I have long held the belief that one cannot be a Christian and a Democrat at the same time and for very long. Either one is a Christian and momentarily a Democrat, before recognizing that Democrats are fundamentally anti-Christian and will leave the party, or one is a Democrat and calls himself a Christian, but holds Left-wing beliefs and values such as abortion, open borders, homosexuality, etc. and is not a true Christian whatsoever.
 
Seemingly, though perhaps not totally surprisingly, California megachurch pastor John MacArthur believes the same thing: one cannot be a Christian and support Leftist beliefs and people.
 
Grace Community Church pastor John MacArthur has been a recent example of a wartime Christian, choosing to fight an authoritarian dictatorship in Los Angeles which stands in clear violation of the Constitution by trying to force MacArthur’s church to remain closed and holding him and the church in contempt and violation of such unconstitutional orders.
 
The Satanic local government is trying to destroy the church’s ability to spread the gospel and MacArthur has actually decided to stand up to them for such a clear violation of his First Amendment rights.
 
Recently, MacArthur told the Falkirk Center that President Trump has recently reached out to the pastor and the two held a conversation on the “pillars of faith and their importance with regard to the upcoming election”, according to Fox News.
 
MacArthur explained: “We love God, we desire to honor Him, and upholding righteousness in a society is what a church is supposed to do. So I said, any real, true believer is going to be on your side in this election because it’s not just an individual, it’s an entire set of policies that Christians cannot, in any way, affirm.”
 
“We talked a little bit about why – certainly from a Biblical standpoint – Christians could not vote Democratic. Because there’s no way that a Christian can affirm the slaughter of babies, homosexual marriage, or any gross immorality. No way we could stand behind a candidate who’s affirming transgender behavior… these things aren’t even political for us… these things are Biblical.”
 
I could not agree more with MacArthur here (which is ironic, considering there are plenty of things that I disagree with him about, particularly on matters of eschatology). No true Christian believer could bring themselves to vote for Biden or any other radical Left Democrat.
 
What the Left believes runs contrary to what God teaches us and commands us to believe and follow. The Left believes in a government which replaces God, basically. Of course, it cannot actually do that, but their allegiance is to government, not to God, and they worship government, not God.
 
The Left believes in a woman’s “right” to kill her own baby, and they are moving closer and closer to arguing in favor of this even AFTER the baby has been born. Every Christian worth their salt knows that abortion is murder and murder is explicitly PROHIBITED by God, going all the way back to Cain. Murder is explicitly prohibited by the sixth commandment. To be at any capacity in support of abortion, at ANY stage in the pregnancy, is an affront to God and in support of plain, clear murder.
 
No Christian can, therefore, support abortion because to do so would be the effectual rejecting of God. Man is created in God’s image. Murder is the illegitimate elimination of said image (keep in mind the reason I say “illegitimate” here is because the death penalty is a legitimate elimination of a person, reserved only for the worst kind of criminal).
 
Homosexuality, transgenderism, and other sexual sins (including straight sex when done outside of marriage) are an abomination to the Lord and are wrong. God created Man and Woman to be together. Man and Man together is an affront to God, as is Woman and Woman. And, of course, this means that there is no “third” option for one’s own gender, no matter what the Satanist heathens might try and argue.
 
When a political party stands in such direct contradiction to the teachings of the Bible, how can anyone who proclaims to follow the teachings of the Bible then go on to vote for such a party?
 
Now, one might try and argue that Trump isn’t much better, though they can only argue in terms of personality, not in terms of systems of belief or policy. The ONLY argument Never Trumpers have nowadays is that he is supposedly a “deeply” flawed individual and has severe personal problems.
 
They claim that Trump is not exactly a good representative of Christ due to his Twitter fights and other supposed character flaws. Okay, but then, are we Christians supposed to wait for someone with a perfect personality, no issues or flaws whatsoever, if we are to vote for someone? Doing so would require us to wait for Christ Himself to run for POTUS, a position FAR beneath Him.
 
What, then, shall we do without Christ literally running Himself? Abstain from voting and wait until Christ runs? Vote for a party which clearly does not represent our beliefs?
 
Which is another thing right there: what sense does it make to vote for a party which very clearly does not represent your beliefs over a party or candidate which does?
 
Some people might try and argue that the Bible doesn’t say that Christians are Republicans or Democrats, which is obvious considering the two parties were created roughly TWO MILLENNIA after Christ, but again, I ask, what sense does it make to vote for a party which does not represent your beliefs over a party which does?
 
That’s not to say that the GOP is a perfect representative or even that all or even most in the party are such representatives of Christian values (GOP establishment types come to mind as inherently non-representative of Christian values). However, no one can honestly tell me that the Democrat Party better represents Christian values than the Republican Party.
 
“Oh, well, they support and believe in charity!” the ignoramus will argue. No, they don’t. Their celebrities will virtue signal because being depicted as charitable is good for PR. Their politicians will often not donate a lot of their income to charity (and considering Trump donates 100% of his Presidential income to charity, he’s hard to beat on that front) and argue that charity is communism and vice versa, when it is not.
 
Charity is the willful giving of your things to another who needs it more. Communism is the state forcing you to give up your things (like land, other possessions, and rights) supposedly for “the greater, communal good”, which at the end of the day is simply the government.
 
So, if the Democrat Party stands in such clear contradiction to the values taught to us by Christ, what reason does any true believer have to vote for a Democrat over a Republican (provided the Republican is a better representative of Christian beliefs)?
 
“Oh, but God is loving and Trump is hateful, just look at the wall he’s trying to build to separate us with our fellow humans south of the border,” the ignoramus will continue. Yes, God is loving, but He is also just. When one breaks the law, that person must be punished. Illegal immigrants break the law; they must be punished and their actions deterred. God doesn’t let people get away with breaking the law, even Man’s law, provided Man’s laws do not contradict God’s Law.
 
Also, Trump is not hateful. That he wants to prioritize American citizens is not an act of hate. That he wants to see justice for people who have been negatively affected by illegals – people who shouldn’t even be here and have NO RIGHT to be here – is not a sign of hatred from Trump. Does Trump love people like God does? No, because God’s love is agape love, meaning “the highest form of love and charity”, which is a form of love inaccessible to mankind, at least for one another. We have philia love, brotherly love, and filikos love, or neighborly love, but not agape love because that is a love relationship between God and man.
 
So Trump fundamentally cannot love people like God does, but his actions, particularly in his decision to run for President of the United States when he is just about the last person who needed to do that, shows that he loves America and Americans.
 
He doesn’t hate the immigrants that obey the law (for crying out loud, HE’S MARRIED TO AN IMMIGRANT) and I doubt he outright hates the illegals who come here, just hates that they break the law to come here and hates the criminal actions that they typically commit.
 
For anyone to argue that Trump, even despite his personal flaws (which he obviously has, considering he’s human, but I believe they have been unfairly accentuated by the media), is in any way a worse representative for those with Christian beliefs than Joe Biden or anyone on the Left is ridiculous and a complete lie.
 
God doesn’t require that we be perfect, and that includes Trump. I’ve made this point in the past, but it bears repeating: No one in the Bible, apart from God and Jesus (who are the same essential being in different persons), is perfect.
 
I’ve heard people wishing that we had a leader like David, but they forget that David committed adultery and basically murder by sending his loyal soldier to die in battle so he could screw his wife.
 
God uses imperfect people for His plan. Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith, was impatient and committed adultery before he was given his promised son. Moses killed an Egyptian guard and was running from the law for forty years before his encounter with God. Jacob was a liar and a ritualistic sinner before he was given the name Israel by God Himself (and was given that name after he literally wrestled with God). Sampson succumbed to sexual immorality but he was still redeemed by God in the end.
 
Trump has flaws, of course, but for any Christian to believe such flaws disqualify him from being president or earning our vote is ludicrous. For a Christian to support Biden or abstain from voting (which only helps Biden and the Democrats) is to run contrary to his or her own professed belief.
 
Like John MacArthur said, any real, true believer and follower of Christ will see the two options presented to us this electoral season and come to the conclusion that, despite whatever flaws Trump has, Joe Biden represents and carries with him beliefs that not only run contrary to Christianity, but are outright damaging to it (and no, it doesn’t matter one bit that he is a self-professed Catholic. Profession of faith is not the same as possession of faith).
 
Keep in mind, MacArthur is currently fighting DEMOCRATS who say that he is not allowed to open his church and share the gospel with his congregation and are actively seeking to punish him for wanting to do so. Clearly, given the chance, Democrats will leap at the opportunity to destroy our constitutionally protected rights of freedom of religion.
 
Once last time, I ask: what sense does it make for any true Christian to vote for a party which does not represent his or her Christian values and actively works to undermine them?
 
Ephesians 6:12
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

To paraphrase Tucker Carlson, you have to be extremely stupid to work at CNN because you will never stray from the topic that is handed to you. You never have to think on your own, you just have to repeat what is on the teleprompter or your notes, and when not speaking, mindlessly nod at whatever someone else said even if what someone said is monumentally stupid, incoherent, illogical or even extremely bigoted.
 
The dumbest man on news, working alongside Fredo Cuomo, let some of his idiocy shown recently when talking about the Founding Fathers and, more specifically, the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
In a discussion with the man who has as many IQ points as he does brothers, Don Lemon criticized the Founding Fathers, “So why are we deifying the founders of this country, many of whom owned slaves, and in the Constitution – the original one – they didn’t want, they put slavery in there, that slavery should be abolished because it was the way the king wanted. And then the Congress said, ‘No way!’”
 
The man’s stupidity knows no bounds, as he unwittingly praised the Founders whom he is trying to crap all over (and I’ll get to that in a brief moment).
 
Yes, many of them owned slaves because that was a violent and disturbing time in history when people owned other people. This has been the history of humanity for millennia and the idea that people shouldn’t own others is relatively new. White people used to own black people. Black people also used to own black people, both in Africa, with the tribes that fought and enslaved other tribes, and in the States, with black people legally owning other black people. Native Americans owned other Native Americans, at least, the ones that chose to enslave the tribes they conquered. Often times, tribes like the Comanche would simply choose to slaughter the tribes they defeated.
 
The Jews used to be slaves in Egypt and Babylon. Romans had slaves. Europeans would enslave one another when possible, particularly in Eastern Europe.
 
Slavery has been a part of humanity’s history for ages and is not something that has strictly applied to black people (especially considering there were black people back then who were either never slaves or outright owned other people). And let’s not ignore the fact that slavery is still a thing in this day and age, specifically in the Middle East.
 
Now, does this justify the horror that is slavery? Of course not. But it does put necessary context in a discussion that the Left chooses to not put any into just to get a chance at delegitimizing the United States. These people want Americans to believe that slavery was strictly an American thing, created by the U.S. and every other country in the history of the world was more “civilized” and “progressive” while the U.S. was anything but.
 
Ironically, Lemon PRAISED the Founders by noting that they wanted to abolish slavery in the first iteration of the Constitution. If these people were senseless barbarians who saw no issue with owning people, why would they try to put the abolishment of slavery into the original Constitution? Never mind why it was not actually put into it (the South wanted to keep their slaves, the North didn’t want that, but prioritized keeping the Union together and kicked the can of slavery down the road, though made provisions for the eventual abolishment of slavery), the fact that they DID WANT TO put it in there shows that they were not demons who wanted perpetual slavery.
 
At any rate, the dumbest man on news went on to further show why he has earned the moniker from President Trump by saying: “Here’s the thing: Jesus Christ – if that’s who you believe in, Jesus Christ – admittedly was not perfect when he was here on this earth.”
 
On who’s admission, Don? Yours? Because it’s certainly not to Jesus’ own admission or God’s own admission or any of the human authors of the Bible’s admission.
 
Jesus Christ was perfect, otherwise He would not have been an adequate sacrifice for the sins of those whom God has called. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says: “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
 
Hebrews 7:25-26 says: “Therefore He is able to save completely those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest truly befits us – One who is holy, innocent, undefiled, set apart from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.”
 
John 7:17-18 says: “If anyone desires to do His will, he will know whether My teaching is from God or whether I speak on My own. He who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but He who seeks the glory of the One who sent Him is a man of truth; in Him there is no falsehood.”
 
Luke 1:35 says: “The angel answered and said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.’”
 
The One who is holy cannot be imperfect. Not that I expect the dumbest man on news to understand this. Furthermore, it’s not even about how dumb or smart he is (though he is definitely not the latter). Intelligence matching that of Albert Einstein is not required in order to understand that Jesus Christ is perfect, and was perfect while He was walking on the Earth. What is required is faith and at least a basic level of understanding of the Christian tenets. It is made abundantly clear, day in and day out, fake news story after fake news story, that Don Lemon possesses neither of those requirements.
 
Don Lemon is not a Christian, so it’s not exactly a surprise that he would know nothing of the Lord. He has no excuse, of course, given the prevalence of evidence of God’s existence, Christ’s divinity and holiness, and availability of the Bible, both in book form and via the internet, but still not surprising that he would not know who the Lord is, even to this level.
 
The guy is a charlatan and is employed by the Charlatan News Network. That Chris Cuomo, who is supposedly Catholic, mindlessly nodded along (like I said was a requirement for working for CNN if you weren’t the one speaking), is also not surprising because he is every bit the charlatan that Don Lemon is, that his genocidal governor brother is, that Nancy Pelosi is, etc. They are not true Christians in the least.
 
Don Lemon is like the sort of person spoken of in 1 John, specifically chapter 2, verses 22 and 23: “And who is a liar? Anyone who says that Jesus is not the Christ. Anyone who denies the Father and the Son is an antichrist. Anyone who denies the Son doesn’t have the Father, either. But anyone who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”
 
Denying the perfection of Christ is denying the holiness of Christ, as the two are inseparable. Denying the holiness of Christ is denying the deity of Christ. Denying the deity of Christ is denying the deity of God. Denying the Son is denying the Father. That is precisely what Don Lemon (and Fredo) is doing, of which he should repent immediately, knowing that Jesus said, in Matthew 10:33: “But whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
 
Denying the Son is not the path to salvation; in fact, it’s literally going the opposite direction. Do I think Don Lemon is seeking to be saved? No, otherwise, he likely would have been, because if he was seeking to be saved, he would have been called to the Lord. But regardless of whether or not Lemon is seeking to be saved, or believes he must be saved from the punishment of his sins, what he did was deny the Son, which is to deny the Father.
 
Claiming Jesus was not perfect is extremely ignorant and shows the state of his soul. It also shows the state of Fredo’s soul (and the emptiness of his head) that he mindlessly nodded along as Lemon publicly rejected Christ on live TV.
 
I pray that these two repent of their abhorrent sin and come to the Lord in repentance and submission.
 
John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

It’s nothing new to see radical Leftists invoke the name of the Lord to defend their outright satanic beliefs. Radical Leftists often tried to use the Bible to defend the institution of slavery and to defend segregation. Radical Leftists try to use the Bible to defend the mass genocide of babies in the womb. So it’s not surprising to see a BLM communist invoke the name of the Lord to defend the destruction of the United States.
 
In a recent interview with Martha MacCallum, Hawk Newsome, communist leader of the Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, did exactly that in his defense of the riots.
 
MacCallum brought up the following quote from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and asked what Newsome thought of it: “Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, ‘White Power!’ when nobody will shout ‘Black Power!’ but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power. Do you agree with that?”
 
Newsome then had the gall to say the following: “I love the Lord. And my lord and savior, Jesus Christ, is the most famous black radical revolutionary in history. He was treated just like Dr. King. He was arrested on occasion, and he was also crucified or assassinated. This is what happens to black activists, we are killed by the government.”
 
If he truly was a Christian, he would know not to compare Jesus with anyone, let alone “black radical revolutionaries”. Christ was NOT a black radical revolutionary.
 
Throughout the interview following that statement, Newsome tried to make the point repeatedly that Jesus was not white. Considering He was in the Middle East, I imagine He might not have been, but if He were white, black or whatever else, He is still the Lord and our Savior, so true Christians would still follow Him. Considering how adamant Newsome was about saying Christ wasn’t white, as though that matters, I don’t believe for one second that he would follow the Lord if He had been white.
 
But that just addresses the “black” part. Let’s address the “radical revolutionary” part. Jesus never set out to overthrow the government of His time and repeatedly made note of that. Jesus said in Mark 12:17: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” He didn’t call for an overthrow of Caesar (as the Pharisees believed and tried to trap Jesus into admitting as much). He didn’t call for a toppling of Rome. He made note that His Kingdom is not of this world, so He was NOT a revolutionary at all.
 
Next, and perhaps most importantly, Jesus was not killed by the government like a “black activist”. To insinuate Jesus was a “black activist” is a damnable insult. Jesus was killed by a BLOODTHRISTY MOB that DEMANDED His blood. Even Pontius Pilate said he found no guilt in Jesus. Luke 23:4 says: “Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, ‘I find no guilt in this man.’” Later on, it even says that Herod, who was the ruler in Jesus’ district of Galilee and also had the ability to judge Jesus, found no guilt in Jesus for what He was being charged with.
 
But the crowd insisted that Pilate would punish Jesus and would instead release Barabbas, who was, as verse 19 says: “a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder.” Similarly to the mob of today, the mob that called for the death of Jesus would rather have a horrible criminal and dangerous person be released than someone who is innocent.
 
Pilate further insisted on releasing Jesus but the crowd chanted: “Crucify, crucify him!” Soon after, Pilate relented and bent the knee to the mob, giving them what they wanted, and ordered the death of Jesus.
 
So Jesus was not killed by Rome. He was not killed by the government. He was killed BY THE MOB THAT DEMANDED HIS BLOOD BE SPILLED. He was killed because a government figure bent the knee to the mob.
 
That Newsome does not know this is not at all a surprise to me. HE ISN’T A CHRISTIAN! Christ is nowhere to be found in his heart, else he wouldn’t believe what he believes or say what he says!
 
Later in the interview, Newsome says that he wanted “black liberation and black sovereignty… by any means necessary.” Does that sound like something a Christian would say?
 
Blacks in the U.S. ARE ALREADY LIBERATED AND HAVE BEEN FOR A CENTURY AND A HALF! And of course, it’s hard to ignore the call for “black sovereignty”, which is, of course, black supremacy. The guy is no different or better from the neo-Nazis who call for white supremacy instead.
 
The guy demands black liberation when he claims to be a Christian. A Christian IS ALREADY FREE BECAUSE OF THE WORKS OF CHRIST AT THE CROSS! He wants black sovereignty or supremacy. That is not equality at all and shows us the type of person he is. Christ’s people will rule and judge the world alongside Him.
 
Revelation 20:4 says: “Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.”
 
There is no black sovereignty. There is no white sovereignty. There is no human sovereignty. The only sovereignty that exists is strictly the Lord’s and we all have a single path to salvation.
 
That Newsome believes Jesus to have been equal to a black activist destroying property, setting fires, assaulting people and killing people is outright blasphemous and I hope he repents. What he said is nothing short of an insult to the Lord and a threat to this country, which he intends to destroy to bring about black supremacy.
 
This man is no Christian at all, and just because he professes to have faith, that does not mean he actually possesses it. It’s clear, from this single interview, that he does not speak as one who has Christ in his heart. He has hatred – Satan – in his heart.
 
Christ was not a “black radical revolutionary.” He was not a black activist. He was not even killed by the government. He is the Lord. He is the King. He was killed to satisfy a mob. Newsome is part of the mob we see today, making demands and threatening destruction and unruliness if the demands are not met.
 
Newsome speaks more like a radical terrorist than a Christian. He should look inside his own heart and be afraid of what is in there. He should repent of the blasphemous things he said and believes. But as a radical Leftist, I don’t really expect him to do such a thing.
 
Who knows, though? Maybe the Lord will bring wisdom onto Newsome and get him to repent. I won’t judge Newsome because it’s not my job to do so. But what he said and currently believes is damnable and I will condemn it to Hell.
 
Matthew 7:21
“’Not everyone who calls out to me, “Lord, Lord!” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter.’”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

This is something I have said before, but it bears repeating: the Left HATES Christians, hates Christianity, hates Jesus and hates anyone who follows Him, believing such people to be nothing but foolish and naïve science deniers who believe in fairy tales. They loathe our worship of the Lord and view it with nothing but contempt and mockery.
 
That is the precise response some Leftists in the mainstream media had to President Trump appointing Vice President Mike Pence to lead the Coronavirus Task Force and to Vice President Pence praying alongside the CTF in a photo (above).
 
The New Yorker, after President Trump appointed VP Pence to lead the Coronavirus Task Force, shared a cartoon of the Vice President with the caption: “We remind everyone that the first defense against this outbreak is vigorous handwashing and repentance.”
 
Days later, a contributing writer for The NYT Magazine tweeted out the picture of Pence and the CTF praying, stating: “Mike Pence and his coronavirus emergency team praying for a solution. We are so screwed.”
 
Do you see how little these heathens think of Christians and those who pray to God? Funny how they would never dare say the same if they saw a picture of Muslims praying to Allah about the same thing. They would applaud their commitment to their religious beliefs, but when Christians pray to the Lord, we are mocked. Not that this comes as any surprise.
 
These godless people do not understand the power of prayer. They outright mock it whenever a mass shooting occurs (which is nowhere near as often as they would want us to believe) and people offer prayers for those affected. They are devoid of any sense of reverence to God in their unbelief, somehow believing that everything came to be out of pure chance, and have the nerve to claim that we are the illogical ones for believing in God.
 
Verses such as Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God,” and Mark 11:24: “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours,” and others that highlight the power of God through prayer are utterly meaningless to these people.
 
They legitimately believe that we came from MONKEYS despite all of the massive holes in Darwin’s theory and even its origin, and yet, do not believe in the God of the Universe.
 
It’s worth pointing out that, obviously, prayer is not the only thing the vice president and the CTF are doing. Unlike what some Leftists might sarcastically suggest, they are not “praying the virus away”, or at least, that’s not all they are doing. They are praying to the Lord, who has total and absolute control over everything that happens, that He give them strength in dealing with this, wisdom in how to tackle it, and success in minimizing the influence and effect of the virus so that as many people may survive it and so that this can be put behind us.
 
The seventh question of the Westminster Confession of Faith asks “what are the decrees of God?” The answer is: “The decrees of God are, His eternal purpose, according to the counsel of His will, whereby for His own glory, He hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.” This means that God has, for His eternal purpose and His own glory, preordained whatever comes to pass, such as a coronavirus outbreak. It wouldn’t happen if God did not ordain for it to happen. That is not the same as saying God caused it or it’s His fault, because God is the Healer, whereas Satan is the destroyer. However, He has allowed it and the Vice President, as well as the others in that picture, understanding the power of the Lord, are praying that He give them the tools to deal with it and that He would allow for this virus to be defeated.
 
And while I know that the Westminster Confession of Faith is a Presbyterian document, I don’t think too many Christians would disagree with the notion that God is absolutely in control of everything that happens, because if even one molecule in this universe were not under the complete and utter control of God, He would cease to be God.
 
Unfortunately, this is where many on the Left and general unbelievers would retort with “if God is so good then why does He allow these things to happen” which can be difficult sometimes to explain. I couldn’t imagine trying to explain to someone who has suffered throughout their life why God, who is so good, or is regarded by Christians as being so good, would allow for such suffering to happen. The best I could imagine myself doing would be pointing out the story of Joseph, how he was betrayed by his brothers, hated by them, thrown into a pit, be rescued by them only to be then sold into slavery, be falsely accused of trying to have sexual intercourse with his master’s wife and be thrown into prison for years and how if anyone had any “right” to be angry at God, it was him, and yet, he never abandoned his faith in God. Eventually, as we all know, through the path that he took, despite how rocky it was, Joseph became the second-leading ruler of Egypt only behind Pharaoh, and saved millions of lives as a result of that appointment.
 
The point of that is to say that, even when things are at their bleakest and we wonder where God is, we have to remember that God is there, working behind the scenes, for our good. Some may look at what’s happening with the coronavirus and mock Pence and the others for praying to a God who would allow this to happen, but the VP and other fellow Christians know the goodness and the love of God, know who He is and that He wouldn’t allow for this to happen for no reason. Whether that reason be an individual one where someone with the virus or someone who has family with the virus turns to the Lord and repents of their sins, or a larger reason, such as forcing companies to understand the perils of being so dependent on a communist nation that can’t do jack to protect itself and turn away from it to keep their businesses from being hurt like that in the future. I mean, 80% of our medicine comes from China! Maybe this will force some businesses to reevaluate their desire to work with the Chinese and focus on other countries (if not the U.S.).
 
People who do not know the Lord look at us Christians in contempt and think of us as monkeys who believe in fairy tales. They think prayer, despite the power that it has, is completely worthless. But God, as previously stated, is the one in control. It is through Him that anything at all happens. And God is delighted when His children pray to Him, asking for salvation of their soul or simply to be strong in the face of trouble.
 
We pray, not because we are without hope, but because we are full of hope, knowing the goodness of God. We humble ourselves before Him, bowing our heads to Him in prayer. The simple looks at these actions and thinks little of them, while God looks at them and is delighted.
 
Do I know what will happen with this coronavirus? No. I am not God, after all. However, we know from Romans 8:28 that “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.” Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, we will obey the Lord and trust that He will deliver us from earthly perils, and that even if He doesn’t, we will not be shaken in our faith.
 
Those three were threatened to be thrown into a blazing fire so hot that it killed the Babylonian guards that were trying to put them in there. The only thing that burned upon being thrown into the fire was the rope that bound them together, with Nebuchadnezzar questioning why there were four people in the cauldron and not three, with the extra person looking like one who was like “the Son of God”.
 
We trust in the Lord and His ways, knowing that they are greater than ours, and thus, we pray to Him both in times of great need and of great abundance; in times of suffering and times of joy. I am so glad that Vice President Pence is a man of faith, one who knows God and His goodness, and leads his CTF team in prayer while searching for ways to mitigate the problem.
 
God is good; remember that.
 
Psalm 34:17
“When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

As a Christian, I want to always share the good news - the Gospel of Jesus Christ - so I try to speak about the goodness of God every time I get a chance. Because no matter what mistakes we made in our lives, we know that Christ paid for the sins of those who trust Him. So I tend to try to share the good news with anyone – any sinner – who’s willing to listen.

But also as a Christian I have high expectations of those who speak from a pulpit – you don’t have to be perfect, but you need to understand Scripture. And you need to be passionate about Jesus and about people – showing the same love and compassion towards sinners that Jesus showed. So what I definitely don’t want to see is a “Church” in which they allow in their pulpit anyone who clearly has no understanding of the Word of God – someone like Mayor Pete who hates babies and is in favor of killing them if their moms don’t want them.

This past Sunday, Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg spoke at the First Baptist Church in James Island, South Carolina, and decided to quote the Bible to get his political message across. The problem is, while using the Bible, he clearly misunderstood the very verse he used. I’ll explain that in just a moment, but let me share with you what he actually said:

“My point in standing before you is not to claim that I understand more than I do, but rather to promise – as the Scripture says – not to lean on my own understanding too much, but to do a lot of listening along the way”. And he added “Not to say that I get it, but to promise to always surround myself with people who will let me know when I don't.”

Now, all of this sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Mayor Pete has this ability to sound so reasonable all the time. After all, there’s nothing wrong with surrounding yourself with people who will let you know what you don’t know. That makes perfect sense. Except he’s citing a Bible verse to appeal to Christians as if the Bible was the one directing Buttigieg to listen to other people when he doesn’t know - and this is where he's wrong. The problem is that that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible actually warns us about false prophets, for example, and to be careful about who we surround ourselves with. We obviously don’t want to listen to murderers, do we? Or sexual predators.  What good thing could we possibly learn from them?

What Mayor Pete said comes from Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding”.

If Buttigieg knew anything about the Bible he’d know that a) it’s the inerrant Word of God and b) it must be interpreted by the Bible itself. As many Theologians would point out, “you have to interpret the Bible by the Bible”. This means you don’t just read one verse and interpret it any way you want, which is what Buttigieg mostly does, but rather you need to continue the reading of Scriptures and understand that particular verse by other verses in the Bible such that you will be consistent and correct in your interpretation.

But in this particular case, the verse is so clear that it doesn’t require reading any additional Bible verse to understand its meaning.

You see, what God asks from us in that verse is that a) we trust Him and b) we do not lean on our own understanding. That even when we see bad things happening, we need to trust God's plan.

As you can see, God is not telling us to go listen to other people to understand better, but rather to trust Him. That's the mandate. How do you trust Him? By listening to Him. And we listen to Him by reading all of the Bible and trust what He says – when you get to know God you know He’s the only one you can truly trust. He told Abraham that he would have a son and He would give his offspring a land “flowing with milk and honey”. And He did. I wonder if Mayor Pete knows that. God said that if we walk in all His statutes, He would cause everything we touch to prosper. I wonder if Mayor Pete knows that. God also said that He would never leave us nor forsake us. I wonder if Mayor Pete knows that. Jesus healed everybody who asked Him to heal them – He never denied healing to anyone who came to Him. I wonder if Mayor Pete knows that.

Mayor Pete is not supposed to go listen to other people, though that’s not a bad thing to do, but rather listen to GOD. Listening to God by the reading of Scriptures is the BEST way to lead your life. If Buttigieg did read the Bible regularly, he’d be a much better politician (and definitely would not be a Democrat). He would also do his best to stop sinning, knowing he isn't perfect and he will sin by his very nature, but will try to mitigate that sin. But because we know he’s leading a life that God calls “an abomination” (Bible verses against homosexuality include Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13; Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9 and many more), we can tell he doesn’t understand God at all. And how could he, when it's clear he doesn't understand this simple Bible verse?

For this reason, Mayor Pete should never be allowed to speak from a pulpit. No matter what the message is. He should attend service and try to understand who God is and who he is, as a sinner. And furthermore, he would know that there’s a way to Heaven that is inclusive but also unique and does not involve doing good deeds to try to convince God on judgement day that you weren’t all that bad while here on Earth. The Bible is clear, in Galatians 3:11 "the righteous shall live by Faith". We're saved by faith and by faith alone.

The sad part is that Mayor Pete and, likely, the leaders of the church where he “preached” do not understand the good news. You see, if it wasn’t for the bad news there wouldn’t be any good news. The bad news is that we’re all sinners. The good news is that God provided a way for us sinners to ensure eternal life. And that way is Jesus Christ exclusively. There is no other way. And when you understand the work of redemption that Jesus did 2,000 years ago – the fact that He was sinless, the fact that He was tortured by the Romans and crucified FOR OUR SINS, descended into Hell and was raised from the dead, then understanding what He did for you causes you to want to know everything about Jesus. Like when you follow an athlete or a singer, you want to know everything about them, right? Followers of Christ want to know everything about Him. And out of gratitude for what He did for us, we want to obey Him in all His commandments. But it all starts with understanding God.

Did Jesus die for everybody? No. He died only for those who trust Him, like John 3:16 says: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life”. "Whoever believes in Him" excludes those who don't. God tells us that Jesus died for the sins of those who trust Him. Those who don’t trust Him are going to end up in Hell. There is one condition for salvation and that’s that you trust Jesus. When you do, you get ALL the blessings God promises. ALL of them.

I pray that Mayor Pete one day sees the light and truly gives his life to Jesus.
  
1 Kings 2:3
“keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn .“

Author: Danielle Cross

This is not a sports website or a basketball website by any stretch of the imagination. What happens in the world of sports or the NBA is largely irrelevant to this website unless it has something to do with immoral business dealings by the league with authoritarian communists or when a basketball player asserts that there is vast racism in this country when there largely is none. Some topics relating to sports are relevant to this website, but many are not.
 
But it should come as no surprise to long-time readers of this website that I, personally, am a big basketball fan and have been for years. I stay in tune with many of the things happening in the NBA from trades, to free agent signings, to individual player stats to win columns, etc. Basketball, though not close to the level of politics and theology, is a big passion of mine. So hearing the news of the tragic death of Kobe Bryant, one of the greatest players to have ever set foot on the basketball court, has honestly both shocked me and left me in mourning, at least to some extent.
 
Of course, I never met the guy or knew him personally and he certainly never knew I existed, but that does not really matter. The whole basketball world, from the fans to the players to the coaches and those in the executive offices and lower on the corporate ladder, is in mourning over this extremely unexpected and horrific event.
 
The fact that it was not only him, but also his 13-year-old daughter and 7 other people apart from them (9 total, with another 13-year-old apart from Kobe’s daughter, at least according to TMZ) also perished in this incident makes it all the worse because of the potential of those lives. Kobe’s playing career ended in 2016, but he was not done with the game. Gianna, Kobe’s daughter, had dreams of continuing her father’s legacy and enter the WNBA, likely dominate in that league as her father did for so many years in the NBA.
 
All loss of life is tragic, particularly when it comes in this manner. No one in Kobe’s family could’ve possibly prepared, even a little, for last Sunday. But I hope that in this grief and time of mourning, the Bryant family, as well as the families of the people who likewise perished aboard that helicopter, come closer to God and that He would bring them closer to Him, so that they might seek His comfort and, if not quite yet saved, that they might be saved.
 
As far as Kobe and Gianna go, I would like to believe that they are playing for Heaven’s basketball team now. The reason I say this is because of the various sources saying that the guy, and his family, were/are all Catholic.
 
Now, if you are indeed a long-time reader of mine, you know my irks with the Catholic Church and the doctrines they teach. They emphasize a relationship with the Church as opposed to Christ and have many other doctrinal problems, let alone political and social problems that have plagued the Church for centuries (Dictatus Papae, anyone?). However, that does not mean that the entirety of the body of that church is cast off from God’s sight and presence. For all the problems within the Catholic Church (problems that are not exclusive to the Church), there are, indeed, some among the Church who are saved, provided they put their salvation on Christ and not the Church.
 
Kobe Bryant and his family, I believe, are among those who have been saved. Why do I say this? Well, while Kobe has been raised Catholic (which alone does not necessarily save someone), after the rape allegations were made against him, he sought the counsel of a priest who advised him to let God control that situation. Kobe said of that meeting with the priest that “that was the turning point”, supposedly in reference to him trusting his life to the Lord.
 
One could also assume that his faith had influence over his family as well, possibly giving Gianna, Kobe’s oldest daughter, the opportunity to trust the Lord with her life as well. Now, I will say that I do not know for certain whether this is the case, but for my own sake, without having substantial evidence to convince me in one way or another, I believe Gianna did also make it into Heaven alongside her father (and I hope whomever else in that crash that perished also received the Lord Jesus into their hearts and repented of their sins before this).
 
It is this faith that saves us and this faith that tells us the meaning of life. I’ve already mentioned this to some extent in a previous article relating to British youth being “the least happy generation”, but the answer to the meaning of life can be found in the shorter catechisms of the Westminster Confession of faith, particularly in the first one (though I will mention all the ones I consider to be relevant for this).
 
The first shorter catechism found in the Westminster Confession of Faith asks the question: “What is the chief end of man?” The answer to this question is: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”
 
Again, I’ve already mentioned this once, but to reiterate: this right here is the meaning of life. We are created in God’s image so that we may glorify and enjoy Him forever. This is how every Christian should try to live: doing everything for the glory of the Lord.
 
The seventh shorter catechism asks the question: “What are the decrees of God?” The answer reads: “The decrees of God are, his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.”
 
With this, we know that God is in control and that nothing is a surprise to Him. He already knew and foreordained everything had happens, knowing the day and the hour in which we all pass.
 
The 20th shorter catechism asks the question: “Did God leave all mankind to perish in the state of sin and misery?” The answer reads: “God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer.”
 
God, in all of His wonderful love and grace, has given to us a Savior and Redeemer so that we would not have to suffer His wrath and perish due to our sin.
 
The Lord has put purpose into our lives and that purpose is to glorify Him. This is not a purpose that is exclusive to those who believe (though belief in God is a prerequisite, otherwise one would not glorify a being that they do not believe exists) but a purpose given to each and every single one of us. We are to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
 
God also already knows whether or not this is something we will strive for and, not only knows it, but has preordained it. He has elected some of us to believe and be saved by the works of His Son Jesus at the cross.
 
And in all of His ever-lasting love for us, who do not deserve such love and grace, God has given us a path to salvation through His Son Jesus. And while the Westminster Confession of Faith is a Protestant document, many of the doctrines it teaches are fairly universal. God loves us. He has given us a purpose to glorify Him, doing everything in His name and for His glory, and ultimately, we shall enjoy Him forever. This is not merely a Protestant thing – it is a Christian thing.
 
This, I hope, is how Kobe lived his life and I hope he is, indeed, enjoying God forever, having been saved by the Lord Jesus.
 
I also hope this is how the other passengers lived their lives, or at least tried to, and can all now enjoy the Lord in Heaven.
 
John 4:24
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli. 

Searching through news articles and op-eds for me to find inspiration, I came across an opinion piece published on Scientific American with the following title: “Can Science Rule Out God?”, with the subhead reading: “We must understand the laws of nature before we can deduce their origins”.
 
Naturally, I became interested in what the author of the piece, a man by the name of Mark Alpert, had to say on this subject. The debate between science and religion has existed for centuries at this point since the Age of “Enlightenment” (I put it in quotation marks since it seems to have had just the opposite effect when it came to logic and reason).
 
From the outset, Mr. Alpert notes that he himself is not a religious man, does not outright believe in the existence of God as He is found in the Bible, but is not an atheist either, but something more akin to an agnostic (which has roots to the Greek word “agnostos” meaning “unknown” or “unknowable”, or in other words, basically means ignorant since “agnoia” means “ignorance”, so it is interesting that someone would be willing to call themselves “ignorant”). Mr. Alpert also mentions that for a decade, he had been an editor at the very scientific journal that he is currently writing for in efforts to expose “the falsehoods of ‘intelligent design’ proponents who claimed to see God’s hand in the fashioning of complex biological structures” like the human eye and bacteria.
 
Not quite sure what falsehoods he could be talking about with this. The only other argument here is that these complex things came about entirely by chance, which as I have explained time and time again, is nothing more than mathematical probability of an event occurring and it has no inherent power to act upon anything, but I digress.
 
Mr. Alpert eventually writes something that I found interesting. He notes that “as physicists investigate the most fundamental characteristics of nature, they’re tackling issues that have long been the province of philosophers and theologians: Is the universe infinite and eternal? Why does it seem to follow mathematical laws, and are those laws inevitable? And, perhaps most importantly, why does the universe exist? Why is there something instead of nothing?”
 
That last question is really what intrigues me (and the question about the universe being infinite and eternal, which I will get to). Indeed, why is there something instead of nothing? And here is where we arrive to one of three possible theories to explain the existence of the universe:
 
Theory #1: the universe was created by God, who is a self-existing, eternal being, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.
 
Theory #2: the universe is eternal and self-existing.
 
Theory #3: the universe is not eternal but self-created.
 
Let us observe the objective reality that there is, indeed, something, as opposed to nothing. By sheer reason and logic, we can completely eliminate the third theory as a whole. Why? Because of two laws: the Law of Causality (or the Law of Cause and Effect, if you will) and the Law of Noncontradiction.
 
The Law of Causality is, as explained, the law of Cause and Effect. Simply put, this law means that every effect must have an antecedent cause. For a ball to move, force must be applied to it. Someone must move it themselves, be it with their hands or their feet, or simply a strong enough gust of wind or the force of gravity must act on it in order for the effect of motion to occur. Following Newton’s First Law, the Law of Inertia, an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an outside force.
 
Every effect must have an antecedent cause and if there is no cause, there is no effect. The second of the laws I mentioned is the Law of Noncontradiction which simply states that A cannot be A and non-A at the same time and in the same relationship. Something cannot BE and NOT BE at the same time and in the same relationship.
 
For example, you can be a father and you can be a son at the same time, but you cannot be both at the same time and in the same relationship. You cannot be your own father and you cannot be your own son. It is logically impossible for such a relationship to exist. Another example would be that you cannot exist and not exist at the same time and in the same relationship. Or you cannot have a job and not have a job at the same time and in the same relationship, etc.
 
So why do I bring this law into the conversation? Because in order for the universe to create itself, it first must BE and NOT BE at the same time and the same relationship. It must exist and NOT exist, which is not physically or logically possible. In order for something to create anything, even itself, it must first BE. You cannot argue that the universe created itself because you would then be arguing illogically, as the universe must first have not existed and existed at the same time and in the same relationship.
 
NOTHING can create itself, as a result. It is logically, not to mention physically, impossible for something to create itself simply because it would have to literally defy LOGIC in order for this to happen. Not even God has the power to create Himself.
 
If there ever was a time when there was nothing, without the acting of an outside being that is self-existing and eternal, there would be nothing at this very moment. Ex nihilo, nihil fit. Out of nothing, nothing comes. So if there is SOMETHING, it absolutely could not have come from nothing, at least out of its own power. So the third theory is eliminated entirely.
 
So let’s move on to the second theory, which is something Mr. Alpert covers, even if unwittingly. Mr. Alpert writes:
 
“Cosmologists don’t know if the universe even had a beginning. Instead it might’ve had an eternal past before the big bang, stretching infinitely backward in time. Some cosmological models propose that the universe has gone through endless cycles of expansion and contraction. And some versions of the theory of inflation postulate an eternal process in which new universes are forever branching off from the speedily expanding ‘inflational background.’”
 
Such theories should be easy enough to discern why they might not hold up. If the universe is endlessly expanding and contracting in cycles, what is causing it and when did that start? To return to the Law of Causality, all effects must have an antecedent cause. If something, anything, including the universe itself, is expanding and contracting like a lung, then what is the CAUSE?
 
It is this very law that also eliminates the second theory. The very existence of the universe, the fact that there is something instead of nothing, is an effect. Again, out of nothing, nothing comes. Even those who believe in the second theory understand this principle and it is the reason why such people do not believe in the third theory. But the Law of Causality also throws a wrench at the second theory. The existence of the universe, being an effect, must have an antecedent cause.
 
Funny enough, even Mr. Alpert notes this: “But other cosmologists argue that inflation had to start somewhere, and the starting point could’ve been essentially nothing. As we’ve learned from quantum theory, even empty space has energy, and nothingness is unstable. All kinds of improbable things can happen in empty space, and one of them might’ve been a sudden drop to a lower vacuum energy, which could’ve triggered the inflationary expansion.”
 
A few things about this. First, I’m glad that he notes that cosmologists have enough logic to argue that this cycle of inflation (if true) had to start somewhere. That’s nice.
 
Second, and most importantly, suppose that the “sudden drop to a lower vacuum energy” is, indeed, what happened and caused this “inflationary expansion”. We return, once again, to the Law of Causality. What CAUSED that sudden drop? I don’t think I need to argue why a “sudden drop” is an effect. When you suddenly drop a coin, that drop had an antecedent cause. The same, therefore, must be applied here.
 
Which brings us to the first theory I talked about: the theory of a self-existing, eternal being with the power to create and manipulate energy and matter itself to create anything and everything.
 
Now, non-believing skeptics might argue “but doesn’t the Law of Causality apply to this theory too? You argued that an eternal, self-existing universe cannot be because of this Law, which says that all things must have a cause. Why is this theory, the one that points to an eternal, self-existing God, any different?”
 
The answer is simple: because the Law of Causality states that every EFFECT must have an antecedent cause. God is not an effect, but the antecedent cause. God is not a creation. He is not an effect, because if He were, literally nothing would make any sense. There’d be no universe and no intelligent being to understand anything for anything to make sense. God CANNOT be an effect and most certainly, He is not.
 
God is the antecedent cause in the Law of Causality. If you argue that the universe came about because of a “sudden drop” to a lower vacuum energy, one must still explain the cause of that sudden drop and the only feasible and logical outcome would have to be the acknowledgement of a self-existing, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient being and there is only one such being that can come to mind, and that is the God of the Bible.
 
It is for this very reason that science cannot rule out the existence of God and those who adamantly deny the existence of God are not scientific. It is impossible to prove that something does not exist. You cannot prove a negative. It’s for this same reason that it is up to the prosecution to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in order to get a conviction. It is not up to the innocent to prove their innocence (though exculpatory evidence should be looked for, but is not necessary), but for the accuser to prove guilt. One cannot prove that God does not exist, and by virtue of the things that I talked about, it would be illogical for people to say that He hasn’t been proven to exist, because He has.
 
Science can’t rule out God because God is FACT. Science can’t rule out God because without God, there’d be no science in the first place. There’d be absolute nothingness because ex nihilo, nihil fit. Out of nothing, nothing comes. If there is no God, there’d be nothing right now.
 
Romans 1:20
“For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

Looking through the news, one can’t help but be overwhelmed at the sheer number of problems that people must face on a regular basis. We read stories about shootings, terrorist acts, foreign governments intruding in elections (mainly Ukraine), a whole political party seeking the impeachment of a president on the grounds of “we don’t like him”, people claiming to be a different gender from what they are, people attempting to justify and rationalize the murder of the unborn, people demanding increased immigration, legal or illegal, as a means of “enriching” our country, etc.
 
There are a whole lot of problems in Western civilization (and the world as a whole, but we’ll focus on the West today) and one can’t help but think: how did it all come to this?
 
The answer to this question seems to lie in the past, about 80 years ago, with the findings of Oxford social anthropologist J.D. Unwin in his book called “Sex and Culture”.
 
Unfortunately, I do not currently have access to this book, but thankfully, Father John Peck does and has written a very good article about it on his own website: frjohnpeck.com. The article is titled: “Why Sexual Morality May be Far More Important than You Ever Thought.”
 
In this article, Fr. Peck notes that Unwin examined data from “86 societies and civilizations to see if there is a relationship between sexual freedom and the flourishing of cultures.” In his book, Unwin described four “great patterns of human culture” and levels of flourishing of those cultures based on architecture, art, engineering, literature, agriculture and other sciences. Fr. Peck says that the “primary criterion for classification was how they related to the natural world and the forces it contains.”
 
These four great patterns are as follows:

• Zoistic, which is completely focused on day-to-day affairs, needs and desires with no inherent interest in the understanding of nature. Unwin describes this as a “dead culture” and is the lowest form of civilization, if one can call it that.

 

• Monistic, where a culture adopts superstitious beliefs and/or “special treatment of the dead to cope with the natural world,” as Fr. Peck describes it.

•  Deistic, where cultures attribute powers of nature to a god or gods.  

• And finally, Rationalistic, where cultures use rational thinking to understand nature and make decisions based on this logic and findings.

 
 
Unwin also noted varying degrees of sexual restraint that tend to appear in any given culture. These degrees are divided into two categories of their own: prenuptial (before marriage) and postnuptial (during marriage).
 
First, there is the prenuptial category of Complete Sexual Freedom. As the name suggests, this is where there are zero restrictions on sexuality before marriage.
 
Second, there is Irregular or Occasional Restraint, where “cultural regulations require an occasional period of abstinence.”
 
The final prenuptial category is Strict Chastity, where the culture demands that people remain virgins until marriage.
 
Then, there are four postnuptial categories:

• Modified Monogamy, where people are married to one spouse at any given time, but this relationship can be terminated by either person for any given reason.

 

• Modified Polygamy, where men can have more than one wife (sometimes, it’s the inverse, where a woman has more than one boyfriend or husband, but that is very rare and a product of our time, not something that would really be found during Unwin’s era), but the wife has the right to leave her husband at any point for any reason.

 

• Absolute Monogamy, where people are married to one spouse at a time and the relationship lasts for life (a more Catholic view, and not something I totally agree with, but ideally, the relationship should and would last a lifetime, provided both parties understand the trinity that exists in their relationship, with God being at the head of the husband and wife).  

• Absolute Polygamy, where men can have more than one wife, but wives cannot leave their husbands and must “confine their sexual qualities (activity) to their husband for the whole of their lives.”

 
So, understanding all of these concepts and the way they work in the real world, what are the effects that Unwin ultimately found with these 86 societies and cultures? The short answer: nothing good for the cultures in the long-term if they allow for sexual freedom.
 
According to Fr. Peck, Unwin found that “increased sexual constraints, either pre or post-nuptial, always led to increased flourishing of a culture. Conversely, increased sexual freedom always led to the collapse of a culture three generations later.”
 
This is very significant because we can easily picture our own culture here. During the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Western civilization went through what is known as a “sexual revolution”, where old norms of chastity and virginity were replaced in favor of allowing people to do what they want with whom they want any time they want, provided no laws or human rights were violated. While it used to be that virginity was something to be kept until marriage, the very concept of it is mocked and ridiculed in our time. If someone doesn’t have sex by their late teens or early 20s, that person is considered an outcast if it is known that they are a virgin.
 
Unwin also found the most influential factor in a society’s flourishing to be whether or not prenuptial chastity was a requirement. If it was, that culture would typically flourish, while if it was not, that culture would descend into collapse and eventual replacement by another culture that has more social energy and for this to happen, the replacing culture has to have more sexual restraint.
 
This would explain, at least in part, why Islam is growing at the pace that it is. Of course, factors such as threatening people with “submit or lose your head” are taken into consideration here, but one of the very few pros of Islam is their sexual restrictions (apart from polygamy and killing of homosexuals, that is).
 
In today’s Western culture, if a girl gets pregnant at an early age, that is not usually seen as that big of a deal, even if it is a hindrance on the family, for a number of reasons. For one, abortion is seen as a viable, often preferable, option. Two, pregnancy is what often follows sexual freedom, so it is not seen as completely unexpected, even if not an ideal outcome.
 
But in cultures where there are high levels of sexual restraint, if a girl gets pregnant at an early age, the girl is subject to scorn and the family becomes extremely upset. This type of behavior, though seemingly harsh, tends to be a tool of discouragement for others to do the same.
 
Another of Unwin’s findings is that, when strict prenuptial chastity ceased to be the norm, categories of absolute monogamy, deism and rational thinking would disappear within three generations.
 
This is also rather easy to see in our own culture. With the sexual revolution happening a generation or so ago, we find less people in Western civilization who accept that marriage should be for life (50% divorce rate is the result of this), less people believe in God and less people accept objective truth and opt for subjective lies that comfort them, such as the belief that a man can be a woman and vice versa.
 
Basically, what we see today is the effect of the sexual revolution of the late 20th century. What Unwin noticed in the societies that allowed for sexual freedom are what is happening today: less acceptance in absolute monogamy and more acceptance of ending a marriage on the basis of “I just don’t feel the spark anymore”; less acceptance of God and His Sovereignty and more acceptance of abstract superstitions like cosmology, giving power to the mathematical concept of chance, and believing in “karma” or “chakras” or other nonsense; and less acceptance of objective, provable truths and more acceptance of subjective, improvable lies that serve to comfort the individual and provide them with zero conflict, or at least, that is the advertised objective.
 
These things, Unwin notes, tend to lead to the collapse and replacement of a culture. As previously mentioned, when a culture allows for total sexual freedom, said culture collapses within three generations to a level of essentially being a “dead culture” where people have little interest in anything apart from fulfilling their most carnal desires day in and day out and not seeking, maybe even rejecting, any attempt at actually understanding nature and creation. It is at this level where a culture is often subject to replacement by another culture.
 
I’ve seen semi-joking tweets from Ann Coulter about supporting Islam when there would be stories about Muslim parents protesting schools imposing LGBTQ curricula on students. As I’ve said time and time again in the past, the LGBT agenda and Islam are very antithetical with one another and, under Hegelian Dialectics, are bound to clash at one point or another. That is one of the examples of these two cultures colliding, and given Unwin’s findings, Islam will come out on top here.
 
If Christians were to do the same (and I don’t see many, if any, stories about Christian parents protesting LGBT curricula in schools, likely out of fear of persecution by Leftwing mobs), Christianity would also come out on top, provided it remains resilient on this issue and doesn’t try to give ground away, like the Catholic Church has done in allowing for gay priests, or like some protestant churches have done in allowing “Same-Sex Attracted” pastors to lead congregations.
 
But the very reason any of that has even happened is because of the sexual revolution being so popular in the Western culture in the first place. Churches, fearing people would abandon them, chose to follow the crowd, even if that meant abandoning God and flocking to what is inarguably considered in the Bible to be sinful. As a result, people have still abandoned churches, seeing no real reason to attend, and the churches have abandoned God, so they provide no actual reason for anyone to attend, given that the Gospel is no longer being preached (again, in some churches, not all of them).
 
The reason pastors like Joel Osteen are so popular is because they actually preach the Gospel and provide the basic message of “God loves you despite what you have done if you trust in Him”. This provides a rest from the secular, shallow world and helps people to find meaning in their lives.
 
The secular world, particularly as it allows for sexual freedom, has led to the destruction of the family. Mary Eberstadt researched mass killings, the rise of mental health issues and the surge and dominance of identity politics and found that these are a “primal scream” as a result of “the loss of identity that was once provided by growing up in a long-term, immediate family with siblings and a sizable group of cousins, aunts and uncles, all of which provided identity – essential for well-being,” as Fr. Peck also notes in his article.
 
In other words, the destruction of the nuclear family has given rise to many of the problems we see today, like mass shootings, general mental health issues like depression and anxiety, and the dominance of identity politics and the perceived importance of valuing oneself and identifying oneself based on their physical attributes, sexual desires, or made up victimhoods.
 
And the destruction of the nuclear family can also be traced back to the sexual revolution and to overall sexual freedom. When kids don’t know who one of their parents is, that’s a problem. When kids grow up thinking that having two dads or two moms or more than two parents is normal, that’s a problem. When teenagers are mocked for restricting their own sexual desires, that’s a problem. When people believe marriage to be a “union of love” without any concept of God being a part of that union, that’s a problem. When people conflate love with lust, that’s a problem.
 
These things are all a result of sexual freedom and the sexual revolution of the early 20th century. Western civilization, much as I would hate to admit, will fall if this is not remedied. There is nothing inherently special about Western civilization that would have it be spared of this fate by God, particularly when said civilization is less and less likely to believe in God as time goes on.
 
On this site, we’ve already explained that Israel would often be punished for disobeying God and would be redeemed for returning to God and obeying Him again. Western civilization, having been founded on Christian principles, cannot live apart from such principles, as doing so would divorce it from God.
 
My desire is for Western civilization to return to what it once was: fearful, obedient and loving towards God, who would reciprocate such fear, obedience and love with love and blessings. Note that this does not mean returning to the way everything was in the past. The Left often tries to argue that “Make America Great Again” envisions an America where black people are either segregated from white people or are slaves of white people. That is not what MAGA means whatsoever. It only indicates a desire to return America to the greatness and power it once knew, economically, militarily, and culturally.
 
Unfortunately, while Trump can greatly succeed (and is succeeding as much as he can) in the first two endeavors, the last one is totally out of his hands and things don’t exactly appear to be moving in the right direction in that aspect.
 
If the U.S., and indeed, all of Western culture does not turn this ship around culturally, then it doesn’t matter if the economy is the best we’ve ever seen or if we can win any of the wars we currently are engaged in or possibly could be engaged in, for Western civilization will ultimately be lost as a culture and replaced by another.
 
And given the horrible options of Islam or Chinese supremacy, I would hope that Western civilization will return to God sooner rather than later.
 
Exodus 19:5
“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

Of course, that question in the title is very rhetorical. The answer is that he does not know God. He knows of Him, of course, but does not actually know Him on a personal basis, otherwise, he wouldn’t say the crazy, wrong, and even at times, idolatrous, things that he says.
 
Saint Peter’s Square was holding the inauguration of the Vatican Christmas tree and Nativity scene last Thursday, and the Pope thanked the people of Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige, who donated the tree and the Nativity scene.
 
But in doing so, Il Papa went on a tangent regarding his favorite topic: not the Gospel, but climate change and the “emergency” that we face.
 
“Today’s meeting offers me the opportunity to renew my encouragement to your people, who last year suffered a devastating natural disaster, with the demolition of entire wooded areas. These are events that frighten us; they are alarm signals that creation sends us, which summon us to immediately take effective decisions to safeguard our common home.”
 
Don’t know about you, but it sure sounds like he believes God is not actually sovereign and that the climate depends entirely on us to survive.
 
Of course, this is far from the first time Pope Francis has said ridiculous and seemingly idolatrous things. He’s often lambasted politicians for being “weak” regarding cutting emissions, has encouraged people to “adopt more simple and respectful lifestyles”, though does not show himself to be leading by example, and encourages people to seek the “old-age” wisdom of indigenous peoples and how they treated and lived with nature. Indigenous peoples were people who worshipped nature, not God, so I can see why Pope Francis feels at home with such ideologies.
 
But to return to his quote at Saint Peter’s Square, funny enough, I have already written an article discussing what he is talking about. In an article titled: “There Is No Link Between Climate Change And Extreme Weather Events”, I talk about… well… how there’s no link between climate change and extreme weather events like what northern Italy recently had.
 
If you remember, the ultimate conclusion reached in that article is that scientists researching this very topic found that “any trend of rising ‘climate damages’ were primarily due to increased population densities and economic activity in the path of storms and that it was, at this time, not possible to determine what portion of those damages can be attributed to greenhouse gases, which is something they don’t expect to change in the near future at least.”
 
What’s more, a 2012 IPCC report called “Special Report on Extreme Weather” ultimately agreed with these scientists on their findings that there was no actual statistical connection between climate change and extreme weather events.
 
The only reason any environmentalist whacko says that hurricanes are due to climate change is to frighten people into believing the cult’s ideologies. Because hurricanes exist and because they can cause damage, even death, then there must be a scientific explanation for them (there is). The Left has hijacked science to be a political tool (look at what they are claiming about gender) and insists that these hurricanes, which are real, is a result of man-made climate change, which is not real, and they provide no actual evidence to this.
 
Pope Francis is among the false teachers that the Bible warns us about. 2 Timothy 4:3-4 says the following: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
 
The Pope, much like other Leftists, hates the fact that he is not God Almighty. What the climate cult hopes to achieve is to turn mere mortals into gods, like Greta Thunberg. They seek to have the power of God, able to create and destroy, to be sovereign over all the universe. Convincing people that they have more power than they actually do, and that such power can be harmful to the environment and that this power must be controlled by the government and by the leaders (like Francis) aims to achieve what that letter to Timothy says. In order to suit their own desires, they get teachers (scientists) to say what they want to hear, instead of the truth.
 
It’s extremely obvious that Pope Francis is a false teacher, a false shepherd, a false prophet. He speaks of things he has no clue about, as evident by the fact that he insisted that extreme weather events are a result of climate change. But what is worse, perhaps, is the fact that he has the Truth available to him anytime he wishes to read it and still adamantly rejects it and perverts it.
 
Of course, he doesn’t explicitly say that he rejects the Truth of the Gospel. Doing so would get him removed from the power he has. But he rejects it every time he speaks such falsehoods. He does not trust that the Lord is in control; that He is sovereign over everything, including the weather and the climate of the world. He has no actual faith in God, so he turns to Man. He believes Man has the power to wrestle away control from God with regard to the climate – that we can turn up the temperature or cause it to severely drop if we so chose to.
 
He does not trust that, even if the climate does warm up or cool down, it is because God has created the Earth this way and because He has ordained it to be so. If God wanted to, He could make the climate completely static, utterly unchanging. He and He alone has the power to warm or cool the planet. To believe we are capable of wrestling away such control is heresy.
 
The Pope often says that we are “harming” the planet that God has given us because of the sin in our hearts. Of course, Man is capable of harming nature, there’s no disputing that. We can pollute lakes and other bodies of water. We can pollute the ground. We can pollute the air (by the way, it’s funny but not unexpected that whenever he talks about climate change, Pope Francis always attacks capitalism and does not say anything about China and their egregious polluting practices). However, being able to do that does not mean we are capable of forcing a warming or a cooling of the climate.
 
As stated in previous articles, the climate engages in a cycle of warming periods. There was the Roman Warming Period, which lasted around the same time as the Roman Empire did; there was the Medieval Warming Period and we are currently in the Modern Warming Period. Each of these Warming Periods denote a time when the Earth was abnormally warm, but even then, one can hardly call that “abnormal”. This is a cycle that appears to happen every thousand years, with one Warming Period and with no Warming Period in a millennium, so if it alternates like this, I’d say that the warming and the cooling is not abnormal at all. What would be abnormal would be any break in the cycle, either making the cycle last longer (the Warming Periods usually last 300-600 years) or making them way shorter.
 
This is the way that God has ordained the world to exist for now. One cannot realistically argue that any of these Warming Periods, particularly the Medieval and Roman ones, are a result of man-made climate change or are a result of our lifestyles.
 
The third chapter of the Westminster Confession of faith (which I recognize is a Protestant document, not a Catholic one, but I believe it to be accurate doctrine applicable to anyone who is a follower of Christ) begins with the following words: “God, from all eternity, did by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and immutably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.”
 
You don’t have to be a Protestant to believe these words to be true. You don't even have to be a Christian. If you believe in an all-powerful, sovereign God, you have no choice but to believe these words to be true. Whether you are a Christian, Jew or Muslim, this is something all theists believe and what all atheists do not believe. God, for all of time, by his own wisdom and holy counsel of His very own will, entirely freely and unchangingly ordains whatever happens. That means that nothing happens without His ordaining so. He isn’t caught off-guard by anything; nothing is a surprise to Him. He doesn’t look at anything and say “Didn’t see that one coming”.
 
So to assert that mere men, creation made from dirt by the Holy power of God and made in His own image, are capable of acting in a way that overpowers the will of God is an assertion made by someone whose life and heart and being do not totally belong to Christ. To believe that we are capable of wrestling away control from God in this manner is antithetical to the very belief system present in Christianity.
 
If one does not believe God to be omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent and one does not believe that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, one cannot be considered a believer in God, because whatever god such a person believes in is not the One True God of Scripture and is nothing more than a fictitious, man-made deity, whose characteristics are created by Man, and not the other way around.
 
It is shameful that the man who is considered the head of the Church would be so lacking in faith. And even though he is far from the first Pope to not be a Christian, it is still shameful that such secular people could be put into what is considered the highest honor of Christendom in the mortal realm.
 
Ezekiel 13:9
“My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations. They will not belong to the council of my people or be listed in the records of Israel, nor will they enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign Lord.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

Despite the fact that we recently had the Democrats hosting the first day of the Impeachment Circus, little news came out of it (just like with the Mueller hearings) other than things that are to the detriment of the Democrats (regardless of what people deep in denial might say about this). So, I turn my attention to another piece of recent news: The Salvation Army being defamed by hateful Leftists who pressured a spineless celebrity to threaten to pull out of their halftime show during the Cowboys-Bills Thanksgiving Day game.
 
Singer Ellie Goulding had initially partnered with the Christian organization that helps the homeless and the poor to sing during their halftime show for the Cowboys-Bills game on Thanksgiving Day. But angry Leftists bashed her for helping out The Salvation Army (Goulding had also been volunteering with them in New York) because they accused the organization of having an “anti-LGBTQ” agenda. In other words, Leftists hate that a celebrity would help out a Christian organization, so they throw out this accusation, which is the same one they use for Chick-fil-A, and just like with the chicken sandwich restaurant, it’s nothing but defamation.
 
Goulding, like many other celebrities, caved to the outrage mob and gave the following statement: “Upon researching this, I have reached out to The Salvation Army and said that I would have no choice but to pull out unless they very quickly make a solid, committed pledge or donation to the LGBTQ community. I am a committed philanthropist as you probably know, and my heart has always been in helping the homeless, but supporting an anti-LGBTQ charity is clearly not something I would ever intentionally do. Thank you for drawing my attention to this.”
 
In other words, she did NOT make any research on this and is taking the word of outright liars as the truth, threatening to pull out of the show if The Salvation Army does not quickly make a contribution to the LGBTQ community, aka extortion.
 
The reason I say she did not make any research is because she herself said that The Salvation Army was anti-LGBTQ when they are not.
 
The Salvation Army began in East London in 1865. It was a Protestant church and is now commonly known worldwide as an international charitable organization with the aim of ministering to the needy and bringing the Gospel to the streets. The Salvation Army’s website has a whole section regarding their helping LGBT homeless people. They explain how 40% of homeless youth in America identify as LGBT, nearly 33% of homeless transgender people are rejected from emergency shelters (not associated with The Salvation Army) and that LGBT Americans have a higher chance of being poor.
 
“The Salvation Army USA serves more than 23 million Americans every year. In every ZIP code of America, services are offered without discrimination… When a transgender person seeks help from us, we serve them in the same manner as any other person seeking assistance,” read their site.
 
Even the Prairie Pride Coalition, a gay rights organization in Illinois, advised locals in their community to go to The Salvation Army for help. The Salvation Army also provides people with shelter, job training, and help with substance abuse and food insecurity.
 
To say that The Salvation Army is anti-LGBTQ is a despicable lie. It’s a Christian organization and as such, they have the OBLIGATION to serve, as followers of Christ are called to serve, those around us who need help. That isn’t to say that they promote or support the LGBT agenda or anything of the sort. But doing so isn’t necessary for an organization to do good. Not that hateful bigots on the Left will see it that way. In their eyes, if an organization doesn’t kowtow to their every whim, it should be considered illegitimate in people’s eyes and should be defamed and destroyed.
 
As I have said multiple times in the past, no Christian or Christian organization (at least no true Christian) hates gay people. Why? Because hate is for evil; for Satan. We hate evil because God hates evil. We recognize that homosexuality is a sin and that it’s evil, which is why we do not endorse it or support it. But everyone is a sinner, including Christians, and if we were to discriminate against anyone who was a sinner, literally nothing would ever be done because there isn’t a single person on this earth who isn’t a sinner.
 
Jesus dined with sinners, not because He agreed with their sin or because He was accepting of their sin. Far from it; He dined with them because He did not want them to sin any longer. He forgave the adulterous woman not because He was okay with her sin but because He called on her to not sin any longer. He healed the blind and the lepers, who were considered to be that way because they sinned, not because He agreed with their sinful ways but because He loved them and called on them to not sin any longer, having them recognize Him as the Son of God and do what’s right in God’s eyes.
 
One doesn’t have to be accepting of homosexuality to be charitable to a homosexual. One doesn’t have to agree with the LGBT agenda in order to help the LGBT community where help might be needed.
 
God loves us despite our sin, not because of it. Likewise, we are to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, love our neighbors and even love our enemies, hard as that last one might prove to be. The Salvation Army, being a Christian organization, knows this extremely well and shows that in their good works. For anyone to defame them is utterly shameful, but not something I can be surprised by considering who is doing the defaming.
 
The Left hates Christians, hates God and hates anyone who would dare disagree with them. The Salvation Army, being a Christian organization, is one of their targets for defamation and destruction.
 
But The Salvation Army had a very good response to such defamation:
 
“We’d like to thank Ellie Goulding and her fans for shedding light on misconceptions and encouraging others to learn the truth about The Salvation Army’s mission to serve all, without discrimination. We applaud her for taking the time to learn about the services to the LGBTQ community. Regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, we’re committed to serving anyone in need. Every day, we provide services such as shelter for the transgender community and resources for homeless youth…”
 
The Salvation Army knows that they are not what the hateful Leftists claim they are and are not afraid to fight back against such shameful defamation and ludicrous accusations.
 
As Christians, we are called to witness the Truth of the Gospel to everyone. I don’t know for certain if that is what they do in these shelters still, but I certainly hope they do, as that is what they are supposed to do.
 
But to reiterate, as Christians, we are called to serve and not to judge or discriminate against those who sin. We are, ourselves, sinners and we will be measured by the same rod with which we measure others. When it comes to LGBT people, we are called to rebuke them for their sins with love and try to help them to receive Christ. Same as we would adulterers or criminals or other kinds of sinners, we are to rebuke and help them receive Christ if possible.
 
2 Corinthians 5:21
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.