission. She saved hundreds of girls from similar horrors, and through decades, she would be Amma (mother) to almost a thousand children. As they grew into adulthood, many continued to serve and teach the little ones with their Amma. Whenever they needed food, clothes, protection, and space for more nurseries and schools, Amy’s growing “family” would pray. And God would provide in amazing ways!

In her prayers one morning in 1931, Amy asked, “Do anything, Lord, that will fit me to serve Thee and help my beloveds (her precious ‘children’).” That same day, as Amy was checking on some much-needed property God was adding to their expanding home, she fell into a hole, broke her leg, and twisted her spine. Medical care was minimal in those days, and for the next twenty years—until her death—she was a bedridden invalid in almost constant pain.

But, oh, what a joy she was to those who loved her! Her “children” of all ages now had continual access to their beloved Amma. What’s more, God gave her time to write books and poems that have encouraged His people around the world! Here is one of my favorites:

Hast thou no scar?

No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?

I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;

I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.

Hast thou no scar?

No wound? No scar?

Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,

And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.

But thine are whole; can he have followed far

Who hast no wound or scar?

Wounds and scars? The faithful Job would soon have plenty of both! In Chapter 2 we find him alone, lying on a heap of ashes, his tormented body gripped with pain, covered from head to toe with agonizing wounds—bleeding, throbbing and aching! 

He has lost his children, his home, his livelihood as well as the respect of the world around him. Where are his numerous friends now? Who will encourage and comfort him in his grief?

Remember, Job was not an ordinary man. Our Lord had declared him “a blameless and upright man!” What’s more, he “was the greatest of all the people of the East.” How could someone so high fall so low?

God doesn’t answer these questions here. But by the last chapter of this timely “Book of Job,” we will understand far more about God’s unfathomable wisdom and sovereignty. Meanwhile, ponder this second exchange between our holy God and the devious leader of the unholy angels:

“Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, ‘From where do you come?’

“Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth....’” Job 2:2-3

God knew well the answer to His question. Satan was always looking about for an “opportune time” to tempt God’s people. Seeing God’s protective “hedge” around Job, “the evil one” had left his victim alone. And when he did, Job passed the test! God knew he would!

But now Job faces an even harder test—one that would demand long-term endurance of criticism and condemnation along with the excruciating pain:

“Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? And still he holds fast to his integrity, although you incited Me against him, to destroy him without cause. ’”

“So Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse You to Your face! ‘”

“And the Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, he is in your hand, but spare his life.’”

“So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of the ashes.” Job 2:3-8

What a simple task for Satan! After all, he understood human nature—its wants, weaknesses, cravings, etc. In the beginning, his clever dialectical deception had led to man’s disastrous rebellion against God. Eve hardly hesitated when he offered the forbidden fruit. Now, with his arsenal of lies, lures, pain and pleasure, it shouldn’t take long to incite Job to “curse God.” Like most people, Job would surely yield to his corrupt human nature and follow his self-focused feelings. Wouldn’t he?

What Satan didn’t understand was the work of God’s Spirit in the heart of a faithful man. While the deceiver fought to turn human hearts away from God, our sovereign King answers the cries and prayers of those who trust Him. As Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth,

“... we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-11

Job will indeed be “hard pressed but not crushed... struck down but not destroyed.” Though he doesn’t know it, God intends to demonstrate His mighty power working through this weak and battered human vessel. For just as His light shines most brightly in utter darkness, so is His victory far more astounding when His defenseless servant is facing the world’s overwhelming odds.

Now, in the second stage of Satan’s invisible war on Job’s faith, we meet his first visible human instrument—the person we might expect to be closest to Job:

“Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold fast to your integrity? ‘Curse God and die!’ 

“But he said to her, ‘You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?’ In all this Job did not sin with his lips. “ Job 2:9-10

No mercy or comfort here! Yet Job remains faithful to His Lord!

In the end, it’s God’s name and honor that is at stake, not Job’s. But our sovereign Lord sees right into Job’s heart! Putting him to the test, He demonstrates to his arch enemy—and to future witnesses like us—something Satan refuses to believe: That no matter how excruciating the assault, Job will not curse or deny his Lord!

We, too, may face such a test one day!  Countless multitudes of faithful Christians have willingly given their all because they loved God most of all. They knew that—for those who trust in God and put Him first—the gate of death would only lead to the heavenly glory that could not even compare to the pleasures of earth.

Will we let Him use us for His eternal purpose? Can we like Jesus say, “Not my will but Thine...”?  Here is Amy Carmichael’s answer:

From prayer that asks that I may be

Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,

From fearing when I should aspire,

From faltering when I should climb higher

From silken self, O Captain, free

Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From subtle love of softening things,

From easy choices, weakenings,

(Not thus are spirits fortified,

Not this way went the Crucified)

From all that dims Thy Calvary

O Lamb of God, deliver me.

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Gill Rapoza

Veritas Vos Liberabit

http://grapoza.blogspot.com/

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It’s Called Responsibility

It’s Called Responsibility

Charlie Daniels

02/19/2010

http://www.charliedaniels.com/soapbox-2010/soapbox-2010-0219.htm

People who lived on a farm back in the 40’s (and before) learned very early in life that if they didn’t gather their crops when they were ready, they were going to lie in the field and rot.

If you didn’t cut and bring in the firewood at night the family was going to be cold and hungry the next morning.

If you didn’t hoe the weeds they would take over the crops and you’d have nothing to sell at harvest time.

There were no subsidies, no fallbacks, no safety nets. You either worked hard and made a harvest go or you let things go to pot and let your family starve through the next winter.

There was no one to do the work for you, no one to blame it on if you didn’t make it and no welfare agency that would take you in and coddle you from cradle to grave.

It used to be if you fathered a child, a judge would make you support it until it reached the age of majority.

If you insulted a man he was apt to pop you in the mouth and nobody blamed him for it.

If you tried to break into somebody’s house and you died in the living room from a shotgun blast, society just buried you and got on with their business.

A man’s word was his bond and a handshake was just as good as a hundred-page contract.

There was a time when I’d never met anybody who questioned the existence of God.

There was a time when people realized that if you went in debt for more than you could afford you were tying up your future and the quality of life you could expect to live until the debt was satisfied.

Unfortunately, on a national basis we saw those qualities disappear with steam locomotives and saddle oxfords.

Personal responsibility has gotten rarer and rarer as the years have gone by and the nation is paying for it and is going to pay much more dearly for it in the future.

Green idealism has replaced common sense in California where some of the most productive farmers on the planet are denied water to nourish their crops to save some fish nobody outside biology class has ever heard of and couldn’t care less about.

The global warming lie and its ramifications have already cost billions of dollars that will just disappear into thin air and into Al Gore’s bank account.

The federal government is spending America into the global poorhouse and nobody in Washington has the gonads to put on the brakes.

America, where once a family could sleep soundly through the night behind unlocked doors has become the hunting ground of thieves and predators and the best thing the liberals can come up with is to take guns away from law abiding citizens.

Is this responsibility?

The interest alone on our national debt piles up billions of dollars a day and Obama just keeps on printing and spending.

Is that responsibility?

We put our military in impossible situations expecting them to be politically correct in the face of death and prosecute them if they don’t.

Is this responsibility?

One kid who doesn’t even have a job fathers five or six children and gets away without supporting any of them.

Is this responsibility?

America is suffering from a bad case of putting the blame on anybody else except the man in the mirror.

It ain’t never gonna work.

Pray for our troops, and for our country.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

© Copyright The Charlie Daniels Band

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Gill Rapoza

Veritas Vos Liberabit

http://grapoza.blogspot.com/

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The “Kingdom of God” in the Emerging Church: A Theology of Despair and Hopelessness

The “Kingdom of God” in the Emerging Church: A Theology of Despair and Hopelessness

by Bob DeWaay

(author of The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity)

02/15/2010

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/newsletters/2010/newsletter20100215.htm#letter.block12

Imagine a world where the polarity of time is reversed so that history moves backward toward Paradise rather than forward toward judgment. Consider a world in which God is so immanently involved in the creation that He is undoing entropy1 and recreating the world now through processes already at work. Think of a world where the future is leading to God Himself in a saving way for all people and all of creation. This imaginary world is our world viewed through the lens of Emergent eschatology.

Several acts of God’s providence brought me to know the nature of Emergent theology and its unique eschatology. The first happened in 1999 during my final year in seminary when the seminary hired a new professor, LeRon Shults. Shults, a theological disciple of the German Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, became my professor for a logic class. Shults often described his beliefs with this simple statement: “God is the future drawing everything into Himself.”

Some years later, several people suggested that I consider writing an article for Critical Issues Commentary, our ministry newsletter, examining a new movement called “The Emerging Church.” For my study I carefully read Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy.2 What baffled me about his theology was that his views were nearly identical to those refuted 40 years earlier by Francis Schaeffer, who had called it “the new theology.” But as Schaeffer so clearly showed, the result of this theology is despair because under it there is no hope of knowing the truth. But the Emerging writers describe their theology as one of hope. If there is no hope of knowing the truth about God, man, and the universe we live in (as they claim), then how is hope the result? It turns out that a theology from the 1960s, first articulated in Germany when Schaeffer was writing his books, is the answer.

That leads to a second providential event. A member of our congregation handed me a book that she thought might be of interest in my research: A is for Abductive - The Language of the Emerging Church.3 Under the entry “Eschaton,” the heading “The end of entropy”4 appears. It then says, “In the postmodern matrix there is a good chance that the world will reverse its chronological polarity for us. Instead of being bound to the past by chains of cause and effect, we will feel ourselves being pulled into the future by the magnet of God’s will, God’s dream, God’s desire.”5 Reading this brought my mind back to 1999 and Shults’ interpretation of Pannenberg: “God is the future drawing everything into Himself.” Could this be the ground of Emergent “hope”?

The third providential event was the debate with Doug Pagitt, the 2006 event on the topic of The Emergent Church and Postmodern Spirituality. That event gave me the opportunity to ask Pagitt, a nationally recognized leader in the Emergent movement, whether or not he believed in a literal future judgment. He would not answer either way but did state that judgment happens now through consequences in history. His refusal to answer that question convinced me that the Pannenberg/Shults eschatology was behind the movement!

The fourth providential event was a meeting with Tony Jones of the Emergent Village with the goal of setting up another debate. It turned out that they did not want another debate, but Jones offered to answer any of my questions about Emergent. I responded by e-mail asking about Stanley Grenz, Wolfhart Pannenberg, LeRon Shults, and Jürgen Moltmann and their influence on Emergent theology. Jones replied that Grenz (who, as I will later show, praises the theologies of both Pannenberg and Moltmann) was influential and that Jones himself was studying under a professor named Miroslav Volf who had studied under Moltmann. Also, he helped me with his comment that their hope-filled belief generally leads them to reject eschatologies that “preach a disastrous end to the cosmos.”

The fifth providential event was when I fell and fractured my ankle while trimming trees. The broken ankle required that I sit with my leg elevated for a full week in order to get the swelling down. I had found a copy of Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope that I knew I had to read if I was going to write this book and prove my thesis. Reading Moltmann was so laborious that finishing the book was not likely to be completed quickly. But because of my immobility I finished Moltmann, taking notes on the contents of every page. The same week I read Moltmann I obtained the just-published An Emergent Manifesto of Hope with Pagitt and Jones as the editors. I read that as well and found Moltmann cited favorably by two emergent writers.6 In that same book, Jones describes why this theology is so hopeful for them: “God’s promised future is good, and it awaits us, beckoning us forward. We’re caught in the tractor beam of redemption and re-creation, and there’s no sense fighting it, so we might as well cooperate.”7 Or as professor Shults always said, “God is the future drawing everything into Himself.”

All of this leads me to my thesis: That the worldview represented by the theology of Grenz, Pannenberg, Moltmann, and Shults is the bedrock foundation of the Emergent Church movement. Their language and ideas present themselves on the pages of many Emergent books. For example, McLaren writes, “In this way of seeing, God stands ahead of us in time, at the end of the journey, sending to us in waves, as it were, the gift of the present, an inrush of the future that pushes the past behind us and washes over us with a ceaseless flow of new possibilities, new options, new chances to rethink and receive new direction, new empowerment.”8 Here is Pagitt’s version of it:

God is constantly creating anew. And God also, invites us to be re-created and join the work of God as co-(re)creators. . . . Imagine the Kingdom of God as the creative process of God reengaging in all that we know and experience. . . . When we employ creativity to make this world better, we participate with God in the recreation of the world.9

These writers often refer to “God’s dream.” Apparently they mean that God imagines an ideal future for the world that we can join and help actualize. When this dream becomes reality in the future, it will be the Kingdom of God.

This series of providential events in my life worked together to help me accurately understand a movement that works very hard to stay undefined. Definitions draw boundaries. Definitions are static. But definitions are necessary in order for us to understand anything. With no defined categories we would be hopeless human beings because, for example, we need our rational minds and valid categories to distinguish between food and poison. Definitions are valid, and no amount of philosophical legerdemain can change that reality. Definitions, to their way of thinking, impede the process of the “tractor beam” of redemption they are experiencing. They consider definitions too “foundationalist,” as we will discuss in a later chapter. I believe that I can now define the Emergent Church movement more accurately because I understand what they believe.

The Emergent Church movement is an association of individuals linked by one very important, key idea: that God is bringing history toward a glorious kingdom of God on earth without future judgment. They loathe dispensationalism more than any other theology because it claims just the opposite: that the world is getting ever more sinful and is sliding toward cataclysmic judgment.10 Both of these ideas cannot be true. Either there is a literal future judgment or there is not. This is not a matter left to one’s own preference.

(The article above is taken from The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity by Bob DeWaay, pp. 15-18; used with permission.) This material is also covered in the new DVD lecture series Exposing the Quantum Lie by Bob DeWaay and Warren Smith.

Note: In September 2009, Bob DeWaay attended the “2009 Emergent Theological Conversation” where Jurgen Moltmann was a guest speaker. This substantiated DeWaay’s findings regarding Moltmann’s significant influence in the emerging church.

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Notes:

1. Entropy is the principle by which physicists describe heat loss in a closed system. The existence of entropy is a proof that the universe is not eternal because if it were infinitely old it would have already died of heat death.

2. CIC Issue 87, March/April 2005. http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue87.htm

3. Leonard Sweet, Brian McLaren, and Jerry Haselmayer, A is for Abductive - The Language of the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003).

4. Ibid. 113.

5. Ibid.

6. In An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones editors (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007); Moltmann is cited favorably by Dwight Friesen on page 203 and Troy Bronsink page 73 n. 24.

7. Ibid. Tony Jones, 130.

8. Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy; (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004) 283.

9. Doug Pagitt, Church Re-imagined (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003/2005) 185.

10. Please note that classical amillennialism also believes that the world is facing future judgment. Emergent is not merely opposed to dispensationalism, but any version of eschatology that asserts that God will bring cataclysmic judgment at the end of the age.

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Author: Bob DeWaay is the pastor of Twin City Fellowship in St. Paul, Minnesota and the author of The Emergent Church and Redefining Christianity. He also writes for the Critical Issues Commentary, a hard-hitting, Scripturally based commentary and articles ministry covering some of the most important issues affecting the church today, including mysticism and spiritual formation.

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Gill Rapoza

Veritas Vos Liberabit

http://grapoza.blogspot.com/

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The States Can Stop Obama

The States Can Stop Obama

By Sheriff Richard Mack (Ret.)

http://www.sheriffmack.com/docs/The_States_Can_Stop_Obama.pdf

By now we have all heard the clichés and seen the posters from the “Tea Parties” espousing freedom, less government, and perhaps most of all, how the federal government had better back off trying to shove their national healthcare down our otherwise healthy throats. The truth of the matter is all the slogans of “Don’t Tread On Me” or “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death” or “We’re Mad As Hell And We’re Not Taking It Anymore,” don’t mean a thing when compared to reality; the real and actual answer to all the protests, marches, and outrage. The answer is in our own backyards! The States can stop every bit of it! That’s right, the individual States can stop “Obamacare” and all other forms of out-of-control federal government mandates and “big brother” tactics. If Arizona, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Texas, etc. want nothing to do with National Healthcare as proposed by Barack Obama or Congress, then all they have to do is say “No!”

For you skeptics who think the States could no more do this than fly to the moon, let’s look at the law. First, the U.S. Constitution is the ultimate and supreme law of the land. More specifically, the Bill of Rights was established, because some of our Founding Fathers feared that the Constitution did not go far enough in restricting or limiting the central government.

Hamilton was one of a select few who wanted a bigger and powerful federal government. However, several key states and powerful delegates such as Patrick Henry, said they would not support the formation of a new government if the Constitution did not contain a Bill of Rights, a supreme law to establish basic and fundamental human rights that could never, for all future American generations, be violated, altered or encroached upon by government. So the Framers of our Constitution came up with ten; ten God-given freedoms that would forever be held inviolable by our own governments.

The last of these basic foundational principles was the one to protect the power, sovereignty, and the autonomy of the States; the Tenth Amendment. This amendment and law underscores the entire purpose of the Constitution to limit government and forbids the federal government from becoming more powerful than the “creator.” Let’s be very clear here; the States in this case were the creator. They formed the federal government, not the other way around. Does anyone believe rationally that the States intended to form a new central government to control and command the States at will? Nothing could be further from the truth. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution details what duties the federal government will be responsible for under our new system of “balanced power.” Anything not mentioned in Article 1, Sec. 8, is “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” (Tenth Amendment)

Hence, the federal government was not allowed creativity or carte blanche to expand or assume power wherever and whenever they felt like it. The feds had only discrete and enumerated and very limited powers. Omnipotency was the last thing the Founding Fathers intended to award the newly formed federal government. They had just fought the Revolutionary War to stop such from Britain and their main concern was to prevent a recurrence here in America.

In perhaps the most recent and powerful Tenth Amendment decision in modern history, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mack/Printz v U.S. that “States are not subject to federal direction.” But today’s federal Tories argue that the “supremacy clause” of the U.S. Constitution says that the federal government is supreme and thus, trumps the States in all matters. Wrong! The supremacy clause is dealt with in Mack/Printz, in which the Supreme Court stated once and for all that the only thing “supreme” is the constitution itself. Our constitutional system of checks and balances certainly did not make the federal government king over the states, counties, and cities. Justice Scalia opined for the majority in Mack/Printz, that “Our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other.” So yes, it is the duty of the State to stop the Obamacare “incursion.” To emphasize this principle Scalia quotes James Madison, “The local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the Supremacy, no more subject within their respective spheres, to the general authority than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere.” The point to remember here is; where do we define the “sphere” of the federal government? That’s right; in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and anything not found within this section belongs to the States or to the People. So where does health care belong? The last place it belongs is with the President or Congress. It is NOT their responsibility and the States need to make sure that Obama does not overstep his authority.

Just in case there is any doubt as to what the Supreme Court meant, let’s take one more look at Mack/Printz. “This separation of the two spheres is one of the Constitution’s structural protections of liberty. Hence, a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other...” What? The Constitution, the supreme law of the land, has as a “structural protection of liberty” that States will keep the federal government in check? No wonder it was called a system of “checks and balances.” The States (and Counties) are to maintain the balance of power by keeping the feds within their proper sphere.

So do the States have to take the bullying of the federal government? Not hardly! The States do not have to take or support or pay for Obamacare or anything else from Washington DC. The States are not subject to federal direction. They are sovereign and “The Constitution protects us from our own best intentions.” (Mack/Printz) Which means the States can tell national healthcare proposals or laws to take a flying leap off the Washington monument. We are not subject to federal direction!

In the final order pursuant to the Mack/Printz ruling Scalia warned, “The federal government may neither, issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. Such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty.” It is rather obvious that nationalized healthcare definitely qualifies as a “federal regulatory program.”

Thus, the marching on Washington and pleas and protests to our DC politicians are misdirected. Such actions are “pie in the sky” dreaming that somehow expects the tyrants who created the tyranny, will miraculously put a stop to it. Throughout the history of the world such has never been the case. Tyrants have never stopped their own corrupt ways. However, in our system of “dual sovereignty,” the States can do it. If we are to take back America and keep this process peaceful, then state and local officials will have to step up to the plate.

Doing so is what States’ Rights and State Sovereignty are all about.

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Gill Rapoza

Veritas Vos Liberabit

http://grapoza.blogspot.com/

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Fake “Conservatives” Embrace Homosexual “Monster”

Fake “Conservatives” Embrace Homosexual “Monster”

Written by Cliff Kincaid

19 February 2010

http://www.rightsidenews.com/201002198749/editorial/fake-qconservativesq-embrace-homosexual-qmonsterq.html

Kathleen Parker is the “conservative” columnist liberals can count on to bash conservative personalities and causes. This is why her column is syndicated by the Washington Post and why she is featured on the Chris Matthews show.

Now, Parker has done her best imitation of lesbian MSNBC-TV commentator Rachel Maddow by writing a column bashing Uganda’s Christian majority for considering passage of a bill to toughen laws against homosexuality. This has been a Maddow cause for months, and Parker is now on the bandwagon.

When the MSNBC-TV host isn’t attacking Christians here and abroad for opposing homosexuality, she is promoting homosexuality in the U.S. military, as Post media critic Howard Kurtz was recently forced to acknowledge in a story about her preoccupation with this matter. But it’s really not surprising. Maddow’s show is an extension of her lesbian lifestyle. She is gay and proud and given free rein at MSNBC because of her role as the first “out” lesbian to host a show on a national cable news network.

It’s another “first” for the homosexual lobby and the media, which seem to go together.

Parker’s interest in the issue is not as clear but it may stem from her eagerness to please those who syndicate her column and quote her approvingly in the liberal press. This is how “conservatives” become mainstream media stars. However, her column is even worse in its accusations and charges than what we can find in the hysterical gay press. Parker finds those Christians opposed to homosexuality in Uganda and who base their opposition on the Bible to be in favor of “genocide.”

Losing complete control of her senses, Parker states that a proposed law against homosexuality constitutes “state genocide of a minority [that] is proposed in the name of Christianity...”

Once again, as we have documented on so many occasions, the death penalty in the bill is only one provision and is for “aggravated homosexuality” or serious crimes mostly involving homosexual behavior targeting children and spreading disease and death.

The potential genocide in Uganda is the AIDS epidemic that the government and Christian leaders are successfully combating. They understand, although Parker apparently does not, that homosexual behavior promotes the spread of AIDS.

There is a myth that AIDS in Africa has been spread exclusively through heterosexual conduct. But the internationally acclaimed medical journal The Lancet last August published the first scientific study showing that male homosexuals are more often than not infected with HIV than the general adult population in sub-Saharan Africa. The study is titled, “Men who have sex with men and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Here, all of this is out in the open and well-known. Indeed, the Cato Institute held an event on Wednesday in which HIV-positive writer Andrew Sullivan strode to the podium during a conference on “gay conservatives” with ashes on his forehead from having attended a Catholic Church Ash Wednesday service. Sullivan was caught soliciting a partner for dangerous “bare-backing” sexual practices and has since “married” another man. This is “conservative?”

Like Kathleen Parker, he is still considered a “conservative” by some and was introduced by Cato executive David Boaz, a member of the Independent Gay Forum and pro-marijuana activist. Like Sullivan, Cato is also misleadingly described in the media as “conservative” too many times to mention.

Today, as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gets underway in Washington, D.C., participants will find a literature table established under official CPAC auspices from a homosexual Republican group calling itself GOProud. CPAC organizer David Keene, whose lobbying activities have been an embarrassment to the conservative movement, approved letting the gay rights organization officially attend the conference, despite complaints from traditional conservative groups such as Catholic Families for America. 

Talk of tolerance and diversity aside, male homosexuals constitute most of the HIV-AIDS cases and they are still prohibited from donating blood because of their propensity to come down with various life-threatening diseases. Facts are facts. But don’t expect to see this information analyzed and reviewed by the mainstream media when considering such issues as allowing active and open homosexuals into the Armed Forces and into close quarters with normal heterosexuals.

Gay activists complain that thousands have been forced out of the military because of their homosexuality. The evidence, in the form of opinion polls and letters from former military officers, suggests that many thousands more will leave if the military brass force acceptance of homosexuality-and the diversity training that will inevitably go along with it-on the military rank and file.

The purpose of the Ugandan bill, quite clearly, is to keep homosexuality in the closet, where it used to be in this country. The country’s literal survival may depend on passage of this legislation, after it undergoes hearings and some revisions.

The bill will likely have more of a deterrent effect than anything else. Some of the controversial passages, such as restrictions on “touching,” are included for the purpose of defining homosexual behavior. It may sound strange to Americans who are accustomed to in-your-face homosexuality on national television and almost everywhere else in society, but Uganda is serious about avoiding a return to the time when a notorious homosexual king was ruling the country and tortured and killed young Christian men who resisted his homosexual advances.

Ironically, Parker makes reference to this terrible period, but only to contrast it with a frightening future in which she speculates that gays will be offered up by authorities in Uganda as martyrs for the gay rights cause. To drive the point home, a gay rights group recently held a news conference in Washington, D.C. featuring an alleged gay rights activist from Uganda wearing a paper sack over his head. It was a good publicity stunt, designed to generate sympathy and attention for people who only want the “right” to celebrate a behavior that is a documented public health hazard.

Hedge fund manager George Soros, who is behind the campaign to homosexualize Uganda, doesn’t wear a bag over his face and doesn’t need to. He operates mostly out in the open, in the name of promoting his version of an “open society” here and abroad. The problem is that most of the liberal media agree with his policies and proposals and therefore don’t shed light on what he is doing in terms of interfering in the affairs of not only the U.S. but other nations of the world.

In fact, the Ugandan legislation seems designed to send a message to Soros and his minions in the foreign homosexual lobby to keep their hands off Uganda’s families and kids. Soros funds efforts to legalize homosexual behavior and prostitution in Uganda and other African nations. It’s too bad Parker didn’t notice and condemn that. But such a reference might provoke criticism from the left, and she wants to avoid that so she can keep going on the Matthews show.

The eminent historian Paul Johnson, who was recently on C-SPAN taking questions from viewers, has something to say about this. His book The Quest for God laments that Western society made a huge mistake by decriminalizing homosexuality and thinking that acceptance of the lifestyle on a basic level would satisfy its practitioners. Instead, he wrote, “Decriminalization made it possible for homosexuals to organize openly into a powerful lobby, and it thus became a mere platform from which further demands were launched.” It became, he says, a “monster in our midst, powerful and clamoring, flexing its muscles, threatening, vengeful and vindictive towards anyone who challenges its outrageous claims, and bent on making fundamental-and to most of us horrifying-changes to civilized patterns of sexual behavior.”

Today, this monster makes even more demands and inroads, especially into our government, as President Obama appoints subversives such as homosexual activist Kevin Jennings to the Education Department, and some poor mixed-up “transgendered” person to a post at Commerce. Plus, adding to our health care problems, he has lifted the ban on AIDS-infected foreigners from traveling to and living in the U.S.

His gays-in-the-military proposal would not only make the Armed Forces a laughingstock but would end its value as a fighting force capable of defending us against foreign threats. Indeed, a homosexualized military could itself become a threat, just like it was in the Nazi period.

Instead of finding a “monster” in a gay rights movement that wants to impose itself on all of us, including our children in the schools, Kathleen Parker finds the monster to be the Christians in Uganda who want to spare their children from a lifestyle that too frequently ends in premature death. She accuses them of “genocide” for being patriots and good parents. Shame on her.

Parker’s “conservatism” is a farce and a fraud. But it seems to be in fashion at CPAC this year.

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Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org  

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Gill Rapoza

Veritas Vos Liberabit

http://grapoza.blogspot.com/

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