Category: Apologetics

Examining Dr. McDurmon and American Vision on Immigration

There simply is no biblical reason to refuse legitimate refugees. The Bible is clear that national borders should be open to all peaceful and law abiding individuals. Further, when we properly understand the meaning of the Bible’s teachings on immigrants, we will understand that to loathe refugees is to loathe ourselves and our own nation.

Dr. Joel McDurmon
American Vision

1.) First we would note that Dr. McDurmon confuses the issue somewhat by conflating the categories of “refugee” and “immigrants.” A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her home country, while an immigrant is someone who chooses to resettle to another country. There is a third category of “asylee” that is part of the conversation. These distinctions are important in this kind of conversation for without them it makes it even more difficult to make progress in the conversation.

2.) Dr. McDurmon makes this assertion in the face of what many have styled as “civilizational Jihad.” The recent deceased  Muammar Gaddafi, noted,

“We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe—without swords, without guns, without conquest—will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”

Consistent with Gaddafi’s observation, authors Sam Solomon and E. Al Maqdisi in their book, “Modern Day Trojan Horse; The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration,” call Muslim immigration to the West a “modern day Trojan Horse.” They go on to note that,“Mohammed himself proclaimed that migration is jihad,” and provides a flourish with. “from the Islamic jurisprudence view the immigration of the Muslims to the West is to be regarded as the most important step on the ladder for achieving the establishment of an Islamic state in the West. This is the primary objective of Islamic Mission in the West.”

Dutch political leader, Geert Wilders again echoes the above sentiments by noting that, “gradual and incremental transformation of our societies and legal systems, or what is termed ‘Isalmisation’ of our democratic societies by the vast growing numbers of Muslim immigrants who are importing Islam into our Western way of life.”

Ann Corcoran in her book, “Refugee Resettlement and the Hijra to America,” writes Hijara means migration and, according to Islam’s doctrine and its quietly acknowledged organizational strategies, the goal of migration, today is not peaceful assimilation to the political system and mores of the host country. Instead, the goal is jihad by non-violent means known as civilizational jihad or Islamization.

Would Dr. McDurmon have us believe that God would be pleased with embracing a immigration pattern, the soul intent of which is squashing what little remains of Biblical Christianity, by a Muslim immigration horde intended to be used as a hammer of submission to obliterate the Christian remnant in the West and all this to the end of the Humanist attempt to establish a New World Order?

3.) Next we would note that Dr. McDurmon is  just wrong in this assertion above, as OT Scholar Dr. James Hoffmeier points out ,

“The very positive statements about the treatment of strangers in the Bible, some of which were already quoted, show compassion for the alien in ancient Israel. The defenders of illegal aliens point to these passages as the rationale for rewriting current laws. The problem is that they make a simplistic correlation between the ancient Israelite social law and the modern situation as if the Bible was addressing the same problem. Three important questions must be raised before one attempts to apply Israelite law to the modern situation: 1) Was there such a thing as territorial sovereignty in the second millennium B.C. when these laws originated; 2) Within that socio-legal setting, what was a “stranger” or “sojourner;” and 3) How does one obtain this status?”

The fact of the matter is that McDurmon has likewise rushed passed these distinctions just as he rushed by the distinctions between “refugee” and “immigrant.” McDurmon completely disregards the distinction between the differing words in the OT translated as differing times as “stranger,” “foreigner,” “alien,” and “sojourner.” This is a significant error and reveals a certain sloppiness on Dr. McDurmon’s part.

In point of fact, as Ehud Would has written, putting the strongest contradiction possible to Dr. McDurmon’s opening quote,

“In biblical law foreign races were permitted to enter the border only under patronage and direct legal oversight of a native. Whether ambassadors, contracted laborers, or slaves, they were forbade from owning land, ascending to any positions of political power, forbidden to marry members of the nation, and weren’t allowed to lend to natives at interest (though natives could do so toward them). Nor could aliens conscript natives to perpetual slavery, but natives could buy chattel slaves so long as they were of other peoples. And any of foreign breed who would not consent to these terms for entry of Israel’s border was regarded a hostile invader and subject to forcible expulsion as in the cases of the mass deportations under Ezra and Nehemiah.”

Dr. James Hoffmeier, unlike Dr. McDurmon in the opening quote, pays close attention to the different OT Hebrew words that are so significant in this discussion, and confirms much of Ehud Would’s observation immediately above,

“The delineation between the “alien” or “stranger” (ger) and the foreigner (nekhar or zar) in biblical law is stark indeed. The ger in Israelite society, for instance, could receive social benefits such as the right to glean in the fields (Leviticus 19:9-10; Deuteronomy 24:19-22) and they could receive resources from the tithes (Deuteronomy 26:12-13). In legal matters, “there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the LORD. One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you” (Numbers 15:15-16). In the area of employment, the ger and citizen were to be paid alike (Deuteronomy 24:14-15). In all these cases, no such provision is extended to the nekhar or zar. In a sense, the gerwere not just aliens to whom social and legal protections were offered, but were also considered converts, and thus could participate in the religious life of the community, e.g. celebrate Passover (Exodus 12:13) and observe Yom Kippur, the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:29-30). They were, moreover, expected to keep dietary and holiness laws (Leviticus 17:8-9 & 10-12). It is well known that within Israelite society, money was not to be lent with interest, but one could loan at interest to a foreigner (nekhar). These passages from the Law make plain that aliens or strangers received all the benefits and protection of a citizen, whereas the foreigner (nekhar) did not. It is wrong, therefore, to confuse these two categories of foreigners and then to use passages regarding the ger as if they were relevant to illegal immigrants of today.”

4,) Another problem with Dr. McDurmon’s quote above is that Dr. McDurmon is calling for the State to have charity but as Dr. R. J. Rushdoony notes, “the state has no part in charity; the scripture never says that the state is to administer it. ” Rushdoony, in the same lecture,  “Justice and World Law,” offers about this issue of immigration,  “first of all they [illegal immigrants] have broken the law. And justice to everyone requires that the law be upheld. So if they are illegal aliens they should be deported. Now that’s justice because it’s comparable to breaking and entering into a man’s house.” From this quote we see that Dr. Rushdoony also disagrees with Dr. McDurmon’s opening quote.

In conclusion it is interesting that seemingly all of Institutional Christendom is insisting that civilizational Jihad must be embraced, and that the West must embrace its death by commandment of God. Whether it is the long acknowledged Left like the “Sojourners” organization or whether it is the Cultural Marxist Churches, or whether it is organizations like Lutheran World Relief or Catholic Relief Services or any number of other Denominational organizations what Christian laity are almost universally being told is that that if they don’t support the dissolution of themselves in their undoubted catholic Christian faith and as a people and  they don’t love Jesus and are guilty of Racism. This call to accept civilizational jihad now even comes from those organizations that heretofore were considered “conservative” such as American Vision.

Christians need to be assured that they can oppose immigration and still be considered Christ honoring. Opposition to the kind of immigration that is being foisted upon the West today can happen in the context of obeying the 1st commandment, the 5th commandment, and the 8th commandment. Opposition to the kind of immigration that is being foisted upon us today can be embraced on the basis of the admonition of the necessity to provide for one’s own household.  Opposition to the kind of immigration that is being foisted upon us today can be embraced on the basis of the same kind of love for our people that we find St. Paul expressing in Romans 9:3. In point of fact, I would insist that opposing the kind of immigration that is being foisted on the West today is the duty of every Christ loving Christian.

“

Theopolis Institute’s Terrible Article On Immigration

First, we should clarify that there is not the slightest shred of biblical justification for any government to legislate against the free movement of law-abiding citizens from one country to another. There should be no laws against immigration.

Rev. Steve Jeffery
Federal Visionist UK Pastor
Federal Visionist Theopolis Institute

Now think about this for just a second.

If the above were true why would it not similarly be true that there is not the slightest shred of biblical justification for any government to legislate against the free movement of law-abiding citizens from one family’s property to another family’s property? After all, all nations are are extended families.

Unrestricted immigration is a violation of the 8th commandment since the kind of movement required in untrammeled immigration means the disregarding of the ownership of property. The fact that the State claims ownership of all property is the only thing that keeps untrammeled immigration from being clearly seen as theft. Because we think that, since the State owns everything ,the State, as owner of everything, has the place to open up borders in order to give to the alien and stranger what belongs to the home born. In order for Rev. Jeffrey to make this claim he must first assume the State is owner of everything and so can make laws that allow the placement of the alien and stranger above the home born.

Remember that Rev. Jeffery said above that there is not the slightest shred of biblical justification for any government to legislate against the free movement of law-abiding citizens from one country to another. I have already given more than a shred by invoking the 8th commandment.

Another fact that shreds Rev. Jeffery’s “not a shred” argument is the 6th commandment which requires us to not only “not murder,” but also that,

“I am not to dishonour, hate, injure, or kill my neighbour by thoughts, words, or gestures, and much less by deeds, whether personally or through another … ”

And yet the kind of immigration that Rev. Jeffrey is calling for is a case of dishonoring, hating and injuring our own family and neighbors by supporting a policy that will create a permanent economic underclass. The kind of policy that Rev. Jeffrey is calling for will result in eliminating the middle class while creating a have vs. have not social order. The support for this statement can be found in Harvard Economist George Borjas analysis in this article,

http://cis.org/node/4573

Rev. Jeffrey and the Theopolis institute are confusing sojourning with integration. Biblical sojourning was segregated. This handy chart reveals that there were different categories for non resident and that the non resident remained distinct from the resident member of the Nation.

http://www.biblestudytools.com/encyclopedias/isbe/stranger-and-sojourner-in-the-old-testament.html

These Old Testament distinctions are completely disregarded by Rev. Jeffrey and the Theopolis Institute. This is a ham-handed handling of Scripture on the part of Rev. Jeffrey and the Theopolis Institute and makes for a distinct misrepresentation of truth and reality.

 
This whole line of thinking would be news to Moses who asked permission for Israel to merely pass through Edom. And when permission was denied, he offered to pay a toll. After that was denied, Israel went round Edom. Moses never insinuated that Israel had a right to pass through on the grounds that “the free movement of law-abiding citizens from one country to another” may not be impeded.
 
This is Libertarian make believe without a shred of justification from Scripture.

A Christian take on non-Christian views masquerading as Christian views on Kim Davis

The following is a response to this,

That Public Square Thing

1.) I don’t buy the “pluralism” argument as enjoined against Kim Davis. This idea insists that, since we are not a Christian nation, therefore Christians must tolerate and live with pagan practices, such as sodomite marriage, of heathen practitioners. Those who argue for this tolerance for pluralism seem always fail to realize that toleration is a device used to introduce a new law-system as a prelude to a new intolerance. Secondly, as it pertains to pluralism what most people don’t seem to recognize is that pluralism always hides a monotheistic non-pluralistic order where the God is the State policing how far the other gods in the pluralistic order can walk in the public square. Since, it is impossible for the God-State to exist without being animated by some belief system that belief system, which always animates every Government in existence, mocks the whole nonsense of “separation of Church and State,” as that phrase is currently used and understood. More on “separation of church and state later.”
 
2.) Some have argued that because Kim Davis issues marriage licenses to those who, in a manner inconsistent with the Scripture, are marrying again, after being un-biblically divorced, therefore Kim Davis is being inconsistent by refusing to issue marriage licenses to sodomites and lesbians who, like their heterosexual counter-parts, are also marrying un-biblically. This argument seems to posit that since some of God’s standards for marriage have been abandoned therefore all of God’s standards for marriage must be abandoned. This is like arguing that since we let a filthy and unclean dog in the house therefore we are inconsistent if we don’t let that filthy and unclean dog eat from the table or sleep in our bed. What will follow from this type of reasoning? Will we now argue that since County Clerks issue marriage licenses to sodomites they therefore must give marriage licenses to necrophiliacs and to Farmer Clyde and his prize milk cow Bessie?

Do you see why the wise are telling you that Obergefell vs. Hodges is the end of marriage having any stable meaning?

 
3.) Many ministers and others who are championing ignorant opinions on the Kim Davis case have no understanding regarding our law and the way it works. First, on this score, no law condoning sodomite marriage currently exists. Constitutionally speaking only Congress can make law. Article 1 Section 1 of the Constitution states, “All legislative power herein granted is vested in a Congress….” Please understand that ‘All’ means all. Congress has passed no law allowing for sodomite marriage. No law like that exists. SCOTUS, constitutionally speaking, can not legally make law. SCOTUS only interprets law. Can anyone take me to the law or point to the law that says that sodomites can marry? They can’t because no such law exists.

Second, on this score, even if the US Congress had passed a law saying that “sodomites can marry” such a law would be null and void before the ink was put to the page and county clerks would be under no obligation to follow such an illegal legality. The Federal Government is restricted, by the US Constitution (our covenant document) to only the enumerated and delegated powers outlined by the US Constitution. Guess what folks? Granting sodomites the legal right to marry is not one of the Federal Governments “delegated or enumerated powers.” I’ve read the US Constitution. Such a enumerated and delegated power is just not there.
 
Third, the 9th and 10th amendment make the above paragraph abundantly clear. Law on matters not enumerated or delegated to the Feds are reserved to the States or the people.
 
Amendment IX
 
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
 
Amendment X
 
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
 
Now, the Feds can certainly interpret this language any way they damn please but all because the Feds say the US Constitution gives them the authority to judicially or legislatively force sodomite marriage down our collective throats doesn’t mean that the US Constitution agrees with the Feds. Repeat after me slowly … “The Feds have zero Constitutional authority that allows them to force upon the States sodomite marriage.”
 
So, that being said we pause to ask, ‘How can the federal courts enforce a law that Congress, Constitutionally speaking, cannot even make”?
 
Fourth, on this score,since the Feds can point to no law passed by any legitimate Congress, wherein it is required that the States embrace sodomite marriage, Kim Davis is exactly correct in following the only law that speaks to the matter — Kentucky law. Kentucky law is the only law that currently exists on this subject and Kentucky law does not allow for sodomite marriage. It is everyone else besides Davis who are not following the Law. Let them sit and rot in jail.
 
4.) Some have argued that Kim Davis should do the “honorable thing and resign.” These folks fail to realize that Kim Davis is acting as a Public person. She does not have the luxury of resigning if she is take her public vows seriously. She, in her public capacity, is protecting her constituents from violating the current law of the land of Kentucky. In point of fact, a resignation would be the dishonorable thing for her to do.
5.) A brief word again on the “separation of Church and State.”
 
a.) The ability to completely divorce Church and State is a impossibility. All States reflect and are animated by some God or god concept as taught by some church somewhere. As the State has to do with creating and enforcing a societal law order. all states are expressly religious as all law is nothing but religion externalized into the social order.
 
b.) there is indeed a jurisdictional distinction between Church and State that absolutely must be abided by. The State, jurisdictionally speaking, is the realm of justice. The Church, jurisdictionally speaking, for the Christian, is the realm of grace offered and / or conferred in Word and Sacrament. The distinction exists. However, a jurisdictional distinction is far different than the idea of a “separation” as that is currently invoked.
 
c.) The phrase “separation of Church and State” is not part of our founding documents. The usage of it arose in a private letter of President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist convention in 1802. Jefferson’s phrase, “separation of Church and State” was not invoked as part of our political landscape until invoked in a SCOTUS “Everson vs. Board of Education” in 1947. The invocation of this unfortunate and misunderstood phrase has been lamented by legal scholars. In 1962, Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, complained that jurisprudence was not “aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the ‘wall of separation,’ a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution.” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, likewise found the phrase “separation of church and state” lamentable, In addressing the issue in 1985, Rhenquist noted “unfortunately the Establishment Clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson’s misleading metaphor for nearly 40 years.”
 
d.) Until Everson the Establishment clause, which was originally intended to be applied only fully to the Federal Government (i.e. — The Federal Government could not create a religious establishment for all the states) was now fully applied to all the states so that the Federal government would insure that the States also had a wall of separation between church and state. (The famous doctrine of incorporation.)
 
Separation of church and state is a myth, created by a progressive court for the purpose of setting the influence of Christianity aside in favor of more enlightened views. The Founders never envisioned a State that was separated from religious influence. Their intent was to insure that the Feds didn’t influence the States in the states having established religions.
 
6.) And even if 1-5 were inaccurate (and they’re not) “Let God be true and every man a liar.”
 
The point here is that those who tell you that Kim Davis is in violation of the law just don’t know what they are talking about. A second point here is that Christian ministers, who speak of the need for pluralism, are in point of fact saying that Christian ministers must champion polytheism for the public square. Pluralism is just not possible without polytheism. Don’t you think it passing strange that a Christian minister would tell you that God is pleased with Christians insisting that God is pleased by requiring room for false gods in the public square? 

Midland Apologetics

If you’d like to see Jeff’s end of the conversation cut and paste the below link and go to comments.

http://www.ourmidland.com/blogs/truth-and-meaning-i-am-racist/article_9d2c6626-4db1-11e5-b016-1392ceb74318.html

Jeff Liebmann

In a package that is given to teachers by the Toronto District School Board called “Teaching about Human Rights: 9/11 and Beyond,” it states that “While people in different contexts can experience prejudice or discrimination, racism, in a North American context, is based on an ideology of the superiority of the white race over other racial groups.”

Only two groups would ever admit to such beliefs: white supremacists and disciples of Foucault. The difference is that the one group adopts it sadistically, to oppress and punish their inferiors; the other does so masochistically, to oppress and punish themselves. The primary thrust of the TDSB’s policy is a symptom of a new religion which seeks to propitiate cultural guilt. It constitutes a new form of atonement, a social constructivist scapegoat.

Jeff, you are a high priest in that new religion.

Bret

_____________

Jeff Liebmann

1.) Where does the bible teach that dark skinned people are the offspring of Cain? Chapter and verse please.

2.) Institutional racism is a myth. The embrace of such an idea only proves your white guilt and self loathing. Your desire to “level the playing field,” is an attempt for you, in a masochistic hue, to provide your own false propitiation for your false guilt.

3.) White privilege is what you’d expect to find in a white country. Who goes to Japan or China and complains about Yellow privilege? Who goes to Africa and complains about Black privilege? If I were to visit your home I would not be upset with you in the least if you practiced Liebmann privilege. Indeed, throughout my life I have unabashedly shown McAtee privilege in my home. For example, I bought my children clothes and not all the other children on the block. I bough my children books and not all the other children in the city. I took my children on vacation with me and not all the other children in the state.

This whole notion of “White Privilege,” is inculcated to create false guilt while turning white people into Masochist seeking to atone for their false guilt by a false propitiation.

The idea that we practice White privilege in this country has seen the lie put to it by our affirmative action legislation, by our electing a black President, by electing Indian governors in two Southern states, etc. etc. etc.

But your self loathing and guilt will never be satisfied.

Jeff, the only thing that can answer your false guilt is the work of Jesus Christ for sinners such as you and I. Christ died on the cross to turn away the Father’s just wrath against those who would claim His prerogatives. The death of Christ was a taking away of the true guilt of those who would give up their false guilt. The death of Christ alone can answer your masochistic tendencies to destroy yourself and so many others. God commands you to repent Jeff of this theology that would pull God off His throne in favor of your own imaginings.

I’m just one beggar trying to tell you as another beggar where to find bread Jeff.

____________________

Jeff Liebmann

1.) You said the Scriptures taught that dark skinned people were the offspring of Cain. I asked for chapter and verse. You then demonstrate that there is no chapter and verse. Therefore I conclude that you were wrong when you stated that the Bible teaches that dark skinned people were the offspring of Cain. That people read into the Scripture something that was not there does not prove the Scriptures teach such a thing. Interesting that you are making the same kind of error that those folks made by misrepresenting the facts.

2.) My second point is only argumentative in the sense that your moral sense about “common decency” is uncommonly immoral. Your solution for what you perceive to be the problem of white privilege is not to lift minorities up but rather to pull white people down so that all people are equally miserable. Your advocacy of “white privilege” and “institutional racism” fills people, who are not yet successful, with a real envy based on false facts. This is why I insist that your moral sense of “common decency” is uncommonly immoral. Instead of advocating a position that would inspire people to achieve, you come with a message of grievance, jealousy, and envy. All of which has the effect, not to lift people up, but rather to pull people down. This is altogether unseemly of you and does not befit a man of the cloth.

3.) Your linked article merely tells me what white privilege is according to the Marxist worldview in which you share. It tells me nothing about truth. As the previous paragraph, its only intent is to either fill people with false guilt, or to create in them a canker eating envy. In both cases you are doing the devil’s work Jeff.

And yet despite all this I’ve laid out you want to characterize your position as acceptance and openness? You splay your intolerance all over your writings and then have the chutzpah to characterized that as “reason and discernment.” You enjoin people unto false guilt, self loathing, jealousy and envy and then you talk about how you serve a god who ‘loves all people for their gifts just as they are.’

I’m more then willing to let the reader decide who is ranting and who is merely giviing the facts.

Shalom,

 

Sexuality and Man & Woman as Image Bearers of God

In the embrace of homosexuality there is the attempt to strip off the imago dei by the Lesbian or sodomite in question. Sexuality is so closely tied up with the Image of God in men and women that when one defiles and reverses their sexuality they at the same time are seeking to rip the image of God out of themselves.

The reason this can be advanced is that male and female together comprise the image of God.

Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

When a man or a woman seek to strip themselves of their God ordained sexuality they are therefore seeking to undress themselves of the Image of God appointed to them in their composite role as image bearers.

There is also the reality that in man and woman together reflecting the character of God, in all their glorious God appointed sexuality, the fact that, together as image bearers, they reflect the one and the many found in the Unity and plurality of the Godhead. In seeking to strip off their God ordained masculine or feminine sexuality there is the attempt to turn God into a monad absent of His plurality.

The embrace then of Lesbianism and / or Sodomy then is, at its foundational level, an attack on God via the means of the attempt to erase God’s Image by erasing God’s ordained sexuality placed upon the man and the woman as God’s creaturely image bearers.

This explains why this particular sin is so dangerous and why St. Paul can write,

I Corinthians 6:17 — Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.

The lesbian and / or the sodomite is sinning against their own body because by illicit coupling they seek to disembody themselves of the image of God contained in their physical bodies as given in their sexuality.

Sexual sin is particularly primal. It goes to the core of our identity as image bearers of God. While one can never successfully sanitize themselves of the fact that they are the Imago Dei, one can so twist their self understanding of the reality that they are image bearers that the twisting begins to approach a searing of the conscience so severe that few recover.