tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34612459675457732024-02-19T08:35:35.632-07:00the bible and the newsNews Interpreted by the Bible, not the Bible Interpreted by the News.thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.comBlogger180125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-58509567531884806002023-08-24T17:09:00.002-06:002023-08-24T17:14:58.849-06:00MY NOTES ON 'OLD-TIME MAKERS OF MEDICINE' BY JAMES JOSEPH WALSH, 1911<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpOnuAHh0d5p-J71u0acDzEvtT5bUOk2aOgM8v1vbcHc2EKq2u3X8iNQ-pVXOykhSLP4Dytl_kM8SkTU1zsX_e07iWDrBq6UTaKDr62WHLYaFDoWrUIFjPaFopewUSmMbstcGSQOhxvQMFWraG3MLguoEzDKv-S8Ilyt4DxQC4IO30uJz0VhKmRuQzaw/s300/Old-Time_Makers_Medicine%20image.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpOnuAHh0d5p-J71u0acDzEvtT5bUOk2aOgM8v1vbcHc2EKq2u3X8iNQ-pVXOykhSLP4Dytl_kM8SkTU1zsX_e07iWDrBq6UTaKDr62WHLYaFDoWrUIFjPaFopewUSmMbstcGSQOhxvQMFWraG3MLguoEzDKv-S8Ilyt4DxQC4IO30uJz0VhKmRuQzaw/w400-h400/Old-Time_Makers_Medicine%20image.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">First, here is a link to the audio that I listened to, which is free to download: https://librivox.org/old-time-makers-of-medicine-by-james-joseph-walsh/</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">As these are my notes on an audio version of a thorough history of medicine, I did not labor to get the spelling of all the names or words right, but guessed at many of them. Sometimes I thought it necessary to put my own thoughts in parentheses. The reader of said audio is LivelyHive. Thanks to him, this interesting book may be absorbed with ease. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">NOTES ON 'OLD-TIME MAKERS OF MEDICINE' BY JAMES JOSEPH WALSH, 1911.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Preface and Chapter 1: This book covers the period of the Middle Ages, from the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 A. D. to the discovery of America. He gives the earlier context though as well. Our Forefathers in Medicine is his other book, which covers the period after the discovery of America down to his own time. He posits that medical ignorance was not what we think it was during the Middle Ages and that Christians made the progress that was made, possible. That is his thesis; he is a Roman Catholic. Some knowledge that they had in the Middle Ages was forgotten about; then it was rediscovered, either through ancient books or otherwise; this knowledge includes anesthesia, sepsis, and antisepsis. It is interesting that the author mentions the fall of the Roman Empire as being caused, in part, by invasion and infertility (choosing not to have children.) I have heard this opinion many times; it suits our case today. Much of the medicine in the ‘dark ages’ was recovered in the 19th century from old books. Barbarians coming into Rome was what began its intellectual decadence. This suits our case to a point as well. Basil Valentine is the father of pharmacy. This first chapter is excellent. Listened to it twice in a row; and I plan to do so again. The author is a clear writer. The reader is flat; but he reads slowly, which makes the material easy to follow; his pauses are in the right place; I can get used to him. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 2, Part 1: This is on early Christian caring for the sick, and their hospitals, which date as far back as Basil in the fourth century. Before this, Christians were hindered more; but they did what they could.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 2, Part 2: Men do not regularly consent to surgery on the testes to cure varicose veins. Gynecology and cancer were known in the Middle Ages. Asheus (phonetic) was one of the first whose work was published by the printing press, though he lived many centuries earlier. There follows a summary of four brother physicians. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 2, Part 3: This is on Alexander. Saltwater is for curing dandruff. (This probably works; too bad I didn’t know this as a kid and young man.) Headache is inflammation of the brain. (Alexander is full of common sense.) He observed a tapeworm that was 16 feet long. Other doctors are now summarized. Ecclesiastical control is the reason for the preservation of old works on medicine until the printing press was invented and could be used. Christians and Arabs translated many Greek works of medicine and other subjects into their languages. This knowledge they built on in their own studies, experiments, and treatments.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 3, Part 1: This is on great Jewish physicians. They labored greatly against prejudice. They drew on the Old Testament and the Talmud. The Old Testament is the foundation of rules of sanitation. (The Talmud has much in it that is correct.) Good description of canine rabies at 9 minutes: “His [the dog’s] mouth is open. The saliva opens from his mouth. His ears drop. His tail hangs between his legs. He runs sideways. And the dogs bark at him. Others say that he barks himself, and that his voice is very weak. No man has appeared who could say that he has seen a man live who was bitten by a mad dog.” The author says that this description is accurate up until his day. C-section is mentioned in the Talmud. The Talmud is a kind of encyclopedia on all kinds of knowledge. At 12 minutes a quote from the Talmud which the author calls ‘a famous summing up of the possibilities of life and happiness’: “Life is compatible with any disease, provided the bowels remain open; any kind of pain, provided the heart remain unaffected; any kind of uneasiness, provided the head is not attacked; all manner of evils, except it be a bad woman.” Author calls this quote ‘possible [sic?] wanting in gallantry, being set down to the times in which it was written.’ </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 3, Part 2: This concerns the ninth century. It begins with the contemporary Jewish doctor of Charlemagne. Muslims studied Aristotle and Plato at Baghdad at this time. Jewish physicians influenced Arab leaders. At this time the Arabs too became successful physicians. Disraeli is called by one of his translators into Latin: ‘the monarch of physicians.’ Some of his maxims at 7:30 minutes to 8:30: “The most important duty of the physician is to prevent illness. Most patients get better without much help from the physician, by the power of nature.” He distrusted the use of many medicines at the same time. “Employ only one medicine at a time in all your cases, and note its effects carefully.” He was ‘as wise with regard to medical ethics as therapeutics.’ He wrote on fevers, urine, melancholy, diet, et cetera. He lived to over 100 years. There were decrees against the Jews by the Roman Church and the pope himself, the author admits; but the Jews overcame this. He says that they nevertheless became physicians to kings, bishops, and even popes. He does not blame the persecution of them on Christianity, but ‘defective human nature.’ He’s right, but only technically. Pope Innocent III he calls the greatest pope of the Middle Ages. This pope: “Let no Christian, by violence, compel them to come, dissenting or unwilling, to baptism. Further, let no Christian venture maliciously to harm their persons without a judgment of the civil power or to carry off their property or change their good customs, which they have hitherto in that district, which they inhabit.” Some later popes were of the same mind. Author generalizes that the popes of the Middle Ages were protectors, not persecutors, of Jews. His bias is showing, I think. He says it’s because of the popes that the Jews were not exterminated. He quotes a few Protestants to try to prove this. He blames their persecution on ‘local’ instances of ecclesiastical regulations, especially in France. A lot of it was to guard against ‘quackery.’ He ends with praise of Maimonides, a man greatly esteemed by later physicians. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 4: Maimonides was the royal physician to Saladin. He was Jewish, and born in 1135 or 1139. Arabs introduced a system of irrigation not equaled by the Spaniards. Rural people leaned more on the intellectual side than people in the cities, for these latter pursued money more. The Jews were so happy in Spain that they wrote poems about it. The basis of education in Spain among Jews in Maimonides’ day: the Bible, the Talmud, math, astronomy, literature, law, and physical science. He was not precocious. His family had to flee Spain because of persecution. They settled in Cairo. Maimonides was one who cared for people, not diseases. His letters include rules on dietetics. This is summed up at 22-34 minutes. These rules are for staying healthy. (Most of them I agree with.) Salt and oil he recommends for constipation. This is important because this ailment makes one liable to disease, he maintains. Most diseases, he says, are caused by poor eating habits. Maimonides: “Every change in a life habit is the beginning of an ailment.” He was wise enough to reject astrology. His rules for believing, or not, things like astrology: Rational proof, as in math, perception of the senses, or traditions from prophets or learned men. In his day, men tended to believe whatever was written in a book, especially an ancient one. He read every astrological book he knew about, and could find no reason to believe in it. His proverb, borrowed from a Rabbi: “Teach thy tongue to say, ‘I don’t know.’” This is an acknowledgement that you may not have the answer to your query yet. He died in 1204. Even Aquinas quoted him. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 5, Part 1: Great Arabian physicians. Before the time of Mahomet, right after the time of Christ, Arabs were ‘hireling soldiers’, generally uneducated, and nomadic. Nestorian Christians began to teach them. The Muslims burned ten centuries of books at Alexandria because: if they agreed with the Koran, they were useless; and if they disagreed with it, they were pernicious. Exceptions were made for books of science, including medicine. Knowledge contained in Greek books eventually allured them into becoming pupils. Aphorisms that follow in this chapter are by Razis (phonetic): “At the beginning of a disease, choose such remedies as will not lessen the patient’s strength. When you can heal by diet, prescribe no other remedy; and, where simple remedies suffice, do not take complicated ones.” Another, because of his belief in the influence of mind over body: “Physicians ought to console their patients even if the signs of impending death seem to be present, for the bodies of men are dependent on their spirits.” The most important thing for the physician to do, he believed, was to increase the patient’s natural vitality. “In treating a patient, let your first thought be to strengthen his natural vitality; if you strengthen that, you will remove ever so many ills without more ado. If you weaken it, however, by the remedies that you use, you always work harm.” The simpler means, the better, he believed. He insisted more on diet than on artificial remedies. “It is good for the physician that he should be able to cure disease by means of diet if possible rather than by means of medicine.” Another: “A patient who consults a great many physicians is likely to have a very confused state of mind.” A huge translation of his work was burned by the translator to avoid controversy. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 5, Part 2: Ali Abus, a prestigious successor to Razis. His book on medicine was used as a standard for two centuries. Arab physicians flourished in Spain. An Arab produced the first illustrated medical book. There is an ingenious cure for a fracture in the pelvis of a woman at 14 minutes, not quoting. One of these Arab physicians had commentaries written on his work up to five centuries after he practiced. One of his books replaced the one by Abus, and was used for a long time. Nutrition per rectum was known at this time (11th century, I think.) On this rectum treatment, it was thought that the nutrients could be sucked up that way. One philosopher-physician did more harm than good because he practiced speculation more than observation. Arabs reared medical institutions in Baghdad and Cordova. Some medical terms still in use in the author’s day come from Greek and Latin sources, but through Arab translations. This testifies of Arab influence in medicine. Arabs did plagiarize a bit the ancient authors. They lack originality, theorize too much, and observe too little. Freind wrote A History of Medicine. (He must be the doctor whom I quoted in my Covid book.) </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 6: The medical school at Salerno, 10th century, in the south of Italy. Much training was required there to be licensed, about ten years, which included an undergraduate degree in assorted areas of knowledge. Man is interested in his health, then his prosperity, then his relationships to God and man, says the author. (He’s probably right about that.) William the Conqueror went to Salerno for treatment when still a duke. Salerno set the standard for credentials. King Roger of the two Sicilys, 1140, promulgated the law: “Whoever from this time forth desires to practice medicine must present himself before our officials and judges and be subject to their decision. Anyone audacious enough to neglect this shall be punished by imprisonment and confiscation of goods. This decree has for its object the protection of the subjects of our kingdom from the dangers arising from the ignorance of practitioners.” So this, says the author, was so that unfit, unworthy physicians might not practice to their benefit and to the detriment of the patients, which had been happening due to the popularity of Salerno as the hub of good medical practice. A physician’s visit was worth the salary of a patient’s day’s work. Their lack at Salerno of training in dissection was not due to Roman Catholic objection, says the author, but to people not wanting their dead relatives dissected. (This might be his bias speaking.) Arabs didn’t look to nature for healing as much as what was done at Salerno: diet, water, and so on. Salerno has a poem written about it, 3,500 lines long. At 38:30 there is information on bedside manner, not quoting. At 41:30: physicians used a bit of deception for the good of the patient, not quoting. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 7: Constantine Africanus in Salerno. He is the link between Arab and Western medicine. (Many of these physicians lived long lives, as did this one, some to over a hundred years.) Other physicians were jealous of him because of his renown and innovations; they gave him much trouble. He became a friend to the future pope: Desiderius (phonetic): a Pope Victor. Hard to say which works are Africanus’ because some writers used his name in order to have their works read. In that day, ten centuries ago and even during the renaissance, it was common for a writer to sign a known writer’s name to his work, and not care if he himself became forgotten, as long as his thoughts would be read. There was no question of money. Author: “Literature that has deeply influenced mankind has never paid.” Money-making publications, he adds, have been insignificant works that have affected people superficially. This is the best chapter so far except for the first one. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 8: Medieval women physicians: the education of women at Salerno for the treatment of women’s diseases. Plato believed that women should be educated. So the idea is an old one. The author gives a brief history lesson on the education of women. There were Greek and Roman physicians, for example; they were not rare. Some early Christian women were not only physicians, but surgeons. He gives some information on some of the medieval women physicians and their manuscripts. They learned all branches of medicine, but practiced mainly one: that which concerns women diseases. This level of education spread into the whole of Italy, but not the West, at least not for licensing. Benedictines were the driving influence in Salerno for producing women physicians. ‘Sister infirmians’ were in monasteries and convents. Whether this means physicians or nurses, the author does not say. Hildegard (1098-1179) was a woman physician who corresponded with great men of the age and wrote much on medicine and natural subjects like trees and minerals. She anticipated many instances of modern ideas in medicine. For example, she asserted the circulation of blood centuries before William Harvey (1578-1657) discovered it. She said this about stars in the firmament: “Just as the blood moves in the veins, which causes them to vibrate and pulsate, so the stars move in the firmament, and send out sparks, as it were of light, like the vibrations of the veins.” In 1311 in France, women were allowed to practice medicine. By the 16th century, women physicians were almost a thing of the past. And the fact that women have practiced the profession has been all but forgotten (in the author’s day.) (My suspicion is that most of the ‘women physicians,’ since they majored in ‘women’s diseases,’ might have been no more than ‘midwives,’ though the author does not use that word. And this would sometimes necessitate a kind of surgery, which is simply cutting; and therefore midwives could have been called surgeons because of that.) He recommends a couple of his other books for proving the point that we often have to rediscover things that we already knew. ‘Escape the tooth of time’ is a good turn of phrase by the author. ‘Quack-salver’ is an ancient epithet, their name for a snake-oil salesman, or carpetbagger. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 9, Part 1: Mondino (b. 1275) and the Medical School at Bologna. This school is a legacy of Salerno. It advanced in the department of anatomy. Mondino wrote a manual on the subject. He reintroduced the practice of dissection, which was an advance on the dissection of pigs. His public dissection of bodies was probably the first of these regularly made. Advances in medicine came mainly from education in Italy; it was this way for centuries. Here the author objects to the idea that the Roman Church was opposed to science in the Middle Ages. We need to acquaint ourselves with firsthand sources in order to learn this, he says. Dante was advancing literature. Giotto was beginning modern art. Why should it be hard to believe that medicine, too, was making strides? He gives some notes on Tadio, a great physician. The university (which included, I think, the medical school) at Bologna had, by the end of the 13th century, no less than 15,000-20,000 students. It was the custom, then, to learn both medicine and philosophy. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 9, Part 2: Mondino was not the first to do human dissection, as is commonly supposed. The author gives recent anecdotes from his own time on body snatching. This he gives to prove that it is easy to suppose that body snatching occurred in Mondino’s day for dissection. The author wrote a book, The Popes and Science. Some professors in Italy were women from at least the 1200s to the author’s day. He shows how it must be inferred from Mondino’s writings that he did many human dissections. (I think his proofs from inferences are legit.) Mondino’s manual ruled for two centuries. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 10, Part 1: Great surgeons of medieval universities. Historians generally contend that surgeries were not performed in the Middle Ages and that the Roman Church was the cause. The author, of course, is not of this mind. Medical historians know better. Surgery developed wonderfully in the 13th and 14th centuries. Surgeons of that day knew that a fractured skull did not necessarily exhibit a visible wound, a fact not always recognized in prisons of the author’s day. Most of this chapter is about a commentary by ‘the four masters.’ At 22 minutes they have a note on how the surgeon must have clean hands, have eaten no foods that may corrupt the air through exhalation, and have had no recent contact with menstruating (‘and other’) women. (Maybe this is a reason for the segregation of menstruating women for longer periods of time than for other reasons in the Old Testament: not concerning ceremonial purity merely, but literal cleanliness! What he means by ‘other women’: maybe sexual contact?) The medical institution at Salerno was likely founded in the 10th century; the one at Bologna in the 12th century. At 26 minutes a quote to prove anesthesia was not discovered in the middle of the 19th century in America, but was a practice in olden times; so this, from Tom Middleton in the 16th century: “…the mercies of old surgeons, who put their patients to sleep before they cut them.” Anesthetics were experimented with as early as the 13th century.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 10, Part 2: Bruno de Longo Burgo. He recommends surgery only after diet and potions have failed. Physicians had now become more eclectic in their gathering of knowledge. Wine was the best known antiseptic; wounds were washed with wine. Better food, they believed, produced better blood. Notes on Burgo’s work follows from this, which I am not summarizing. One surgeon removed (which resulted in a cure) a tumor the size of a hen’s egg from the mouth of a woman. He did it by heated instruments; thereby, (I suppose) removing the tumor and cauterizing the wound at the same time. Her cure was made more lasting and certain by the removal of loose teeth from the affected area. At 27 minutes occurs a passage on the qualifications of surgeons. It’s too long for quoting; but it’s good to know where it is just in case. Surgeon named Lon Frank (phonetic) at 28 minutes: “The surgeon should not love difficult cases, and should not allow himself to be tempted to undertake those that are desperate. He should help the poor as far as he can. But he should not hesitate to ask for good fees from the rich.” </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 10, Part 3: Mondeville. His work was not published until 1892, though he did his work in the 13th century. He accompanied the king (with other physicians) on his campaigns. He had not much time to write. He was a learned man who happened to become a physician. Confidence in the surgeon is often more important than the surgeon’s work in producing a cure. The patient’s relatives must not be told too much in case they drop some bad news on the patient. (This rule must still be in effect, based on my observations.) The surgeon’s assistants must be cheery in order to keep up the humor of the patient. (This is definitely still in effect, for I have experienced this before the doctor went for a biopsy of my stomach via my throat, and in dentistry.) Mondeville on problems arising from women nursing their husbands: at 17:45 minutes: “In our days, in this Gallican part of the world, wives rule their husbands; and the men, for the most part, permit themselves to be ruled. Whatever a surgeon may order for the cure of a husband will then often seem to the wives to be a waste of good material, though the men seem to be quite willing to get anything that may be ordered for the cure of their wives. The whole cause of this seems to be that every woman seems to think that her husband is not as good as those of other women whom she sees around her.” At 19:15 on categories: just as Gallan divides the famous physicians of the world into three sects: the Methodists, the empirics, and the rationalists; Mondeville divides modern surgery into three sects (naming certain names of physicians into three groups.) The methods of these sects divided by Mondeville: the first sect: they limited patients’ diet, used no stimulants, dilated all wounds, and got union only after puss formation; the second sect: they allowed a liberal diet to weak patients, though not to the strong, but generally interfered with wounds too much; the third sect believed in a liberal diet, never dilated wounds, never inserted tents (probably stents), and its members were extremely careful not to complicate wounds of the head by unwise interference. At 21:15 minutes on the kinds of traveling charlatans in Mondeville’s day, as quoted from Mondeville’s work: “barbers, soothsayers, loan agents, falsifiers, alchemists, mitch-heresies (?), midwives, old women, converted Jews, Saracens, and indeed most of those who, having wasted their substance foolishly, now proceed to make physicians or surgeons of themselves in order to make their living under the cloak of healing.” The author mentions an English physician at that time, a surgeon. (Usually he sticks with Italy or France.) There was a condition that caused fecal vomiting. Other areas of science, not only the medical field, he says, were more advanced than is thought. (Many of these physicians were Roman Catholic clergymen and/or bishops and/or Dominicans.) </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 11 Part 1: Guy de Chauliac. The surgery of that day was, in fact, says the author, ‘applied science.’ (He says this because that was disputed in his day.) Chauliac was the father of modern surgery. He lived in the 14th century. He was another physician-cleric. Going to Italy from France in that day was more costly and took more time, says the author, than taking a voyage to America from Europe in the author’s day. Chauliac’s book was the most read book on medicine for centuries. The RC Church was the patron of many physicians, including Chauliac. A Scot taught medicine in France in his day; Chauliac had no respect for his book. At 13:45 minutes there is a description of dissection, not quoting. There were body snatchings in his day in Bologna. Chauliac was a physician to three popes. He wrote one of his books ‘for solace in old age.’ (Maybe a good idea.) Fear and love are obstacles, says Chauliac, to discovery. What he means is that people, because of love or fear, commonly accept, without discrimination, what authorities have decided is true. (He has a point.) Few men think for themselves, says the author. (These thoughts are pretty good at around 23 minutes.) He quotes John Ruskin: “Nothing is harder than to see something and tell it simply as you saw it.” Men of Chauliac’s day lacked the critical faculty; this was not a fault in Chauliac.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 11, Part 2: Some surgical procedures in the author’s day, as well as the architectural designs of hospitals, were learned from Chauliac’s time. The medieval hospitals had a more cheerful look; and they were more practically built. Hernia was Chauliac’s specialty. He said that a truss should be worn over the hernia and that no surgery should be attempted unless the hernia endangered the patient’s life. He invented a manipulation of the hernia that was still in use in the 19th century. Chauliac discusses six surgeries for it. Sepsis was starting to be disregarded (not by him) in Chauliac’s day. The author calls Freind ‘that great English physician.’ (I quoted a letter to Freind in my Covid book.) Freind called Chauliac ‘the prince of surgeons.’ Chauliac cared for the sick during a bubonic plague while so many other physicians fled. He also wrote about said plague. (At 23 minutes: The qualifications that he laid out for surgeons to measure up to reminds me of qualifications for ministers in the NT.) He has been often compared to Hippocrates. At 24:30 there is a list of the great men of his time: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Giotto. Foundations of modern art were being laid; great cathedrals were being finished; universities were in ‘the first flush of their success.’ Chauliac was the most admired surgeon for centuries after his death. His books were copied and translated into all the languages of Europe in his day or shortly after. The editions of his work are numerous across the centuries. Decadence in surgery, however, followed his death, until the Renaissance injected it with new life. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 12, Part 1: Medieval dentistry: Giovanni of Arcoli. Dentistry achieved a high degree of excellence even in ancient history, among the Phoenicians, for example, in dental bridgework. Among the Etruscans, too, this was the case, circa 500 B. C. Most replacement teeth were removed for burial among ancient people for reuse and/or for religious reasons. Causes of tooth decay were written about by Chauliac, with a fair amount of knowledge. Tooth powder (what we call toothpaste) was recommended by him, and a recipe is given for the making of it. A false tooth may be fashioned from ox bone, says Chauliac. Arcoli is the first physician we know of to speak of filling teeth with gold. At 22:30 minutes a decalogue is recited about the preservation of teeth, not quoting. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 12, Part 2: Medieval dentistry again. Anatomy of teeth not developed until a century after Arcoli, who was born near the end of the 1300s and who died either in 1460 or 1484, probably the former. His books were popular and literary. Something called ‘alcoholic insanity’ is mentioned from the olden time. (Probably this is the Delirium Tremens, which I have experienced.) Arcoli describes four kinds of angina. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 13: Cusanus and the first suggestion of laboratory methods in medicine. Cardinal Cusanus suggested counting the pulse rate by the water clock in 1450 or so for diagnostic purposes. (Watches were not invented yet.) He was a not a physician, but a mathematician. A century before Copernicus, he asserted that the earth moved and was not the center of the universe. “His intuition outran by far the knowledge of his time.” (On the constitution of the sun, the author thinks Cusanus was a genius to figure it out; but his theory of its constitution has since been proven wrong, for it is made of hydrogen and helium.) His best known work is called, On Learned Ignorance. I looked for it; did not find. What he means by the title is that “men know many things that ain’t so,” as quoted by the author from some writer or other. Cusanus suggested weighing urine for diagnostic purposes, not only observing its color and tasting it. At 16:45 minutes is a quote from Nicholas of Cusa from the 15th century about seeking knowledge, not quoting. This quote is to show that not all men of his time merely accepted what they were told to believe. (This is the author’s bugbear, or one of them.) Nicholas received his doctorate at the age of twenty-three, was made a cardinal at the age of forty, and became one of the leaders in Europe. He did much of his thinking on his horse, and figured some things out by observing the conduct of flies. Back to Cusanus: at 24 minutes is the outline of the proper political system, according to him, not quoting. Usually it’s a young man early in his career who makes breakthroughs, says the author, before his mind is cumbered with the opinions of others. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 14, Part 1: Basil Valentine, Last of the Alchemists, First of the Chemists. He was a Benedictine monk and the founder of pharmaceutical chemistry. (Isn’t it interesting that pharmacologists originate from alchemists?) Elements had been known as earth, air, fire, and water. But Valentine advanced this to sulfur, mercury, and salt. (I think he said ‘salt,’ not certain; his reasons are explained, starting at 11:30.) At 12:45 there is a passage that can be taken for the theme of the book, and so must be fully quoted: “It is a little bit hard in our time for most people to understand just how such a development of thoroughly scientific chemical notions, with investigations for their practical application, should have come before the end of the Middle Ages. This difficulty of understanding, however, we are coming to realize in recent years, is entirely due to our ignorance of the period. We have known little or nothing about the science of the Middle Ages because it was hidden away in rare old books, in rather difficult Latin, not easy to get at, and still less easy to understand always; and we have been prone to conclude that since we knew nothing about it, there must have been nothing. Just inasmuch as we have learned something definite about medieval scholars, our admiration has increased.” The author shows that foundations have been laid for even great men like Isaac Newton. The word ‘amalgam’ comes from Aquinas. Roger Bacon made astonishing predictions in the13th century on propulsion. See that at 16:00. At 19:45: on monks knowing more than we give them credit for: they often exercised genius to solve great problems. (The author seems to have believed in the renaissance of belief that was current in the early 20th century, of the transmutation of metals: which is nothing else than the failed magic of alchemy, unless he means the amalgam of metals to make new compounds. This is the most important chapter since the first one; there is a great sweep of information in it; must listen to it again and maybe take it and the best chapters and put them into my ‘favorites’ thumb drive. Chapter 14, part 1 is likely what his book on the thirteenth century is like. I’m looking forward to listening to it, even if he was a Roman Catholic.) </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 14, Part 2: He gives a list of influential scholars from the Germany of that time. Many legends were invented for the lives of characters like Valentine and Roger Bacon. The author narrates a few of them. Paracelsus and Van Helmont picked up pharmaceutics where Valentine left off. The chemical side of medicine then made gradual progress. Valentine developed hydrochloric acid and sulfate of copper. He anticipated the theory of respiration, even to the point of stating that fish need oxygen. Great harm was done by the use (abuse) of antimony (for it apparently worked well if not abused); it was eventually replaced by venesection, or blood-letting, though it was used well into the 19th century. At 19:45 there is a quote on what a classic is like, from a man called Russell Lowell: “To read a classic, no matter how antique, is like reading a commentary on the morning paper, so up to date does genius ever remain.” At 22:55 there is a quote from Valentine’s book, The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, to show that his book on the science of chemistry is often sermonic: “Love leaves nothing entire or sound in man. It impedes his sleep. He cannot rest, either day or night. It takes off his appetite that he hath no disposition either to eat or drink by reason of the continual torments of his heart and mind. It deprives him of all providence. Hence he neglects his affairs, vocation, and business. He minds neither study, labor, nor prayer, casts away all thoughts of anything but the body beloved. This is his study, this, his most vain occupation. If two lovers the success be not answerable to their wish, or so soon and prosperously as they desire, how many melancholies henceforth arise, with griefs and sadness, with which they pine away and wax so lean as they have scarcely any flesh cleaving to the bones? Yea, at last they lose the life itself, as may be proved by many examples. For such men, which is a horrible thing to think of, slight and neglect all perils and detriments, both of the body and life, and of the soul and eternal salvation.” He continues: “How many testimonies of this violence which is in love are daily found, for it not only inflames the younger sort, but it so far exaggerates some persons far gone in years, as through the burning heat thereof, they are almost mad. Natural diseases are for the most part governed by the complexion of man, and therefore invade some more fiercely, others more gently; but love, without distinction of poor or rich, young or old, seizeth all, and having seized, so blinds them, as forgetting all rules of reason, they neither see nor hear any snare.” (Would have to look at the text to get this right for quoting because I had to guess at some of the words, as well as the grammar; it’s a good passage though, as good as a Puritan would compose.) Some of Valentine’s other books’ titles are given at 30:15, good for chemists. He did not try to transmute metals for selfish gain, the author assures us. And he believed in nature more than in chemical drugs. (Much of this chapter is on antimony and the use and success of it. It seems to have included salt and I know not what else; from what I gather in this chapter, it seems to have been the first pharmaceutical drug, though this is not explicitly asserted.)</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Appendix 1, Part 1: Luke the Physician. The author takes the traditional view against the higher critics about Luke having been a physician. Reasons are given, then, to show how his account brings this out. Background is added, too, of medicine before, during, and after his day in that part of the world. Henry Samuel Baines has done a bio of Luke, published in 1870, he says. (That would be worth looking up.) This is an interesting, important chapter, the third or fourth so far to deserve a place in my ‘favorites.’ See the ends of the chapter notes to see the ones that I said were most worthy.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Appendix 1, Part 2: Similarity of style between the third gospel and the book of Acts has established the single authorship of Luke. The use of medical words employed has established it. At 3 minutes a book is recommended by Harnack on the subject, and another at 5 minutes. The close of this chapter could be used for a quote on scholars, like in the Millennium book: their use of modern translations and, I think, even modern concordances. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Appendix 2, Part 1: Science at the medieval universities. In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a neglect of history. (I have noticed this as well in my pursuit of knowledge on dragons; but life was hard in those days; and the authors were busy with important subjects.) This is why the science of medieval times is little known about. Their hospitals were better than what these later centuries built. Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Thomas Aquinas were the three major teachers of the 13th century. (The author says that the greatest mind ever was probably Aristotle. He mentions something called Monograph on the History of Thought by G. H. Lewes; could look that up because Lewes is the author who wrote the excellent Life of Maximilien Robespierre, which ended up helped me a lot for my Covid book. Just looked it up: the monograph might be the same as his Biographical History of Philosophy, which I do not want.) The author then shares praises of Aristotle in order to defend the medieval giants who were devoted to him. The author says, through quotes, that the theory of evolution may be found in Aristotle’s writings. To prove that great men of medieval times were not overly devoted to Aristotle, the author points out that Magnus corrected Aristotle on some things and Bacon discouraged the study of Aristotle because men relied on him so much as to not think for themselves. Four grounds of human ignorance at 23 minutes from Roger Bacon: “First, trust in inadequate authority; second, that force of custom which leads men to accept without properly questioning what has been accepted before their time; third, the placing of confidence in the assertions of the inexperience; and fourth, the hiding of one’s own ignorance behind a parade of superficial knowledge so that we are afraid to say, ‘I do not know.’” Bacon at 24 minutes: “The strongest argument proves nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation.” Contrary to popular belief, the author says, the universities of the Middle Ages did not neglect science, they were scientific universities. The study of classic languages came into its own only in the renaissance. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Appendix 2, Part 2: Some quotes are given in support of Magnus having been a great botanist, among other specialties. He wrote much on a variety of topics, like meteors, sleep, old age, youth, the soul, and death. He was a phenomenon of the Middle Ages. He followed Hippocrates and Augustine more than Aristotle on scientific and medical matters. Roger Bacon was much interested in astronomy, invented spectacles and developed lenses. One of Bacon’s prophecies (because he believed that man would one day be able to control the energies exhibited by explosives): “Art can construct instruments of navigation, such that the largest vessels governed by a single man will traverse rivers and seas more rapidly than if they were filled with oarsmen. One may also make carriages which, without the aid of any animal, will run with remarkable swiftness.” He predicted flying also, though not by explosive compulsion. Aquinas anticipated many modern ideas as well. He said, “Nothing at all would ever be reduced to nothingness.” This is the law of the ‘conservation of matter.’ These three men did not believe in the transmutation of metals in the exaggerated sense, as did some of their contemporaries. Dante’s writings are full of science and nature, and in surprising detail. Science was taught by the great teachers back then, not literature. Theology, law, and medicine were the graduate departments, theology being a science. In the time of Emperor Frederick II around 1241, a law was passed concerning the regulation of medicine. Based on this information, here is a quote from our author: “If the government inspector violated his obligations as to the oversight of drug preparations, the penalty was death.” (All of our Covid vaccine pushers would be in violation in that day.) The author goes into detail about the time and rigor involved in the making of a physician in that century. Of course their therapeutic arts were often absurd, he admits. Professor Richid? at 23:47 said: “The therapeutics of any generation is quite absurd to the second succeeding generation.” In this medieval time, doses of opium were figured out, and laxatives were used to good effect, as was iron. Leprosy too was controlled and even expelled from Europe. They anticipated much in surgery, rabies, and blood poisoning. Modern advance is often reinvention. Alcohol is still used as an antiseptic. The author explains the pope’s bulls against dissection as that which did not forbid the practice absolutely; and he rationalizes generally about this and other papal restrictions. He says that surgery in the medieval time has only been surpassed by what is being done in the author’s day, and this only ‘possibly.’ Medieval arts and crafts are not surpassed yet, he says. (He’s right about that.) The author defends his thesis for a lot of this chapter. So there is quite a bit of reiteration. The thesis: the medieval time was not backward scientifically, but as theoretically and practically advanced as it in the 19th century. “Their minds were occupied entirely with science,” says the author about the students and teachers of the universities in that late medieval day. (He stretches things because this thesis of his has possessed him almost to the point of fanaticism; for sure it has negatively affected his critical faculty.)</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Appendix 3: Medieval popularization of science, and footnotes. Inductive investigation was not unknown and unpracticed in the Middle Ages. Boethius did it in the sixth century, and wrote many books on sundry topics. (His Consolation of Philosophy is an excellent book, which I read awhile ago.) He influenced many great writers, including Dante. Next the author speaks of Cassiodorus and his works, and after that Isidore of Seville from the 7th century. The next link is the Venerable Bede. He wrote mainly on history, but on science as well. (He wrote The Explanation of the Apocalypse, which I did not find particularly helpful.) Only in the 13th century, the author’s ‘favorite,’ did the university spirit take hold. The author uses the word ‘misinformation,’ which is interesting in light of its use today and some of us thinking that it is of contemporary origin. Here is a quote at 17 minutes on madness under the category of ‘medical lore’ from a 13th century encyclopedia, a work often adverted to by Shakespeare from a 15th century edition of the same for quoting and for the use of many expressions: the author of the quote is Batholomaeus Anglicus: “Madness cometh sometimes of passions of the soul, and of business and of great thoughts, of sorrow, and of too great study, and of dread, sometime of the biting of a wood-hound or some other venomous beast, sometime of melancholy meats, and sometimes of drink of strong wine. And, as the causes be diverse, the tokens and signs be diverse, for some cry and leap and hurt and wound themselves and other men, and darken and hide themselves in privy and secret places, the medicine of them is that they be bound, that they hurt not themselves and other men; and mainly, such shall be refreshed and comforted and withdrawn from cause and matter of dread and busy thoughts. And they must be gladdened with instruments of music and some deal be occupied.” The author quoted this passage on lunacy for its visible quaintness in the old orthography, but also because the causes, symptoms, and treatment are as well and succinctly put as anywhere he has ever read. The next quote from the same encyclopedia is about the result of the bite of a mad dog; the old word for mad is ‘wood’ and is in use here: “The biting of a wood-hound is deadly and venomous, and such venom is perilous, for it is long hidden, and unknown, and increaseth and multiplieth itself, and is sometimes unknown to the year’s end; and then the same day and hour of the biting it cometh to the head, and breedeth frenzy. They that are bitten of a wood-hound have in their sleep dreadful sights, and are fearful, astonied, and wroth without cause; and they dread to be seen of other men, and bark as hounds; and they dread water most of all things; and are a-feared thereof and sore and squeamiss also. Against the biting of a wood-hound, wise men and ready use to make the wounds to bleed with fire or with iron that the venom may come out with the blood that cometh out of the wound.” (This is not word perfect, for I had to guess at some of the words and at some of the spelling; and I had to guess at the grammar too; it’s close though.) </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Footnotes: Many absurd therapies used in the author’s recent times were as absurd as the most absurd ones that are found in the Talmud. It is surprising that something as useful as the ligature (though sometimes employed improperly to the hurt of patients) could have fallen into disuse, as once it did. The author: “The first dentist who filled teeth with amalgam in New York some eighty years ago had to flee for his life because of a hue and cry set up that he was poisoning his patients with mercury.” On the meaning of ‘universitas’: in the Middle Ages it refers to the whole world of students for the study of anything. Physicians of that day wore a cloak, and often a mask to protect them from infections. Some signs of pharmacy used: mortar and pestle, colored lights in windows of drug stores, the many colored barber pole, and (in the author’s day, I guess) the wooden Indian for the tobacco store. (I didn’t name all the signs he gave for the Middle Age pharmacy, only the ones I might recognize.) Spelling had no fixed rule in the Middle Ages; some of the same words could be written differently on the same page. Medical books were some of the first that were published by the printing press. He speaks of the neglect that medieval medical books have suffered since the late 17th century until his day, more neglected than before.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">(There is a lot of learning in this book; nothing to help my ailments, probably; but definitely a worthwhile one to listen to. I would probably give it an A- instead of A, but only because the subject is an obsession with him, which therefore renders some of the information suspect; and also because the noticeable bias in favor of the Roman Church means the turning of a blind eye. The chapters to bring together for listening to again are: 1; 7; 14, part 1; appendix 1, part 1: all good for my ‘favorites’ drive.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p><div><br /></div>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-23633426919176199902023-08-24T14:46:00.003-06:002023-08-24T14:48:53.320-06:00CANADA'S PRIME MINISTER IN 2023<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz4jpwDB7SHt6v8ujKJben5W6IUElefauL41YDuKwYJ7IKuiuETBtQaZ9XVYE9lE4H53pT9TMNjvvx9WkQeuI5vdzPt411XIy3WM_GFgq9SbB0zwTfHdHsjdtRds8ERuQpK9WxFjz3TX4QAXskSsbbLvxtkCRrTXR93RTwAlkAZ28dMrQPaY-6ZL1RKQ/s944/septembre_Edited%20(1).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="695" data-original-width="944" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz4jpwDB7SHt6v8ujKJben5W6IUElefauL41YDuKwYJ7IKuiuETBtQaZ9XVYE9lE4H53pT9TMNjvvx9WkQeuI5vdzPt411XIy3WM_GFgq9SbB0zwTfHdHsjdtRds8ERuQpK9WxFjz3TX4QAXskSsbbLvxtkCRrTXR93RTwAlkAZ28dMrQPaY-6ZL1RKQ/w400-h295/septembre_Edited%20(1).jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;">JUSTIN & BARBIE</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Our effeminate Prime Minister</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Went to see a movie about a doll.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But while he plays with Barbie</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">His fiefdom is starting to fall:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A fitting end if he gets finished</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">By his fetish for all things pink.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Soon we think, we hope, we pray:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We’ll have ourselves a better Canada Day,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">When what we’ve seen we’ll see no more forever,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Like him sitting there acting the princess</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">With his prissy legs pressed together,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Or his standing between two perverts</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">With his pornographic tongue hanging out.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It hurts to have a drama queen</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In love with drag for our Prime Minister.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But while Justin and Barbie play in the sand</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Without their skirts to spread their tan, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Someone’s preparing the color blue</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">To paint the country like a man; </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Or at least he won’t play with dolls. </span></p><div><br /></div>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-42755668288666771562021-08-18T22:22:00.001-06:002021-08-18T22:22:54.603-06:00Only Soldiers Will Understand This Poem<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzKuYR59cto5ZrJAw62IlRc_oahRk59nhZczB8NPZc_Jma7gYa0adKZ7dczhQxJcbGbJ0CWmfsEDFy-IQbv5D3MaOfG5_OVwYvdmzVHrXwtEZ9YLc58B8JWkD39Bkxs5nGSWXgenK2Q/s2048/THE+BOYS+ARE+RETIRING.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1457" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzKuYR59cto5ZrJAw62IlRc_oahRk59nhZczB8NPZc_Jma7gYa0adKZ7dczhQxJcbGbJ0CWmfsEDFy-IQbv5D3MaOfG5_OVwYvdmzVHrXwtEZ9YLc58B8JWkD39Bkxs5nGSWXgenK2Q/w455-h640/THE+BOYS+ARE+RETIRING.jpg" width="455" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-50153913563254610082021-07-17T20:43:00.000-06:002021-07-17T20:43:14.150-06:00Why Residential School History is Being Falsified<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGBQYxoAEz-inYD4HLMFZDdckvVT6j0hhxLQ_Y8FoRjJTyGT1VWeFc7FMYnPjNua-gC5GAMbd-M78t8Bw-Cjh1DVuLw_oCYFN9Y-Xw_9DunlpajvUkngIz2JI7epa5mB7gCbNwow-4JA/s2048/KERRY+BENJOE+TELLS+THE+TRUTH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1560" data-original-width="2048" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGBQYxoAEz-inYD4HLMFZDdckvVT6j0hhxLQ_Y8FoRjJTyGT1VWeFc7FMYnPjNua-gC5GAMbd-M78t8Bw-Cjh1DVuLw_oCYFN9Y-Xw_9DunlpajvUkngIz2JI7epa5mB7gCbNwow-4JA/w400-h305/KERRY+BENJOE+TELLS+THE+TRUTH.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau loves these alleged discoveries of unmarked graves at residential school sites. And he loves it that churches are being burned in response to these alleged discoveries. He loves the alleged discoveries of unmarked gravesites because the preoccupation gives him an ethnic group to pretend to stand up for. And we know he loves the burning of churches because his denunciation of the crime wave is cool. He would be boiling over with rage, though, if mosques were being burned; or at least he would pretend very hard to care, maybe even to the point of shedding theatrical tears, which he often does. He loves chaos because he needs crises to campaign on; he needs crises to campaign on because he has no accomplishments to point to. He could stop fanaticism from being whipped up on account of these unmarked graves that are being conveniently found. He could stop churches from being burned to the ground. But he needs trouble in order to be reelected. If only he can draw a violent reaction from white folks whose churches are being destroyed, he will have something to forward as evidence of white supremacy. Retaliation would not be supremacist; but this fact would not matter. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">While it is true that Trudeau cannot be saved from burning in hell through Roman Catholic doctrine, even if he were a practicing Catholic, his burning in hell will be hotter because of Catholic churches burning. Catholicism can’t save; but it’s a sin to not prevent Catholic churches from burning. Arson is attempted murder; therefore that person is guilty who could stop these attempts but won’t; and this guilt must be added to the judgment of his other sins. All the PM has to do to stop the terrorism is take the cuffs off the RCMP and let them do the job that they are being paid by taxpayers to do. But the RCMP is effectively a wing of the Liberal Party now. So instead of investigating arson, RCMP officers are used to persecute citizens for practicing the liberties that are endorsed in the Charter. Arson is winked at; freedom of assembly is disallowed. Statues may be torn down; but the person (in Manitoba recently) protesting the vandalism is tasered.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">When Communism is introduced, the elites who bring it in have their terrorist groups tear down what stands in Communism’s way. This is what’s happening in Canada in 2021. A PM doesn’t have to say, “Go and burn those churches down and go and knock those statues over.” All he has to do is ask his handlers to create the atmosphere in which a storm will occur, have the media whip the storm up into a hurricane, and order the cops to stand down and let that storm destroy. The unmarked grave site situation involves no accidental discoveries. The burning of churches involves a coordinated scheme as well, though with possibly here and there a spontaneous act. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Trudeau family has been in a love affair with the Castro family for decades. It makes no difference whether Justin’s ideal father is Fidel or Pierre because both Fidel and Pierre were Communists. One devil is as bad as the other because the ideology of the Cuban was that also of the French. Maybe we would be better off if Justin were more like his mother: mentally unbalanced. But no, it would make no difference; Justin is no more the controlled man-boy than if he were completely insane. The residential school crisis is probably not his idea. He knows how to roll a joint; he doesn’t know how to create a smokescreen. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">You can find a lot of unmarked graves in old indigenous burial grounds. These may be seen online. And I know from history books that while on the march to wherever their nomadic feet pointed to next, indigenous persons frequently ‘knocked on the head’ captives who slowed them down, left them there, and continued on. No marked graves for them. These unmarked graves being complained about are a lot better than what so many indigenous persons and their captives were honored with before the white man stepped onto America. And the treatment that indigenous children received in residential schools was no doubt better than what they received from their tribes in pre-colonial times. Whenever I have watched or heard an interview of a residential school ‘survivor,’ specific information about the survival has been conspicuously absent. I seldom, if ever, have heard a specific instance of abuse reported by an alleged victim. Of course there was abuse. <i>Some</i> abuse occurs in practically every institution, especially the Roman Catholic one. But where are the anecdotes of abuse in these residential schools? The CBC would be making these anecdotes known if there were so many. If a person has been abused, that person can give details. He or she might say, “I was raped” or “I was kicked” or “I was slapped” or “I was often deprived of food.” But this is not the kind of thing we hear. We are told that the treatment was bad or harmful or racist. But this is so general that it could mean nothing more than that a teacher was verbally cross once in awhile. There are former workers at these schools who pretend to have repented of their association with them. Even <i>they</i>, in spite of their finger pointing, do not relate specific anecdotes of abuse. There is this video on the ‘CBC News’ YouTube channel called: “Former residential school child-care workers say they wish the school had never existed.” This video was put up on July 5th, 2021. Before watching this fourteen minute video, I predicted that nothing would be revealed about how bad the school was except indistinct allegations. Here is what these two ‘residential school child-care workers’ revealed. They revealed horrors like these: there was ‘inadequate staffing’; the kids were ‘poorly integrated’; they ‘slept in dormitories’; they were ‘washed with a very strong soap.’ These two ‘former residential school child-care workers’ worked at a residential school in 1970 on Vancouver Island for ‘four months.’ This qualifies them, apparently, to speak with authority on the subject of residential schools. These ‘four months’ are their credentials. From this vast experience they are qualified to assure us that the residential school was so bad that it should not have existed. Back in 1970, they were a young married couple newly come up from the United States. Their names are Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein. What are they really up to? The CBC host, either making a mistake or else trying to protect the couple from revealing eye-opening information, says that the book they wrote on the subject was released ‘last year’; that is, in 2020. Nancy Dyson corrects her with: “Our book was released just as the first announcement came out about the unmarked graves in Kamloops.” What propitious timing! Positively providential! Just a coincidence! No collusion at all! So they could have spoken up in the 1970s or the 1980s or the 1990s or in the year 2000, 2010, or 2015; but they didn’t. They had fifty years to squeal about how this residential school was like a gulag; but they didn’t. No, they speak up now, fifty-one years later, just as their book and the story out of Kamloops mysteriously collide! Were the kids at the residential school they worked at raped, murdered, or burned alive at the stake? Shouldn’t Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein turn themselves over to the authorities for being part of the problem at an infamous residential school? Should we not have a Nuremberg Trial for them? Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein are unprincipled opportunists, two of many trying to cash in on the residential school cash cow. They really have nothing to report, just a little money to make or some hero posing to do. What were these schools like for real? There is this other video that I found. It is on the ‘CBC Saskatchewan’ YouTube channel. I’m surprised it’s there at all. The video was put up on September 29th, 2020, and is called: “Kerry Benjoe shares her experience as a student at the residential school in Lebret.” So the video is about her experience at one of these schools. Her memories of the school, she says, are ‘mostly positive.’ Her supervisors and teachers, she says, ‘really were positive influences on me.’ She says that she has gotten tired of people apologizing for her having gone to the school. Most indigenous persons, I think, must be tired of being treated like victims. Her journey in the residential school is ‘probably one that no one has really heard much about,’ she says. This is true; only the opinion that says the schools were horrible is allowed any press. This video of Kerry Benjoe’s experience is an oddity, not because her experience is of the rare kind, but because her experience is of the unpopular kind. What is unpopular is often the truth; the truth is often hard to find; when we hear the ring of unpopular truth, the agenda sounds like a cheap gong in comparison with it. Truth and agenda do not sound alike; they look different from each other, too. Compare Kerry Benjoe’s body language to that of Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein. I can see the difference there between honesty and duplicity. It didn’t take a lot of guts for Nancy and Dan to talk about this topic, like the host says. The video does not ‘contain graphic details,’ like it says at the beginning of the video. And the subject of residential schools is not a ‘painful conversation.’ The subject is a tool to get the Liberals reelected; and it’s a way for well-placed Liberal-minded opportunists to make some easy money or appear compassionate. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In the days of residential schools, pupils were taught actual history, language skills, arithmetic, and some religion, albeit the corrupt Catholic one. Except for Roman Catholicism, is that not better than what is taught today? Today pupils are taught to hate history; they learn no religion, except maybe the Muslim faith; they can barely count on their fingers; and they can’t write a sentence that makes sense. They are taught to hate the white race; they are taught fake science like evolution and climate change; they are taught fake biology in gender studies; and this is all presented within the framework of philosophical Communism, which is atheistic, amoral, and totalitarian. It isn’t the residential schools that we need to address the wrongs of, for they are in the past and were better than the schools we have now. The schools of <i>today</i> are what need to be regretted and changed. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Except for technical skills, our kids are being indoctrinated, not taught. And the saddest parts of the history of the residential school system are being exaggerated so that indigenous persons and loafer-leftists, rather than make progress by getting on with their lives, can be made to stew and bubble over in violence to benefit the Liberal Party. The residential school crisis is a decoy. The fabricated crisis has fuelled the burning of churches. And the institution that stands to benefit the most from both the fabricated crisis and the burning of churches is the present governing Liberal Party of Canada.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">We are beginning to reap a whirlwind of evil in Canada because enough of us don’t know, even with access to the facts through alternative media on the internet, that we are being fooled. We are so in the dark about what’s happening before our eyes that we might as well be limited to a few newspapers and three television channels, like in the old days. The root of our trouble is this: “For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD” (Proverbs 1.29.) God will give us over to Trudeau, his successors, and to Communism if we continue to choose unwisely. The July 13th lightning strike on the mural of George Floyd is an encouraging sign that, as Francis Schaeffer used to say, “God is there and he is not silent.” But we shouldn’t need a lightning strike on the mural of a celebrated thug to know that we should fear God. If we were to fear God as we ought, we would know what’s going on because: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9.10.) We are going to have to begin to ask God for this fear before he gives it to us without our asking. </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-37790017421216652692021-06-30T23:33:00.001-06:002021-06-30T23:33:44.028-06:00CANADA DAY NO MORE: BECAUSE OF GENOCIDE (OR SO THEY SAY)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipGEP0lph5i_UD4azt_UDx0jz8z4iyWTjzpl5Q07geLwKLG8ZUi3obKtwIrY3e6AmbYVi1Ui901innAqwrVE9jPHFEiPyMHkx5bmLDNA8EOqRR6lwvnAmQzx4AWyo2QleRM0yovEQZrQ/s1280/DOMINION+DAY+FIREWORKS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipGEP0lph5i_UD4azt_UDx0jz8z4iyWTjzpl5Q07geLwKLG8ZUi3obKtwIrY3e6AmbYVi1Ui901innAqwrVE9jPHFEiPyMHkx5bmLDNA8EOqRR6lwvnAmQzx4AWyo2QleRM0yovEQZrQ/w400-h225/DOMINION+DAY+FIREWORKS.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We’re guilty of genocide—so they say,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Against the ‘indigenous’ from June until May.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Every nation, as long as it’s a ‘first’:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They’re all wiped out now or well on their way—</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Or so they say: it’s what genocide means.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Boxcars, concentration camps, and gas—</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Inhumanity! Indigenous purge!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Who will write the eulogy? Who the dirge?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">No cultural appropriation, sirs!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Canada Day no more! Use the curse of Job:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Let that day perish wherein we were born! </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Make the most of our worst; kneel down and mourn.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Check our privilege and our genocide.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Follow up with suicide—if we care.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We’ll do it if we care—for genocide.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Genocide, genocide, so much of it!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Haven’t seen it yet? At least believe that</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A dream catcher caught the ghost of it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">No catcher at my window, not for me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But if it caught a dream, here’s what it said:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">From Liberal lips while I lay on my bed:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Secure all the voters, begin with the Reds.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Just drive the narrative: the genocide. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Hype it up by graves, resurrect ‘em all.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Two hundred and fifteen? Go find us more!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Dead bones can live; they can live to the fall.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Each dead bone is a thousand ballots, pal.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Broken promises? Forge genocide again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Reservation squalor? So that’s their lot!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Mercury poison? Grassy Narrows—what?! </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The narrative, the narrative: the genocide.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Residential schools: where some babies died.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Whatever is an inch, make a mile wide.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Whatever is narrow, dig to the core.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Make mass graves to be there; only believe!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Do a token visit; pass through the sage.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Make smudge our screen to share in their grudge. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Then bye to the rez; we saved our own hide.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The money we gave, your chiefs will decide:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Here Walks Like A Bear: run get your loonie. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Thank the Liberal Party before we’re off; </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We’re off to Ottawa, our booty calls.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Stand by Little Beaver and Growling Bear, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Bird with a Beak, White Cloud Feather, and wait—</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For next time when we need you in the war</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Against genocide near election time.” </span></p><div><br /></div>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-58468232654638048812021-06-19T18:31:00.000-06:002021-06-19T18:31:24.875-06:00The 'Ongoing Genocide' of the 'Indigenous' in Canada<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTtnmWyl73lu5LLq789FRmci-tWlH38AXcYPDWFf1PjSnUyauctHxRC2DZ18RmyIOmw1isq7w_9fueRBsUS4mB9ZQxLU6gzMPQrHC5jAWlCjUMNm8ym_sJYn89NdB84NeaM8Aw7ZfsA/s855/KAMLOOPS+RESIDENTIAL+SCHOOL+PIC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="855" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTtnmWyl73lu5LLq789FRmci-tWlH38AXcYPDWFf1PjSnUyauctHxRC2DZ18RmyIOmw1isq7w_9fueRBsUS4mB9ZQxLU6gzMPQrHC5jAWlCjUMNm8ym_sJYn89NdB84NeaM8Aw7ZfsA/w400-h203/KAMLOOPS+RESIDENTIAL+SCHOOL+PIC.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">On Sunday, June 6th, 2021, after listening to a couple of sermons via MP3, I switched my little transistor unit to radio mode to hear the weather or something (not the news, because on CBC Radio the news is too often <i>fake</i> news.) After switching over to the CBC, I left the radio on too long and accidentally heard the Juno Awards being introduced. Before turning the radio off, I predicted that the Juno Awards would not get underway without first repeating the story about the ‘indigenous discovery’ that was allegedly made in Kamloops recently. I am not a prophet; but mainstream Canadian content is so predictable that my prediction came to pass just as if I were one. I turned the radio off after hearing my prophecy being fulfilled in real time, but not before I heard the warning that the Juno Awards would contain ‘coarse language.’ That’s what you can expect these days on Canadian television and radio: coarse language. </span></span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So after a few words about how wonderful the Juno Awards are (they’re not), the host passed it over to Buffy Sainte-Marie, an ‘indigenous’ singer. Trying hard to cry but failing in the attempt, she spoke of the alleged Kamloops discovery in the context of the ‘ongoing genocide’ of ‘indigenous’ persons in Canada. What does her assertion amount to? She was accusing white Canadians of being genocidal—genocidal like Adolph Hitler was. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There never was any genocide in Canada; there never was an <i>attempted</i> genocide in Canada; there is no ‘ongoing genocide’ of ‘indigenous’ persons in Canada. What has the Juno Awards to do with ‘indigenous’ genocide, anyway? What has it to do with genocide generally? It has nothing at all to do with it. But some people like to feel righteous at least sometimes; and the shortcut to feeling this way is to accuse others of sins like racism and genocide. Driving others down, even if it is by a false accusation, gives accusers the allusion of a lift; this is the upward path, they think, to being righteous. Instead of aiming for righteousness by repenting of their sins, they must believe that it is obtained by having their neighbors repent of sins that their neighbors didn’t do. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The closest thing to an ongoing genocide in Canada is the one against <i>defenseless babies in the womb.</i> Do we want to be righteous? Let’s begin by repenting of <i>that</i> sin. Furthermore, since ‘indigenous’ people believe in animism—since they believe that buffaloes are kindred spirits—maybe it’s time to accuse them of genocide against the buffalo. The white man did help to wipe out the buffalo herds; but ‘head-smashed-in buffalo jump’ sounds like an ‘indigenous’ practice, doesn’t it? Instead of settling the land like the pilgrims did, what did ‘indigenous’ persons do? Instead of settling down and planting crops, they roamed over the face of Canada slaughtering all the buffalo herds and massacring each other, tribe against tribe. People, be they ‘indigenous’ individuals or not, forfeit their right to the land they occupy if their occupation involves barbarous behavior like tribal warfare, scalping, headhunting, wanton torture, and cannibalism. Read the Old Testament and you will learn that when a nation—even a ‘first’ nation—pollutes its land with blood, that nation is eventually dispossessed because of it. This is why the white man has controlled the agenda in Canada for so long. Through atrocities like abortion and philosophies like feminism, however, the white man is self-exterminating. Kill your kin in the womb, and raise the rest to hate themselves—this is how you slay your own skin. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>No <i>living</i> person is guilty, probably, of the 215 ‘indigenous’ deaths in Kamloops where its residential school closed in 1978. If some culprit still lives who was involved in the incident, assuming there was in incident, I am not one of them. And no one can be truly guilty of deaths that were caused by someone else—even if the dead are ‘indigenous’ persons. What is the truth of the recent story out of Kamloops that the CBC told us about on May 28th? ‘Mass unmarked grave’ was the headline that the National Post and the Toronto Star ran with and that some politicians copied. The ‘discovery’ was made by the use of ‘ground penetrating radar’; or so they say. But how does ground penetrating radar determine that there are 215 bodies in a mass grave? This detection technology is not exact enough to determine something like that. Is the ‘mass grave’ really a number of unmarked burial sites? Were the children killed? Or did they die of a disease like TB, maybe? Isn’t it interesting that the RCMP is being obstructed from investigating the matter? And isn’t it interesting that just a few days after the ‘discovery’ of this ‘mass grave,’ $27 million dollars was being made available by the Federal Liberals to ‘memorialize children who died in the residential school system’? (Ben Cousins, CTV News, June 3, 2021.) Many more millions will flow than 27 though. On June 15th, the CBC reported that the Ontario Conservatives have promised $10 million for residential school sites to be searched. You don’t have to be a taxpaying plumber to know that the money tap will not close after that. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>An old man was interviewed by Drea Humphrey of Rebel <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>News about this residential school that he went to where the 215 children were allegedly dumped, holocaust-like, into a mass grave. What chilling anecdotes did he have to tell? He shared only one. A boy died, he said, from a jump in a haystack, which was one of the games that ‘indigenous’ children used to play. You can tell by the rest of what he had to say that life was not too bad in the infamous residential school system. He spoke of apples, cows, pigs, chickens, and horses, but only of one death, which was accidental. He intimated that some girls died ‘in the water’ where they washed clothes. But he shared no specific anecdote about that. Those deaths too, if there were any, would have been accidental. This residential school was not equivalent to Auschwitz, after all. If you look hard enough, you will find the buried testimonies of ‘indigenous’ persons who have been thankful for the residential schools that they were made to attend. These buried testimonies—now there’s your mass grave, sirs! Go and do some digging there! What beautiful skeletons remain to be recovered! But suppose we pretend that every ‘indigenous’ experience in every one of those schools was a bad one. Would not most of those experiences still be better than the ‘indigenous’ way of life that once was? Here is an example of how ‘indigenous’ persons fed the white man back in 1763. “I confess,” said Alexander Henry, “that in the canoe, with the Chippewas, I was offered bread—but bread with what accompaniment! They had a loaf which they cut with the same knives they had employed in the massacre—knives still covered in blood. The blood they moistened with spittle and, rubbing it on the bread, offered this to their prisoners, telling them to eat the blood of their countrymen” (Alexander Henry, <i>Massacre at Michilimackinac</i>, in <i>Captured by the Indians</i>, edited by Frederick Drimmer, p. 84.) Did the white man not feed ‘indigenous’ persons—even in residential schools—better food than this? ‘Indigenous’ bellies were never more regularly satisfied than while going to these schools. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Defending the Roman Catholic Church is not something that I normally do. But if Buffy Sainte-Marie believed in an ‘ongoing genocide’ that was in its heyday while residential schools were being run by Roman Catholics, would she not have changed her Catholic name to an ‘indigenous’ one by now? Why hasn’t she changed her name? Is it not because she knows there never was a genocide? And can it not be because her ‘Sainte-Marie’ name is the recognized one to make the most money by?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>An honest article on this subject is what a CBC journalist ought to have written by now. But honest journalism is not what the CBC does. The CBC’s unwritten mandate is to defame and divide. Its most used argument, if not its only one, is the baseless accusation. White Canadians are not <i>systemically</i> racist; the CBC, though, is <i>systemically</i> defamatory. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>No one in Canada is guilty of genocide against anybody—not even against the ‘indigenous.’ What is the ninth commandment? “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” This commandment is good for every school, even the ‘residential school’; and it is good for everyone, even the ‘indigenous.’ Where did the idea come from for agitating about a ‘mass grave’ suddenly discovered near a residential school? I am tempted to prophesy that it came from fancy folks of the white socialist class: the establishment politicians and their mass media minions who make their living and maintain power by setting ethnic groups against each other. If it did not come from there—if it came from an ‘indigenous’ source—it is still true that the idea has now been used by the socialist class to make fancy snobs look compassionate and the rest of us look racist and genocidal. Bearing false witness is the socialist’s most frequent method of emitting his ingloriousness because the socialist’s chief attribute is envy. The socialist envies the peace that people have who mind their own business; therefore the socialist’s mission is to disturb this peace, which is done by telling lies. Bearing false witness is as natural to a socialist as it is natural for God to be faithful to truth. What shall be given to ‘lying lips’ and the ‘deceitful tongue’? The Bible says that ‘sharp arrows’ and ‘coals of juniper’ shall be given to both (Psalm 120); and the sharp arrows and coals of juniper will be more dreadful than the words ‘arrows’ and ‘coals’ denote because these arrows and coals will be supernatural and divinely administered. Falsely accusing others of murder and genocide, even if these others are hated white folks, is the breaking of one of the most sacred commandments that was ever given; sacred judgment can be that sin’s only reward. Divine judgment will be dispensed for defamation. ‘Lying lips’ and ‘deceitful tongues’ will be silenced at the judgment before the incarnation of the Word of God: Jesus Christ the Righteous. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span> </span>Since the truth about a matter may still be found, though with an increasing amount of effort due to progressive censorship, people who have jumped aboard this lying narrative about a ‘mass indigenous grave’ or the ‘ongoing genocide of indigenous persons’ are guilty in some measure as well. Sharing a lying narrative is not as sinful as making one up. But to share a lie is to forward a lie; and to forward a lie that we don’t know is a lie is nevertheless the promotion of what is untrue. This is a serious sin when the promotion of the untruth entails the defamation of a large body of Canadians whose skin pigmentation happens to be white. Some of us are never going to accept being called racist no matter how many ‘mass graves’ of ‘indigenous’ persons are allegedly found because we have had nothing to do with the alleged crimes involved. And we are going to continue to be as happy to be white as ‘indigenous’ persons are proud of their primitive heritage. If a white Bible believing Christian is okay with Solomon being happy that his lover is so tanned that she calls herself ‘black’ (Song of Solomon 1.5, 6), then this white Bible believing Christian must be something less than a white supremacist. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span> </span>White supremacy is the narrative being pushed by the CBC and the politicians who bankroll that Communist corporation; and this indigenous story out of Kamloops is just one more way to drive that narrative into white skin. Defamatory darts aimed at white people merely because they are not colored, nor elitists, nor atheists, nor ‘indigenous’—these darts can sting; but if these white people are Bible believing Christians, these darts ultimately stick to the cross of Christ behind which every Bible believing Christian hides. A sinner may be reserved for heaven even if he is white. And there is no ‘indigenous’ person alive who has any hope of heaven on the basis of his heritage. Indigenous ceremonies are as far from the kingdom of heaven as Roman Catholic rosary beads are. Salvation is not earned by the sinner; it is wrought by Christ <i>for</i> the sinner. “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Romans 4.5.)</span> </p>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-74449791043214075282020-11-25T22:37:00.002-07:002020-11-30T17:38:08.883-07:00A Beautiful Book of Wisdom for the Little Ones<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi29XA21L2IXkLvxKt-xouT-P69R-p11Lr1mrjtjUZwc35TXfX23qZYD0j3aZWA0qyivSU6hRQ5zfyuJnmZGv2YIvlX13S3CSskmSqCsU4aP6GIzYYXHzsPlv6wQIE2OGHFWPlFjswn4g/s310/SOUTHERNS+BOOK+IMAGE.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="163" data-original-width="310" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi29XA21L2IXkLvxKt-xouT-P69R-p11Lr1mrjtjUZwc35TXfX23qZYD0j3aZWA0qyivSU6hRQ5zfyuJnmZGv2YIvlX13S3CSskmSqCsU4aP6GIzYYXHzsPlv6wQIE2OGHFWPlFjswn4g/w400-h210/SOUTHERNS+BOOK+IMAGE.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I ordered this expecting something less substantial. There is a greater word count than I thought it would have. The pictures are more representative and expressive than I thought they would be. And the lesson is sharper and more true to life than I anticipated. The moral lesson reminds me of the lesson we learned from the lie that was perpetrated against Nick Sandmann of Covington Catholic High School. There is more repentance in fiction than by CNN and its accomplices though. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Henry the Sheepdog & the Wolf of Mossville is not only substantial, sharp, and relevant; it is stylistically pleasing. A lot of work was put into crafting this little gem. I like how ideas are carried through the narrative, like when somebody did something ‘not entirely nice.’ The media outfits competing for customers are perfectly named for kids to enjoy: The Morning Mossville, The Hamster Herald, The Beaver Buzz, The Racoon Review, and The Pup’s Press. The characters, too, are attractive: like Helen the Hedgehog and Karen the Porcupine. And how about ‘Fiddlesticks and Fur!’ and ‘Stuff and Nonsense!’ for exclamations? This little book is so good that I must provide an excerpt. “The Hamsters were horrified. The Squirrels were shocked. The Foxes were frightened. The Possums were petrified.” That’s how you write a book for kids! I am tempted to quote some more. But I don’t want to give too much away. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The grammar is not everywhere perfect; but it’s almost there. There are many characters to keep track of. But this book should be read to little ones often; and then it should be read by the children themselves more than once. This book is suitable, I think, for anyone who is old enough to understand full sentences. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-49744622065776545972020-11-11T00:05:00.000-07:002020-11-11T00:05:59.662-07:00Political Ignorance and What to Do About It<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhslO47FsT6-75HIU3j7xnvh4TVReBfkzWyFnbKdsPB4FhY8_H7PKJgQQCUumbIdbNTLkVVxRn8WRQYrPQ2zfuLGjcno1vJ2MoiS86ISelSpqHJlww9nZXa_KcL6H8lb28oq0fiQkg1Q/s259/COYOTE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhslO47FsT6-75HIU3j7xnvh4TVReBfkzWyFnbKdsPB4FhY8_H7PKJgQQCUumbIdbNTLkVVxRn8WRQYrPQ2zfuLGjcno1vJ2MoiS86ISelSpqHJlww9nZXa_KcL6H8lb28oq0fiQkg1Q/w400-h300/COYOTE.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">When I was a boy, I used to wonder about ‘guerilla warfare’ because I thought the reporter meant ‘gorilla warfare.’ “How come the soldiers can’t outwit these gorillas?” I thought. “They have to be smarter than that, not to mention better-armed.” Pathetic as this ignorance was, it was outclassed by the ignorance of adults who should have known what to answer the boy regarding the nature of these gorillas. They did not know any more than I did, I suspect, who these gorillas were or why they were so hard to beat. They didn’t know a gorilla from a guerilla fighter any more than this little farm boy did. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Do the majority of adults know that the word ‘guerilla’ refers to unconventional warfare? How many of them, if asked to write down ‘guerilla fighter,’ would write down ‘gorilla fighter’? How many of them actually think that this kind of fighting has to do with gorillas of the jungle? My guess is that multitudes think exactly that. It is reasonable to assume this because we have lately learned that Dar’shun Kendrick, a member of the House of Representatives in Georgia, thought that the coyotes mentioned by President Trump—the coyotes guilty of smuggling illegal migrants across the border—were actual coyotes of the dog family! She doubted that a coyote could carry ‘a whole human’ across the border, which proves that she, among many others, did not know what kind of coyote President Trump was talking about. Unless a person has been made to watch nothing on television except episodes of Lassie and The Littlest Hobo her whole life long, there should be no path to her coming remotely close to believing that a forty pound canine with a single digit IQ has been smuggling illegals across the border into the United States. Legal Lassie and Humble Hobo would never go in for that kind of thing anyway. Wile E. Coyote might. But no one except the fully human South American smuggler has done it—with help from democrats and fake republicans. Except for Representative Dar’shun Kendrick apparently. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">My objections on social media to the attempted coup against President Trump on election night showed me that people must be ignorant of what a ‘coup d’etat’ is as well. This term is even more important to know than ‘guerilla warfare’ and ‘coyotes.’ Indeed, a coup d’etat is what’s likely to activate the coyotes more than ever, and could give rise to guerilla warfare in the imminent struggle over the White House. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Because people are so easily deceived by headlines and so easily brainwashed by official remarks, the information war must be waged on every platform that right-thinking individuals can still speak halfway freely on. But face-to-face conversation has the best chance, I think, to make a convincing impact. That a coup d’etat is really, actually, undeniably being attempted is worth the verbal confrontation that it takes to try to educate a person on the subject because a coup is the killer of our liberties. A country that is the victim of a coup—of an overthrow of its government—in this instance, through voter fraud—is a country that has been taken over by tyrants. And tyrants don’t allow fair elections to happen after they’ve taken over. A successful coup attempt means the end of being governed by the consent of the electorate. If this one freedom is lost, the citizen becomes a subject or a serf, and he will be dictated to by whoever is devious enough to make it to the top. The natural response to a coup d’etat is a revolution. Whether or not some other way out of a dictatorship is found, it is certain that ignorance cannot be one of them. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">We must try to convince others to become informed about what is going on in politics. Knowledge may begin by learning words like ‘guerilla,’ ‘coyote,’ and ‘coup.’ But systematic education must follow. It is the only way to learn the destructive worldviews behind the words, terms, and concepts that are ignorantly thrown around; and it is a necessary way to increase the zeal that is needed against these worldviews. Without knowledge that leads to zeal against what is wrong and zeal for what is right, we are in danger of becoming passive slaves or even left-leaning fanatics through propaganda. When the institutions of learning are corrupt, the citizen has got to self-educate in order to become politically aware. With this in mind, and for the learner’s humble consideration, I have put together this short list of what may be read for a start. You may learn about proper political ideals by reading Is Capitalism Christian? This anthology is edited, remarkably and unfortunately, by Franky Schaeffer, a man who has rejected what he once endorsed. But the book has a lot of merit. It should be read. You may learn about how tyranny can take you by surprise in Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. You may learn about the consequences of leftist politics in Because They Hate by Brigitte Gabriel. You may learn about the consequences of secularism and its multicultural madness in America Alone by Mark Steyn. You may learn about the tyrannical world that, to a large extent, we already live in by reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. You may learn about socialism’s empty promises in Orwell’s Animal Farm. You may learn about how relentless the pursuit is for oppressing one’s fellow man by reading Beasts, Men, and Gods by Ferdinand Ossendowski; and hopefully you will notice by this book that the ‘Bolsheviki,’ or Soviet Communist, is of the same stamp as our own Liberal Democrat. Have you not noticed that Liberals and Democrats, just like the Communists, do not let anyone get beyond the reach of Big Government? It is even better to listen to Ossendowski’s true story on audio (available on Librivox), for the reader of it, Mark Smith, has the smooth voice of a motion picture narrator. You may learn about the life that a Marxist, Socialist, or Communist will subject you to if he can get away with it by reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. You may learn about how we are being socially engineered in Huxley’s Brave New World Revisited. And, most importantly and firstly, you may learn about how to be received into the Next and Better World by reading Sermons by R. M. M’Cheyne. Politics matter a little and for awhile; what state your soul is in when you die matters for eternity, and therefore infinitely more. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Maybe you’re thinking that this education is all one sided and that you should learn the other side of politics as well. This is not necessary to do because you have already learned this other side in school, on television, and at the movies. Moreover, you learn it each day via mainstream media like CNN and MSNBC, and on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. You learn it without even realizing that you are learning it. Turn to sites like Rebel News and the Epoch Times while they are still allowed to exist. And follow up R. M. M’Cheyne with C. H. Spurgeon, J. C. Ryle, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, B. B. Warfield, A. A. Hodge, John Bunyan, and the Puritans generally. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">With such reading and learning you will become equipped to warn others to turn away from that form of politics which will carry you, if its masterminds succeed, into bondage like unto life in North Korea, China, Cuba, and Iran. We are speeding toward this political nadir already. About half of what a worker makes ends up in the greedy jaws of Government. This Beast is getting bigger; its appetite is insatiable; unless we learn how to starve it, it will eat everything that we are able to produce; and then we will despair of being industrious. We will be slaves who are commanded, like the poor Israelites in Egypt, to provide resources without the means to do it. We must learn what we need to learn before we indulge in what we wish to learn because we must learn what we need to learn before we are forbidden to learn.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-50913457062663864352020-08-28T00:33:00.000-06:002020-08-28T00:33:20.962-06:00The CBC Campaigns for Joe Biden in Wisconsin<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwLWdITIHCgrF5AIhftXZI9u9FTTe5KwD3AayCpOFkkN9ryPy2xah8tu6Iump63KlqACTAGucOZFIKFTTh1Xfsc44QRxJ4UvRXQ5erYijMBR_4qWmhNUncHVMi10DEU0IBNBzSz237dQ/s300/DEMENTIA+JOE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwLWdITIHCgrF5AIhftXZI9u9FTTe5KwD3AayCpOFkkN9ryPy2xah8tu6Iump63KlqACTAGucOZFIKFTTh1Xfsc44QRxJ4UvRXQ5erYijMBR_4qWmhNUncHVMi10DEU0IBNBzSz237dQ/w469-h263/DEMENTIA+JOE.jpg" width="469" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">One day in mid-August, 2020 (the 19th, I think) while listening to Radio Canada, which is the French side of CBC, I heard something that I am not supposed to hear. The CBC is taxpayer funded radio. Is the CBC supposed to lean on a particular side politically, then? The answer is no. I just read its mandate. Campaigning for a political party is not part of its mandate. And if the CBC should not be campaigning for a Canadian political party, how much less for an American one! But the CBC is overtly political no matter what nation is discussed on its many platforms. The topic announced for discussion on an upcoming episode of a program on Radio Canada was this one: Since the black community in Wisconsin did not show up to vote in the last election as much as they formerly had, what might get them voting in greater numbers this time? The black community usually votes democrat; if it votes en masse in swing states, maybe Trump will lose. That is the truth that the CBC wants to make manifest as a fact. How plainly in violation of its mandate to have its nose in black neighborhoods of Wisconsin for the purpose of getting Biden elected! </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Are CBC hosts worried about Trump having access to a nuclear button? They pretend to be. If they were really worried, however, they would be worried even more about babbling Joe having the same access. Biden is a demented man (he exhibits clear signs of dementia) who literally doesn’t know where he is sometimes, and yet the CBC campaigns for him. The CBC needs to be deconstructed and defunded.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Among its mandated points, I read that the CBC is mandated to serve ‘special needs.’ In practice, this means to serve everyone but white men, Christians, and moralists. Another mandated point is to ‘reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.’ In practice, this means to serve everyone who is not a white man, a Christian, or a moralist. Yet another mandated point is to ‘actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression.’ In practice, this means to serve whatever cultural expression that will help to tear down white men, abolish traditional religion, and contribute to immorality. Canada was never Christian. But it is becoming increasingly savage and heathen. It is destined, if not soon turned around, to become a third world country. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">There is still time for the purveyors of wickedness to repent of their evil deeds. But one day this verse will have fully come to pass: “Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever” (Psalm 9.5.) The more wicked society gets, the more I look forward to Judgment Day.</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-10784678686645990722020-08-26T00:54:00.002-06:002020-08-26T00:54:52.119-06:00Typical CBC Talking Points<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXdTQ5mxHuCcDaT2h66ovJZrSC2ji_ztAod4gVEMxjDXeAHqQ0OXL9Nz9NSm6If_2GcxGrn_7sfLeEIqTNVfTAt7mMcMdfeFc1sNOt5KMM-xQxXtq-XKQLH0gbkXIZNmWwjlLdTcYlWg/s318/A+CBC+LOGO.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="159" data-original-width="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXdTQ5mxHuCcDaT2h66ovJZrSC2ji_ztAod4gVEMxjDXeAHqQ0OXL9Nz9NSm6If_2GcxGrn_7sfLeEIqTNVfTAt7mMcMdfeFc1sNOt5KMM-xQxXtq-XKQLH0gbkXIZNmWwjlLdTcYlWg/s0/A+CBC+LOGO.png" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Here are the CBC talking points for one fine day in August, 2020: Finance Minister Bill Morneau did do a silly thing, but his resignation has nothing to do with the WE Charity scandal; Chrystia Freeland will fill his post, which is great because she will be the first woman ever to fill it, and we are in a ‘she-cession,’ not a ‘re-cession,’ what with all the unemployed women out there; since an epidemic is no time for partisan politics, don’t judge the Liberal government if it’s crooked. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">This, essentially, is what I heard on CBC Radio when Bill Morneau resigned after his latest ethical breach. The CBC covers for the corrupt Liberals, warns us not to judge, and entirely dismisses unemployment affecting men. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Crooked financial affairs are called ‘a false balance’ in the Bible, which kind of balance is an ‘abomination to the LORD.’ (Proverbs 11.1.) This covers PM Trudeau, his finance minister, and their associates in crime who are plunging Canada into irrecoverable debt. Whoever commits what is abominable will be judged by the LORD. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">“Riches profit not in the day of wrath” (Proverbs 11.4.) This covers, not only our politicians, but the richly-paid CBC, which invariably defends Liberal profiteering at taxpayers’ expense. The CBC is made up of people, real people that are made, not only of flesh and bone, but of soul and spirit. Like everyone else, these people have sin natures that make them accountable to God. Riches gotten from the taxpayer via the unrighteous government might profit somewhat now; but they’ll profit no more than mothballs in the day of God’s wrath. If gold cannot save, be sure that mothballs can do nothing. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">“Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you” (James 5.1-4.) This judgment shockingly fits both our politicians in Ottawa and the CBC hosts across the country. Yes, it shockingly fits—even the part about condemning and killing the just. How many persons have been driven to suicide on account of lost livelihoods?—: small businesses and jobs that were cut off due to the cruel obstruction of our oil sector and then because of a ‘pandemic’ that has done less harm than the annual flu! And while businesses are being ruined, and their owners killed through loss of hope, what does the government and the CBC do? The government fills its pockets even more than usual; and the CBC madly helps to extend quarantine measures as if the bubonic plague is threatening to kill off the whole world. The CBC wants more billions for more years of fake work; so it does what it can to make sure the lying Liberals continue to rule, just in case a conservative might finally live up to his promise to defund it or at least diminish it. But there will be a reckoning. There is a LORD who judges what is abominable; there is a day of wrath approaching; there is a day of slaughter preparing: a slaughter by the LORD of sabaoth. From this there will be no stonewalling, no filibustering, no evasive speech, only irresistible acquiescence. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">“Repent, for the kingdom is at hand.” This command, if humbly responded to, can still lead to salvation from the coming wrath of God. It may be that a person has better odds of seeing a UFO than catching a politician reading a Bible; and better odds, too, of getting struck by lightning than hearing a CBC host do something else with the Bible than make fun of it. Trudeau and Morneau are rich. A CBC host, like Wendy Mesley, for example, is rich. (Her salary was well beyond the quarter million dollar mark the last time I checked.) She’s probably still getting paid even though she’s under some kind of suspension for using the N-word. “A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19.23.) Yes, hardly, but “with God all things are possible” (verse 26.) When have we witnessed a politician or a CBC host repent, though? I will not say that they are all past the possibility of receiving grace to do so. But I do confess that sometimes—maybe most times—I have a hard time believing that I will ever see or hear an instance of it. </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-48060725364170695222020-08-18T00:43:00.001-06:002020-08-18T00:43:52.431-06:00The Fall of a CBC Radical<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ecHSlggy3FTjyUK7B-Prg4Xt3MHa1XXxn4Ozw2tU401zVtxvM_otdnX7Cfvzvz7XobyF4Q4NwPKHd8dIRt7AWLlvBHeFpu4P2mcagLKSQGWsma47lwyOcg_Tfc2NlkH6Ga1k2Fap6Q/s300/CBC+WENDY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ecHSlggy3FTjyUK7B-Prg4Xt3MHa1XXxn4Ozw2tU401zVtxvM_otdnX7Cfvzvz7XobyF4Q4NwPKHd8dIRt7AWLlvBHeFpu4P2mcagLKSQGWsma47lwyOcg_Tfc2NlkH6Ga1k2Fap6Q/w469-h263/CBC+WENDY.jpg" width="469" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">Wendy Mesley has been with the CBC for two decades at least. Hired for beauty as much as for merit, no doubt, she has been a dependable conduit for mainstream narratives all that time—until a few weeks ago—until the summer of 2020, a devastating fate-filled year for so many. Now she’s ‘suspended,’ which is a euphemism, usually, for the word ‘fired.’ Wendy was a mainstream talking head, a television personality who spoke, not her own thoughts, but rehearsed talking points. It’s hard to keep your talking head above the waves these days, what with the unpredictable winds and manufactured storms that continuously assail. You have to be a big fish in order not to drown. Wendy thought she was big enough. She thought she was one of them sea serpents with the long neck above the water mark. You’ve got to be a big fish to be able to use the N-word with impunity. B. Hussein Obama was big enough to do it. His neck was long enough. Dr. Laura drowned by her audacious use. This was no surprise, given her conservative color. Not many necks are long enough, moreover, on the conservative side. How ignominious to Wendy’s proud gills to discover that she could be fired for the same reason as conservative Laura was canned. Now Wendy is cooked, canned, and maybe even shelved for life. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">A Loch Ness Monster that was wont to menace from shore to shore to shore, seeking whom she might de-platform and devour, is now become a measly landlubber. Should Nessie Mesley be allowed to retreat to her swanky tax-paid den, and that is all? Or should she not get the microphone thrust, and be called upon to answer for the behavior that she falsely accused others for exhibiting? This woman lusted to ruin lives. Recall her rearing her haughty head as she baited Jordan Peterson with the racist hook! This woman deserves no rest until she is made to forward some answers. Maybe if she were given to taste that hook, she would be made to feel sorry. Then peradventure she might take a stroll to the edge of the sea that she has been cast out of, look out upon it with self-condemning introspection, and count all the lives that she has hunted from the water. Each day she should be pursued a-la-Paparazzi. What answers can be given by this fish out of water? Can a reporter please memorize the following questions, and then put them to her in lightning fashion as she runs to her car from the supermarket or the hairdresser? Yes, maybe even from the hairdresser even though her hair is too short to make a good use of one. (Her hair is not short because of cancer, but because of radical feminist ideology put into practice; let me put that in for protection.) </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">Wendy Mesley needs to answer some questions. And these questions ought to be asked by a reporter while waving Joseph Conrad’s ‘Narcissus’ in the air before her face for effect. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“Madam Mesley, what do you have to say about using the N word?” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“How many times have you used the word?” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“Have you used it today?” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“Have you ever painted your face black?” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“What is your message to the black community?” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“Wendy, do you believe in slavery?” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“Are you a white supremacist?” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“Will you condemn the KKK?”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“Do you know David Duke?” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“What about this novel? Have you read it? Do you condemn it?”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">These questions should all have been memorized so that each one runs off on the heels of the last with relentless, merciless abandon. Shame is for sinners; and she is a big one, though not as big a fish as she thought she was. Her sin is not in the use of the N-word, for it is not a sin to use it. Her sin is in the attempted destruction of lives and livelihoods. Who knows how much harm she is guilty of? She should be poisoned with the very poison that she has been cruelly administering to others: career-ending accusations. She that hounded needs to be hounded back. ‘A tooth for a tooth,’ Wendy. We know that you’re fired already. But is it wrong of us to make sure? </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11.3.) The righteous can warn people like Wendy that the portion of the wicked—the wicked who destroy the foundations of religion, freedom, and morality—will have ‘fire and brimstone’ rain upon them unless they repent (verse 6.) Before Wendy manages to get back destroying on some medium or other, she should be deservingly shamed. It is better to be shamed upon now than to be rained upon later by the LORD. Shame may lead to repentance; repentance leads to mercy; and mercy leads to the firewall that sinners need against the wrath of God. If Wendy’s suspension is permanent—and we hope that it is—the least effect that it will have is to restrain her, and thus lessen the misery that she would otherwise endure at the hand of Jehovah. Rejoice, Wendy, you have not such opportunity to sin as before. Take the lowest place, as the Bible teaches, for it is from there that we may best consider our faults, and from there that crumbs of grace may be gathered for our good. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihatPezsCOXnKdranYllc-ew9Zu-obFb3AHIpPKSZXX-Ct26xOOPzvyfiZYgB2rw3vVdmsLmB9_imSDGtkL5lJgsL5MF6lFhP27lHTVFd0lTB4Ri3S3r5fYbwkAY5fYJjVRESVy4hVxA/s281/NIGGER+OF+NARCISSUS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="180" height="439" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihatPezsCOXnKdranYllc-ew9Zu-obFb3AHIpPKSZXX-Ct26xOOPzvyfiZYgB2rw3vVdmsLmB9_imSDGtkL5lJgsL5MF6lFhP27lHTVFd0lTB4Ri3S3r5fYbwkAY5fYJjVRESVy4hVxA/w281-h439/NIGGER+OF+NARCISSUS.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div></div>thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-71471160843888116642020-06-29T23:31:00.000-06:002020-06-29T23:32:28.069-06:00WHY AMERICA WILL BURN<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK46BqobPjWbXaFUi-T2CyFQPI-OZEq8JVDYVjbjafvDsaTl2c9vN7rHTROJHOdG_aOeQaVU4Oz0VjRzl6k6rNEIdT16maWVQ0c36wjVsn1u0SYCQRkh4oL3LGwmBT4wdGZBfBJD7qSQ/s1600/AMERICAN+FLAG+BURNING.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="162" data-original-width="311" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK46BqobPjWbXaFUi-T2CyFQPI-OZEq8JVDYVjbjafvDsaTl2c9vN7rHTROJHOdG_aOeQaVU4Oz0VjRzl6k6rNEIdT16maWVQ0c36wjVsn1u0SYCQRkh4oL3LGwmBT4wdGZBfBJD7qSQ/s400/AMERICAN+FLAG+BURNING.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">What is going on in the USA is an attempted revolution, and it will probably succeed. These riots in early June, 2020, are not the first, and there are many to come. If the republicans manage to stay in power, they will soon have to govern in a way that will look dictatorial and martial. They will have to do it this way because the democrats, their donors, their media, and their terrorist wings will have it no other way. The democrats have become so radical that they will not be governed by republicans, only ruled by an iron fist. Every time they can find an excuse to riot, they will run with it. No party, no police force, and certainly not every member of the white race can maintain the innocent conduct that is necessary to avoid giving the democrats an excuse to riot. Like magic, any bad thing that happens to a black person, whether that thing is real or imagined, can be pulled out of the hat to mean ‘systemic racism’—: the absurd charge that racism against blacks is everywhere. And then the riots are on, and cities burn once again. How do you govern a country like that? You have to do it with power. You have to be willing to be called a despot in order to have law and order. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">But the USA will be ruled by an iron fist even if the republicans lose power, and especially in that case because the democrats are now Communists. Therefore if the republicans are smart, they will crush every riot just as a dictatorship would do: instantly and without mercy. That is the only chance, unless a revival of religion happens, that Americans have of not falling into Communist hands. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">America will burn because the democrats want it to burn. If they are out of power, they will riot. If they are in power, they will destroy. But why do the democrats hate America? They hate America because its Constitutional liberty does not allow them to be in power perpetually. They want power because they want resources. And they want resources in order to live in luxury, to look down on others, and to practice debauchery in high places, with impunity. But even if they get everything they want, they will still hate, and they will still burn everything down. But why is it so? They will continue to hate as long as vestiges of righteousness remain, which righteousness can never be entirely extirpated. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Here is what democrats hate to see most of all. Here is what they want to eradicate by burning America down. Dick and Jane are on vacation with Mother and Father to celebrate the end of school and the baby that’s on the way. They’re driving to Yellowstone National Park in their brown ranch wagon. The Bible is on Mother’s lap; and Father plans to stop at a gun show on the way in order to buy Dick his first rifle. What will Mother buy for Jane? She plans to buy her a new red dress that is so long that it will cover not only her thighs and knees, but also her calves and ankles. And what does Jane think about that? She thinks that’s just swell because Mother knows best. Besides, Father says that Dick will let her shoot his new rifle when they get home, but not before she sets the table for Mother and after the family prays and sits down for dinner to talk about the trip. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">“He that is upright in the way is abomination to the wicked” (Proverbs 29.27.) As long as a few families in the nation are ‘upright in the way,’ wicked democrats and their loathsome allies will not be happy. To quote their refrain, “More needs to be done.” They will never be happy; but they will be less miserable if they can get rid of the last of these upright families. They know the obverse of that proverb, which makes them hate all the more. They know that ‘an unjust man is an abomination to the just.’ They can feel the disdain that just people have for their wicked ways, and they can’t stand it. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">This is why America will burn. It will burn unless we can generate Dick and Jane families all across America immediately. But no, it must burn even then. It must burn for a more fundamental reason than wicked, democrat hatred. God must judge America for its many sins, especially abortion. As for slavery, that has been paid for many times over. Since this judgment must happen, our prayer should be that it will happen by a plague—a real one. That would be more merciful than being judged through migrants, Communism, famine, or the loss of power to run homes and transport goods. A plague is the quickest way. Take the punishment, don’t complain about it, bury the dead, repent, believe on Jesus like the settlers did, and then live like Dick, Jane, Mother, and Father. That is the best we can hope for. Our nations have committed so much wickedness that we must assume that we are in the place David was when God asked him to choose a method of punishment for his sin of pride in numbering his people. “Shall seven years of famine come upon thee in thy land? or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee? or that there be three days’ pestilence in thy land?” (2 Samuel 24.) David chose to fall ‘into the hand of the LORD’ because the LORD is more merciful than enemies. And so the LORD sent a pestilence instead of war. If enough Americans united in prayer to acknowledge before God what they deserve, maybe the USA would be granted a new beginning. But, you see, united prayer will never happen, not in actual earnest contrition, at least, because even the people who are not democrats are more proud than humble, not to mention ungodly enough to be practically atheists. They would not even know that the faithful and the heathen should not be praying together and that such a mixed multitude of belief and unbelief will not be heard by God. Interfaith prayer must be avoided, shunned, and condemned by every faithful believer in Jesus Christ. Then united prayer among faithful believers may begin. But the few families who would pray—the few who are ‘upright in the way’—these are not numerous enough nor pious enough to draw down such a huge response from the LORD of heaven and earth. This means that the USA will have it rough; but it will have it no rougher, maybe, than the rest of western civilization will have it, all of which must fall, just as Babylon fell, just as Israel fell, just as Judah fell, and just as Rome fell. America’s best days are behind, not before. If its best days are not behind, it will be a long time until we see these best days. America must be judged, not because we hate America, but because the LORD hates wickedness.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Shall we eat, drink, and be merry then, while we still can? We dare not do that because our payment on earth for sins is nothing compared with what we must pay hereafter for those very same sins. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane must be more than conservative; they must be born again. They must obtain the righteousness of Christ by faith, not so much for this world, though that is important enough, but for the everlasting world to come. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-17106398908645323582020-03-20T16:39:00.000-06:002020-03-20T16:39:23.557-06:00Bully Boosting by the CBC<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifmTVUBt6s5TgTEWT56VdYj8uFtm_M_fxNUAnKa1TJZw6rTpmD2oIwLTzhnC_L5zYerMXIZ3BLpWL-EDkof5yNzVTjwwQV5jXWM6BJre8IL58aZCyVXEoZNSn0eAujy6f9ofOZbDe5mw/s1600/RITA+CELLI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifmTVUBt6s5TgTEWT56VdYj8uFtm_M_fxNUAnKa1TJZw6rTpmD2oIwLTzhnC_L5zYerMXIZ3BLpWL-EDkof5yNzVTjwwQV5jXWM6BJre8IL58aZCyVXEoZNSn0eAujy6f9ofOZbDe5mw/s400/RITA+CELLI.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Hosts at the CBC hate capitalists even more than they love socialism. We know this because even though the CBC receives $100 million per month from capitalist taxpayers, these parasitic socialists are not satisfied with producing boring content that almost no one will listen to or watch, but pass much of their time hating capitalism and capitalists wherever these may be found. Socialism’s attributes include greed, envy, and covetousness. But its chief attribute is hatred.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">It is the nature of socialists to hate and to persecute. A blue-collar billionaire like President Trump who works overtime to free his citizens from unemployment causes lazy socialists a lot of shame. A president who donates his presidential salary to good causes is a shameful reminder of generosity to stingy socialists who live off the resources of others. The capitalist, therefore, must have hatred incited against him. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">The CBC’s Rita Celli, for example, did a call-in show for no other reason than to justify the mocking of President Trump. She did this on December 9th, 2019 on her money-wasting radio broadcast called 'Ontario Today.' That episode is shamelessly called, ‘Laughing at Trump: Does it Matter?’ That should be ‘President Trump’ to Rita, but maybe she hasn’t accepted the results of the 2016 election yet. Rita’s hate-filled helper for this day was Susan Delacourt from the Toronto Star, another medium that lives on Canadian taxes. During this extra-special Trump-hating episode, Rita suggests that mocking Trump might be a form of ‘bonding.’ She wouldn’t like bonding to happen by her being made fun of, though. Why not? Because, as a socialist, she’s necessarily a hypocrite. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">CBC hosts want us to believe that they are crusaders against bullying. In truth, they are hypocrites who encourage bullying. They are haters who incite bullying. What would happen if someone did a call-in show about whether or not it matters if Rita Celli is laughed at? Well, little Rita would collapse into a depression and summon help from the government to make the laughing stop and to make the laughers suffer by the hammer of Canada’s lawless Human Rights Commission. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Even the President of the United States must be defended against bullying because bullying is always wrong. Bullying is never a virtue; it is an evil deed that is too often imitated. Therefore bullies like Rita Celli and Susan Delacourt must be denounced. It would be better if they were fired. But we have better things to do than to campaign for the loss of their cushy jobs; besides, Rita and Susan might not be able to survive without taxpayers paying their way. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">When CBC Radio was founded in 1936, something better than smoke and vinegar was likely transmitted to its listeners. Since a few decades ago, however, and certainly by the year 2000, CBC Radio has done little more than help to fulfill this verse from the Bible: “As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him” (Proverbs 10.26.)</span></div>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-45136027634663268922020-02-13T19:45:00.000-07:002020-02-13T19:45:20.116-07:00Book Review of Ezra Levant's 'Libranos'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4DJl0sGuS2o2kXbNgdSXrQfnu369ejBQIjHzyAozLycjJp8M3BbdD-A0eY627nfbUjAcipv9TCPVontdbPVGrlzUEHCjr54rmjKKG-X_pXohr_CynKY9gVoNdZaXm5V-Wrbq1AmNx6w/s1600/LIBRANOS+PIC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4DJl0sGuS2o2kXbNgdSXrQfnu369ejBQIjHzyAozLycjJp8M3BbdD-A0eY627nfbUjAcipv9TCPVontdbPVGrlzUEHCjr54rmjKKG-X_pXohr_CynKY9gVoNdZaXm5V-Wrbq1AmNx6w/s400/LIBRANOS+PIC.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Ezra Levant, The Libranos (Canada: Rebel News Network Ltd., 2019), 137 pp.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">As the cover of this book artistically shows, the Libranos is the Canadian Liberal government. Liberal Prime Minister Trudeau and his political operatives are the Libranos, just as Prime Minister Chretien and his Liberal network were the Libranos back before the less corrupt days of Conservative Prime Minister Harper. ‘Libranos’ is the word ‘Sopranos’ Liberalized. The Sopranos is a show about a fictional mafia family. I have never seen the show, and it probably no longer airs.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">We who watch the Ezra Levant Show do not learn a lot about Trudeau and his Libranos from this book. We have been well informed by the show. But The Libranos should be read by everyone who relies on the CBC, the CTV, the Globe and Mail, or the Toronto Star for news about what really goes on in our capital when the Liberals are in power. This is ‘the other side of the story,’ which is the motto of Ezra’s Rebel News. Of the two dozen or so books that have been written about Trudeau, The Libranos is the only one that has been singled out by the Liberals for censorship; the only one whose author has been interrogated, Communist-style, for writing; and the only one that has shot up to number one on Amazon (Canadian side) after the Liberal government’s goons were shown, on video, trying to scare its author. It was after Ezra published the video of the interrogation that I decided to read the book. An author who is grilled by government-sent goons for the book he wrote is an author who deserves his book to be read. An author who is targeted, intimidated, and threatened by the government for the book he wrote deserves his book to be read. An author who stares down former RCMP officers in a scary back room must have written an important book that embarrasses a corrupt government; he deserves his book to be read. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">The statement that best summarizes the corruption, which is carefully backed up with facts and figures, is this one: “Butts [Trudeau’s best friend] may have earned enough to retire after just three years working in government” (p. 131.) This possibility is understandable from the fact that ‘more than $300 billion in new debt’ has been run up since Trudeau took office (p. 125.) </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Watchers of Ezra’s show may not learn a lot from this book. But we do learn a little. In chapter four we learn some things we didn’t know about the Charter; in chapter eight we learn more about the festival where Trudeau groped a reporter; in chapter eleven we learn more about Trudeau’s truancy. In his first year as PM, he “flew off to tropical St. Kitts, went skiing in Whistler, celebrated Carnaval in Quebec, chilled at an exclusive resort on Fogo Island, N.L., surfed in Tofino, hit the beach in the Bahamas, added extra personal time to an official trip to Japan to celebrate an ‘anniversary’ that had actually already passed, and caught Hamilton on Broadway during a getaway to New York City” (pp. 131, 132.) </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">That quote about Trudeau’s many vacations is one out of only two sentences that I check marked for eloquence. This book is far less eloquent than it is average. It is written in the popular point form style, often with short sentences that stand in for whole paragraphs. The sentence fragments are particularly wearisome. “To repeat: Trudeau. Hit. A. Woman. On the floor of the House of Commons” (p. 88.) Writing like this, to use Ezra’s own word for something he hates, is ‘gross.’ A writer should have too much respect for the written word to write like that. No matter what we write, it should be written well, even if it’s a book of nonfiction. The other annoyance is the lack of editing that went into this effort. If I had counted all the faults that an editor should have caught, like the unintentional repeating of words, the number would have risen to fifteen or more. Sometimes the line spacing even varies. Inadequate editing may demonstrate that Ezra Levant is on a low budget like his viewers are on. But even a writer on a low budget can get better editing done than this. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Though this book is brief enough to be called a booklet, it is annotated to the number 289! This is the book’s greatest strength: whenever wrongdoing is alleged, it is alleged with evidence. When its author was interrogated for writing the book, he was berated, not for defamation, but for publishing. This fact, all by itself, suggests that the Liberal government has totalitarian tendencies, but also that the book it is trying to ban must be full of truth.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Four stars: Liberal Government Corruption Meticulously Exposed </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-91911510111657655472019-11-29T19:40:00.000-07:002019-11-29T19:40:21.144-07:00Preparing a Mission Statement<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjus_YVJ8ytIDskfuq8b0RbixRmE1xUmigZoz-cO1Vwfk5cHfBBMBB9hVs7cWIeEuZ2yIWo-vcj33EI4huhwRFu88V-pY-y-HisbaBgCuqNpvqO2tCBYUwJyYJH95UDdffgfWdIU8RALg/s1600/PAPER+AND+QUILL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="720" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjus_YVJ8ytIDskfuq8b0RbixRmE1xUmigZoz-cO1Vwfk5cHfBBMBB9hVs7cWIeEuZ2yIWo-vcj33EI4huhwRFu88V-pY-y-HisbaBgCuqNpvqO2tCBYUwJyYJH95UDdffgfWdIU8RALg/s400/PAPER+AND+QUILL.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">A mission statement is not a creed. A creed should be subscribed to long before a Christian considers writing a mission statement. It is best to form the statement, not by perusing the Scriptures or textbooks, but by drawing on what is understood thus far, with an intention to reform the statement as growth continues. By drawing on one’s mere understanding of what has been learned through the various exercises of grace, one’s journey and goal will be a personal word between a disciple and God—a declaration to be assessed after the statement has been put into practice and has aged awhile. Categories may be written to prompt thought about what a mission statement should contain. For my part, categories naturally emerged after I had written the statement out. My platform line came about as I reflected on the contents of the New Testament, which I had recently read in short order. The new convert should be praying for a mentor to advise him. The more seasoned saint should be praying for converts to guide. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">This mission statement was written on the recovery side of a severe trial, which trial occurred about ten years after my conversion. Provided that I have grown since then, at least in understanding if not pious conduct, I was happy to notice that the statement did not need to be substantially revised fifteen years after it was first drawn up. I had to change a few words for the sake of precision and clarity; that is all. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">PLATFORM </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Faith in the resurrected Christ who sacrificed himself to God for the remission of my sins. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">PIETY</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">By prayer, instruction, and meditation, to avoid sin and to draw closer to the Father, through Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit, in order to know what to do, how to do it, and above all, to know the mind of God. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">COMMISSION</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">To close with, in order to save or disciple, whosoever God may choose to put in my way, by any means possible, being all things to all people, so long as I am not morally polluted and the gospel is not compromised; secondarily, to be a force and influence to prevent sin in others, even if the result is no more positive than to restrain their potential punishment in hell.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">LIFESTYLE</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">To ensure that my business is righteous and my home godly, and to be regularly employed in a particular ministry that is in harmony with my gifts and talents, often meditating on, and being on the lookout for, whatever might be done to glorify God and to enlarge his territory, remembering to take notice of those who are neglected indeed, knowing that responsibility, rewards, and stature in heaven depend on how I conduct myself in this life. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">CONCLUSION</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Being mindful of my future state, thinking and acting justly must be attended with right motives, knowing that spontaneity for God is closer to perfection than mere disciplined action, and that spontaneity through disciplined action is even better, being the action known in revelation as ‘first love’; perseverance in the face of tribulation is the greatest work, and, next to all other works combined, is as everything compared to nothing, being the highest exercise of faith. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-8839135609594054762019-11-11T19:15:00.000-07:002019-11-11T19:15:07.712-07:00Feminists are like Chihuahuas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-csWxE69Ow-2RgQD9x4tZUdxaylmwkaQhQDvS2TxmmfxOHDnm7zX7RoeK6LqputwCea2bS0CkBxUYRJDm94pma3gf_nRAhYvRs9WDr9T6UHFyqFseItyn7ecTuBaDxMyIkXOkoUvZMw/s1600/ANGRY+CHIWAWA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="281" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-csWxE69Ow-2RgQD9x4tZUdxaylmwkaQhQDvS2TxmmfxOHDnm7zX7RoeK6LqputwCea2bS0CkBxUYRJDm94pma3gf_nRAhYvRs9WDr9T6UHFyqFseItyn7ecTuBaDxMyIkXOkoUvZMw/s400/ANGRY+CHIWAWA.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Feminists are like Chihuahuas. They make a lot of noise to get attention. They rely on others to compensate for their lack of bite. They are envious. And they are spiteful. I know this because we raised Chihuahuas at home when I was a boy.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">This one Chihuahua that we had was called Tina. Tina is a good specimen to select for my comparison of feminists to Chihuahuas because, in spite of her positive attributes, she exemplified all the negative Chihuahua traits to a T. When a morsel of meat was put down for her to eat, she approached it with a dainty step. Then, after taking a sniff, she typically turned up her nose, and walked pathetically away. After this the cat would inevitably make an approach toward the morsel, anxious to eat what Tina did not think fit for consumption. But when the cat got close, Tina would threaten the cat and pretend to want the morsel. Tina would then guard the meat and grudgingly lick it to torment the cat. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">The meaning of the parable is this. The morsel is the kind of man that every woman should want: the delicious red-blooded man. The Chihuahua is the feminist who does not want the man unless another woman wants him. She just wants a man as a delicacy to show off and to make other women jealous. The cat is the virtuous woman who actually wants the man, and for the right reasons. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">This is not all though. When the cat became aggressive enough to make a try at getting the morsel, Tina would rush forward and gobble the morsel up. In like manner, the feminist will make her final move on a good man if she sees that a virtuous woman is about to take him. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">After Tina devoured the morsel, I would have to rescue her from choking by massaging her neck to make the food go down. This is like the feminist who, by getting the good man, bites off more than she can chew, which causes her to choke, whereupon the government steps in to rescue her from her choice. Unlike Tina (the parable breaks down at this point), the feminist spits out the man, who, frequently, is either too used up to attract a good woman, or so put off that he never marries again. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">“It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house” (Proverbs 21.9.) Who is more brawling than a bawling feminist? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-21620894854881424242019-11-08T23:12:00.000-07:002019-11-08T23:33:12.262-07:00Radical Feminists Contemplate Murdering men on CBC Radio<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtQPRbicI9b66uM_ffFBAYRC6xKIYax3eeAXSmFQo12D0FkyvLEglKw4INqt9AWsxt38iL-NzGOKCJYI5qM8BHaT6gCFM45byvnLhFYK7di9yeWT48AZ8ntGyK4Lz4r8FZ-GafJNsJ1g/s1600/CBC+INCITING+VIOLENCE+THROUGH+RADICAL+FEMINIST.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="857" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtQPRbicI9b66uM_ffFBAYRC6xKIYax3eeAXSmFQo12D0FkyvLEglKw4INqt9AWsxt38iL-NzGOKCJYI5qM8BHaT6gCFM45byvnLhFYK7di9yeWT48AZ8ntGyK4Lz4r8FZ-GafJNsJ1g/s400/CBC+INCITING+VIOLENCE+THROUGH+RADICAL+FEMINIST.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i><u><br /></u></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i><u><br /></u></i></b></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i><u>We Pay the CBC $1.5 Billion Dollars Annually so that Radical Feminists Can Discuss Murdering Men on the Air? </u></i></b></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Thanks to Janice Fiamengo at StudioBrule for catching this, and for quoting the man-hater word for word. This is the kind of hatred and incitement to violence that is recruited to guest on the CBC, yes, the CBC that costs taxpayers about 1.5 billion dollars each year. The guest is Mona Eltahawy from the middle-east; the host is Piya Chattopadhyay of East Indian heritage. And this is the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, folks. It exists to import man-hatred, among other evils.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">If men spoke like this about women, their medium would be shut down and the men would face charges. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Women are so oppressed in Canada that they get to talk about murdering men while men are accused of being aggressive just for refusing to sit with their legs together! Women are weaker vessels indeed! They are so weak that they must always be given rights that men don't have. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">One day, hopefully, sins committed at the CBC will be dredged up as an argument to defund it. In any case, the Day of the LORD will not fail to punish hate-filled feminists.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5.10.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-71256562644053404992019-11-08T22:13:00.000-07:002019-11-08T22:13:06.235-07:00Poppies on a Cross? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5wzCLHDhnsJh4b3W_DvI9zW1jvPygkDP0IoOCjywaDJKRF_RmYQpD18sx7QB5Z4QEbnMgNTUCYB3b3StA3pYTnjhiSjp0WJfweoGfqk3M_IyxDrzeL4PAW8-Q_65GTq_ABZcLcO4VVA/s1600/POPPIES+ON+A+CROSS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="183" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5wzCLHDhnsJh4b3W_DvI9zW1jvPygkDP0IoOCjywaDJKRF_RmYQpD18sx7QB5Z4QEbnMgNTUCYB3b3StA3pYTnjhiSjp0WJfweoGfqk3M_IyxDrzeL4PAW8-Q_65GTq_ABZcLcO4VVA/s400/POPPIES+ON+A+CROSS.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Our nation takes time to remember the men who fought and died for our freedom. It is our custom to do so every November 11th. This custom is a gesture of respect for those who deserve to be honored, and it should continue. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">We brethren take time to remember the Savior who suffered and died for our salvation. It is a custom that some churches still observe every Sunday. This custom is in response to a command given by Jesus Christ, and so the custom should continue. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">I’d be confused if I saw a cross on a poppy; and I’m nearly as confused when I see a poppy on a cross. Yes, I can see the analogy of the soldier’s death to that of Christ’s death—his gift of freedom and our freedom in Christ. But what I can’t figure out is why a Christian would put poppies on a cross in an attempt to bring honor to our men of war. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">If you look at the cross, a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, and you remember men of war rather than the Prince of Peace, or a mixture of the two, I think that takes away from the honor that is due Christ. Especially is this the case when the poppy laden cross stands in the sanctuary, the official place where Jesus Christ is supposed to be honored above, or even to the exclusion of, everyone else. Shall we dishonor the Lord in our attempt to honor military veterans? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Christ’s first coming had nothing to do with war, and little or nothing to do with democracy or politics. Jesus died for sin in order for sinners to reap an eternity of freedom. But, unlike soldiers, he did not kill anyone or even fight anyone in order to provide this freedom. The symbol of sacrifice that soldiers made should not be applied to the cross, for the cross represents Christ’s sacrifice for sinners, and nothing else. A weaker, or more sensitive, Christian, not to mention an unbeliever, might construe the fusion as equating the death of Christ with the death of sinful men. Commixing these symbols implies that we may elevate the sacrifice of sinful men to the level of sacrifice that Jesus made. At the very least, a cross with poppies on it reminds us of other persons than the One who died on the cross for sin. This fact should be sufficient to discourage the practice of putting poppies on crosses on Remembrance Day. A cross with poppies on it distorts the meaning of the cross. It puts human tradition where it does not belong—on what symbolizes the only satisfactory sacrifice that has ever been made, and that can be made, for sin.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">It is debatable whether we should use a cross at all to symbolize the death of Christ. He has given us bread and wine to remember his sacrifice by. But that is a different issue.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-65514134403735720372019-11-08T22:02:00.000-07:002019-11-08T22:02:10.222-07:00Great Preachers Preach Christ Crucified<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6m_95KcMhPjjuDxityEYi-N024PWhlmQCl0Ol1Y6EV4Jso303o_NJ1rmWz9jdTQd5C2b6X0UgGL4liWCDGdcjAQn5PYQ3cPrObnQ2JQokE8A5731OthKXk_xEGi_4f1oI75gd4TiYwA/s1600/DANIEL+ROWLANDS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="179" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6m_95KcMhPjjuDxityEYi-N024PWhlmQCl0Ol1Y6EV4Jso303o_NJ1rmWz9jdTQd5C2b6X0UgGL4liWCDGdcjAQn5PYQ3cPrObnQ2JQokE8A5731OthKXk_xEGi_4f1oI75gd4TiYwA/s400/DANIEL+ROWLANDS.jpg" width="254" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">“For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2.2.)</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">This doctrine is so important that it is stated as making up the whole of evangelical theology. It is a statement that is put into absolute form to emphasize its indispensability. If all the major doctrines are preached, in season and out, with zeal, but the death of Christ is left out, what good will be accomplished? If this verse from Corinthians is true, such preaching will do no good. And if a preacher will not preach the doctrine of Christ crucified, how will it fare with him in the end? Will he not find that Christ never knew him, that the Father never adopted him, and that the Holy Spirit never called him? By leaving this doctrine out of his ministry, he will doom the souls of sinners, along with his own, and he will have hell for his reward. Many preachers come into Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem with their sermons, but they avoid Golgotha, the place of the cross. Angels must have many woes in reserve for ministers who will not preach Christ crucified. There are many more woes to come, no doubt, than the ones that are uttered in the book of Revelation. Is it not reasonable to preach the blood of the new covenant as often as the blood of bulls and goats was spilled under the old dispensation? In every century since the incarnation, ranks of pious men have marched up to the cross in answer to God’s call, to preach new life into souls by preaching the death of Christ; they have done so after the manner of Paul the apostle, whose example has been ratified by God as worthy to follow. The effect of his preaching is the proof of it. Ministers are exhorted to imitate and follow the example of Paul. The apostle asserts that he has preached Christ crucified as if nothing else matters; to follow his example is as reasonable as obeying a command from God. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>What is the Meaning of Christ Crucified?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) ‘asked for this [verse] to be carved on his tombstone.’ He has this to say about it: “Think of it like this. Why did the Son of God ever come into this world? Why did he leave the courts of glory? Why was he born as a little babe? Why did he take unto him human nature? There is only one answer. He came because man could not save himself…‘The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost’ (Luke 19:10.) And when I look at that cross and see him dying there, what he tells me is this: you have nothing whereof to boast. The cross tells me that I am a complete failure, and that I am such a failure that he had to come from heaven, not merely to teach and preach in this world, but to die on that cross. Nothing else could save us.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Martin Luther (1483-1546) was so haunted by the devil for his doctrine and life that he threw his inkpot at him on one occasion. About this doctrine, he says, “The atonement is the chief, the most exalted, article of the Christian doctrine. Faith alone apprehends it as the highest good, the greatest blessing, of our salvation, and recognizes that we cannot, by our works or our sufferings, do or merit anything in atoning for sin.” ('Atonement' means a satisfactory reparation for wrongs committed, which is done for sinful man by Christ to reconcile him to God: the <i>blood</i> of Christ as the <i>covering</i> for sin being the only satisfaction thereto, the only satisfaction to reconcile sinners to God, Editor.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a man, who, ‘by the concurrent voice of all who have perused his writings, is assigned one of the first, if not the very first place, amongst the masters of human reason.’ About Christ crucified, he says, “The death of Christ did not only make atonement, but also merited eternal life; and hence we may see how by the blood of Christ we are not only redeemed from sin, but redeemed unto God…This precious blood is as much the main price by which heaven is purchased, as it is the main price by which we are redeemed from hell…He spilled his blood to satisfy, and by reason of the infinite dignity of his person, his sufferings were looked upon as of infinite value, and equivalent to the eternal sufferings of a finite creature. And he spilled his blood out of respect to the honour of God’s majesty, and in submission to his authority, who had commanded him so to do.” (The words 'redeem' and 'purchase' mean the same thing: 'to buy back,' Editor.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813-1843) had this for a prayer about his ministry: “I fear the love of applause, or effect…May God keep me from preaching myself, instead of Christ crucified.” His prayer was answered, and he preached, “Here is a being hanging between earth and heaven—forsaken by his God—without a smile—without a drop of comfort—the agonies of hell going over him; and yet he loves the God that has forsaken him. He does not cry out, Cruel, cruel Father!—no, but with all the vehemence of affection, cries out, ‘My God, my God.’ Dear, dear souls, is this your surety? Do you take him as obeying for you? Ah! then, you are complete in him.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Confessions</b> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">William Grimshaw (b. 1708) drew walkers from ten to twenty miles away each Sunday to hear him preach. He confessed to God, “My sins have reached unto heaven, and mine iniquities have been lifted up unto the skies. My base corruptions and lusts have numberless ways wrought to bring forth fruit unto death, and if thou wert extreme to mark what I have done amiss, I could never abide it…I am convinced of my sin and folly…I am…sensible of my vileness and unworthiness, but yet sensible that I am thy pardoned, justified, and regenerated child in the spirit and the blood of my dear and precious Saviour, Jesus Christ, by clear experience.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">John Hooper (1495-1555) was burned by the Roman Catholic Church for his beliefs, being ‘three quarters of an hour or more in the fire’ before he expired. He confessed, “I do believe and confess that Christ’s condemnation is mine absolution; that His crucifying is my deliverance; His descending into hell is mine ascending into heaven; His death is my life; His blood is my cleansing, and purging, by whom only I am washed, purified, and cleansed from all my sins: so that I neither receive, neither believe any other purgatory, either in this world or in the other, whereby I may be purged, but only the blood of Jesus Christ, by which all are purged and made clean for ever.” (All are purged of sin that renounce it and turn to the Saviour for the cleansing, Editor.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Daniel Rowlands (1713-1790) caused ‘smiles and tears running down the face of all’ by his preaching. He confessed, “Except your consciences be cleansed by the blood of Christ, you must all perish in the eternal fires.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">William Romaine (1714-1795), ‘at the age of eighty-one, was evidently preaching at least three days in every week!’ He confessed, “There is but one central point, in which we must all meet—Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (Which reply he made shortly before his death, Editor.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
CHRIST WAS CRUCIFIED TO SAVE SINNERS JUST LIKE YOU</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-10157829938631993132019-11-07T20:42:00.000-07:002019-11-07T20:42:20.003-07:00Great Preachers Preach Justification by Faith<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrTSWYm1Czk82vkOoTGu3rmvzZw50KQaJUWMG2qakH4KE9zX3B4x4xuVPSk623cCZohXuquOdwzL_5jAyZRgNy_DkGSpT2Ni2CXaBc3Uk-deyWhh2jUIjgOP4tCtS9WWvidx9FNxExbg/s1600/SAMUEL+WARD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="248" data-original-width="203" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrTSWYm1Czk82vkOoTGu3rmvzZw50KQaJUWMG2qakH4KE9zX3B4x4xuVPSk623cCZohXuquOdwzL_5jAyZRgNy_DkGSpT2Ni2CXaBc3Uk-deyWhh2jUIjgOP4tCtS9WWvidx9FNxExbg/s400/SAMUEL+WARD.jpg" width="326" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Romans 3.28.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Justification by Faith</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">This is the doctrine that was reemphasized during the Reformation; indeed, it was one of the fundamental causes of it. The doctrine took hold of a lowly Catholic monk by the name of Martin Luther (1483-1546), to the horror of the pope and to the unsettlement of popery. It is a principle in every revival; it is the grand tenet of Paul the apostle in his weighty letter to ‘all that be in Rome.’ Justification is as necessary for the salvation of a soul as the blood of atonement, the resurrection of Christ, and the regeneration of man. To be justified is to be declared righteous, through faith in Jesus Christ, whose righteousness it is that we need to our account. A sinner is not forgiven who is not justified. Without being forgiven of sin there is no peace with God and no inheriting his kingdom. Without being justified, we must bear our own guilt, and hell must be our destiny. Great preachers preach justification by faith. I will ‘improve’ the doctrine, as they used to say, by the use of some of my best books. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Why Not Justified by Works?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Stephen Charnock (1628-1680) authored what may be the most reverent book since the Bible was composed, <i>The Existence and Attributes of God.</i> It was said that his ‘rhetoric was masculine and vigorous, such as became a pulpit.’ About justification by works, he says, “As though a small service could make him [God] wink at our sins, and lay aside the glory of his nature; when alas! the best duties in the most gracious persons in this life, are but as the steams of a spiced dung-hill, a composition of myrrh and froth, since there are swarms of corruption in their nature, and secret sins that they need a cleansing from.” Justification must be by faith. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>What is Faith?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) ‘preached Christ to every class of hearer and Christ as the <i>only</i> need of every heart.’ He gives a concise definition of faith: “I pray you to remember that genuine faith that saves the soul has for its main element—trust—absolute rest of the whole soul—on the Lord Jesus Christ to save me.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">John Wesley’s (1703-1791) design was ‘to deliver to others the naked truth of the gospel.’ Here is his definition of faith: “The faith I want is a sure trust and confidence in God that through the merits of Christ my sins are forgiven, and I reconciled to the favour of God.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>How Does Faith Justify?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Thomas Vincent (1634-1678) has been ‘long remembered for his fearless preaching amidst the dying multitudes of London in the Great Plague of 1665.’ About justifying faith, he says, “Faith doth not justify as a work in us, but as an instrument which applieth the perfect righteousness of Christ without us [outside of us, in the heavenly court of God], whereby we are justified.” (Our justification springs from the obedience and death of Jesus Christ—from that sacrifice his righteousness transfers to us in a declaration: when we believe on Jesus for the remission of our sins. To be declared righteous by God, that <i>is</i> to be justified; the righteousness of Jesus is our justification, Editor.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Whosoever has this Faith, how much is he Justified?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">William Perkins (1558-1602) had an ‘enormous impact on generations of preachers of the gospel.’ He was one of the earliest puritans. About the sufficiency of justification by faith, he says, “Indeed, he is so justified by Christ that he is no longer a sinner in God’s presence or in his reckoning.” (Though on earth, until the kingdom comes, his behavior is imperfect, and his sanctification incomplete, Editor.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>How is Justification by Faith Obtained?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">William Perkins: “1. By denying and rejecting your own righteousness, which is done by repentance. 2. By claiming and clinging to Christ’s righteousness, which is done by faith.” (Faith and repentance imply each other—they are always together, Editor.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>What if I Want Faith, Confidence, or Trust, or to Believe, but Cannot?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">William Perkins: “The will to believe is itself faith (Psa. 145.19; Rev. 21.6.)” (That is, a real anxious will, not a half-hearted wish, Editor.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Thomas Manton (1620-1677) was ‘endowed with an extraordinary knowledge in the Scriptures.’ About a sinner’s ability to believe, he says, “The grace God gives to men, to convert them, it is not a power to be converted, repent, and believe, if they will; no, but he gives repentance, he gives faith, and works so as the effect shall succeed: he works efficaciously and determinately, so as to oppose all the resistance of the will, and accomplish his work.” (Therefore look up God’s promises and plead for them, and depend on him to do his work in you, Editor.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>How Does Faith Face Death?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Samuel Ward (1577-1639) was ‘that famous divine and the glory of Ipswich [in England].’ About facing death, he says, “It is possible for Pharaoh, with much ado, to stand out the storms of hail, the swarm of flies and lice; but, when once the cry of death is in the houses, then is there no way but yielding; his enchanters and mountebanks could abide the cry of frogs and other such vermin, but this basilisk affrights them. Only faith takes it by the tail, handles it, and turns it into a harmless wand; yea, into a rod budding with glory and immortality.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>A Word of Warning</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Augustus Toplady (1740-1778) produced writings that “contain ‘thoughts that breathe and words that burn.’” He warned, “Perhaps you have in reality some secret reserves in favour of that very self-righteousness which you profess to renounce, and are thinking that Christ’s merits alone will not save you unless you add something or other to make it effectual. Oh, be not so deceived! God will not thus be mocked, nor will Christ thus be insulted with impunity.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>A Word of Assurance</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">John Berridge (1716-1793) ‘would often preach twelve times, and ride a hundred miles in a week.’ About assurance, he says, “Remember also that salvation does not depend on the <i>strength</i> of faith, but the <i>reality</i> of it. In the gospels, Jesus often rebukes weak faith, but never rejects it. Weak faith brings but little comfort, yet is as much entitled to salvation as strong.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">GUILTY AS SIN; JUSTIFIED BY FAITH, NOT WORKS</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-66172459260831381792019-11-05T23:20:00.000-07:002019-11-05T23:21:26.029-07:00A Closer Look at Joan Didion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMGIBbcAPmnuTITG72C0hwjCYs0naGh0PrRhnmHHEKlMeq1swS6I-0kyWT_eYBM2zA8D5VVUDGyO5RgekeiNFHgR1rRunVq4MgKpRvtJ-ns3OTRav1ZfVPAvMRLxGF3-NYUhKe0qsy1Q/s1600/JOAN+DIDION+BOOK+COVER+AGAIN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMGIBbcAPmnuTITG72C0hwjCYs0naGh0PrRhnmHHEKlMeq1swS6I-0kyWT_eYBM2zA8D5VVUDGyO5RgekeiNFHgR1rRunVq4MgKpRvtJ-ns3OTRav1ZfVPAvMRLxGF3-NYUhKe0qsy1Q/s640/JOAN+DIDION+BOOK+COVER+AGAIN.jpg" width="425" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">BOOK REVIEW OF 'SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM'</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Having read six of Joan Didion’s essays in an anthology, four of which I admired, I picked up an early edition of <i>Slouching Towards Bethlehem</i> from a second hand book store. That was over twenty years ago when, on second thought, I threw the copy away without reading it because the title of the book offended my sensitive faith. “How could anyone slouch towards Bethlehem?” I thought at the time, “where the Saviour of the world was born!” Christians ought always to be that sensitive, even if it means missing out. I don’t remember if I noticed that the title was borrowed from a poem by Yeats. But knowing that it came from there would not have lessened the offense. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">The essays in the book are from 1961-1968. The edition that I have this time is from 2008. It will be thrown out as well, only this time I will have read the contents first. Nothing of value would have been missed had I never read this book. Many offensive words and nasty allusions had been avoided (pp. 31, 50, 88, 89, 91, 97, 156), and at least one instance of the Lord’s name taken in vain (p. 224.) What a picky critic am I! Yes, though not picky enough; the main reason for doing this review is to point out that what is hailed as great prose is not only less than great by a great margin, but foul, foolish, and profane. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">After reading each essay, I wrote down my immediate point-form thoughts. I will begin with that. ‘Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream’—: About a woman who murders her husband; more eloquent than average, though with some failed attempts; paints the landscape well; finishes well; either the story is uninteresting, or uninterestingly told, perhaps both. ‘John Wayne: A Love Song’—: About a dialogue including John Wayne; you can hear it well; well written; would be hard to get right; pretty uninteresting. ‘Where the Kissing Never Stops’—: Stupid title has nothing to do with the essay; about Joan Baez and the leftist life of neurotic indolence. ‘Comrade Laski’—: About an obscure Communist in the USA; revealing of how radical Didion is. ‘7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38’—: Loosely about Howard Hughes; boring, vague stuff. ‘California Dreaming’—: About a think-tank Center where bad ideas are peddled in exchange for lavish payments. ‘Marrying Absurd’—: About dodging the draft by getting married in Las Vegas. ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’—: About hippies in San Francisco and the stupid things they say while high; no one seems to work, including Didion, who is among them; worthless all the way. ‘On Keeping a Notebook’—: About justifying writing things down in a notebook, which things appear trivial or absurd later; she’s kind of neurotic; she is an habitual observer, though, wondering about people she sees year after year as she goes through the motions of life: the ones she sees but does not know, that is; I do that too; the essay is sparse. ‘On Self-Respect’—: Ambiguous observations on self-respect, which virtue is poorly understood. ‘I Can’t Get that Monster out of my Mind’—: About film production in Hollywood; some okay observations. ‘On Morality’—: A poor essay on how no one has moral authority. ‘On Going Home’—: Quite well considered from a woman in her thirties; nicely nostalgic and thoughtful vis-à-vis going home after some years of being an adult on one’s own. ‘Notes from a Native Daughter’—: About the Sacramento Valley; uninteresting all the way. ‘Letter from Paradise’—: About recent history in Hawaii, circa WW2; some well placed words; very boring. ‘Rock of Ages’—: Not bad; about Alcatraz being an okay island to live on after its closure. ‘The Seacoast of Despair’—: Pretentious anti-industry essay; vague. ‘Guaymas, Sonora’—: A lame essay about a trip that Didion took to Mexico. ‘Los Angeles Notebook’—: Loosely about Santa Ana winds; disconnected piece; could have been written by someone in an asylum. ‘Goodbye to All That’—: Still seems excellent; nostalgic about youth; she reveals more, I think, than she intends.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">The essay that the collection is named after is not about Bethlehem. But it is, inadvertently perhaps, about slouching. It is an essay about lazy hippies in San Francisco and the ‘hip’ things they say, like, “God died last year and was obited by the press” (p. 104.) It’s about how slouches live, Didion not excluded. “Almost everybody I meet in San Francisco,” she admits, “has to go to court at some point in the middle future” (p. 89.) It’s about the indolence of waiting for something to happen: “Something. Anything” (p. 98.) It’s about pretentious leftists eating what’s ‘macrobiotic’ (pp. 87, 112) and doing ‘blackface’ around ‘Negroes’ (pp. 125, 126.) It’s about aimless teenagers like Jeff who have left home because life at home was so oppressive. “For example I had chores,” he says. “If I didn’t finish ironing my shirts for the week I couldn’t go out for the weekend. It was weird. Wow” (p. 91.) It’s about the idea of a ‘guaranteed annual wage’ (p. 100), which is now, decades later, being called the ‘living wage.’ The lesson here is that bad ideas live on in new forms in the hope that one day they will be imposed. It’s about a five year old being given ‘acid and peyote’ (pp. 127, 128.) How can an author write about something like that without condemning it? How can she be a silent witness to a child that age being high? There is no indication that she called for help, even though she brags about having had, at the time, ‘an unofficial taboo contact with the San Francisco Police Department’ whom she sometimes met on the sly, she would have us believe, as an informer would do (p. 115.) The essay is also about, thankfully, people being ‘unconscious instruments of values they would strenuously reject on a conscious level’ (p. 113.) I say ‘thankfully’ because that is a good observation. The best example I can think of to corroborate the observation is the unconscious acceptance of abortion turning to conscious revulsion and repudiation once it is understood what abortion involves. This frequently happens, as Lila Rose’s anti-abortion movement has demonstrated. I give the example to make up for Didion’s lack of supply. As poor as this essay is, it is the only one in which can be found a moral analysis. Though she does it in a loose, flaccid way, Didion points to the loss of family connection as the cause of haphazard living among the youth (p. 123.) Her solution for purposelessness, though, is ‘mastery of language.’ Thinking for oneself may depend somewhat on mastery of language, like she says. But what good will language and thinking do without a moral base of beliefs? She was on gin and Dexedrine while writing this essay. Dexedrine may be a cognitive enhancer. But Dexedrine needs more knowledge to work with than what a thirty-something Didion has got. ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ is one of the most boring essays in the collection and one of the most barren that I have ever read; ten out of the twenty are no better; ‘all of them were hard to do’ and ‘papered with false starts’ (p. xiii.) Out of twenty essays, only two are worth reading. The rest are not worth the ink that it took to pen them. And that judgmental sentence is better prose than what 99% of the book contains.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">When there is no moral base from which to reason, an author—or any person for that matter—is apt to mess up a good moral point. It is true, for example, that self-respect is not about gaining approval from others; and that a self-respectful person will sacrifice, if need be, his reputation (p. 143.) It is also true that self-respect springs from accepting responsibility (p. 145.) But is it self-respectful to not seek ‘absolution’ from the party that is hurt after adultery has been chosen? (Ibid.) That moral philosophy is poor indeed which calls this kind of behavior self-respectful! Joan Didion is seldom opinionated. When she does opine, she is usually off the mark because she has no declination for her compass. Her thoughts are not oriented to a biblical worldview, which worldview rightly preaches that the good you would have people do for you is the good that you should do for your neighbor. If you do evil to your neighbor instead of good, therefore, you do not love yourself as you should, for you are, by such behavior, inviting the same evil upon yourself. The deduction, then, is to ask forgiveness from the party that you have wronged. This would be more self-respectful than to remain haughtily inconsiderate. There are two possible reasons why Didion seldom judges anything. She does not want to seem traditional and moral, and certainly not Christian; and she does not want to draw ire from the irrationally judgmental left. She seems okay with anything, condemns nothing, and is careful (though not careful enough) to come short of prescribing something. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">While charting my course for this review, my notes began to crowd around the pattern that emerged: the subversive philosophy that we call cultural Marxism. Because of the content, and especially since ‘almost all of the pieces here were written for magazines’ (p. xii), I agree with the people who called Joan Didion a ‘media poisoner’ back in the day (p. 114.) What is cultural Marxism? Cultural Marxism is the philosophy of Marx in a sophisticated, experimental form. It is practiced by those who are always accusing others of being ‘fascists’ (p. 77), and it is what has given rise to Antifa, one of the domestic terrorist groups of our day. Cultural Marxism includes the idea that we ‘deserve better and better’ (p. 76); that is, without working for it. Cultural Marxism is when Joan Baez rears a weird school of ‘Nonviolence’ for Berkeley-type protesters, driving property values down (pp. 42-45, 48.) Joan Baez was, like Greta Thunberg is now, a ‘pawn of the protest movement’ (p. 47.) That is what cultural Marxists do. They pick someone who has talent or who can draw sympathy, and they agitate through her in order to quash liberty and destabilize capitalism. Like Baez says about herself, and like it is for Greta Thunberg, they have it ‘pretty easy’ (p. 58.) They are made comfortable by a capitalist system; but for the sake of Communism they work to destroy it. Even a <i>small</i> ‘shotgun-shell manufacturing business’ is unacceptable (p. 50.) Cultural Marxists are offended by ‘American flags’ (p. 59); with Didion, they sit under ‘the hammer-and-sickle flag and the portraits of Marx, Engels, Mao Tse-tung, Lenin, and Stalin’ to discuss revolution (p. 62.) And note that Mao, the deadliest one in the list, is in ‘the favored center position’ (Ibid.) Joan Didion would likely say that hers was a journalistic role, and she would get a pass even if she refused to disavow the radical association. But what happens when Faith Goldy goes on podcast radio merely to interview men who lean white? She is shunned even by most conservatives. Faith Goldy is not a supremacist of any kind, while Joan Didion sits comfortably with a man who wants revolution by violence in order to establish Maoism in the USA! “Michael Laski…believes with Mao that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, a point he insists upon with blazing and self-defeating candor,” she writes (p. 62.) This means that Laski likes the idea of revolution by violence, and wants it to be the way. What does Didion say to that? “As it happens I am comfortable with the Michael Laskis of the world, with those who live outside rather than in, those in whom the sense of dread is so acute that they turn to extreme and doomed commitments…Michael Laski…did not feel as close to me as I did to him” (pp. 62, 63.) My ellipses do not, I assure you, alter the true sense. Do her words not express true love for the Communist cause? Might there not be a latent desire here, even, for a repeat, if necessary to bring Communism about, of the Maoist nightmare that killed tens of millions of people? She ought to be challenged to do some disavowing. To be comfortable with an avowed Communist is to be comfortable with Communism, is it not? Joan Didion was, I believe, and probably still is, a hard-line Communist, as all cultural Marxists are. Cultural Marxism is just progress toward the iron fisted ideal. She writes in a detached way; but she is not merely an objective observer. Her journalism may be distant and cold; but it is often cozy with the worst aspects of what she reports on. I am judging her as a woman in her thirties, for it was then that she wrote what’s inside this book. But has she ever recanted what she sits comfortable with in these essays? There are many ‘conversations with’ Joan Didion on YouTube. How friendly and informal! She deserves to be interviewed by someone who will ask her some tough questions before she dies. How hard is it to read her book, mark it up, have it ready, and then quote her own words to her before saying, “You were at ease with revolutionary Communists in your thirties. Are you still attracted to them?” Or how about, “Do you disavow the Bolshevik-style revolution that you seem to have endorsed in your essay on Comrade Laski?” Why should it be okay for one person to sit with, and express admiration for, a Communist if it is not okay for the next person to interview a Neo-Nazi? Has Communism not been the avenue to more horror than its socialist cousin? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">I do not believe that cultural Marxists are necessarily aiming for a dreamy kind of Communism. They would settle for something less—something like the Communism of China or even North Korea. They like power and control more than liberty and comfort. They would rather control in slight discomfort than be perfectly comfortable but have no one to control. They always believe that they themselves will be members of the controlling elite. They think this way because they are gullible enough to believe they are the favored persons that their friends assure them they are. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">On the back cover blurb we read that these essays embody ‘the essential portrait of America—particularly California—in the sixties.’ Unless this portrait is how hippie culture merged with cultural Marxism—which connection hit me like the proverbial thunderbolt—the portrait is faint. There are signs of the times in these essays; but few of them are noteworthy. In 1967 ‘the market was steady and the G.N.P. high’ (p. 84.) ‘The Shadow’ is obviously a reference to a radio drama of that day (p. 68.) It was still customary to use the male pronoun when speaking generically (p. xiii.) A ‘traditional straight wedding’ (p. 112) was not in distinction from a gay one. Blacks were called ‘Negroes’ (p. 126.) Natives were called ‘Indians’ (p. 146.) It was not unusual to cinch underwear with safety pins (p. 144.) Surfboarding was relatively new to California, the pastime having come from Hawaii (p. 189.) And, as Didion shockingly found out, some people still considered it indecent to wear a bikini to the market (pp. 222, 223.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">I doubt that Joan Didion realizes, even after five decades of dissemination, what these essays reveal. Not only are they a primer on cultural Marxism, they are a self-revelation of Joan Didion. Miss Baez, she says, is better looking ‘than her photographs suggest, since the camera seems to emphasize an Indian cast to her features’ (p. 44.) The ‘New Left’ (p. 62) would have to call her a racist for that comment. “Men paid for Newport,” she says, “and granted to women the privilege of living in it” (p. 211.) The New Left would have to call her a misogynist. She wrote the word ‘fag’ in her book (p. 223.) The New Left would have to call her homophobic and would have to ban her book. It was by virtue of getting married that she acquired furniture and a rescue from despair (pp. 232, 237.) The New Left should not be impressed by such a reliance on patriarchy. So Joan Didion had her needs met by a man, without whom she might have been swallowed up by destitution and depression in New York City. “I would sit in the apartment on Seventy-fifth Street paralyzed until my husband would call from his office and say gently that I did not have to get dinner” (p. 237.) That is not the woman we see on the cover of this book though! No, on the cover of this book is the picture of a self-made woman with trendy sunglasses on—a bold woman looking forward with a clenched jaw—a strong woman who must have needed no man to save her from anything! Maybe her depression in New York City had something to do with the base people that she had for friends. “It seemed that the last time he had gone to a party where he had been promised ‘new faces,’ there had been fifteen people in the room, and he had already slept with five of the women and owed money to all but two of the men. I laughed with him….” (p. 228.) </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">William Smart, as the editor of <i>Eight Modern Essayists</i>, calls Didion’s style economical and elliptical. This is his way of finding something good to say about a style that is dull and disjointed. She has better than average moments, however. ‘Because I had been tired too long and quarrelsome too much and too often frightened’ (p. 187) is a smashing start for a sentence. Her repeated allusion to Robert Frost’s most famous poem is suitably applied to her life (pp. 230, 233.) Sailors on their way to war being ‘no longer in Des Moines and not yet in Danang’ (p. 195) is a poignant way of saying it. When one of her essays animates the reader—at least this reader—it is not so much in how she says something as in what she says. This is why I enjoyed ‘On Going Home’ and ‘Goodbye to All That’ both times I read them, over twenty years apart. Both essays are insightful and nostalgic from the perspective of a decade into adulthood. They are about the realization that youth and time do not stand still after all. “You see I was in a curious position in New York: it never occurred to me that I was living a real life there. In my imagination I was always there for just another few months….” (p. 230.) That’s life in one’s twenties. The novelty that I appreciated concerns vocabulary. These are the words that the essays introduced me to: <i>sotto voce</i> (under the breath), bonhomie, bouvardia, curlicue, anomie, atavistic, factitious, <i>arriviste</i>, ineluctably, and plash (pp. 21, 75, 82, 110, 154, 160, 162, 203, 211.) </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">On the final page of one of the essays, I wrote: Obviously the essays that I liked years ago must have been selected from a lot of trash; there is no good reason for most of these essays to have been written. She admits, at least, that they ‘took more time than perhaps they were worth’ (p. xiii.) There is a very good reason, though, which I did not at first perceive, for reading and reviewing this book. That reason is to highlight who Joan Didion is and what cultural Marxism is. Because she and her writings are celebrated, their maleficent character should be exposed as much as they are espoused. It may be that Joan Didion has written essays to rival the few good ones of hers that I have read. But I will not, I’m pretty sure, be looking for them. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">How do essays of this character and merit go from being in magazines to being in a book? For whatever reason—probably a legal one—it is confessed in the <i>Acknowledgments</i> that much renaming has occurred since the essays appeared in magazines. Is it not likely that renaming some of the articles is a tactic to get readers to buy what they’ve already read? Why, for example, would an essay called ‘Just Folks at a School for Non-Violence’ be changed to ‘Where the Kissing Never Stops’? The original title tells us what to expect; the new one not only has nothing to do with what’s inside, but gives the reader no idea that he might have already read the piece. If an essay is not presented with its original title, should we not suspect that the reason might be a monetary one? If an admirer of Joan Didion looks over the contents page, is he not more likely to buy the book upon seeing that six of the essays must be new ones? If this bit of speculation is not wholly on the mark, neither is the speculation idle. Based on having read little more of Joan Didion than these twenty essays, I boldly surmise that had Didion remained ‘paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act’ (p. xi), the world of literature, as well as the readers of it, would not have suffered much from the omission.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-2028633994726351932019-10-22T19:25:00.001-06:002019-10-22T19:25:52.140-06:00Blessed is the Man who Abstains<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7w7AXI5-JsPbvDqq9bksKdpCFlY9nB7msLsmjUGDgmW_EtJnco6p-Fqt2Emn8h7Uk2x6SHXbXkuj1OvaHKblB4L7TSLOCZEbaplc4C-XRCf94Kkp4vJwI_CxKQ0JdrdXi4k_rWgHpjQ/s1600/CASE+7.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="654" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7w7AXI5-JsPbvDqq9bksKdpCFlY9nB7msLsmjUGDgmW_EtJnco6p-Fqt2Emn8h7Uk2x6SHXbXkuj1OvaHKblB4L7TSLOCZEbaplc4C-XRCf94Kkp4vJwI_CxKQ0JdrdXi4k_rWgHpjQ/s400/CASE+7.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-84629797774812070252019-10-18T00:28:00.003-06:002019-10-18T00:28:50.722-06:00Only Biblical Conservatism is Worth Being Loyal To<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFLDZdwrSZhCeeCXo4x2448dx3GVhciLCHRl6JfWzBePLieKi6iY4WgaPj19ziAh4dey5CUqYZgNznUbeMqr_oszw-gxC277nvv8PRO7Py4Wy4-477tX4TF6wyonTD34MMAxxoYG0Gcw/s1600/POLITICS+LIKE+A+GAME.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="497" data-original-width="735" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFLDZdwrSZhCeeCXo4x2448dx3GVhciLCHRl6JfWzBePLieKi6iY4WgaPj19ziAh4dey5CUqYZgNznUbeMqr_oszw-gxC277nvv8PRO7Py4Wy4-477tX4TF6wyonTD34MMAxxoYG0Gcw/s400/POLITICS+LIKE+A+GAME.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-31502929922113409712019-10-16T19:34:00.000-06:002019-10-16T19:34:03.536-06:00Global Warming is our Purgatory<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR1n8TtnDZvM_RMRxlCLq5RBe4gOR_jWFqec8SDURsYMGf8xbl81Be4YRtwxYz7eg42DDX21bMcOHu1gjEc3_wqlnC2VwCS8Qc0UaHbFh9RCooDWyiLjVMKzb1R0-cQ4GFU_oWfiPKlQ/s1600/GLOBAL+WARMING+LIKE+PURGATORY.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="462" data-original-width="679" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR1n8TtnDZvM_RMRxlCLq5RBe4gOR_jWFqec8SDURsYMGf8xbl81Be4YRtwxYz7eg42DDX21bMcOHu1gjEc3_wqlnC2VwCS8Qc0UaHbFh9RCooDWyiLjVMKzb1R0-cQ4GFU_oWfiPKlQ/s400/GLOBAL+WARMING+LIKE+PURGATORY.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461245967545773.post-65375691988300163982019-10-15T18:59:00.003-06:002019-10-15T18:59:56.124-06:00An Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_OKLkSbLkhr9ZuKqAczJN4776bOXdSIsLISSX3__0fucmYaKs3aiWkD2VyfoLnw0ihQrDbSLMhutjGroPcURm1oI_5-AplwcHVpzNYydGXGyP81CrMpMF-6yALBILZJyRYu9POCnALw/s1600/PUNISHING+ABORTION+DOCTORS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1310" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_OKLkSbLkhr9ZuKqAczJN4776bOXdSIsLISSX3__0fucmYaKs3aiWkD2VyfoLnw0ihQrDbSLMhutjGroPcURm1oI_5-AplwcHVpzNYydGXGyP81CrMpMF-6yALBILZJyRYu9POCnALw/s400/PUNISHING+ABORTION+DOCTORS.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
thebibleandthenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15822107296545789954noreply@blogger.com0