The Death Of Christian Thought

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The Superiority Of Theism Part 4: Precarious Exacting Complexity

Once the more-thoroughgoing theist establishes the need for a God to get the universe rolling, the conclusions of the teleological argument should be introduced. The argument contends that God not only set the universe in motion but also designed the cosmos in such a way that on average its systems and components function with a degree of efficiently not statistically likely if reality was the product of random chance. Known more commonly as the design argument, the Teleological Proof can be stated formally in the following manner: "1. Every design has a designer. 2. The universe has a highly complex design. 3. Therefore the universe had a Designer (95)."

This complexity is evident in the environment in which we find ourselves as well as within ourselves and the creatures we share this environment with as biological organisms. Despite pride in his accomplishments that can veer into arrogance if not kept in check, man is ultimately a delicate creature that can exist only within a narrow continuum of conditions and thrive along only an even smaller range along that scale. The idea that the world was specifically suited so that me might even be able live in such an environment is known as the Anthropic Principle.

In The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, the elder demon Screwtape in dispensing advice to his nephew Wormwood on how to delude his human charge counsels the young devil to dupe his victim into perceiving the ordinariness of the world around him and to avoid using real science. Such knowledge could very easily end up encouraging the lost soul into embracing the Christian faith (110).

The first Anthropic Constant examined by Geisler and Turek is that of oxygen level. Contrary to what is probably popularly believed, though it is what our lungs primarily extract for the purposes of respiration when we breath, the Earth’s atmosphere is only 21% oxygen. If the percentage was a mere four points higher, fires would erupt spontaneously; and if a mere six points lower, human beings would suffocate (98).

To our perceptions, the world seems as broad as the horizon. However, we actually live in a manner not all that different than a fish in a bowl or upon “spaceship earth” as Ray Bradbury termed the globe we travel upon as we careen through space. For the content of the atmosphere is but only one of the constants that must be relatively precise for both life and advanced civilization to exist upon this planet as we know them. Though they are often invoked to frighten the population into embracing policies resting more on assumptions rather than definitive experimental conclusions, the concepts of nuclear winter and global warming help us better comprehend the consequences if the nature of the world were even slightly different.

According to the theory of nuclear winter, the Earth's temperatures would significantly decrease following a nuclear exchange since so much debris would be hurled into the atmosphere. Thus, another Anthropic Constant is atmospheric transparency. Geisler and Turek point out that, if the atmosphere was less transparent, not enough solar radiation would reach the earth as this warmth would be reflected back into space. However, if the atmosphere was more transparent, too much solar radiation would make it through, heating things to a level deleterious to life here now as well as bombard us with assorted dangerous forms of energy.

Yet another Anthropic Constant the average person seldom gives thought to is that of the carbon dioxide level. As anyone that follows news and politics knows, former Vice President Al Gore has accumulated a fortune for himself since leaving office warning of the dangers theoretically associated with the gas.

It is conjectured that, should too much carbon dioxide accumulate in the atmosphere, excess heat would not be able to radiate back into space, causing all life on the planet to burn up. But before one goes too far and long for the abolition of all manmade and naturally occurring carbon dioxide, if there was not enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, too much heat world flow back into space without enough being retained to sustain life.

Even if the majesty and precision of the world in which we find ourselves is not enough to melt the coldness of the atheist's heart, perhaps their awe for the human creature the humanists among their number are so enamored with may move them to reconsider their hostility towards the Creator. The unbeliever needs to be confronted with nothing less than life itself.

When we gaze out across the vast domains of biology, one of the first things that strikes the thinking individual is the vast variety of life ranging from the tiniest of viruses and bacteria all the way to the most gigantic of whales. In considering the attributes and abilities of each, it is easy to think of some as simple and others as complex. For no matter how much radical zoological egalitarians might want to convince otherwise, there is a vast difference in scope and scale between what the cold virus and a human being are capable of doing.

Since relativism is a beloved philosophy of those that think the universe came about through a hodge-podge, helter-skelter process, it must be pointed out that the categorization of something as a “simple life form” is in reality nothing of the sort. For even the tiniest of microbes and even the most miniscule components that make up our own bodies (both single cells) consist of a complexity that baffles the human imagination that even the most intelligent of scientists are yet to replicate them.

The so-called building block of life is deoxyribonucleic acid, known more commonly as DNA. Of these molecules, Geisler and Turek write, “DNA has a helical structure that looks like a twisted ladder. The sides of the ladder are formed by alternating deoxyribose and phosphate molecules, and the rungs of the ladder consist of a specific order of four nitrogen bases (116)."

However, there is more to this compound than simply being the atomic concrete upon which our scaffolding rests. Contained within the connected nitrogen bases is the genetic blueprint for the particular life form under consideration. Even for an organism as "lowly" as the single-celled amoeba, it is estimated that the information contained within it is the equivalent of 1,000 sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica (116). As Geisler and Turek point out, “For Darwinists...then life can be nothing more than chemicals. Life contains a message --- DNA --- that is expressed in chemicals...but those chemicals cannot cause the message anymore than the chemicals in ink and paper can cause the sentence on this page (122).”

Philosophical atheism must not only account for the so-called “simple” cell whose ironically named “genesis” still befuddles mankind’s brightest intellectuals but rather also the more “complex” such as primates, ungulates and cetaceans. This they do through the process that has come to be referred to as evolution.

According to atheistic naturalists, the plethora of life forms in the world today can be traced back to those early amino acid strains and bacteria. These primitive organisms began to accumulate adaptations through interactions with their environment that were passed on largely by the process of natural selection. By natural selection, organisms with the changes granting them an advantage over their less fortuitous counterparts were the ones most likely to reproduce. Eventually, so many mutations and variations would accumulate that various phyla, kingdoms, and species would diverge from biology's original trunk and even the assorted branches of this theoretical "tree of life" (to borrow a term ironically Biblical in its origins).

As evidence for their theory, evolutionists often point to a number of observable changes that seem to indicate that change in organisms is indeed possible over time. For example, any one that has followed medical news over the past few years knows of the dangers of misusing antibiotics in that drug resistant strains of bacteria can result.

In response to this, proponents of creationism will grant that microevolution can occur within a species that can result in an organism's varying characteristics. However, what one ends up with is simply a bacteria with a characteristic that one could argue was already inherent in a certain number of microbes to begin with. Addressing such a reality, Geisler and Turek write, "Unfortunately for Darwinists, genetic limits seem to be built into basic types...Likewise, despite the best efforts of intelligent scientists to manipulate fruit flies, their experiments have never turned out anything but more fruit flies (and usually crippled ones at that) (142)."

by Frederick Meekins

Bibliography: Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. “I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist.”

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Will Christians Take A Ride On The Tyranny Buss?

In an analysis of Charlie Sheen's revelation that the actor is infected with HIV, Christian social apologist Scott Alan Buss pretty much blamed that development on all Christians.

In a column at his website FireBreathingChristian, Buss writes, “We see porn shops and strip clubs operating all across the fruited plain in direct violation of God's word.”

Those strip clubs are the fault of their owners and those that frequent them.

If you are Christian and you do not, you have nothing to answer for in regards to such smut peddling.

Even more disturbingly he writes, “We read about Muslims, witches, and even Satantists openly worshiping their false gods in the land in the name of all American/anti-Christian versions of 'freedom' and 'liberty'.”

Linked to that column is another titled “There Is No God Given Right To Worship False Gods.”

It would depend upon what is meant by that.

If that means that, after a life spent as an adherent of a false religion you go to Hell when you die, that is a correct statement.

But by that his pronouncement does Buss mean that the governing authorities should punish those advocating a perspective other than the religion officially sanctioned by those holding power?

In his condemnation of religious liberty, Buss insists that it is the epitome of statism to allow the adherents of non-Christian religions to worship publicly.

But what social institution would be charged with enforcing the law against those violating these statutes in his idealized Christian regime?

How is what he suggests little different than Iran that utilizes force, violence, and compulsion in the attempt to impose theological purity and uniformity?

The case can be made that there is less in the New Testament urging these as the preferred methods of evangelistic outrage than the long hair with which Buss is depicted in a number of photographs which Holy Writ counsels is a shame on a man.

By Frederick Meekins

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Technocrats Fret Hitler Quote Exposes Modus Operandi

A popular truism holds that those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

On the surface, that insightful observation might apply to those that know the factual details of history but refuse to embrace that field of study's numerous object lessons.

However, for the aspiring tyrants, oligarchs, and elites eager to exert their control over a targeted population, it can be just as easy to censor and oppress those examples most likely to arouse suspicions those advocating nefarious agendas might otherwise prefer remain dormant.

Through the horrors of the Holocaust, the lives destroyed or ruined as a result of the Second World War, and the nightmarish curtailment of civil liberties that took place in Germany under the auspices of the Nazi Party's, mere utterance of the name “Adolf Hitler” stops the discerning and reflective in their tracks to take stock of what is being said so that life and liberty might be preserved.

For what happened under the oversight of this particular dictator saw one of Europe's most advanced nation's transformed into one of the most brutal regimes this world has ever known.

Given the scope of the atrocities perpetrated during the Nazi era, the average person often concludes that this organization must have must have stormed into office with only the most brutal and violent of tactics that only the most courageous were willing to withstand.

And while these were always the stock and trade of the most diehard of Nazis, the movement was also able to warp for its own purposes those aspirations of the human heart towards which nearly all have a desire.

Some of the dicta propagated sounded disturbingly similar to the public service announcements of our own day.

In the attempt to draw attention to the subtle spiritual war waged at the worldview level, Life Savers Ministries sponsored an Alabama billboard that consisted of a picture of a group of children and two contrasting quotes.

One attributed to Adolf Hitler read, “He alone who owns the youth gains the future.”

The second from Proverbs 22:6 admonished, “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Put up on a Friday in June 2014, the billboard was taken down by the following Tuesday as a result of the ensuing hullabaloo.

The ministry's founder was quoted in an account appearing in the Columbia Ledger Enquirer as responding, “We are pulling the billboard and actually never intended to cause confusion...Herbert Hoover would have been a far better one to quote when he said, 'Children are our most valuable resource'. We are a children's organization and had honorable intentions and nothing else.”

Granted, it is easy to cave when tolerancemongers are eager to rip out one's throat (possibly even literally with the threats of violence such fanatics often make in the name of peace, understanding, and inclusion).

However, what this pastor or evangelist should have done is to use this incident as what President Obama would call a “teaching moment” when the Chief Executive desires to lecture the American people in an exceedingly condescending manner.

Glenn Beck's yeoman's efforts to the contrary in struggling to educate the population as to the dangers of 20th century Progressivism, but why doesn't anyone get all exercised over this Herbert Hoover quote?

For shouldn't those seeing this alternative quote get jacked out of shape over children being dehumanized to the level of a resource like coal or, in this era of mass legalization, industrial hemp?

A resource, after all, has no will of its own and little to no rights.

The purpose of a resource is to be shaped, utilized, and discarded by those to whom in belongs once the owner or those holding title to it see fit for their own benefit.

Perhaps failure to notice that is an indicator of just how conditioned many of us have become to the statist mindset. Such a concern is similar to that unsettled by how dangerously close our world in general and our country in particular are on the verge of mirroring the early days of Nazism.

Of course, at this point, we are not close to placing the assorted undesirables onto boxcars.

But there are signs all around that such a worst case scenario is not beyond the realm of plausibility.

Government agencies whose sole distasteful purpose is to simply and dispassionately collect revenue are use to suppress speech prevailing elites find distasteful.

Millions of the unborn are snuffed out as an inconvenience by those who apparently didn't find it inconvenient to find the time for the carnal pursuit through which new life is brought into existence.

Thousands concerned over the revolutions in morality and lifestyle remain silent for fear of an act as innocent as a donation to a perfectly legal organization could one day be used against them as grounds for terminating employment.

Swarms of supposedly “youthful” foreigners are detained for who knows how long in government warehouses because a militarized or enclosed border is supposedly less humane.

By contrasting the rhetorical similarities between the Book of Proverbs (a source of world religion's most profound wisdom) and Adolf Hitler (a personification of fallen man in his most unredeemed states), one is forced to confront the two basic paths a child can be led down as they make their way towards their eternal destination.

Parenting is not a spectator sport.

Like it or not, the soul of each child will end up in the hands of one of the two great forces waging war for the ultimate allegiance of mankind.

Without a doubt, once in Satan's grasp, though not an impossibility to be freed by the infinite compassion of the works of Christ's death upon the cross and His resurrection from the dead, it becomes all the more harder and complex for the individual to accept this free gift of salvation there for the asking.

By Frederick Meekins

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Will Russell Moore Become A Theological McLarenite?

It is often remarked that history appears cyclical in nature. By that, it is meant that, if one watches long enough, one can detect certain patterns that come back around from time to time. And with certain social currents seeming to speed by faster than ever before, often these “temporal ebbs” pour over a society or movement before those watching are even aware.

Today, Brian McLaren has branded himself as a Christian that advocates a number of positions that many other Christians would have a hard time accepting. For example, one can follow his spiritual path from a stance downplaying the relevance of the Afterlife such as the eternality of Hell and that the Kingdom of God is not so much about everlasting life in Heaven but rather about establishing utopia here on Earth to co-officiating at his son's gay wedding.

However, about 25 to 30 years ago, one would have probably have had to have been quite skilled at socio-theological forecasting to predict how far McLaren would have fallen off the deep end. For at around that time, McLaren was an academic with a specialty in literature laboring to establish a post-denominational church with the desire to get back to the simplicity of the Gospel truth all sincere Christians profess.

Those wanting to get in on what is near the ground level of a similar phenomena only need to watch Southern Baptist Commission On Ethics & Public Policy President Russell Moore. For while at the moment holding to a foundational theology sounder than Brian McLaren's, one can now hear Moore's articulation of a certain number of beliefs that is setting him down a path not all that markedly different than the one Brian McLaren has previously trodded.

This is evident in the column published by Russell Moore titled, “Why This Election Year Makes Me Hate The Word 'Evangelical'”. In those remarks, Dr. Moore announces that he no longer wants to be known as an “evangelical” because the connotations that have accrued surrounding the term subverts the cause of Jesus. Instead, Moore clarifies that he is a “Gospel Christian”.

As in regards to the other word games played by those in the arenas of public policy, who could possibly object to the term “Gospel Christian”? For such a phrase, much like the founding motivations of McLaren's Cedar Ridge Community Church, brings to mind the primary narrative of Scripture though which the remainder of divine revelation is understood and brought to life in the heart and soul of each professing believer.

But as in the case of other terms bandied about in the media such as “choice”, “equality”, and “tolerance”, those invoking the term “gospel” often do so for the purposes of imbuing it with meanings altered enough to undermine the traditional understanding as well as support for those one must view as one's opponents or adversaries.

Moore writes, “Part of the problem is that more secular people have for a long time misunderstood the meaning of 'evangelical', seeing us almost exclusively in terms of election-year voting blocs or our most buffoonish television personalities.” Moore is himself tottering close to becoming one of these if he is not careful.

What is so wrong if activist Evangelicals are seen primarily as a voting bloc and why is it the fault of the average Christian that realizes that now is the time for all good men to come to the aide of their country? For apparently Dr. Moore has no problem with reducing Evangelicalism or “Gospel Centered Christianity” to a set of platform positions when it apparently advances the agenda preferred by Russell Moore.

Moore continues, “The other problem is the behavior of some evangelical leaders. I have watched as some of those who gave stern and windy speeches about 'character' in office during the Clinton administration now minimizing the spewing of profanities, .... race-baitingm and courting white supremacists ... [and] debasing public morality and justice through the casino and pornography industries.”

Have not Moore and his closest associates not done the same thing? Donald Trump has verbalized gruff things that have gone over the line, particularly in reference to Megyn Kelly, Karli Fiorinia, and Heidi Cruz. However, at no time did Donald Trump “race bait”.

In regards to “race baiting”, all that Donald Trump did was call for the enforcement of U.S. immigration law and proffer as suggestions a number of proposals such as a wall that might protect the lives of Americans living in what has become a dangerous area. How is this any different than the policies implemented by the Jewish State of Israel which so many Evangelicals are so chummy with that they conveniently overlook the hostility of this competing world religion to Christianity's most fundamental tenet that Jesus is both Messiah and God?

If Russell Moore is going to stand rigorously by the principle that it is essentially sinful for ethnic groups or nationalities to advocate policies that are more favorable to the particular group in question, instead of sitting on the board of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, shouldn't he resign from that position and publicly repent of the organized ethnocentricism he goes out of his way to condemn when it is supposedly engaged in by White people? For in his column, Russell Moore condemns Donald Trump for courting White supremacists.

Mistaken as that pernicious ideology is on a number of points, perhaps disaffected Conservatives and even Evangelicals have decided to give that disreputable element a hearing because many average Americans that have never done a thing to injure a Black person or another minority are fed up with churches and denominational leaders that live higher up the socio-economic ladder beating the mere pewfillers over the head about how horrible Black folks and illegal aliens have it. That message is further compounded by the assumption promoted that somehow the average American is at fault for the misery allegedly endemic among these supposedly oppressed demographics when in reality such is often the result of many in these particular ethnicities failing to exercise self control and a little delayed gratification.

The sincere Christian is obligated to admit that Donald Trump is hardly a role model when it comes to important aspects of his individual character. However, it seems that bold “Gospel Christians” such as Dr. Moore are as guilty of the selective outrage that he has accused his coreligionists of when it comes to certain celebrities and public figures.

Some Christians might have gotten a little cozy with a candidate that wasn't quick enough to distance himself from those perceived as White supremacists (which in this era run amok in political correctness can be defined as little as failing to commence the automatic self-denunciation for simply being White as command of entrenched elites and social engineers). However, a number of Southern Baptists with whom Moore is closely associated are disturbingly reluctant to distance themselves from C.J. Mahaney.

To say that C.J. Mahaney is a controversial pastor would be an understatement. Not only under Mahaney's ecclesiastical leadership did child molesters get by relatively unscathed. He also ran the Covenant Life Church he pastored in Gaithersburg, Maryland along the lines of a cult.

For example, it was not enough for members to show up regularly for the Sunday morning and even the Sunday evening services. They were also expected to participate in a number of prisoner of war style encounter groups referred to as discipleship meetings where they were to spill their innermost secrets included as to how they kept their homes.

Moore writes, “We have been too willing to look the other way when the word 'evangelical' has been coopted by heretics and lunatics. This sort could deny creedal Christianity and gospel clarity with impunity, as long as they were on the right side of the culture war. Thankfully, this sort of evangelicalism is not the future.”

Perhaps Dr. Moore might prefer an Evangelicalism where believers are to overlook any number of abuses on the part of those that articulate not only the required doctrine but also a number of additional peculiarities to let it be known in the process how much they despise the traditional American way of life. Usually such statements take the form of detailing how horrible White people are and how the institutionalized church ought to exercise direct control over areas of your personal life over which God did not originally provide much detail other than a few broad principles He'd probably rather you figure out on your own how to implement.

Like Brian McLaren that went down this path before him, Russell Moore possess the ability to articulate his particular understanding of the Christian faith before a number of generational demographics. It is just unfortunate that each of these figures has grown increasingly liberal as this ability has earned each of them wider circles of acclaim.

By Frederick Meekins

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So-Called Evangelicals Denounce The Atonement As "Too Individualistic"

In an interesting article posted a Christianity Today, Mark Dever examines growing opposition within the Evangelical community to the substitionary atonement, meaning the death of Christ upon the cross for the fulfillment of our sins.

Thinking they know more than God now, a number of theologians oppose the Atonement as a barbaric holdover from less enlightened times that fosters a sense of individuality among believers. Heaven forbid anything that hinders our sublimation into members of the COMMUNITY.

Frankly though, if Christ did not die for our sins and rise from the dead, why bother being a Christian at all? 1 Corinthians 15:19 says, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable."

Furthermore, what's the point of forgiveness and eternal life if it means the obliteration of our individuality in a manner akin to Brahmin in Hinduism or the Nirvana of Buddhism? Also, the observant might note that, if these theological babblers have constructed elaborate arguments to convince themselves they are without sin, the last thing they want to confront is the most jarring reminder of all that the bad in humanity outweighs the good.

The word sin is simply retained as a convenient tool with which to prod the masses when the uneducated clods drag their feet in implementing the agenda of the elite and hindering the revolution rather than to convict any one person of individual wrongdoing.

For the offenses of materialism, racism, and nationalism mentioned are so broad that they are more interpretations than specific misdeeds.

In the eyes of our social and ecclesiastical overlords, materialism is not so much the Saganist philosophy that the universe all the was, is, or ever will be but rather the failure to relinquish one's property to the state or other institutions of authority. Racism is not so much the mistreatment of a particular individual and thus covered under more traditional ethical codes but rather failure to support undue concessions or favors for protected groups. Nationalism is not so much the elevation of the state above God or even the individual but rather the failure to embrace the headlong rush towards global government.

As all powerful as the Communitarians would like their collective to be, it's not going to do one bit to keep you out of Hell or launch you into a happy afterlife. And if there is no hope beyond the grave, why shouldn't we party like a bunch of Epicureans, maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain as each of us sees fit if death is nothing but the ultimate get out of jail free card as the cold end of it all with neither the guilty being punished or the righteous rewarded?

by Frederick Meekins

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No Mere Consideration: The Apologetic Quandaries Found In The Lewis Classic

Psalms 14:1 says, “The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'.” Only those seeking to live in utter irrationality can ignore the arguments made in favor of the God of the Bible by C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”. Three of the most compelling issues the skeptic will have to confront when reading this classic include the universality of the moral law, the existence of a personal God as Creator of the Universe, and whether Jesus is who He says He is.

Fundamental to the creed of the contemporary skeptic is the notion that everything is relative and that there are no absolutes. However, that is itself an absolute. And no matter how cool it is to feign the attitude that one exists beyond right and wrong, no one wants to be treated as if right and wrong did not exist.

Of this universal truth, Lewis observes, “Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right or Wrong, you will find the man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say 'Jack Robinson' (15).”

Since law exists whether we like it or not, it must have a source beyond us in order to be binding upon us and to avoid degenerating into a matter of mere preference or opinion. Since this universal law represents the codification of a set of principles, it could not have come about as a result of random choice, but rather through some kind of purposeful intelligence. Thus, a second issue confronting the skeptic in “Mere Christianity” is whether the source of this law is personal or impersonal.

The views regarding God can be divided into two basic viewpoints. On the one hand, pantheism believes, in the words of Lewis, that “God animates the universe as you animate your body: that the universe is almost God (30).” Traditional monotheists, on the other hand, believe that God is distinct from creation in a manner similar to “...a man making a picture or composing a tune...A painter is not a picture (30).”

From our understanding of law as a set of principles established for determining right and wrong, the monotheistic conception would be the one most in keeping with the evidence. For if God and the universe were co-terminus as postulated by the pantheists, by definition whatever is, is ought. Only by being distinct from what He has made is God justified in pronouncing judgment upon it.

Since God is the source of perfection and man so marked by imperfection, there must be some way for these seemingly irreconcilable twains to meet. Since man is imperfect, there is nothing he can do of his own merit to bring himself to God's level. Rather, the imperfect can only be made whole and elevated to a higher status on the terms of the perfect.

Since God is the ultimate authority and source of power, it is up to Him to determine the method through which man can be reconciled to God. Of all of the religions of the world, orthodox Biblical Christianity is the only one where that particular belief's conception of salvation is not granted on the basis of the adherent's own merit or accomplishment but rather as a result through the realization that one's own works are as filthy rags and by throwing oneself on the mercy of a loving God willing to extend forgiveness to those embracing what God has done for them rather than on what they have done for Him. In the Christian tradition, this eternal pardon is granted to those believing that Jesus as the only Son of God lived the perfect life that we could not, suffered and died upon the cross for the sins of the world, and rose in bodily form from the dead.

Thus, the most important issue the skeptic is forced to confront is exactly who do they think Jesus is. Impressed with the morals of Jesus but not wanting to admit that they themselves are sinners, most unbelievers think they are broadminded enough by giving Jesus an esteemed status as an ethical teacher from the past with no present claim on their lives.

However, as Lewis points out, a moral person would not say the things about himself that Jesus said about Himself. Lewis writes, “A man who...said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be a lunatic --- on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg --- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice (41).”

Much of the spiritual danger of the contemporary world lies in the numerous distractions available to those preferring to avoid those fundamental questions nagging at the human soul. C.S. Lewis, in “Mere Christianity”, forces the reader to confront these issues in an engaging and forthright manner.

By Frederick Meekins

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Prominent Critic off the Mark Regarding Apocalyptic Thriller

As a semi-professional contrarian prognosticator on current events and ideas, I’ll be the first to admit how easy it is to find fault with things falling outside the purview of one’s own take on the world. However, it would seem from John Whitehead’s review of "Left Behind" in the February 7, 2001 edition of WorldNetDaily that some people are never happy.

Though I have not yet seen the film nor read the series of novels as of earlier 2001, I have seen similar works such as "The Omega Code", "One Moment After" and the 70’s classics "Thief in the Night", "Image of the Beast", and "Prodigal Planet", as well as having noticed the proto-eschatological themes addressed in more mainstream science fiction such as "Babylon 5" and "Earth: Final Conflict". I believe I am safe in addressing John Whitehead’s criticism of this cinematic production.

John Whitehead levels considerable criticism at "Left Behind". Yet at one time he was one of the voices calling for greater Christian involvement with popular culture as evidenced in a profile of him published in the December 7, 1998 edition of Christianity Today. It is in response to this yearning that the producers of "Left Behind" hope their efforts will "lead to more family-friendly movies".

But of such efforts, John Whitehead says today, "Christian involvement in culture should be in a way that ultimately serves that end --- not merely to pour $17 million into a poorly adapted feature that does not contribute to leading viewers into a deeper relationship with their eternal Creator."

One must assume Mr. Whitehead thinks such edification can be found in "The Last Temptation of Christ" which he classified as "a sympathetic and reverent treatment of Christianity’s origins," according to the Christianity Today profile. It should be recalled that "The Last Tempation" was the movie that made Judas out to be the hero and cast Jesus as the villain.

Mr. Whitehead further admonishes contemporary Evangelicals in light of the "Left Behind" phenomena, "Instead of dedicating their lives to taking care of the poor and the needy, American followers of Christ too often ignore His example and instead look for cheap thrills in an increasingly superficial world."

Mr. Whitehead should be reminded of his own neglect of the downtrodden in his own pursuit of glitz and the limelight. According to Christianity Today, Mr. Whitehead’s civil rights organization the Rutherford Institute, at the expense of those facing more pressing and substantial First Amendment religious rights issues, came to the defense of Paula Jones --- the floozy who wouldn’t disrobe for then Governor Clinton but who apparently had no problem doing so for Playboy photographers.

To some Christians, it’s not legitimate missions activity unless it’s directed at some impoverished foreigner halfway around the globe. John Whitehead writes, "...instead of centering their hopes, prayers and financial resources behind the tragedy in India [a reference to the recent earthquake] ... much of the American Christian community was busy hyping a movie that one reviewer called ’unintentionally hilarious’."

Elsewhere on his gaudy and semi-tasteless looking magazine and website Gadfly, John Whitehead has explored the metaphysical background of the "X-Files".

How would he propose we reach out to those whom this particular genre speaks to? Somehow I don’t think vaccination clinics or soup kitchens will quite grab them where they are hurting most. An evangelistic film geared towards their interests in paranormal phenomena and government conspiracies likely would, however. And for others, such visualization would help make the obscure beasts, dragons, plagues and judgments of the Book of Revelation and other passages of Scripture relevant to their early twenty-first century lives.

John Whitehead dismisses "Left Behind" as a "B" film and comments, "Truly Christian films embody this aim by exploring the human dimensions of loving thy neighbor as thyself, portraying servants in a world where everyone seeks to be a master, and by encountering the Divine in unexpected places ..."

What more could Mr. Whitehead hope for than a movie set during the time of the Tribulation?

During that period in eschatological history, the very power of Satan will be allowed the seemingly unbridled power the Prince of Darkness has always longed for since the time of his fall, and during this future era simply being a Christian could get you executed. It is under such conditions to which Americans are currently not accustomed that the protagonists of "Left Behind" must stand for truth and righteousness during the heyday of the New World Order.

In all likelihood, "Left Behind" is not a perfect movie. However, much of the drivel and filth produced by Hollywood is not worth watching to begin with.

It must be remembered that Christians have not had much practice at producing cinematic masterpieces that are both theologically accurate and appeal to a broad audience. This is due in large part to the sanctimonious piousness like that displayed by those such as John Whitehead, who in at least this instance, refuse to realize the apologetic of certain literary genres and narrative techniques.

By Frederick Meekins

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Hipster Nazarene Insists Daily Bathing Perpetuates Western Imperialism

In a sermon, a Nazarene pastor condemned everyone as an oppressor.

In a self-flagellating confession, the pastor admits he is guilty of this particular evil by taking showers everyday while the natives of an area of Africa to which he went on a short term missions expedition did not have the luxury of using water in such a carefree manner.

And how is that the pastor's fault?

Neither can the Africans probably afford airline travel halfway around the globe.

However, that apparently did not prevent the pastor from engaging in such extraneous travel.

More importantly, did this pastor ever stop and think that these Africans are probably being denied the benefits of modern utilities such as an advanced sewer system as a result of the environmentalist organizations that such self-aware hipsters usually support insisting that the bushmen are more adorable in a state of perpetual primitivism?

Furthermore, even if the White man was magnanimous enough to gift these savages with the latest water distribution technology, will these backward cultures be willing to maintain it or will they get too distracted by the overwhelming compulsion to slaughter the neighboring tribe?

By Frederick Meekins

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Pastor Badgers Congregation To Boycott C.S. Lewis

In a series of sermons against C.S. Lewis posted at SermonAudio.com, Pastor Jason Cooley creates the impression that it is wrong to read that particular author's works because of areas in which the famed scholar's theology was deficient by the standard of Biblical orthodoxy.

So why is it not wrong for the pastor to have either read these works or to have familiarized himself with this material?

At one point in the sermon, Pastor Cooley shouts like a lunatic asking if anyone in the congregation still wants to read the disputed books or watch movies inspired by these particular texts.

And what if someone responded back “YES!”

In this series of sermons, Pastor Cooley insisted that the title alone of “The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe” ought to be enough to get the believing Christian to avoid the book.

So if witches are evil, what is wrong with casting one in the role of the villain?

Maybe that role should instead, as in the case of many of Stephen King's works of speculative literature, be reserved for ultralegalistic ministers attempting to assert too much control over their congregations and parishioners.

From the sermons, it becomes increasingly apparent that, while Pastor Cooley has a commendable grasp of these areas where caution regarding Lewis would be prudent, the minister does not have much appreciation for the techniques of the literary arts.

This is particularly evident in regards to the scenes Cooley analyzes of Lucy's encounter with the fawn Mr.Tumnus.

For example, Rev. Cooley insists that, since fawns are noted in mythology for their seductive powers, that what Lewis is advocating are indecent carnal relations between underage minors and demoniac spirit beings.

Instead, the greater truth Lewis could be attempting to convey might be for the need to be cautious of that which we might initially find appealing if we consider the literary motif associated with the fawn and how the narrative plays itself out with Mr. Tumnus wanting to capitalize on his initial encounter with Lucy by handing her over to the White Witch.

Sometimes these unsettling realities that we are reluctant to face can be easier to grapple with or stick in the brain in the form of an engaging story rather than be constantly hollered at alone.

However, apparently Pastor Cooley is not much of a proponent of the old adage about a spoonful of sugar getting the medicine to go down.

In his tirades against C.S. Lewis, Pastor Cooley remarked that science fiction is nothing but witchcraft.

As justification for such a claim, Pastor Cooley posits that witchcraft consists of any power that does not come from God.

Once again, what Pastor Cooley possesses in terms of a desire to preserve sound doctrine he sadly lacks in literary understanding.

Admittedly, magic is often an intrinsic component of many forms of fantasy.

However, though science fiction can contain certain mystical elements such as the Force in Star Wars, over all, the genre attempts to provide a technological basis for the impressive wonders described in these works of imagination.

As such, though science fiction can be utilized to promote questionable philosophies, science fiction is morally neutral like most other forms of technology.

As such, does Pastor Cooley condemn the use of electricity or the internal combustion engine?

For though these are based upon natural forces set into motion by God's sustaining power, as in the case of literary speculation in conjecture like science fiction, these are the result of the human mind reflecting upon a fact or a concept and extrapolating from these to configure them in such a way as to result in an until then unrealized application or insight.

Interestingly, developers of these technologies expressed affinities towards ideas and affiliations perhaps even more questionable than those to which C.S. Lewis was drawn.

Henry Ford disseminated “The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion” to promote his particular brand of anti-Semiticism.

Thomas Edison wasn't just at one time a member of Theosophical Society; his research into electricity was intermingled with speculation regarding spiritualist phenomena and communication.

Therefore, does that mean that to remain consistent with Pastor Cooley's call for a radical degree of separation, that Pastor Cooley must repent of his electronic ministries and instead must in faith rely only on those methods utilized by the Apostles in the early days of the Church?

By Frederick Meekins

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Nothing Will Be Restrained From Them

Genesis 11:6 says, “And the Lord said, ‘Behold the people is one and they all have one language; and this they began to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” The Lord was speaking in reference to the Tower of Babel built by the followers of Nimrod a short while after the Deluge so his followers might make a name for themselves in a prideful manner. To prevent this blasphemous arrogance from getting out of hand, God confused the languages so the people would disperse across the face of the earth.

The account does more than chronicle the origins of languages, nations, and races. It, in fact, serves as a warning of the trouble mankind can get into when the species comes together and pools its resources in total unity.

While such an assertion might have been dismissed years ago, today as the world draws together as one here at the conclusion of history as it did nearer to the beginning, we see the warning coming to pass in relation to various technological developments.

Take the issues of human cloning and genetic engineering for example. These new sciences could very well be seen as a modern Tower of Babel.

These techniques are not only being considered to ease the suffering of disease but to also tailor humanity to its own liking. In essence, this is one of modern man’s attempts to lift himself above the heavens in a manner similar to that of our ancient forebears gathered on the plain of Shinar.

Eventually, not only will prospective parents turn to this technology to prevent their children from suffering from debilitating conditions such as epilepsy or Alzheimer’s but also to tinker with traits such as hair color and sex and perhaps even enhance aptitudes such as intelligence and athletic ability. Ultimately, parents refusing to utilize such technology beyond the alleviation of illness could come to be seen as negligent or abusive in the eyes of lawmakers and social engineers.

Having imbibed heartily of the spirit of Babel, for some even this is not enough. Throughout much of world history, those seeking to make a name for themselves in the manner described in Genesis 11:6 were content to revel in the wonders and accomplishments of man on an exaggerated scale.

But as technology continues to advance and the world continues to unify, for an emerging worldview known as Transhumanism being human is no longer enough as adherents of this new outlook seek to surpass the limitations of the species through cybernetics or genetic enhancements. Such thinkers will not stop at Hitler’s Ubermensch but will prefer something even far more sinister akin to the Borg from Star Trek or humans crossbred with animal DNA resulting in hybrids similar to The Thundercats of 1980’s cartoon fame.

The skeptical might dismiss such speculation as impossible. But we only need to look back over the history of the twentieth century to see the improbable has had an uncanny way of becoming reality. For example, it was one time thought it was impossible to traveler faster than the speed of sound.

Just imagine what other horrors of his own creation await mankind down the road as this truly seems to be an age where “...nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do.”

by Frederick Meekins

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Headline Potpourri #84

Pastor Jason Cooley in a SermonAudio homily counseled Christians celebrating Christmas that the holiday is not a hill to die on. Those insistent upon continuing to do so only look foolish. As opposed to what? That particular pastor's own brand of legalism elevating his own idiosyncrasies to the level of a clearly delineated dogma?

In a SermonAudio oration on the myth of nonessential doctrine, Pastor Jason Cooley insisted that the Emergent Church movement is the child of Fundamentalism because of the Fundamentalist movement's propensity towards compromise. However, it is also the result a wing of Fundamentalism to clamp down on things where there is no clear mandate provided by Scripture other than individual conscience.

Often in their repeated emphasis about children being born inherently sinful and wicked, it would be helpful if these particularly rigorous Reformed theologians would clarify that such a soteriological observation is not being invoked to justify the mistreatment of such unsuspecting youngsters. For from the manner and in the contexts in which this reminder is proffered one almost takes away the impression that the ones making such verbalizations would enjoy nothing more than beating a small child senseless for the smallest infraction in the eyes of some aging prune neurotically obsessed with finding as many faults as possible.

An episode of Generations Radio addressed the topic of “Why Science Fiction Authors Tend To Be Atheists”. For one thing, Christian youth that might have skill in that genre are not often encouraged by their private school educators to pursue opportunities in such areas. About the only vocational guidance they are given regards the foreign mission field. That is fine and dandy that there is concern for the Pygmies and Hottentots. But what about outreach to Americans through their own cultural idiom for a change?

Shouldn't there be greater outrage at President Obama speaking at a mosque with ties to Islamic terrorism/extremism than presidential candidates that spoke at Bob Jones University in the days when the school forbade interracial dating?

What did Ben Carson think that other candidates and media pundits were going to speculate as he rushed back to Florida to do his laundry as the caucus process was reaching its crescendo? Makes you wonder how many times he pulled something similar in the operating room. More importantly, it also gives one pause to consider if he can handle the pressures of the Oval Office is a campaign where no lives are directly on the line causes near exhaustion or an emotional breakdown.

Regarding the schools that are requiring students to telework during snow days. Are the schools going to pick up the tab for Internet access or tech support?

Contrary to what was insinuated from a pulpit, there are dangers in the contemporary church other than a critical spirit. Isn't it an example of the critical spirit to be critical of the critical spirit? And perhaps most importantly, at times isn't what is viewed as a critical spirit actually discernment?

In a sermon illustration, a pastor poked fun at a hypothetical parishioner that spotted the alleged shortcomings of others at the worship service such as immodest dress and signs of inebriation. But isn't that Christian merely applying that they have been indoctrinated regarding for years by the kind of pastor now spoofing such exercise of judgment. There is rarely any winning at this sort of thing if you are a mere pewfiller.

On SermonAudio, a pastor remarked that a person ought to abide where God has placed us. In other words, one ought to simply obey and not question those invoking a higher status over and above you.

In a sermon, Gideon was mocked for hiding in a wine press. What is so wrong with hiding from an adversary tactically superior in number to you prior to your receiving direct revelation from God regarding what to do about the situation. There is no winning with these kinds of ministers. If Gideon had decided he had had enough and was going to slay any Mideonites coming in his direction, we would have been subjected to an endless number of homiletical expositions about vengeance being the Lord's and why Gideon was in error for failing to instead appeal for the intervention of the civil magistrate.

It was said in a SermonAudio podcast that most people like themselves too much in terms of self esteem. As proof of this out of control ego, the theologian presented the example that most people clothe and feed themselves. Are we supposed to sit passively and wait for the church consistory or deacon board to determine the privilege of what provisions with which we are to be bestowed?

In a discussion of the impact of talk radio upon the political process, home school activist Kevin Swanson suggested that the believer should be leery of the hosts such as Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and Rush Limbaugh that are divorced. It was a wonder such a fanatic did lump in Laura Ingram or Monica Crowely for simply being female. There was no divine mandate from Heaven barring access to the airwaves or the First Amendment those than have been divorced. Mass communications is not an explicitly church office. And what about forgiveness? If these figures are to be banned from non-ecclesiastical occupations on the basis of divorce, should the radical Christian Reconstructionists or Dominionists ever seize power, what is to prevent them from implementing a religious caste system similar to that found in Hindu India that would ban all but the most doctrinally rigorous from certain professions?

In condemnation of talk radio that he categorized as secular, Kevin Swanson warned that hosts must be careful to obey the admonition of not mocking rulers or dignitaries. But America, the authority is actually the Constitution; not the occupant of a particular office or even the office itself. So just how debauched can the offices be that we are obligated to respect? Must Hugh Heffner and Larry Flint be respected as the dignitaries of their respective firms (that being their respective businesses and not the assorted carnality they peddle)? Does this deferential respect also apply to the Anti-Christ and False Prophet which are just as much offices as they are personalities?

In condemnation of radio talk shows that might be considered more secular in that the programs do not constantly beat you over the head with direct Scriptural quotations in regards to every issue addressed, homeschool activist Kevin Swanson criticized the medium for the failure to emphasize that it might be God's sovereignty to turn the reigns of government over to the tyrannically reprobate. So does that mean when the jackboots come to ravish and debase the daughters of homeschoolers that the truly godly such as Pastor Swanson would encourage surrender to and applaud such defilement?

Towards the end of the Dec. 23, 2015 issue of Christian Century, readers are urged to click through to Amazon.com from the publication's website. By surfing that particular route, the Christian Century will earn a percentage of anything purchased. But isn't that part of the capitalism that the religious left any other time denigrates as systematic oppression and undermining face to face COMMUNITY exchange?

In condemnation of Donald Trump, Cal Thomas during a Chicago radio morning show interview castigated the assembled at the candidate's rallies as mostly old and mostly White. But can you really get much older or Whiter than Cal Thomas? By the standard appealed to by Thomas, was the widespread destruction of property in Baltimore and Ferguson mitigated by the predominance of minority faces in the mob? Does Thomas now flagellate himself for the White privilege that has played a role in enabling him to become, as he bills himself, the nation's mostly widely syndicated columnist if such racial pandering has now become part of his stock and trade.

Instructive, Donald Trump confessed that he is capable of transforming into anything that he needs to.

In a campaign commercial, Hillary Clinton assures the child of illegal aliens during a loving embrace not to worry about the disposition of her parents and to leave that to Hillary. Will similar gestures of comfort be extended to the distressed offspring of members of the Bundy Militia or those whose parents have been financially ruined for failing to comply for reasons of conscience with gay marriage mandates? For is not violating immigration law as much a violation of the duly promulgated laws of the land as these politically incorrect causes?

In an examination of President Obama's 2015 National Prayer Breakfast remarks comparing recent Islamic violence with that committed by Christian's centuries ago, homeschool activist Kevin Swanson observed that both Islam and Roman Catholicism have both made the error of being faiths inordinately concerned with power and its accumulation. And Swanson's own theological persuasion of Calvinism has been immune from this particular temptation? Servetus might insist otherwise. Swanson, ministering with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, would no doubt likely align himself with Christian Reconstructionism or a Postmillennialism that insist that a feckless Christ is not able to return until optimal sociopolitical conditions are achieved. So apart from power (the ability to make people do that which they would not otherwise often under threat of violence or actual violence), how does Swanson intend to implement his sect's particular peculiarities?

In his tremendous consumption of fossil fuels and the expansion of his carbon footprint, Pope Francis appeared on the border between Mexico and the United States as part of a staged pity party on behalf of the swarms of illegals violating the sovereignty of American territory. He went as far as to insinuate that Donald Trump was not even a Christian. Does this mean that the Pope will celebrate the conspicuous disrespect of Vatican property and decorum? Let's see if the Pontiff remains similarly broadminded if he is awakened in the middle of the night by raucous music and the uninvited wantonly urinating on the floor of St. Peter's Basilica.

“Pete's Dragon” is being remade. But from the trailer, it looks like this interpretation won't be a family musical. Instead, the narrative looks to be constructed as a serious fantasy. Just wait until “Mary Poppins” gets a similar treatment. No longer will the chimney sweeps be depicted as happy-go-lucky as they dance across the rooftops of London. Most likely these laborers will be depicted as oppressed proletarians suffering a variety of chronic health problems. And forget about the tunes “A Spoonful Of Sugar” or “Feed The Birds”. Child nutrition and animal welfare activists will probably put an end to these beloved classics.

Greta Van Sustern is celebrating her 3500th episode on Fox News. I remember back when her primary focus was serial killer of the week.

In a recitation of his sins at the National Prayer Breakfast, NASCAR personality Darrell Waltrip enumerated among these transgressions being aloof. Aloof is defined as being emotionally distant, reserved, or unwilling to take part in things. This might be an era where one of the primary modalities of Christian fellowship consists of regurgitating the contents of one's inner being for group condemnation on a level just below that of what would take place in a Marxist prisoner of war camp. However, so long as you politely nod to those greeting you as you saunter through the church narthex Sunday morning, I've yet to find a Scripture condemning those that primarily stay to themselves.

In reference to Donald Trump, Marco Rubio hypothesized that, if a candidate despised by nearly fifty percent of the party wins the nomination, the Republicans will implode as they turn on one another. So why are Trump supporters obligated to betray their convictions and fall in line dutifully behind Rubio? Why shouldn't the Marcoists be the ones to stifle their dissent and relent to Trumpian preferences?

By Frederick Meekins

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Pope Exposes His Biblical Ignorance In Hurry To Promote Globalist Agenda

As part of the centuries-long effort on the part of Vatican elites to collapse the United States on behalf of the New World Order, Pope Francis said regarding Donald Trump, “...a person that thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not about building bridges, is not Christian.”

However, it would seem that most of the things said about walls in divine revelation are overwhelmingly positive.

For example, Proverbs 25:28 counsels, “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.”

Some might dismiss that as rhetorical metaphor rather than as a literal example where actual people and lives are involved.

In terms of history, an entire book of the Bible is dedicated to an individual moved by God to take on as his life's work the rebuilding of the wall around the Jerusalem that he loved.

That was none other than Nehemiah.

And to those that dismiss that entire account as Old Testament, the New Testament speaks perhaps even more favorably of walls.

For example, in Revelation 21:14, Heaven or the New Jerusalem is described as having a wall made of jasper having twelve foundations (each named for one of Christ's twelve Apostles).

With this wall measuring 12,000 stadia in length, width and height, assorted Bible scholars estimate this wall to be 1400 miles long, 1400 miles wide, and 1400 miles tall.

Given that Heaven is where the concentrated presence of God dwells, it is safe to conjecture that God must really like walls.

As the institutionally professed Vicar of Christ, does the Pope now take it upon himself to claim that he apparently knows more about what God wants than God?

Lastly, what about the walls built by the Roman Catholic Church in terms of doctrine and dogma to control access to God?

For example, it is doubtful that one will be granted access to what those administering this form of Christianity believe to be the gateway by which to enter the Kingdom of God (namely Communion, the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist) unless one consents to this denomination's particular peculiarities.

As such, why shouldn't the United States be allowed to determine for itself by what criteria outsiders will be granted permission to enter here as well?

By Frederick Meekins There are answers if you know where to look for them JOIN the Faith in Jesus Network

Tyrant Pastors Insist Congregations To Be Viewed Like Dimwitted Children

In an examination of alleged rebellion in the church, Pastor Jason Cooley compared rebellion in the sacred assembly to rebellion within the context of the biological family.

As an example, the pastor provided the illustration of a husband telling his wife to do one thing while the wife responds how she feels led by the Lord to go in another direction.

But provided that either alternative is equally godly, wouldn't a loving husband take into consideration what the wife had to say and perhaps in many instances even defer to her suggestion?

So why wouldn't a pastor worthy of respect as such do similarly?

Rev. Cooley insists that, since such indolence would not be tolerated in the home, it should be just as quickly punished in the church.

Pastors insisting that they should be obeyed without question or hesitation like a parent in general and a father in particular need to be reminded of a fundamental assumption that cannot really be altered.

That is you have no say into what family you are born; however, an adult is perfectly free to up and leave any church in which they do not feel that they are being respected as a free human being.

This legalistic pastor admonished in this same homily posted at SermonAudio that one cannot have a foot in what would be considered a strict congregation in terms of the expectations imposed upon the members and the other foot outside in terms of refusing to relent to pastoral obedience.

So does Cooley intend to bestow a blessing upon those that depart such congregations to attend those that still adhere to essential Christian doctrine but which do not deem it necessary to clamp down so tightly regarding secondary matters?

Or will he hint at Hellfire in the attempt to frighten people from looking for more psychologically or methodologically balanced churches?

In this sermon, Pastor Cooley also criticized those that set out to establish churches on their own without proper authority. By that, does that mean he intends to repent of being a schismatic and to return to the Roman Catholic Church?

By Frederick Meekins

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Those Denying Resurrection Keep Religious Language To Spread Deception

In the 9/20/11 issues of Sojourners magazine is an advertisement for the 2012 Gladdening Light Symposium featuring Jesus Seminar scholar John Dominic Crossan. Part of the ad copy reads, “Feed the soul, savor the beauty, and experience the communion love of Agape in the Gladdening Light of God.”

However, if Crossan is being heralded as what in show business and prize fights circles is called the main event, those in attendance will have very little to ultimately be glad about. Given the name of the symposium, the event frankly borders on false advertising.

Anyone that has subscribed to the History Channel or A&E before both networks went nearly all alien autopsy and rummage sales has no doubt seen Crossan. He is a talking head that use to get dragged out around Christmas and Easter time for those specials that posture as giving viewers the latest dirt on the events of the Bible being bantered about in the halls of respectable academia.

However, seldom do these programs confirm the accuracy of the Biblical accounts. Rather, the intended purpose is often to heap as much skepticism upon these narratives as possible.

Crossan’s ticket to never picking up a bar tab (or in this case midwinter accommodations in sunny Florida) is that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. Instead, Crossan believes Christ’s body was instead most likely eaten by dogs.

But rather than surrendering to a life as a squeegee man if religion is such a colossal waste of time, Crossan has taken up the mission of destroying other people’s faith as well. It’s just that Crossan continues to hold onto Christian terminology to accomplish this task. And it’s quite the incentive to keep at it that mildly entertaining eccentric skeptics are invited on midwinter Florida speaking tours and squeegee men are not.

Over the centuries, most have been drawn to Christianity as a result of its hope and promise of a blissful afterlife at the conclusion of this so very brief existence of terrestrial mortality. Crossan’s vision of Christianity’s allure is markedly different.

On the surface, what Crossan and the Gladdening Light Foundation are calling for sounds quite a bit like Communism, but of a milksop variety lacking the backbone to do so without reference to God and along with the hopes that the religious buzzwords will draw in the easily duped.

The ad copy reads, “…Crossan’s vision of God’s longing for a just and loving community representative of all (‘loving thy neighbor as thyself’ from Leviticus and the Gospel of Mark).” The paragraph concludes that, along with Crossan, a number of whom couldn’t otherwise get real jobs such as a “community choreographer” will speak about “their own creative aspirations struggling for transformation beyond societies that marginalize the disenfranchised.”

This may need to be translated for those that don’t speak stoned hippy. What this really means is that your rights and property as an individual mean very little or even nothing.

It is only the group that counts since that is the only thing that lives on. In a materialistic universe without a Resurrection, we pass out of existence at death (or at best make a guest appearance as a garbled electronic voice phenomena on one of those cable TV spiritism shows that took the place of the kind programming Crossan used to be featured on when A&E and the Discovery Channel attempted to appeal to the educated).

“Struggling for transformation” is the new euphemism for the old revolutionary phrase “by any means necessary”. For now, the saps at the Gladdening Light Symposium are so naive that they think you will be so dazzled by COMMUNITY choreography (must be something like a Glee cast dance number) and Cherokee story telling that you will gladly hand everything you have over to what the ideological forbearers of these sorts of activities use to call the vanguard of the proletariat.

Of course, they will skim some extra off the top for themselves. I’m sure John Dominic Crossan didn’t come cheap and at least had his first class airfare provided while no doubt working into his lectures why the rest of us ought to flagellate ourselves over the developed world’s carbon footprint.

This still doesn’t answer the most important question. What will prevent the likes of those worked up into such a froth of imminent expectancy from turning violent when they discover you aren’t quite as moved as they thought you would be by fancy footwork and the cute little parables many American Indians seem to have a knack for?

One should not try to deny that there will not be any bashing of Western civilization in general and America in particular at the symposium. This will be an automatic given.

This can be discerned from the phrase “societies that marginalize the disenfranchised”. But is a symposium where “Pilgrims concerned with the plight of the world’s people will gather for an entire weekend of vigorous discussion, enlightened teaching, and thoughtful reflection” where the attendees don’t actually travel to assist the disenfranchised but rather to the state whose very name epitomizes delightful winter comfort and luxury really going to accomplish all that much?

About the closest any of the attendees will come to a Third Worlder is the picture of the African refugees placed in the left hand corner of the advertisement announcing the symposium. What this vigorous discussion, enlightened teaching, and thoughtful reflection will likely consist of is a bunch of moderately wealthy former hippies and their young adult children dreaming up additional ways to shame you out of your own money or how to swindle it away from you at the end of the taxman’s gun if you aren’t gullible enough to go along with the obsequious self-loathing.

I Corinthians 15:19 says in regards to the Resurrection, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” I Peter 1:16 assures, “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Any doubting this central teaching of the Christian message while continuing to employ the imagery and rhetoric of the faith is not out to instill hope but rather the most enslaving form of tyranny.

by Frederick Meekins

There are answers if you know where to look for them JOIN the Faith in Jesus Network

Technology May Be Outpacing Limits Of Imagination & Ethics

If technological progress continues at its current pace, most authors of science fiction may soon find themselves out of work as science seems ready to surpass the ingenuity of speculative fantasy literature.

From a plot straight out of a movie or novel, a cult that worships extraterrestrials hopes to be the first to produce a cloned baby.

According to the Sunday Times of London, the Raelian movement through the auspices of its Clonaid corporation plans to produce a duplicate of a ten months old baby boy who died during an operation. So from a certain naturalistic perspective, one might say these scientists hope to bring about the child's "resurrection", if you will.

This story is quite newsworthy in itself. However, a closer examination of those behind this effort provides pivotal insight into the forces at work in the world today and their possible implications upon the future.

Clonaid's attempt at human cloning will be as much a religious sacrament for the group as a scientific accomplishment. According to the Sunday Times, the Raelian movement believes human beings were themselves originally genetically engineered by extraterrestrials.

The movement's webpage claims that in 1973 Claude Vorilhon met an extraterrestrial who revealed to him that life on earth was, in the words of the group's official statement, "not the work of an immaterial God, nor the result of random evolution."

Rather terrestrial life is the work of the "Elohim". Bible scholars will note this Hebrew word for God. Vorilhon contends the word has been mistranslated and more accurately means "those who came from the sky." Upon receiving this revelation, Vorilhon changed his name to "Rael", meaning "messenger of the Elohim".

Raelians also hope to establish an official embassy welcoming extraterrestrials to earth. They also reject the Book of Revelation, and for good reason as we shall discover later.

However, one does not necessarily have to turn to Bible prophecy to see where the implications of this story are possibly leading.

Viewers of the science fiction drama "Earth: Final Conflict" will note the similarity of the name adopted by the movement's chief seer, "Rael", with an alien character on the show named "Mael" who played a similar role in bringing extraterrestrial wisdom to mankind.

But from here, "Earth: Final Conflict" becomes more of an indictment against the Raelian movement than an advertisement for it. In a move paralleling Raelian teaching, the Talons, or "Companions" as they prefer to be called, arrive on earth in a spirit of peace and goodwill.

Such beneficence turns out to be merely a ruse since the true intentions of the Talons are to subjugate the earth and experiment on mankind, manipulating humanity into the Talons' ongoing conflict with another alien species known as the Jaridians.

In pursuit of this end, over the course of the program's four season run thus far, the Talons have placed cyber-viral implants into the minds of humans for purposes of control and genetically engineered clones referred to as "bio-surrogates" into which personalities could be downloaded from other bodies as well as attempted to produce human/alien hybrids in an attempt to solve the problem of their own infertility. There was even an early episode dealing with a "Church of the Companions" that worshipped the aliens, but little ever came of this potentially fruitful plot; one almost wonders now if it might have stepped on one to many toes.

Most would dismiss the Raelians as silly and any insight available through "Earth: Final Conflict" as escapist entertainment. It would seem, however, that extraterrestrial theologies and UFO religions are on the rise and increasing in influence.

Several years ago, the Heaven's Gate Cult committed mass suicide, thinking that leaving their earthly "containers" would beam them up to a spacecraft trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet. Scientology, the religion founded by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, believes human beings are reincarnated space aliens. This particular sect is prominent among the Hollywood elite, with John Travolta and Tom Cruise perhaps being the most prominent adherents.

Yet this worldview placing extraterrestrials on the throne of heaven once occupied by God is not confined to the less educated fringe of society. It is becoming increasingly popular among society's so-called "sophistictaed" who cannot stomach submitting to an omnipotent God as the source of all morals and creation.

The director of the Raelian movement's Clonaid project, Brigette Boisselier, holds two doctorates and teaches college level chemistry. Others just as educated but perhaps not as quick to embrace the mystical ramifications of New Age theology are coming to accept the idea that life on earth is the product of intelligence beyond this planet. This is because naturalistic science needs a new alternative in light of probability declaring evolution an impossibility.

In scientific circles, the idea that life on earth developed in outer space is referred to as "panspermia" and is advocated by no less a scientific luminary as Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA.

But despite such stellar credentials, panspermia still doesn't cut it. For even if it were true, it only moves the need for God back one step. Even if man was manufactured aboard a flying saucer, it does not explain where the little green Martians came from. Eventually you're going to run up against the need for an unmoved mover originally discussed by Aristotle and given a more Christian form by Thomas Aquinas.

Unfortunately, history teaches that those unwilling to admit their sin and need for salvation through Jesus Christ are impervious to sound theological logic regardless of the consequences. And it might not be too far fetched that cloning and UFO theology might have a role to play in end times prophecy.

In a blasphemous attempt to imitate Jesus, the Anti-Christ might be brought about by a false virgin birth by being engineered in a laboratory as the perfect human specimen. Or upon receiving the head wound mentioned in Revelation 13, the Anti-Christ could be "resurrected" by being cloned or having his spirit "downloaded" into an additional body kept in cryogenic storage for just such an emergency.

Demons masquerading as extraterrestrials promoting New Age religion and philosophy could come forward to take responsibility for the Rapture, claiming that Christians upon the earth at the time had to be removed for the sake of mankind's evolutionary development.

Such scenarios are merely a possibility of how certain eschatological events might unfold in light of current philosophical, theological, and technological developments. To many, such a course of events seems highly unlikely. But then again, who among us as little as five years ago would have thought clones and UFO cults would come to the forefront as legitimate news items in reputable journalistic sources?

By Frederick Meekins

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Sword Of The Lord Columnist Insinuates Sci-Fi Fans Not Fit To Teach School

For decades, the Sword Of The Lord has served as a voice of independent Christian Fundamentalism. This publication has fulfilled that mission by regularly standing its ground against the encroaching liberalism and modernism plaguing broad swaths of the Christian church.

One of the most interesting regular features of the paper is “The News and Views” column by Dr. Hugh Pyle that usually applies Christian plain-spokenness to a number of items of public interest. However, in the October 21, 2005 issue of the Sword Of The Lord, Dr. Pyle goes beyond his normal commonsense to draw conclusions not supported by the evidence or deducible from it.

In his Oct 21, 2005 column, Dr. Pyle laments the poor example set by many contemporary public school educators and how in times past these guides along the path of learning imbued their students with a sense of spiritual as well as academic knowledge. As proof of his thesis, he cites a feature in his local paper where an interviewed teacher responded to a survey that his favorite movie was Star Trek.

Dr. Pyle responds, “You had better give your children all the education you can at home and in a good, fundamental church and Sunday school.” From his reaction, you’d think the teacher had admitted to having a stash of girlie videos. Would Dr. Pyle have said this had the teacher admitted to liking sports

With all the nonsense going on in the public schools, you’d think that a teacher that enjoys Star Trek and related science fiction would be the least of any concerned citizen’s worries and might even be considered an asset on an academic faculty. For despite the moral shortcomings that pop up from time to time in the plots, over the course of its various incarnations, Star Trek has consistently remained one of the few expressions of popular culture to present itself as if ethical reflection actually mattered and was often essential to the story.

Dr. Pyle further laments, “Usually my teachers were well read in good and great literature, which included the Bible, and it showed up in class.” And what exactly did this great literature consist of? Shakespeare? It may come as a surprise, but the plays of Shakespeare were the Star Trek of their time because --- while we consider them highbrow literature today --- these dramas were performed primarily as popular entertainment. Paying homage to this tradition, Star Trek has often employed Shakespearean allusions and motifs throughout its history.

Though I cannot speak fully as to Dr. Pyle’s personal convictions about the matter, for a number of those operating in a closely related socioecclesiastical circle even literature produced by fellow Christians is not even good enough. For while most Christians were pleased about the attention given to C.S. Lewis as a result of the cinematic adaptation of The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe even if they had reservations about every last point in his systematic theology, more hardline pastors, scholars, and evangelists want Lewis roundly condemned on all counts rather than to sift the wheat from the chaff in what he has written and some come close to heaping damnation on anyone that dares crack open one of this professor’s books. One pastor in an audio sermon, in an attempt to scare Christians away from seeing the film, claims demons literally hovering in the theater might latch on to unsuspecting viewers (as if this won’t happen in most churches these days, many of the Fundamentalist ones included).

Others a bit more reasonable in their criticisms such as David Brown of the First Baptist Church of Oak Creek, Wisconsin claim C.S. Lewis is inappropriate for Christians to read since Narnia is inhabited by creatures of a questionable spiritual pedigree such as centaurs, fauns, and witches. However, such insights fail to properly analyze classic Western fantasy literature.

Just because there is a witch in The Chronicles Of Narnia does not set off the Harry Potter alarm. Unlike Rowling, Lewis conforms to traditional literary aesthetics by casting the witch in the role of the antagonist or villain.

The most thoroughgoing separationists ---- the term in this sense meaning those that choose not to ecclesiastically affiliate with those of differing religious viewpoints rather than those misinterpreting the First Amendment --- contend that Lewis must still be avoided since to have a witch in a story in any capacity is a violation of II Corinthians warning the Christian to touch not the unclean thing.

If that’s the case, then what are Patch The Pirate Clubs doing in numerous Fundamentalist churches? In much the same manner as Rowling has glamorized witchcraft, numerous churches have romanticized the life of high-seas piracy.

Potter critics rightly point out there is no such thing as a good witch. Likewise, there is no such thing as a good pirate.

Why not just organize Jack The Carjacker Clubs for kids since that’s what pirates essentially were in the Age of Sail. Better yet, why not update things for the current millennium and start Tommy The Terrorist Clubs?

At least Lewis had the decency to cast the witch as the villain. What’s the excuse for this strand of Fundamentalism that demands every last detail be in apple pie order or they’ll bring the legitimacy of your Christian faith into question? Pirates have probably ruined as many innocent lives and possibly even more than the average witch ever has.

If every character in every story abided by every last behavioral norm and stricture insisted upon by many Fundamentalists, frankly there’d hardly be any literature worth reading. This does not mean though that a book must be filled with promiscuity or profanity to be interesting.

To these critics, even the most wholesome classics uncomfortably push the limits of acceptability. According to Kevin Swanson of Generations Radio, Little House On The Prairie suborns lesbianism since Laura Ingalls Wilder dared to exhibit a bit of an independent streak; I guess Half-pint was too tomboyish or spoke her mind one too many times for old Pa Swanson’s tastes.

As evidence, Swanson cites Laura’s refusal to say "obey" in her wedding vows. However, it must be remembered that these are simply a cultural manifestation of a Biblical imperative and despite popular conceptions to the contrary aren’t spelled out verbatim in the pages of holy writ.

No Chronicles Of Narnia. No Little House On The Prairie. Doesn’t exactly leave much to read and from the literary theories expounded by these pious ascetics, it’s a wonder they still let the good Christian read the Bible. For while David might have been a man after God’s own heart, there’s a goodly portion of his life you’d hardly want your children emulating.

Perhaps some Christians are too quick to embrace C.S. Lewis in his entirety without casting a discerning eye on those areas where he did come up short. But if that is the case, these overly-exacting members of the clergy have themselves to blame in large part.

For if these divines find contemporary speculative fiction to be inappropriate if it does not adhere to their particular systematic theologies on every point, are they themselves doing anything to produce acceptable alternative narratives, sagas, and epics? Furthermore, are they actively encouraging the bright young minds in their congregations to pursue artistic or literary callings. Because from what I have studied of and experienced from those of this particular Evangelical perspective, most have adopted a proto-Romanist mindset that those possessing a religionist vocation are somehow more important than the rest of us and the work of such sanctified journeymen more essential to the fulfillment of God’s good purposes. That’s why in many churches, Christian schools, and youth groups one hears an awful lot about becoming a missionary to the heathen savages in some far off jungle but precious little about targeting the barbarians that are taking over this culture and trying to undue the consequences of godless thinking upon our own institutions of thought and learning.

Interestingly though, the Sword of the Lord does not hold a consistent position against all forms entertainment. For while fans of science fiction aren’t fit to teach and a Christian had better not dare go to a movie since even the money from more wholesome motion pictures is likely to flow into the coffers of reprobates, the staff at the Sword of the Lord gets as googoo-eyed around celebrities as the remainder of the population and turn a blind eye when it suits their fancy to the exacting standards of deportment usual insisted upon by the publication.

Featured in the top-left corner of the December 20, 2005 edition is a profile of outdoor sports host Chad Schearer. In his testimony, Chad tells of being invited to a NASCAR race by one of the stockcar owners. If the Sword of the Lord is to be consistent, shouldn’t this individual be chastised and disfellowshipped for going somewhere where alcohol, scantily clad women, and profanity are bound to be present?

As outcast in Christian circles these days as I am among the heathen, I don’t have much of any moral qualms about motorsports. However, I am not the one whose publication is insinuating one is some kind of deviant if one likes laser guns and spaceships and calling into question the legitimacy of one’s Christianity for occasionally associating with conservative Southern Baptists or level-headed Charismatics.

However, I guess if you are part of the “in crowd”, you don’t necessarily have to abide by the rules and standards derived from a particular interpretation of God’s Word the common believer in the pew is expected to adhere to. For you see, Chad’s pappy is pals with the editor.

Furthermore, if Christians are suppose to stay away from works of imaginative speculation such as Star Trek and The Chronicles Of Narnia, how is it that these pastors and evangelists know so much about them? Unlike some things one knows to be inherently wrong by their mere existence, to nitpick these narratives on a nuanced doctrinal level one is going to have to sit there and study them for awhile.

Therefore, if preachers are going to address the issue from pulpit and pen, doesn’t the admonishment to be a Berean compel us to do our own first hand research since in the Protestant tradition one is not to blithely accept the ruminations of the clergy without some kind of collaboration through the application of one’s own critical thinking skills to what has been postulated by those holding ecclesiastical office. If anything, by speaking out against imaginative literature, pastors should rather be pleased then when members of their congregations go to research these works for themselves.

By Frederick Meekins

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An Analysis Of Francis Schaeffer's "The Church At The End Of The 20th Century"

Francis Schaeffer has been characterized as an Elijah to the late twentieth century. Though not as inspired in the same direct sense as his Biblical forebears, Francis Schaeffer did articulate a vision of the future remarkable in its accuracy and a message startling in its relevancy. Schaeffer was able to accomplish this by extrapolating from the cultural situation of the late 1960's and early 1970's and projecting these trends into the future where the implications of these assumptions would have the time necessary to fester over into a comprehensive dystopian milieu. Schaeffer's "The Church At The End 20th Century", from a standpoint a tad less than nearly a half century in the past, explored a world not unlike our own where Western society has abandoned its Judeo-Christian foundations and stands poised to lose not only its order but also its liberty as a consequence.

Throughout the corpus of his life's work, Francis Schaeffer categorized ideas as the primary force motivating history. Richard Pierard in "Reflections On Francis Schaeffer" says regarding Schaeffer's philosophy of history, "People's world views or presuppositions determine the direction of their political and social institutions and their scientific endeavors (199)." "The Church At The End Of The 20th Century" attempts to show how such distorted thinking comes to impact the structures of civilized existence such as the institutions of government and culture.

Francis Schaeffer concluded that the confusion and chaos rampant at the end of the twentieth century were traceable to the rejection of the Judeo-Christian foundations upon which Western civilization once sat. However, as a result, modern man has not drifted along as before, blissfully unencumbered by the burdens classical theism strove to address. Instead the whole world has pretty much started falling apart. In the first chapter titled "The Roots Of The Student Revolution", Schaeffer provides a summary of the streams of thought he saw as establishing the backdrop of the contemporary world drama.

Having abandoned the Judeo-Christian worldview, modern man has also forfeited many of the benefits inherent to that particular body of thought. Being the God of both the physical realm and its order as well as the realm of the spirit and its yearning for freedom, those turning their backs on the God of the Bible inevitably end up losing an essential balance between these two pillars of existence.

Much of the social confusion characterizing the contemporary world is understandable in terms of these extremes dancing unfettered across America's cultural landscape. In the mind of Schaeffer, philosophies and perspectives seemingly light-years apart to the casual observer were in the final analysis interconnected in that they stemmed from the same root problem.

A number of thinkers who have abandoned Judeo-Christian principles have attempted to find ultimate answers in an understanding of science construed though their materialistic philosophy excluding life's spiritual component. Schaeffer referred to this approach as "modern modern science" (13).

Schaeffer deliberately distinguished between modern science and modern modern science in an attempt to emphasize the difference between the two epistemological approaches. Schaeffer stressed that modern science in fact arose amidst a Christian framework. The methodology's earliest practitioners believed that one could understand the operation of the physical universe since it had been imbued with a sense of orderliness by its rational creator.

However, modern modern science would step beyond the confines of such a paradigm to exclude the role of God by arguing that the universe is a closed system complete in itself. But by eliminating the need for a personal Creator, modern modern science also eliminates those aspects of man transcending the sum of his material parts or those qualities Schaffer cleverly referred to as “the mannishness of man”.

When the cosmos is reduced to mere matter, man can no longer be seen as possessing those qualities that distinguish him from the proverbial furniture of the universe. Instead of arising as responses to metaphysical verities, things such as emotions, thoughts, and acts of creativity are reduced to nothing more than responses to electro-chemical biological stimuli. The aspirations the Declaration of Independence gives rise to become no different than the reaction to the gastrointestinal conditions sparking heartburn and may in fact possibly be interrelated.

The hypothesis of man as little more than an empty bag of mostly water, as the infamous Crystalline Entity put it on one episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, does not fit the data or provide much comfort on a cold night when we consider the aspects of existence seeming to rise above the immediacy of our biological functions. Such inadequacy no doubt provokes a response from those not willing to accept how divine revelation fills in these blanks but who realize that the cold scientism of Mr. Spock does not quite cut it either.

Schaeffer pointed out that assorted brands of mysticism are often, surprisingly, the children of scientism's ultimate consequences. With rationalism found wanting, modern man feels he must step beyond reason and make what Schaeffer refers to as "a leap upstairs" in order to find meaning in nonrational experience.

Writing along similar lines, James Sire says of existentialism in "The Universe Next Door", "....against the absurdity of the objective world, the authentic person must revolt and create value (100)." Values are not arrived at in a rational manner through contemplation upon transcendent criteria but through an intuitive choice based upon feeling much more akin to a mystical experience whether we decide to embrace New Age pantheism or various forms of political activism.

In such a situation, one is reminded of the famous statement in "The Charge Of The Light Brigade": "Ours is not reason why. Ours is but to do or die." The human heart realizes that there are things worth valuing beyond the concrete material universe even if it cannot justify the basis for this belief. However, when rational standards are abandoned, chaos of some sort is usually bound to follow.

Perhaps the most ironic thing of this entire discussion is that, the further each alternative gets from the Judeo-Christian standard, the more allegedly objective rationalism and subjective romanticism come to resemble one another. Schaeffer argued that, without some kind of transcendent reference point, even the imposing intellectual monolith of contemporary science breaks down into personal preference and social utility.

Schaeffer illustrated this by highlighting how Cambridge Anthropologist Edmund Leach preferred a theory of evolution whereby all human races descended from one common ancestor rather than arising separately from one another (92). Leach based such a conclusion on no other criteria than that the theory of a single common ancestor fit better with the notions of racial harmony.

No longer are scientific decisions to be made in light of the facts or data available at the time but in reference to the same kind of subjective criteria by which we would decide whether to wear a red or blue tie to work tomorrow. Right answers and wrong answers become predicated on their usefulness to society or at least to those wielding power. One might say objectively that objectivity is not quite what it use to be.

Things might not be so bad if adherents of these worldviews sat in a corner and kept quiet amongst themselves. Yet the ironic thing is that those convinced that no objective truth exists seem the most bent on inflicting their version of it upon everyone else in the attempt to remold society in their own image. Regarding the application of secularist perspectives, Schaeffer was perceptive in realizing that ---- as in the realm of thought ---- these non-Biblical approaches to social organization end up in the same place as well.

Schaeffer elaborates upon what he sees as three alternatives to a society built upon Christian foundations. Despite the differences in these systems, each bears a striking similarity.

The first alternative Schaeffer warns about is hedonism, defined as each doing their own thing. The second alternative is what Schaeffer refers to as "the dictatorship of 51%" or what social scientists and political theorists classify as pure democracy where there are no absolutes or standards beyond what is determined by the electorate, in a focus group, or by a committee. The third possibility Schaeffer foresaw was some kind of dictatorship, either in the form of one-man rule or by an elite technocratic bureaucracy.

As with scientism and the subjectivism from which the aforementioned approaches to politics and social organization derive their foundations, it would seem on the first view that anarchism and the various forms of authoritarianism would have little in common. But once again, closer investigation reveals that each shares a startling degree of similarity.

Anarchy promises liberation through the abolition of all traditional standards and institutions. This is either an empty promise or the proponents of this particular outlook do not fully realize what they are advocating.

Without eternal standards through which rights and property are respected, freedom rests on a most precarious foundation. For while the adherents of the various form of Leftism claim to stand for freedom and rights, this concern extends only to those professing an ideology similar to their own or pursuing related ends. Schaeffer illustrates this in the case of one student radical in Paris who told a caller to radio program, "...you just shut up --- I'll never give you a chance to speak (Schaeffer, 32)."

So much for freedom of expression. One cannot argue that such incidents merely reflect the heat of the moment and do not represent the true sentiments of those advocating total social revolution. Similar sentiments have been expressed by the very theoreticians of this movement as normative operating procedure.

Herbert Marcuse is quoted in "Left Of Liberal" as saying, "Certain things cannot be said, certain things cannot be expressed...which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination (Bouscaren, 13)." In other words, those seeking a world of absolute decentralization in terms of morals just as much as politics would set themselves up as an elite imposing their own arbitrary standards with the same radical rigor they employed in their conflict to rend asunder the traditional order. Francis Fukuyama, author of the acclaimed "The End Of History & The Last Man" noted in a May 22, 2000 Time magazine article titled "Will Socialism Make A Comeback" that a socialistic anarchism will come to exert influence over the world of the twenty-first century without having to assume the formal reins of government by orchestrating disruptive protests like those that now regularly taken place during global financial summits in an attempt to alter world policy.

Francis Schaeffer has been with the Lord since the early 1980's. Yet the thought of this visionary Presbyterian continues to provide considerable insight into a world tottering on the edge of chaos and encouragement for Evangelicals having to navigate a variety of perplexing issues. Schaeffer realized that one could not avoid the dangers of the contemporary world by simply ignoring arenas such as politics and other forms of social engagement since such forces have the power to impact all facets of existence in a mass society. Schaeffer addressed the impact of worldviews upon different aspects of culture in the chapter "Modern Man The Manipulator".

Particularly startling is the accuracy of Schaeffer's predictions regarding technological development. Schaeffer warned, "Very soon, all of us will be living in an electronic village hooked up to a huge computer, and we will be able to know what everybody else in the world thinks. The majority opinion will become law in that hour (97)."

Today, this prediction finds itself on the verge of fulfillment. Leaders such as Newt Gingrich and as far back as Ross Perot have suggested that the networking capability of the Internet be utilized for the purposes of referenda in order to decide major issues facing the nation. However, Schaeffer correctly warned of the manipulation likely to result from the use of this technology by and against individuals not adequately grounded in the truths that do not change regardless of the latest digital innovations. The Information Superhighway can take the websurfer either to the accumulated knowledge of mankind or the electronic equivalent of a red-light district.

Some will dismiss Schaeffer's injunctions as Evangelical eschatological hysteria, especially when he speculates about the bio-electronic manipulation of individuals in reference to a May 22, 1970 International Herald Tribune article about monkey controlled by radio receivers implanted into their brains (98). That is until one reads the May 22, 2000 edition of Time Magazine predicting that prison guards may someday be obsolete thanks to implantable biochips that could be used to modify inmate behavior. Then one realizes that Francis Schaeffer’s understanding of human nature is truly holistic, comprehending the present in light of the past and the future in relation to the present.

It would not be much of an overstatement to say that Francis Schaeffer played a primary role in awakening Evangelicals to the precarious state of the world around them. One cannot discount the influence of Schaeffer upon the contemporary Evangelical mind. Regarding Schaeffer’s influence, Clark Pinnock writes in "Reflections On Francis Schaeffer", “He [Schaeffer] enlisted in this task fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell and Tim LaHaye who, although they were world-denying dispensationalists at first, quickly became culture-reclaiming activists (Pinnock, 179).” In other words, Schaeffer helped Evangelicalism realize that the world and human endeavor possessed value beyond the number of souls that could be saved, central though individual salvation may be.

Schaeffer in no way sought to undermine the centrality of the individual, but rather hoped to expand Evangelical concerns to encompass all areas of thought and creation since the God the Christian served was the master of these as well. It was out of this sanctity for the individual created in the image of God that Schaeffer believed it was imperative for believers to engage in these other areas. Key to accomplishing this mission, Schaeffer believed each individual must take stock of their personal beliefs. Schaeffer often lamented that most people caught their presuppositions like they would the measles ---- quite haphazardly.

Such reflection was just not to be a Sunday school exercise. Schaeffer saw it as groundwork for intensive apologetic conflict and engagement with a decaying world. Though himself a Presbyterian minister and evangelist, Schaeffer hoped to inspire Christians to get involved as salt and light in all academic disciplines and intellectual pursuits. Schaeffer said that the best thing a Christian scientist could do would be to invent a computer for the individual designed to counter the centralizing tendency of intrusive databases (Schaeffer, 99). No where did he conclude that learning was off limits to the believer since it had often been employed for questionable purposes.

I Chronicles 12:32 praises the children of Issachar for understanding the times in which they lived. Our own era stands witness to a rate of change unprecedented in the pages of history. Like the men of Issachar, Francis Schaeffer will be remembered as one of the few capable of rising above the confusion of the moment to determine the overall place of our times in relation to God's providence and the consequences that will result from ignoring it. By Frederick Meekins

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