Christian Faith in America

Written by Samuel Lawrence

The television show, “The X-Files” (1993-2002) had a catchphrase that said “The Truth IS Out There.”  Well, thanks to the Internet, the truth is not only out there, you can actually have it delivered to your desktop, laptop, and even your cell phone.

The current hot topic in Washington DC is the pending Government takeover of America’s healthcare, including public funding of abortions, hefty taxes on the middle class, forced coverage with fines for those not covered, and many other massive regulations, government intrusion into privacy, and the inevitable rationing of care that comes with every single socialized healthcare plan currently on the planet.

Our President promised his “sheeple” who got him elected “hope and change” but what they really got was “bait and switch.”  Here is a video by one of his faithful who are now realizing, too late, the ugly truth about the man from Chicago and his arm twisting henchmen.

Evidently, the “end justifies the means” to the current regime heading the Executive and Legislative branches of our Federal government.  It is astonishing to hear Nancy Pelosi defend and explain her twisted “moral” justification for abortion, which is nothing but pure Secular Humanism, nothing more, nothing less. Watch the video and decide for yourself.

To further demonstrate that this Liberal bunch of Socialists will do anything to push their agenda down the throats of America, listen to both the President and Speaker Nancy Pelosi lie through their teeth regarding public funding for abortions in the current Senate Healthcare bill that the President is STRONGLY urging the House to vote for.  Notice the smirk on both their faces as they talk down to the masses from their lofty “bully pulpits.”

(Many thanks to Cory Truax for the above video link.)

Obama’s message of “Hope and Change” has devolved into “Bait and Switch.”  The only hope America has for any meaningful change in the November 2010 election.  I hope and pray that the Lord will have mercy upon America, but this “power grabbing,” “freedom stealing” administration has more the appearance of divine judgement on a nation which has turned its back on the Lord, than just your average bunch of Liberals gone wild.

The Lord blesses nations and brings curses and loss of freedom to those who reject Him. The Bible says in Psalm 33:10-12 that

“The LORD foils the plans of the nations; He thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he chose for his inheritance.”

Consider Deuteronomy 30:1-7 in which the Lord speaks to the Children of Israel (His Chosen people) through Moses:

“I have told you everything the Lord your God will do for you, and I’ve also told you the curses he will put on you if you reject him. He will scatter you in faraway countries, but when you realize that he is punishing you, return to him with all your heart and soul and start obeying the commands I have given to you today. Then he will stop punishing you and treat you with kindness. He may have scattered you to the farthest countries on earth, but he will bring you back to the land that had belonged to your ancestors and make you even more successful and powerful than they ever were. You and your descendants are stubborn, but the Lord will make you willing to obey him and love him with all your heart and soul, and you will enjoy a long life. Then the Lord your God will remove the curses from you and put them on those enemies who hate and attack you.”

If the Lord God of Heaven promises this judgement to his chosen people, His elect, what more can a heathen and reprobate nation, overwhelmingly consumed with debauchery, hedonism and humanism, expect? Until America returns to the moral Judeo-Christian teachings she was founded upon, and repent from the chronic sin consuming her, we cannot expect the blessings of God, nor the liberty and freedom we once had, that made us great.

(1) “John Adams, had this principle in mind when he wrote, ‘Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.‘   Likewise, William Penn noted, ‘If we will not be governed by God, then we must be governed by tyrants.’ Yet, the nation ceased being a moral people. It ceased recognizing God. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Constitution, which allowed for a tremendous amount of liberty and granted few powers to the government, is now essentially a relic.”

I believe what we are witnessing  is this: we are now reaping the harvest of decades of sin.  America… Bless God!

(1) Quoted from cgg.org

As we near President Obama’s outright snub against the American people in his so-called “bi-partisan” health-SCARE summit, I thought  it right and proper to recall just how popular this Socialist takeover is with ordinary citizens.  Last year grass roots activism reached a boiling point in the TEA Party movement.  Here are some home videos of real SC heroes of Conservatism adding spice to the TEA.

The first is Dr. Tony Beam speaking at Greenville SC TEA Party

The second is Senator Jim DeMint speaking at the Greenville SC TEA Party

As you listen to President Obama speaking about healthcare reform, remember he is talking about a TRILLION DOLLAR entitlement program that is more about increasing Government control over our lives and limiting our freedoms than about solving the perceived and conceived “healthcare crisis.”  The audacity and arrogance of this presidential regime staggers the imagination.

A good friend emailed me today and said she and her husband saw this bumper sticker on a car in front of them as they were leaving church today. If you can’t laugh you have to cry. The bumper sticker said: “I hope nobody tells Obama what comes after a trillion.”  She then said “What does come after a trillion? I don’t even know what a trillion is.”

It is difficult to visualize just how many dollars there are in just $1 billion. The politicians who are spending fortunes in government money make it sound as though they are dealing in smaller numbers by removing quite a few digits.  To put it into perspective, a billion is a thousand million.

• To place it in a better perspective, a billion seconds ago,  it was the year 1959, the year I was born.
• Humans first learned to write 252 billion seconds ago.
• A billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive.
• A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
• A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate Washington spends it.

So, just what does one TRILLION dollars look like?  Well, starting out in smaller numbers, 1,000 Thousands equals 1 Million (1,000,000).  1,000 Millions equals 1 Billion (1,000,000,000).   1,000 Billions equals 1 Trillion (1,000,000,000,000). A Trillion can also be thought of as a Million Millions. So how can anyone relate to such a mind-numbing number like one Trillion?

Well, some time back I received this information in one of those email that float around your inbox and so I searched to find the author, but instead found this posted on several websites, without any credit to the author to be found.  So for discussion purposes, the math appears correct and so I share this with you.

All this talk about “stimulus packages” and “bailouts”…

• A billion dollars…
• A hundred billion dollars…
• Eight hundred billion dollars…
• One TRILLION dollars…

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We’ll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. These are guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.

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A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2″ thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of extravagant fun.

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Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

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While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet…

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And $1 BILLION dollars… now we’re really getting somewhere…

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Next we’ll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we’ve been hearing so much about. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it’s a million million. It’s a thousand billion. It’s a one followed by 12 zeros.

Are you ready for this?

It is pretty surprising.

Go ahead…

Scroll down…

Ladies and gentlemen… I give you $1 trillion dollars…

Notice those pallets are double stacked, …and remember those are $100 bills.

One commentator said it this way: “imagine that you have a fantastic job that pays you one dollar for every second you work.  There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. If you were only getting paid for as 40-hour work week for all 52 weeks of the year, you would still be getting paid $7,488,000 in a year. And if you were getting your $1.00 per second rate for every single second of the year, you would earn $31,536,000 for the entire year. At that rate, to earn a trillion dollars, you would have to work more than 31,709 years! And even if they generously paid you $1,000 per second, it would still take you more than 31 years to earn that first $1 Trillion.

So the next time you hear some politician toss around the phrase “trillion dollars”… that’s what they’re talking about.

Now check out the US National Debt Clock

By Dr. Tony Beam

I love computers, gadgets, PDA’s, cell phones with GPS capability and cars with voice activated phones and MP3 players. I’m hooked on satellite radio and I never go anywhere without my IPOD. In short, I am a bonafide, southern fried techno junkie. I cried for three days when I found out AT&T would be the exclusive provider of the Iphone because I am locked into a long term contract with another mobile phone service provider.

But alas, the affection I have for all things high-tech is not returned to me by my beloved gadgets. Every technological marvel I touch instantly becomes dysfunctional. I was told that I need to switch from a PC to a Mac because Apple computers were foolproof. The Computer Services people at North Greenville University told me once I made the switch they would be able to reassign the lone Computer Services technician they hired just to look after me. In turn, they assured me I would be able to delete the Computer Services extension from my speed dial.

I am now known as the only person in the known universe who had to send two bad apples back to the Mac tree. Tim, the campus computer guru tells me in the world of computers that is a record comparable to Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour de France titles.

But all my face time with Computer Services has taught me a lesson or two about troubleshooting. I was talking to Tim about my latest crisis and he told me what my computer needed was to return to its default settings. It seems a big part of my problem with computers is I like to add lots of programs. Sometimes, Tim says, the best thing to do is just wipe the slate clean of all the added programs and take the computer back to its original settings. So Tim whips out something called the restore program and faster than you can say, “what happened to all my downloads,” my computer is back to its original programming, humming along at warp speed without a single glitch.

Wouldn’t it be nice if political candidates worked like computers? It seems to me a lot of the confusion associated with the current political climate finds its source in what some conservative politicians are trying to add to the original idea of conservatism. Republicans are divided because no one has fully captured the imagination of the majority. Many of the front line leaders in the Republican Party have plenty of impressive ideas they have offered as alternatives to the Obama agenda. But the question many Evangelical conservatives are asking is, when you strip away all the pat answers and the red meat rhetoric, where is the leader whose core values will anchor them to something solid in this stormy time in which we live? The first leader who answers that question will win the support of everyone who longs for ethical leadership and a clear path back to a constitutionally run America.

There is a scene in the movie Braveheart where William Wallace gets in the face of Robert the Bruce (the accepted leader of Scotland) and says “the people will follow you if you will just lead them.” In modern day terms we need a leader who will lead by stepping up to the plate, acknowledging the source of our national distress (progressivism) and lead us back to limited, constitutional government.

America is ready for a leader whose default setting is the Word of God. A leader whose fall back position is to fall back to the idea of a smaller government that protects its weakest citizens and defends all of its citizens against the threat of annihilation from radical Islamic militants. We are ready for a leader who defends our borders and defies those who would transform our culture into a politically correct caricature of itself. Conservative Evangelicals are looking for a leader who will be a stand up straight shooter depending on core values that are rooted in absolute truth and grounded in a true understanding of compassion.

Ronald Reagan’s name has been raised more than once by both Democrats and Republicans during these confusing and dangerous times. What is it about Reagan’s legacy that makes leaders of both parties invoke his name? It’s simple really….Reagan’s core values, his “default setting” captured the hearts of all Americans. All anyone has to do to understand why Reagan was so wildly popular is read a few excerpts from his diary. Reagan would bend over backwards to work with anyone who was willing to recognize he couldn’t be budged off of his default setting. Smaller government, the protection of life, the defense of the family, victory over our enemies, the greatness of the American people, and the unlimited potential of the American dream were all programs that made up Reagan’s default setting.

Its time for true conservative leaders to arise who are willing to remove the latest add on programs to fix America and return to the default settings that will make America great.

You can hear Dr. Beam live on Christian Talk 660 weekday mornings from 7:00-9:00 AM (EST) as he is the host of Christian Worldview Today. You can also listen to recorded broadcasts in the Christian Worldview Today Archive.

Dr. Tony Beam is Vice-President for Student Services and the Director of the Christian Worldview Center at North Greenville College in Tigerville, South Carolina, Dr. Tony Beam received his Master of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and his Doctor of Ministry from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

This one is a little different. Two Different Versions and Two Different Morals.

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OLD VERSION…

The Ant and The Grasshopper

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away..

When winter comes, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

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MODERN VERSION

The Ant and The Grasshopper

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, ”We shall overcome ” . Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share..

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.

Again, this came in the form of an email and the author is anonymous to me.  Whoever penned these words has a creative political flair for satire.  I shared this little story with you because I believe that most of my readers are like the ant and not like the grasshopper!  Make sure that you share this with other ants. Don’t bother sharing it with any grasshoppers because they wouldn’t understand it anyway.