THE EVIL EFFECTS OF DEVILISH DOCTRINES

Red Deer Advocate, December 17^th, 2011. Sins and crimes covered up for decades are finding the Roman Catholic priesthood out. A Scripture promise we are glad to see fulfilled where the most evil cloisters are concerned!

Devout Roman Catholics confess that the Bible is the word of God. Evangelicals who visit the Roman Church and participate in popish services confess the same. But these two groups are either spiritually blind or brazenly stubborn in the face of what the word of God teaches.

What if the Bible clearly predicted that the Church you attend entertains ‘doctrines of devils’? Would you close your ears to that and continue attending there? The Holy Spirit himself warned that ‘doctrines of devils’ would come, and that one of these would be the forbidding of marriage. “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils…forbidding to marry” (1 Timothy 4.1, 3.) Other churches have imposed this unbiblical rule. But the Roman Church is the most infamous one who has done it.

John Calvin on 1 Timothy 4: “Accordingly, although Papists laugh at us, when we censure their tyrannical laws about outward observances, yet we know that we are pleading a cause of the greatest weight and importance; because the doctrine of faith is destroyed, as soon as the worship of God is infected by such corruptions. The controversy is not about flesh or fish, or about a black or ashy color, or about Friday or Wednesday, but about the mad superstitions of men, who wish to appease God by such trifles, and, by contriving a carnal worship of him, contrive for themselves an idol instead of God. Who will deny that this is revolting from the faith?…Not unjustly, therefore, do we maintain that this prediction was uttered against the Papists, since celibacy and abstinence from certain kinds of food are enjoined by them more strictly than any commandment of God.”

Albert Barnes on 1 Timothy 4.3: “This does not necessarily mean that they would prohibit marriage altogether, but that it would be a characteristic of their teaching that marriage would “be forbidden,” whether of one class of persons or many. They would “commend” and “enjoin” celibacy and virginity. They would regard such a state, for certain persons, as more holy than the married condition, and would consider it as “so” holy that they would absolutely prohibit those who wished to be most holy from entering into the relation. It is needless to say how accurately this applies to the views of the papacy….”

It seems clear that the ‘seducing spirits’ are the devils (or demons) and that ‘forbidding to marry’ is one of the their doctrines that they seduce persons (priests) into believing, teaching, and imposing. So this is not about doctrines concerning devils merely, but doctrines arising from them. The worship of idols is rampant among Roman Catholics. Though an idol is nothing, a sacrifice to one, like putting petals before a statue, may result in ‘fellowship with devils’ (1 Corinthians 10.19, 20.) It is no outrageous supposition, then, to assume that fellowship with devils through idolatry may glean doctrines of devils, like clerical celibacy.

Demons (or devils) want what Satan their master wants. The fellowship coveted by demons is to the purpose of causing evil effects. They are no less pragmatic than your modern politician! They have it as their aim to cause something wicked by the devilish doctrines they pass on to idolatrous priests. Demons work within the bounds of what works best. The celibate priest is their perfect match for vulnerable children under priestly care. Some applicants sign up with the Roman Institution fully intending to do good works as priests while remaining celibate. Then temptations collide with opportunities, and sex-mad priests become molesters of children. Others sign up because their proclivities are already perverse, and they are not long in finding opportunities to satisfy what they are tempted to perform.

Now you may deny that there is a union between devils and clerical celibacy. But to do this, you will also have to deny that 1 Timothy is part of Scripture. And you might refuse to allow this evil association between priests and devils to disaffect you from the Roman Church. You might just want to go back to your Roman atmosphere, with its beads, and frosted windows, and statues to kneel down to. Do you not fear that superstitious practice might be the doorway to fellowship with demons? Think, my friend, you might never become a child molester, but what effect will fellowship with devils have on you in the end? Should you not be anxious about that? Should you not be anxious about adhering to a Church that teaches and practices doctrines of devils to such wicked effects? You should be. Your Roman stand might just be a sign that you stand not with Christ, after all. “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Timothy 2.19.) Supporting the Roman Church, either by tithes or attendance, is to support the doctrines of devils that the apostle, through the Spirit, warned Timothy about. Through that support, the evil effects of these doctrines come to pass.

MAD ABOUT MURDERERS

Red Deer Advocate, February 7^th, 2012. Imagine being on the ‘hot seat’ because of a comment against people who should have been executed! Criminal-loving politicians and the media supporting them, how increasingly unreasonable they are! Not one careless word will be tolerated against killers; compassion for victims and their loved ones (who are victims too) always takes a back seat.

Suppose a law were passed whereby convicted murderers should be executed at once, or be allowed the means to commit suicide instead. Would you say anything against that if one of the murderers had murdered your daughter?

Things get emotional when you are the loved one of someone murdered. You should be permitted to wish out loud, anything you please, concerning murderers after that. Furthermore, anyone raising an eyebrow to your comment ought to be on the ‘hot seat’ for being a killer-lover.

Mercy, when taught in the Bible, never runs roughshod over justice. When mercy triumphs over justice, it is only because justice will be, or has been, fully satisfied. Mercy is released by justice being paid in full. The grace of salvation is on account of justice being satisfied by the Son of God. So it is a spiritual reality that he who repents of his sins may be pardoned: for the blood of Jesus Christ covers the sins of repenting men.

The civil reality, however, is that the sword of the State should come down upon all murderers. Romans 13 was not written for nothing, but for States to copy the example of. You may be set free from condemnation leading to hell, if you turn to God and confess your sins through Jesus Christ. But you should not be set free from punishment here on earth, especially if you are guilty of a crime like murder. Church and State have their separate functions. The one may pronounce a pardon regarding the life to come. The other must punish for crimes committed in this life. And so there is a minister of ‘the gospel of God’ (Romans 15.16.) And there is that other minister of God, ‘a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil’ (Romans 13.4.)

We are a long way from executing civil justice when you can’t say a word against murderers without being put on the ‘hot seat’ for it! Someone was even seeking legal action against the senator for his comment! Maybe he still is. Stunning stuff! But normal for Canada! Those who jump to the defense of murderers, even to the point of defending their ‘honor,’ ought to be told by as many of us who have the guts to speak up, that sympathy for murderers has to take a back seat to compassion for victims! Murderers have earned the right to be executed, not merely insulted.

But there is a hot seat in hell for each one of us who dies without having Jesus for our Saviour, be we little sinners or large. Let’s put that in before closing.

CANADA'S BLACK HOLE OF INJUSTICE

Red Deer Advocate, April 21^ST, 2012. Unjust judges will argue anything in order to acquit murderers. This is why verdicts come laced with strange language in Canadian courts. This judge argues that a ‘black hole’ forbids a murder rap.

Who cares what led you to kill defenseless kids? Who cares if your mind was ‘clouded’ by pills and depression when you did the crime? What should matter is if you took lives unlawfully or not. If a self-imposed altered state is all it takes to get you a charge of manslaughter instead of murder, then all you need to do is take a pill before you kill in order to secure for yourself an easy-go in the courtroom and a light sentence. Really, in Canada, just say that you were depressed, and you can get away with double-infanticide!

To say that you may get away with it even though manslaughter becomes your charge is not a contradiction. Compared to the death penalty you deserve, a few years in a posh pen full of amenities and opportunities is a sentence that is tantamount to getting away with it. In Canada, this woman might not do any time at all for killing her two kids! If she does, it will be easy time and short time, so easy and short, that we might as well call her sentence an acquittal. Manslaughter, in Canada, is often just another word for acquittal. But you are not supposed to realize that. Wink, wink, it is a secret among unjust judges.

What about the black hole of death that these infants were plunged into? What about the black hole of depression that those who loved them were plunged into after that? Do these black holes matter? This judge cares about the black hole the woman put herself in, that is all. No, don’t hold her to account for the black mental state she was in! Even if she took pills to put herself there and to brace herself for what she was intent on doing, do not hold her responsible! It does not matter if she murdered, so long as she was in a black hole while she did it! 

There is a black hole reserved by the LORD for unjust judges and the murderers let off by them. Liberal philosophy will cease to gain acquittals on the Day that matters most. That part of logic called ‘inference’ is little used these days. The Puritans were correct in their copious use of it in their expositions of Scripture. After Judgment Day happens, the bliss of eternal life is at hand, but “without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie” (Revelation 22.15.) This sentence is on the supposition that such sinners die without repenting first. There is little need of proving this. King David contrived a murder and Paul the apostle consented to one, yet both are magnified as eminent saints in Scripture: because they repented. So, murderers are ‘without,’ by which is meant: they are kept outside the blessings mentioned in the preceding part of the text. No water of life, no light of God, etc., this is to be shut out of heaven and to be shut into its opposite: hell. There is an inference. But here is the inference that I want to emphasize. If murderers are to be kept without, judges who turn a blind eye to their crimes must be kept without as well. To deny justice is to stand with the unjust. Unjust judges and the criminals they pamper stand together as sinners on the same page of God’s ledger. Both parties are on the same side, and both will be ‘without.’ This inference is hardly necessary to make, for such judges are those persons mentioned in the verse alongside murderers, ‘whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.’ To maintain that this woman is not guilty of murder, and not guilty to fully suffer as a murderer, is to ‘make a lie.’

I take comfort in the truth about how matters will turn out, not because I want souls to be ‘without’ the goodness of God to all eternity, but because there will be some relief, in the end, for those of us who want the precious lives of infants to matter. Their lives matter; and we will witness just how much one Day, when unjust judges get judged alongside the infants’ murderers. The murder of infants will stir up the vengeance of God. God will be glorified by the execution of his justice. Amen. 

AN ARGUMENT AGAINST ABORTION FROM ARGENTINA

Red Deer Advocate, April 12^h, 2012. This Argentine baby was pronounced stillborn by mistake. The doctors in charge are guilty of the sin of negligence. The greater sin is to make a baby stillborn, which is done across Canada with regularity.

Babies born at 6 months, or 24 weeks, gestation can survive. Yet, according to Statistics Canada, abortion is legal in this country throughout all nine months of pregnancy. Since 1988, there has been no law curbing abortion here at all. The only thing preventing more late-term abortions is the lack of doctors to perform them.

But some doctors do perform them: 534 abortions were performed after 20 weeks gestation in 2005. Abortionmyths.ca: “Since the gestational age is reported by less than half of hospitals and clinics, the number of post-viability is likely doubled.” Margaret Somerville, ethicist at McGill: “It is known that at least 400 post-viability abortions take place in Canada each year and the actual number is probably more than twice that.” Abortions of 32 and 34 weeks gestation have been reported in Quebec. Late-term abortions are sometimes also partial-birth abortions, which is infanticide.

Research at hospitals in London, Ontario, indicate that 72% of babies born at 24 weeks (6 months) gestation survive. Not surprisingly, therefore, a baby that is aborted at 22 weeks gestation looks like a fully developed infant. Go see for yourself, if you dare, at priestsforlife.org.

Pro-abortion hard-liners claim that those of us who cry against late-term abortions would have abortions outlawed altogether. We would; those of us who have thought the issue through, that is. Is that not the humane law to press for, considering that a beating heart may be listened to by day 21 and brain waves can be detected by day 40? What do beating hearts and brain waves point to but life? Should life be terminated just because the bearer of it says so? Or should life be terminated just because it has been found, in the womb, to be imperfect? Would you like to be terminated because you have an imperfection? It would not take long for us to find one.

A nation that slaughters its most vulnerable persons, yes, persons, will reap a harvest of hurt in return. Do you know how we are reaping? People who refuse to admit the obvious: that stopping a beating heart is murder, are the kind that God gives over to what the apostle calls a ‘reprobate mind.’ Read the final verses of Romans 1 to see what sins the reprobate mind ends up steeped in. The reprobate mind goes with a hardened heart; hearts that are hardened to a petrified state will not repent, will not be saved, will not take forgiveness, and will scoff at heaven and laugh at hell. Is that not what we see at the mall? downtown? in office cubicles? in schools? in colleges? in universities? on the rigs? in churches?

Take a look around you and then consider your soul. Are you a reprobate like that? Does the beating heart in a womb convince you of life? Do you think that a person not convinced of that may be chosen by God to inherit life eternal? Would that not be a contradictory association? Pro-life is not the gospel, but unlike pro-abortion, it is consistent with it. The gospel yields life; pro-life preserves it.

Jesus gave his life on the cross in order to save sinners from the penalty of hell and to grant them life everlasting. That is the gospel. Anybody believing that gospel and embracing it for his own eternal good will be on the side of defenseless life, maybe even to the point of wanting ‘life for life, tooth for tooth’ legalized in its honor.

Abortion should be made illegal; and those who kill infants in the womb ought to have their own lives taken away by the State. That is how far this issue needs to go in order to prevent the blood of babes from being spilled. That blood cries up into God’s ears, count on it. And there will be literal hell to pay by persons who refuse to listen to what God hears. Murdered babes will have their day! Politicians beware! Abortionists be afraid! Killers of babes watch out! Apathetic souls wait for it! God will get you yet! His ears are open to the blood of babes! Unless you repent, not only of being on the side of that idol called ‘choice,’ but of all your ungodly sins and misdeeds, God will not hear your pleas for mercy on Judgment Day. The blood of babes will then be something you will answer to. The babes are heard by God as their blood spills out on our hospital beds; they will be heard by all of us eventually.  

“The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground” (Genesis 4.10.)

“The land was polluted with blood” (Psalm 106.38.) 

SHAMEFUL CROSS-COUNTRY GLOATING

(October 2013.) Alice Munro has gone down in history as the first Canadian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is always wrong to gloat. But sometimes, like this time, it is especially wrong to do so.

The Nobel judges may have lived up to their mandate by their choice in one respect. I do not dispute that. They are supposed to pick a writer whose body of work is idealistic; Munro’s body of work is idealistic feminism; feminism is just now the popular idealism; therefore a writer like Munro must win. Where feminism is not popular, it is at least shocking. This is why Munro’s books cause a sensation in many languages. One of her short story collections, Runaway, is summed up by her like so in an interview (my paraphrase): “Women flee from relationships [the bondage of marriage] and predictability at the age of about forty because a new pattern of life is desired.” This particular trend in feminism is already dated, for feminists are against marriage now. Now they just have to flee shack-up situations. But it does fit in with the feminist ideal. 

CBC radio personnel, in response to the news of Alice Munro winning the coveted crown in literature, briskly rummaged through their archives to rebroadcast all of their Alice Munro material. They did not have far to dig, for stuff like that is always kept near the surface over there. They also did their best to create some new material. And so the Nobel win was chosen as the subject for CBC’s Cross-country Checkup, the Canada wide radio phone-in program. On there it was made to appear as if everyone from coast to coast was happy about Alice Munro’s prize. This was an appearance, nothing more. Cross-country Checkup runs for two solid hours. My call was received before the first half-hour was up. Because CBC determined to allow no dissenting word on the subject, I did not get past the screener. This was a kind of replay of the other time I phoned in to recommend a Christian book when Rex Murphy solicited calls about favorite books on any subject. The Existence and Attributes of God is not something that CBC would like the nation to hear about through its airwaves, though it is a public station that is supposed to represent all Canadians, not just atheists, Muslims, and liberal activists.

My dissenting word was going to amount to this: Alice Munro writes commonplace prose; unlike the great short story masters, she describes, rather than intimates, the grosser sins, which is easier to do; and she won the prize because her feminist views run through her stories in an age that is particularly accepting of feminism. In effect, I communicated this to the screener. She then desired some particulars from me to back to up my remarks, hoping that I would not, or thinking that I could not, submit a shred of proof. But I was ready with the three stories of Munro’s that I had read, and with my notes. To my comment that these stories do not compare well with those of Hawthorne or Poe and that they contain vulgarities, the call screener simply threw out the old line that ‘times have changed’ and then promised to call me back to put me on the air. That never happened. If our criterion for greatness in literature is whatever body of work boldly promotes the idealism of the day, there is no limit to how low literature will sink. And if ‘the times’ is our rule for what we accept and celebrate, then feminists better rejoice if the age comes to male chauvinism and books are given prizes for waxing mundane upon that!

How can I judge a woman’s award for a body of work when I’ve read just three of her stories? Having listened to her interviews, and now to many of the comments from readers who phoned in to praise her, I know that her body of work is fairly represented by these three stories. Moreover, the reviews on Amazon substantiate this.

So why is it especially wrong to gloat about this win for Canada? First, because the stories lack literary merit. The stories are disabled by insufficient differentiation of characters, poor composition, poor construction, confusing content, and flat endings. Some of these disabilities were haplessly admitted by some of the callers. One caller tried to speak in a positive way about ‘mundane detail,’ for example. Another caller was more careful to call this boring content ‘subtle detail.’ A third caller even confessed that she could not always understand Munro’s stories, but quickly reproved herself for being too ‘analytical,’ which dumb reproof was immediately seconded by the host. Of course, more highfalutin comments were the norm: Munro “carves a groove through the psyche that goes straight to the soul” and some of her sentences “make you gasp and wonder how she did it.” Here is one of the best lines from her story, Dulse: “until he turned into a ropy-armed old man, shrunken, uncomplaining, hanging on to a few jokes.” That’s okay, but it does not make me gasp and it certainly carves no groove to my soul. Mostly, what you find in a story like Dulse is modern cliché writing like this: “Lydia the poet. Morose, messy, unsatisfactory Lydia. The unsatisfactory poet.” The sentence fragment is a modern cliché that passes for poise in prose. When overused, it can only show up lack of skill, tact, and good sense. And why must feminist writers choose female writers for characters? They do so because they are continuously writing their own biographies into their stories, and if not their biographies, then their fantasies. They can’t get beyond themselves as subjects.

The second reason why it is especially wrong to gloat about this win for Canada is because the stories are indecent. School boards from the 1970’s did not reject Munro’s books without good reason. They rejected her books because of the corrupting morals they contain and the vulgar language. The times have changed in a bad way, for her books are widely accepted now, probably even in schools. It is one thing to curse and to speak filthily; but to put that kind of garbage into writing and to push it upon students is worse by a great degree.

From a replay of an interview given in 2004 (by Wachtel), I learned that Alice Munro must be credited with getting the F word in The New Yorker. To this fact she proudly replies that each story she submitted had something like that in it. I learned that in one of her short story collections, infidelity occurs in seven out of nine stories. Without even reading these stories you can tell that that sin is not set in the context of shame and moral rectitude, for Munro says that she doesn’t like stories in which the adulterous woman can’t go out and about in society. Stories like that “are like claws trying to fasten me down,” she admits. What are these claws? These claws may be defined as the moral conviction arising from an accusing conscience. Suppressing these claws is what Romans 1.18 is about: “ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” The passage in which this verse appears is one of the only places, maybe the only place in all of Scripture, where lesbianism is explicitly forbidden and condemned. That story called Dulse is about, among other things, a man in denial of his writer idol being a lesbian. But it’s not like I have to prove that lesbianism is cast in a good light by Munro. It’s not something that she would deny.

If gross immorality invites the wrath of God (Romans 1.18), and gross immorality is what Alice Munro celebrates in her stories, can it be a good thing to gloat about her Nobel Prize? When we gloat over this win, we are declaring that we take pleasure in the gross immorality that her fiction promotes. By gloating over this win, we inject ourselves into the italicized portion of the following verse: “Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them” (Romans 1.32.)

If Alice Munro is the maker of grossly immoral stories for people to take pleasure in, she stands condemned by that verse even more than her gloating readers do. How wise is it to screen her from negative criticism such as I was prepared to give out over the radio? The higher that sinners go in the world with their sins, the less they are likely to be reproved for them along with warnings to repent. This woman is in her 80’s now, and frail, maybe too frail to travel. Who is going to have access and courage to warn her that she is ready to drop into the claws of God’s wrath? A word of caution to her, however curt, might turn into a cry upon her conscience causing her to reconsider her whole body of work and the sin that put it all into motion. Alice Munro rejoices over the fact that these days women her age live with their lovers, by which is meant, in fornication. She calls this a freedom to live a pleasanter life. Compare that opinion with Romans 1, and if you believe the Bible to be authoritative, you must conclude that Alice Munro is not ready to face the Judge of all the Earth. Alice Munro forsook her family in need in order to attend university. She says that she did this ‘without qualms.’ Now (according to the interview in 2004), even though she is glad to have done that, she feels guilty about it. She is still conscious, then, of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, though she would never phrase it biblically like that. So there is a faint hope that she might repent before she dies. But who is going to preach to her? 

Shameful cross-country gloating about Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize for Literature is especially wrong to do. Those who gloat about this win reveal that they are blindly patriotic or ignorant of literature. They act like those persons spoken of in Romans 1, who take pleasure in gross immorality, upon whom the wrath of God will soon descend. This shameful cross-country gloating is the worse thing that can happen to the guilty victor because praise tends to puff persons up and steel them in their sins.