THE BILL KEITH REPORT AND COMMENTARY
Friday, March 14, 2014
The War Against Evangelical Christians and Catholics
These are dangerous days for evangelical Christians and Catholics. Once a majority in this land, we now find ourselves a persecuted minority attacked from all sides.
Theologian/philosopher Frances Schaeffer prophesied the present malaise when he asked: “Does the church have a future in our generation? I believe the church is in real danger…We are facing present pressures and a present and future manipulation which will be so overwhelming in the last days to come that they will make the battles of the past forty years look like child’s play.”
Thus Schaeffer wrote in his book The Church in the End of the Twentieth Century.
Schaeffer — America’s foremost theologian and Presbyterian minister who passed away in 1984 — coined the term that should concern every Christian in America. He said we are living in the “post-Christian era.”
Today we see his prophesy concerning attacks on the church coming true. We are being attacked by the moral decay of the world we live in and from the conflict between Christian principles and political agendas.
According to Schaeffer, they have led to growing compromise morally and theologically within the church and among evangelicals in particular.
The assault on Christianity is coming from the those who try to make a god out of man and a man out of God. They say, “God didn’t create man; man created god.”
These people run in packs — atheists, progressives, evolutionists, global warming alarmists, environmentalists, abortionists, the National Lesbian/Gay Task Force, and big government proponents.
Within their ranks, some of them are determined to change America and the American people into their own image where there are no moral parameters, no right or wrong, no absolutes.
There are at least three worldviews active in today’s battle for the soul of America. They are those who believe in the absolute authority of the Biblical Scriptures; those who want to pick and choose what they will believe from Scripture; and the above-mentioned group. (Continued at end of Report)
Whoa! Say What?
When I read all of the government waste in Washington, I wonder if another one just flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
The U. S. has paid a Switzerland company by the name of Supreme Foodservice more than $5 billion to feed our troops in Afghanistan. Now a government oversight commission says that the company overcharged the U.S. as much as $757 million.
Also, our government appropriated $100 billion for reconstruction in Afghanistan — for building and development and training and arming Afghan security forces. But today, the U.S. is struggling to account for how the money was spent, according to Fox News.
Comment: These examples raise a couple of pertinent questions: first, don’t we have any American companies with American workers who can supply the food for our troops in Afghanistan? And, second, there is almost a total lack of accountability as to how We the People’s money is spent in Washington. And it doesn’t appear that anyone is doing anything about it.
Panelists Say “Yes” to Transgenders in the Military
The U.S. should allow transgender people to serve in the armed forces, according to a report from an independent commission convened at the San Francisco State University, the AP reports. The panel said there is no medical reason for the ban and called on President Barack Obama to lift the ban.
“The five-member panel…said Department of Defense regulations designed to keep transgender people out of the military are based on outdated beliefs that require thousands of current service members either to leave the service or to forego the medical procedures and other changes that could align their bodies and gender identities,” AP reports.
Dr. Joycelyn Elders, a former surgeon general during the Clinton administration, served as chairman of the panel. President Clinton fired her for her comments on training even kindergarten children in certain sexual behaviors.
It’s Your Money
Here’s a report from the Heritage Foundation on how We the People’s tax money is being wasted by our federal politicians and bureaucrats.
Washington spends $92 billion on corporate welfare (going to large companies) versus $71 billion on homeland security.
Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties.
Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them — costing taxpayers $123 billion annually — fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve.
Washington will spend $2.6 billion training Chinese prostitutes to drink their alcoholic beverages more responsibly on the job.
The General Accounting Office audit classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled. Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, jewelry, Internet dating services and Hawaiian vacations.
The U. S. Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, including more than 200 appetizers and over $3,000 on alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each. The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece.
Federal agencies are delinquent on nearly 20 percent of employee travel charge cards, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
The Securities and Exchange Commission spent $3.9 million rearranging desks and offices at its Washington, D.C. headquarters.
John Kerry’s Priority? Global Warming
Secretary of State John Kerry, calling climate change a “top-tier diplomatic priority,” has decided to make the controversial topic the subject of his first policy initiative and is instructing U.S emissaries worldwide to push the agenda.
“Protecting our environment and meeting the challenge of global climate change is a critical mission for me as our country’s top diplomat,” Kerry wrote in his Policy Guidance, which was released last week and marked his first since becoming secretary. “It’s also a critical mission for all of you: our brave men and women on the front lines of direct diplomacy.”
Comment: We have renegade rulers in Iran working to create their first nuclear bomb; North Korea says it has missiles that could reach our West Coast; China has developed supersonic planes against which the U.S. has no defense; and Vladimir Putin has invaded Crimea and may send troops into the Ukraine.
Mr. Kerry’s response? Global warming.
The Pentagon’s response? Cut our military back to pre-World War II numbers.
The Global Warming Fantasy
The Mid-Atlantic Storm 9th Biggest Ever Recorded
Snow in 49 States
Great Lakes Ice Breakers Exhausted
Philly Snowfall Shatters 130-Year-Old Record
Blizzard to Lash Eastern New England
Above are some of the headlines relative to the coldest U. S. winter on record. The response: The administration promises $1 billion more to control global warming and the U.S. Senate discussed the global warming problem in an all-night session.
The War on Evangelical Christians and Catholics (Continued)
Christian columnist Star Parker — one of the few African American columnists in America — says the homosexual rights crusade is just one of the attacks on the church in the culture war.
“Homosexual activists understand the ongoing erosion of traditional values as the pillar of our society and use this opportunity to push Christian reality, once and for all, into the closet and to lock the door…
“The cultural script has been rewritten such that Christians have been put in a position of either rejecting the precepts and prohibitions of their religion, or being faithful to them and being branded as against ‘equality.’”
Parker points out that this is not about what homosexuals/lesbians do in private. “The issue is that it all has been dragged into the public square by the new standards set in our society…The battlefront is the core contradiction of legitimization of homosexual behavior that scripture clearly prohibits and then moving on to redefine marriage.”
Christian Action Alert issued the following warning: “The mainstreaming of homosexuality, and the use of government coercion to make it so, provides the American Christian Church with its most ominous threat since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. This is the issue that makes all other issues secondary, even the life (abortion) issue. For if we (Christians) are not free to speak truth…in this culture we are effectively as powerless as many of our (Christian) brethren meeting in secret to avoid persecution elsewhere in the world.”
There are a myriad of examples of this war on Christianity raging across our land. For instance, some military chaplains have been ordered not to pray in Jesus’ name. Yet the Pentagon rewards the chaplains with extra leave if they conduct homosexual weddings in the base or post chapels.
The current administration in Washington has awarded 11,000 exemptions to the Affordable Care Act — primarily to labor unions and some big businesses — but refuse to grant exemptions to Catholics and evangelical Christians who oppose the Act because it requires them to violate their conscience by providing insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs.
All the evidence points to the fact that we Christians have already lost the culture war.
For some reason, Christians have never caught on to the fact that you change government by winning elections.
Some observers believe there are as many as 80 million evangelical Christians in this land but only half of them are even registered to vote. And among the 40 million who are registered, only 20 million voted in the last election. Catholics have also had great difficulty convincing their parishioners of the importance of voting their conscience on moral matters.
The War on Evangelical Christians and Catholics — to be continued next week.
THE BILL KEITH REPORT AND COMMENTARY - March 14. 2014