The US Policy of White European Cultural Genocide

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

Bertolt Brecht

Brecht’s poem has become quite useful as we are living through a time when the State is seeking to, as Obama promised to “fundamentally transform America.” It is past apparent now that part of what Obama meant in his promise to “fundamentally transform America” was to diminish and perhaps even dissolve America of its Historic White Anglo Saxon Christian heritage.

A key rule of thumb when it comes to politics is to never listen to what politicians say but to always watch what they do. If we follow that rule of thumb we find that our political class is intent, in Brecht’s words, in dissolving the people and electing another. Thomas Fleming put it well in a recent article when he wrote, “The secret is out.  The American ruling class in both political parties despise the people they rule.  They hate their religion, their traditions, their culture, and their history.”

The evidence of this is ubiquitous. From the illegal immigration policy that has been pursued by both Republican and Democratic administrations to the tune of the relocation of 25% of Mexico’s population to these united States to IRS pursuit and harassment of overwhelmingly White Tea Party Organizations to Democratic Presidential contender Martin O’Malley apologizing for saying that not only to black lives matter but so do white lives and all lives matter to Obama’s insistence that, “We are no longer a Christian Nation,” to the SCOTUS decision to legalize sodomite marriage,” to Obama’s dowsing the White House in Rainbow Sodomite lighting in celebration of the SCOTUS decision to the exact opposite response wherein Obama initially refuses to fly the US Flag at the White House at half mast in honor of five dead white soldiers murdered by the 1965 immigration act, to the Federal Government’s recent HUD decision to bribe communities into forcefully integrating to the distribution of the 2009 Missouri Information Analysis Center report warning Missouri police against Americans who know the Constitution as potential terrorists  what has been consistently pursued by the our political class is the dissolving of America of both its White European ethnic substratum as well as the Christian faith which made the White European people the people that they have historically been.

Now when you combine all this with the recent push by many Church denominations in insisting that somehow if a White Church is not integrated then Jesus is displeased as well as the constant media push that racially blended families are the ideal what one sees is a confluence of cultural gatekeepers working to fundamentally transform America from its White European Christian roots to an America that is minority white wherein the prominent religion is cultural Marxism often masquerading and mislabeled as “Christianity.” This is not accidental and all of this borders on fulfilling the United Nations definition of “genocide.” Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as,

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part1 ; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

The underscoring of this is found in the recent assault of the symbols of Historic Christian America. In South Carolina, second generation Indian Nikki Haley, though Christian, testifies that she remains proud of growing up in the Sikh faith and would “never disown her roots” while finding herself more than willing to disown the roots of her White Christian constituents by taking down the St. Andrews Cross flag. In Memphis, Tennessee they’d like to disinter the remains of a White Southern Hero and his wife so as to scandalize and criminalize white Southern History. All of this is the attempt to steal the History and so the identity of a people so as to force upon them a new identity. Quoting Milan Kundera here, “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history.” Without a past, we are not a people, we are just abstractions of the Cultural Marxist Utopian minds, to be eliminated whenever it becomes politically expedient to do so. And the expedient moment has come: The white man must be eliminated, to make way for a new people purged of the sins of the past and ready to live and strive in the new non-Christian, non-white utopia of the future.

If not ethnic genocide it is at the very least cultural genocide and always the policy of those who were intent on vanquishing and squashing conquered nations.

This policy of subjugation was captured in the film Braveheart where Uncle Argyle says to young Wallace, upon the death of their kin and as observing the midnight mourning of their clan around the grave, “They are saying goodbye in their own way. Playing outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes.” True, to paraphrase Lincoln, we can not absolutely know that all these moving parts are the result of a premeditated plan. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen — George W., Barack, Russell Moore, and Nikki Haley, for instance — and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few — not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single piece be lacking, we can see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared to yet bring such piece in — in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that George W., Barack, Russell Moore, and Nikki Haley, and their many co-laborers  all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was struck.

It is simply the case, when one objectively examines the facts, that White Anglo Saxon Christian America is being subjugated by Rainbow Cultural Marxists. And though it is a sin to notice, you will forgive me if I notice when war is being waged against me and mine and if I object to my faith and my people being subjugated.

Please forgive me as I seek to wake up the remnant.

 

 

O’Malley’s Apologizes For Saying Some Lives Matter

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley apologized on Saturday for saying “All lives matter” while discussing police violence against African-Americans with liberal demonstrators.

Several dozen demonstrators interrupted the former Maryland governor while he was speaking here at the Netroots Nation conference, a gathering of liberal activists, demanding that he address criminal justice and police brutality. When they shouted, “Black lives matter!” a rallying cry of protests that broke out after several black Americans were killed at the hands of police in recent months, O’Malley responded: “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.”

 The demonstrators who were mostly black, responded by booing him and shouting him down.
_________1.) Can you imagine booing someone for saying that “all lives matter”?

2.) Can you imagine apologizing for saying “all lives matter”?

3.) If white people booed and shouted someone down a black candidate for saying that “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter can” you imagine the hue and cry?

4.) Clearly there is a double standard here and when one has to apologize for saying “white lives matter … all lives matter” how can it not be the case that what is being communicated is that white lives do not matter?

5.)Keep in mind that the high profile cases of late that has found the death of black people at the hands of police the only one where a white officer alone was involved was in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson Mo. In the Freddie Grey case in Baltimore there were Black cops involved. In the Eric Garner case in New York there were Black cops involved. In the Trayvon Martin case, Mr. Martin was shot by a non white person.

Now, even where there is white assault on black people we needs keep in mind that this is a problem, if it is a problem, that does not move just one direction. Just over a decade ago John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, two black men, went on a sniper rampage killing 10 white people. During the trial Malvo testified that his accomplice Muhammad, driven by hatred of America because of its “slavery, hypocrisy and foreign policy” and his belief that “the white man is the devil”, planned to kill six whites a day for 30 days. Malvo further testified that Muhammad wanted him to shoot pregnant white women.

Beyond Martin O’Malley being a sniveling and pandering coward, why should he be required to apologize for adding to the truth that “black lives matter,” the corresponding truths that “white lives matter, all lives matter?”

When we see Politicians of the highest profile apologizing for saying that “white lives matter,” and “all lives matter,” as well as saying the truth that “black lives matter,” then in my estimation what is being proclaimed that indeed many lives don’t matter. The corollary of that would be that if many lives don’t matter then its open season on those lives.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/07/20/martin_omalley_apologizes_for_saying_all_lives_matter.html

The Enlightenment Use of Passions as Vehicle for Control

Classical ethics proposes restraint as the means of freedom; Sade proposes vice as the way to freedom; indeed Sade’s political theory proposes freedom as a way of annihilating moral restraint, but ends by imposing another more severe restraint in its place, thus introducing the central paradox of the Enlightenment: freedom equals control. ‘As we gradually proceed to our enlightenment,’ Sade writes giving the standard physics of the enlightenment as his starting point.

‘we cam more and more to feel that, motion being inherent in matter, the prime mover existed only as an illusion, and that all that exists essentially having to be in motion, the motor was useless; we sensed that this chimerical divinity, prudently invented by the earlier legislators, was in their hand, simply one more means to enthrall us.’

In classical physics, all objects were at rest unless moved by some agent; in Newtonian physics, all objects were in motion unless halted by some greater opposing force. The same could be said of Sade’s politics, which he derived from Newton’s physics. In an inversion of both Plato and Aristotle, Sade saw ‘insurrection’ as the natural state of men, who are nothing more than machines made out of matter in which motion was inherent. Since the passions are the moral equivalent of gravity, the successful government is not on which stifles passion, but rather one that foster it, and then directs the subsequent motions to its own ends. The state, in other words, should foster vice as an instrument of control:

‘The Greek lawgivers,’ Sade writes,

‘perfectly appreciated the capital necessary of corrupting the member citizens in order that their moral dissolution coming into conflict with the establishment and its values, there would result the insurrection that is always indispensable to a political system of perfect happiness which, like republican government, must necessarily excite the hatred and envy of all its foreign neighbors. Insurrection, thought these sage legislators, is not at all a moral condition; however, it has got to be a republic’s permanent condition. Hence it would be no less absurd than dangerous to require that those who are to insure the perpetual immoral subversion of the established order be moral beings: for the state of a moral man is one of tranquility and peace, the state of an immoral man is one of perpetual unrest that pushes him to, and identifies him with the necessary insurrection in which the republican must always keep the government of which he is a member.’

Sade’s politics is the classical tradition turned upside down. The key insight of both the Marquis de Sade and the Christian West is that the moral man is in a state of peace; he is, in other words, not in motion and so therefore impossible to direct and control from the outside. The revolutionary’s very restlessness, his very rebellion against the moral order, which is the source of his restlessness, holds within it the seeds of control because once in motion the state need only manipulate the revolutionary’s desire by controlling his passions, and it succeeds in manipulating and thereby controlling him. Sade is not slow in drawing this very conclusion. ‘ Lycugus and Solon,’ Sade tells us,

‘fully convinced that immodesty’s results are to keep the citizen in the immoral state indispensable to the mechanics of republican government, obliged to exhibit themselves naked at the theater.”

Lust in other words, is the force which keeps the citizenry of the republic from succumbing to the inertia of tranquility which is the fruit of adherence to the moral order. At this point we enter into something like a circular argument. Lust is good because it fosters the restlessness of republicanism, but republicanism is also good because it fosters lust. Either way what we have here is the rationalization of desire as an instrument of simultaneous ‘liberation’ and control; what was hither to deemed pathological is not to be seen as social norm:

We are persuaded that lust, being a product of those penchants, is not to be stifled or legislated against, but that it is, rather, a matter of arranging for the means whereby passion may be satisfied in peace. We must hence undertake to introduce order into this sphere of affairs, and to establish all the security necessary so that, when need sends the citizen near the objects of lust, he can give himself over to doing with them all this his passions demand, without ever being hampered by anything, for there is no moment in the life of man when liberty in its whole amplitude is so important to him.”

Liberty, according to this line of thought is the ability not to act according to reason, but rather th ability to gratify illicit passion, which means that in the very act of attaining his ‘liberty’ man becomes the thrall of the passion he gratifies. Before long, it becomes clear that Sade’s politics is in many ways just the physics he says it is. Man at the beck of passion is in many ways like a particle with no will of its own, since reason, especially morals, is the soul source of man’s ability to govern himself. And once gratification of passion becomes the definition of ‘liberty,’ then ‘liberty’ becomes synonymous with control because he who controls the passion controls the man. Liberty, as defined by Sade, becomes a prelude to the most insidious form of totalitarian control known to man. This was the genius of Enlightenment politics, which is in reality nothing more than a physics of vice. Incite the passion; control the man; this is the esoteric doctrine of the Enlightenment, one that has been refined for over 200 years through a trajectory that involves everything from psychoanalysis to advertising to pornography and the role it plays in the Kulturkampf. Sade clearly understands that sexual liberation leads to social control and sees this liberation and subsequent control of passion as the basis of permanent revolution that life in France would become ‘If You Would Become Republicans.’

‘No passion has a greater need of the widest horizon of liberty than sexual license,’ he writes, 

‘here it is that man likes to command, to be obeyed, to surround himself with slaves to satisfy him; well, whenever you withhold from man the secret means whereby he exhales the dose of despotism Nature instilled in the depths of his heart, h will seek other outlets for it, it will be vented upon  nearby objects; it will trouble the government. If you would avid that danger, permit a free flight and rein to those tyrannical desires which, despite himself, torment man ceaselessly: content with having been able to exercise his small dominion in ht middle of the harem of sultanas and yours whose submission your good offices and his money procure for him, he will go away appeased and with nothing but fond feelings for a government which so obligingly affords him every means of satisfying his concupiscence.’

There are a number of ironies here, some obvious some not. One irony is obvious: Once man is freed from the moral order, he is immediately subjected to the despotism of those who know how to manipulate his desires. This is the essence of the enlightenment regime; not to prohibit, but to enable, to encourage motion or restlessness, and direct the flow of that activity by manipulating desire. This is the political genius behind a regime that is based on advertising and pornography and opinion polls and the other instruments which control liberated man.”

E. Michael Jones
Monsters From the Id — pg. 85 – 88

 

Ravi Zacharias on the “Sacredness” of Race and Ethnicity and Sexuality

“She said you know I have a problem with Christianity. And here’s my problem. Christians are generally against racism but when it comes to the homosexual they discriminate against the homosexual. How do you explain that?…

Here is want I want to say to you. The reason that we believe that discrimination ethnically is wrong is because the race and ethnicity of a person is sacred. You do not violate a person’s ethnicity and race. It is a sacred gift. And the reason we believe in an absoluteness to sexuality is because we believe sexuality is sacred as well…. You will help me if you would tell me why you treat race as sacred and desacralize sexuality.

Ravi Zacharias
6 minute mark of video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=465&v=nPYRXop7aPA

sa·cred
ˈsākrəd/
adjective
  1. connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration.

So, according to Ravi sexuality is sacred therefore one is not to marry across unnatural boundaries of sex (i.e. — men with men or women with women). Likewise, according to Ravi, race or ethnicity is likewise sacred. Therefore it would seem we must likewise conclude, according to Ravi, that one is not to marry across unnatural boundaries of sacred race just as we are not to marry across unnatural boundaries of sacred sexuality.  If both race and sexuality are sacred, per Ravi, then both race and sexuality as sacred constituent aspects of who we are and of who God created us to be and so must be respected and honored when it comes to entering into marriage. If Ravi is going to say that Christians can not abide homosexual marriage because of the sacredness of sexuality then, if race or ethnicity is equally sacred, per Ravi, how could Ravi consistently, and without contradiction, advocate that entering into inter-racial marriage is something a Christian should advocate?

Ravi might want to rethink this one. If these connections were widely made Ravi’s popularity would suffer, I’m sure.

Mark 4:35-41 …. Peace, Be Still

From the very Beginning of Scripture we have imagery of the creational Spirit of God moving in a setting of a chaotic water existence bringing order into being by God’s Sovereign Word.

The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”   (Genesis 1:2)

This theme of water being associated with the dark forces of chaos as chief enemy to man and in opposition to God is a theme that is traced all the way through Scripture. As is the theme that God has sovereign control over these forces of chaos.

As said, we find it first in Genesis 1:2 but notice the theme played out throughout Scripture.

“The seas have lifted up, O LORD, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves” (v.3). Yet, as mighty as the waves seem, Yahweh is sovereign over them: “Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea– the LORD on high is mighty” (v.4).

Again we see here the combination of the mighty power of the chaotic seas but the even mightier power of God.

God is so sovereign that the chaotic seas are under his command so that He can churn up the seas

Job 26:12a He stirs up the sea with His power,

And He stills the seas by that same power

Job 26:12b — And by His understanding He breaks up the storm.

Again,

Psalm 89:9 You rule the raging of the sea;
When its waves rise, You still them.

In Psalm 107:23-30 God toys with these great forces as His own so that those who ply their trade on the Seas is dependent upon God.

23 Those who go down to the sea in ships,
Who do business on great waters,
24 They see the works of the Lord,
And His wonders in the deep.
25 For He commands and raises the stormy wind,
Which lifts up the waves of the sea.
26 They mount up to the heavens,
They go down again to the depths;
Their soul melts because of trouble.
27 They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man,
And are at their wits’ end.
28 Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He brings them out of their distresses.
29 He calms the storm,
So that its waves are still.

Over and over again this triumphing of God over the watery forces of chaos is seen throughout the Scripture.

Psalm 65:5-7 5 You answer us with awesome deeds of righteousness, O God our Savior, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas, 6 who formed the mountains by your power, having armed yourself with strength, 7 who stilled the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the turmoil of the nations.

Psalm 66:5-7 5 Come and see what God has done, how awesome his works in man’s behalf! 6 He turned the sea into dry land, they passed through the waters on foot– come, let us rejoice in him. 7 He rules forever by his power, his eyes watch the nations– let not the rebellious rise up against him. Selah

Isaiah 23:11 11 The LORD has stretched out his hand over the sea and made its kingdoms tremble. He has given an order concerning Phoenicia that her fortresses be destroyed.

Then of course there is the flood account of how God unleashed the watery chaos upon the earth in order to be judgment to those who opposed Him and salvation to those who found grace in His sight. Neither can we forget the Exodus stories how God tamed the river Nile and the gods associated with it to do His bidding. Or how God made a ally of the Red Sea by making it serve His ends of deliverance for His people.

In all of this God is like the one who masters the wild bronco to make it serve his ends. The beast is wild but God is greater than the beast.

Indeed so great is God’s power that when we get to the book of Revelation we see the sea their again but this time with a meek and tamed presence.

Revelation 4:6says, “Before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.”

Revelation 15:2says, “I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire.”

The fact that it is a “sea of glass” in my estimation speaks to its calmness. It is so tamed it is as glass.

When I was a boy we’d wake early in the morning to go fishing and with a lake less than 100 yards from our back door we would look out the windows and and on still days often say, “the water is like glass.”

Now with all this as backdrop let us turn to the account in Mark as read this morning and without me even taking a second to explain any of this you already get it. You see what this demonstration of our Lord Christ over the winds and the waves is all about. It is a proclamation that the Lord Christ as Creator has the authority that God has always had over the elements. This account my Mark is placed here to demonstrate that the Lord Christ is very God of very God.

Psalm 107:23-30 is being played out before them in real time.

When we consider the particulars in this account in Mark 4 we should remind ourselves that the “Sea” of Galilee is a large, shallow body of water. Being shallow it is comparatively prone to be easily whipped up when the wind hits it.  Pigeon Pass in the mountains west of the lake forms a funnel for the prevailing winds blowing in from the Mediterranean over the lake, as many fishers and boaters have learned to their dismay over the centuries. So the wind rises and the geographic features make for an accentuated affect. This may well be what happened when this storm suddenly descended upon them. Now there they were … these seasoned and salty Fisherman and they are suddenly in a panic.

And like Psalm 107 they 28 Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brings them out of their distresses. 29 He calms the storm, So that its waves are still.

What Mark is communicating here is just what he has labored so assiduously to demonstrate in other ways thus far. He is communicating to those who have eyes to see that the long promised King and Kingdom have come.  Previously Mark has communicated that via the casting out of Demons, the healing of the sick, the cleansing of the unclean.  The Chaos in the Hebrew mindset would have been associated with demon possession, sickness, and in the natural world the violence on the waters. At the command of Christ all are stilled and relieved.

Subsequent to this account Jesus will continue with this ministry even to the point of raising the dead (Mark 5:21f). Calming of Waters is commensurate with casting out of Demons, healing the sick,the forgiving of sins, and raising the dead. All manifest chaos in the lives of people which is the descriptor of those who live in and belong to this present evil age. They are the chaotic ones. The Kingdom as come with Christ the King and so Chaos is being rolled back at every turn.

As an aside here we should note then that this is a classical Miracle. This miraculous work of Christ is a sign pointing to the reality of who Jesus is as the Divine Messiah. This was always the purpose of Miracles and when we speak of something being a Miracle today we cheapen the idea of Miracle as demonstrating Christ’s person and work in the Scriptures. Better to speak of God’s inexplicable care today in terms of “remarkable providence” then downgrading the word Miracle.

The mastery of Christ over the sea by way of Miracle is taken up again by Mark in chapter 6, where Christ walks on the water thus emphasizing again that the Lord Christ has all the authoritative virtue of the Father.

Note also for Mark that the ministry of the Lord Christ is a word and deed ministry. This miracles comes immediately upon the word ministry of the Lord Christ where He teaches His disciples on the nature of the Kingdom.   The Gospel writers routinely link the mighty deeds of Christ with his teachings so that the mighty deeds legitimate the teaching ministry.

This combination of ministry of Word and Deed is also a theme we see in Scripture. St. Paul can tell the Thessalonians, “as it pertains to our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power.”

To the Corinthians St. Paul could say,

my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

Christ who is the Word demonstrates not only the wisdom as Word in His teaching but then also the power of the Word in Miracle.

Let us consider something of this control of God and His Christ over chaos as it applies to us today. This metaphor of the waters standing in for the powers of chaos end up being applied in other ways in Scripture. One example that we don’t have time to consider in any depth this morning is how the pagan nations are characterized by the chaos that is conjoined to the violent sea.

Psalm 65 equates the “roaring of the seas” with the “turmoil of the nations” (v.7). Daniel sees, in his vision at night, “the great winds of heaven, churning up the seas” out of which four beasts emerge (Dan. 7:2-3). These beasts are later identified as four nations (Dan. 7:17). Egypt is also depicted as the great monster of the deep: Rahab (Ps. 87:4; Is. 30:6-7; Is. 51:9-10).

Another example I do want to spend a wee bit of time looking at is how the life of unbelief is characterized by the same chaos that is conjoined to the violent sea.

Isaiah 57:20 20 But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.

The life of the wicked is a going from chaotic unto chaotic. Instability is pursued with abandon. Passions and lusts like wind and waves are storms set loose unto the destruction of themselves and potentially all those around them. Anyone living in contradiction to God’s authority and God’s Law Word is a tossing sea which cannot rest. Like the sea they are unstable in all their ways.

Typically, especially in our culture, the chaotic tossing sea character is demonstrated by the wicked in their inability to control their lusts. Scripture speaks of these chaotic people as being

18  darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

As your Pastor I plead with you to keep yourself from the chaos of lusts that can mark people as being like the tossing sea.  Do not give into your wicked lusts that might push you towards porn on the web or which might push you towards illicit affairs. Check your entertainment habits for the stirring up of mud and mire. Your lusts lie and can not provide for you what they promise. I beg of you to turn to Christ who alone can still the chaos of your lusts just as he stilled the chaos of winds and the waves.

We live in a culture that is as chaotic as the Sea of Galilee in Mark 4. Only God in Christ as Sovereign can deliver us from our lusts which make us like the tossing sea casting up mire and mud. Everything in our culture screams at you to live dissolute lives, from our education centers which teach “safe sex” to children, to our Jewish media outlets, to our Churches who speak nary a word on modesty or chivalry the winds blow that would toss us like the Sea. Only the Lord Christ can calm those lusts.

Now, in rounding off we look at the “faith and fear” mentioned in the text (4:40-41).  Six times in Mark, the disciples are said to be seized by a “fear” that blends terror and awe (phobos, or the verb phobeomai).

Two are in the stories of the storms at sea (4:41; 6:50). Two others accompany predictions  of the death of our Lord Christ (9:32; 10:32). The others are at the Transfiguration (9:6) and the empty tomb (16:8).

Four out of the 6 of these find the disciples in the presence of God in the context of epiphanies.

This teaches us that the fear mentioned is not sinful. This is not the fear of the wicked in rightly being destroyed. This is a fear that bespeaks being in the presence of God.  This is the fear of Isaiah crying out in the presence of God. This is the fear of John in his apocalypse falling as dead before Christ.

Would to God that we might have more of this reverential awe as we walk before God.

Conclusion

The liberal voice

I’ve tried to warn you about the Higher Criticism school. You will recall that this is the School of thought that presupposes the supernatural can’t be true and so reinterprets all scripture in light of that presupposition. I found some of that in my study this week.

Here is an example and notice the subtlety and the not so subtle.

Did Jesus perform a miracle, controlling the forces of nature by a simple word? Or is this a simple story of a stormy day on the lake that the gospel writer inflated into a “fish tale” about Jesus’ power? In either case, what difference could it make to believers living in the twenty first century?

Note how the supernatural is irrelevant. This theologians says “in either case…” Whether it be supernatural or not is unimportant, what we need to look for is what difference this true or false story could make to us today.

Well … if it is not true, the only difference it might make is the necessity to not be fooled by BS 1st century fairy tales.

Another quote,

Perhaps that is what happened one day when Jesus was napping in the boat with some disciples, who woke him because it was getting dangerous. He reassured them, and the storm stopped. Coincidence of time was interpreted as cause, seen in the light of faith.

This one is fairly obvious.

There is a great deal of this about. Until a couple years ago this approach was taken by a prominent church in Lansing. One sees it frequently.