Signs of the Times

"A lot of the Obama presidency is a contest between his intelligence and his arrogance [and he thought] he can say anything on race and is so smart that he will be untouchable." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

What is Freedom?...taken from the PatriotPost

LIBERTY
"Americans beware. You are not free. Worse, you are being made more and more a slave each day by the very people who tell you incessantly that you are. In fact, the very word itself, FREEDOM, has become your enemy, as it is bandied about proudly and loudly, and distracting you from the encroaching tyranny all around. The word freedom has replaced the substance of freedom that was your birthright, and that is no more. Of course, Americans were never completely free, which is expressly why freedom was so long sustained on these shores. Our Founders knew what freedom is: The natural, God-created state of man, completely unrestrained by the conventions of other men. They also knew that such pure freedom was never practically experienced, and that if it was, it could never be sustained, because it would naturally and instantly consume itself as the powerful and strong exercise of their will without restraint upon the weak. Pure freedom replaces itself with tyranny, rapidly and violently in a shockingly Darwinian fashion. From the chaos of pure freedom rise despots and kings. So what our Founders concluded, through study, meditation, and debate, was that for freedom to last and to perpetuate itself, the natural freedom each man is born to must actually be restrained in one, and only one, regard -- sort of a Golden Rule of Freedom: The free man must give up his freedom to encroach upon the freedom of other free men." --Big Hollywood writer Jeremy D. Boreing

THE GIPPER
"Governments that set out to regiment their people with the stated objective of providing security and liberty have ended up losing both. Those which put freedom as the first priority find they have also provided security and economic progress." --Ronald Reagan

On Behalf of Literal Grammatical-Historical Interpretation

The grammatical-historical method of interpretation is a means of guaranteeing that we are hearing what the text says, not what we want the text to say. This is a vitally important point, especially when it comes to the Scriptures. When reading secular texts we are not nearly as tempted to insert a foreign meaning into the words of the author, since it is rare that such a text would be given sufficient importance to warrant the effort. We naturally apply sound rules of interpretation to such documents since we are not at all threatened by the results. But when it comes to the text of the Bible, much more is at stake. But if we are consistent in our beliefs, and truly want to hear what the Scriptures are saying and not what we want them to say or feel they should say, we need to have a means of reading the text that does not allow us to slip our own thoughts into the text under the guise of interpretation. The Bible needs to say the same thing in each language, in each culture, in each context, or it cannot be the means of communicating the truth to us that Christians believe it to be. The grammatical-historical method allows us to be both honest and consistent with the text of the Bible. The fundamental reason we must reject allegorical interpretation of the biblical text is really quite simple: it is unverifiable. That is, there is no possible way to determine that the results of using allegorical methodology have anything whatsoever to do with the actual meaning of the text. One man's allegorical understanding can have no compelling force upon the thinking of another, for that person may well see something completely different in the text. Since the means provided by human language to communicate meaning are by-passed in the allegorical method, there are no "safety nets" to keep one from wandering off into the most fanciful of "interpretations" of the text. Hence, the person who says "the allegorical meaning of this text is such and so" cannot claim the actual authority of the text for his interpretation, for the actual source of the interpretation is not the text itself but the mind of the interpreter. This is why we say there can be no compelling force to one's allegorical interpretation, for it is merely personal, and if anyone else accepts it, it is because they choose to trust the allegorical interpreter rather than the text itself. Allegorical interpretations can have no more authority than the one proclaiming them. When applied to the biblical text this methodology is devastating. The authority of the text is destroyed. No allegorical interpreter can honestly say, "The Word of God says," for in reality, the Word of God has been replaced with the more or less fanciful thoughts of the interpreter himself. The Christian doctrine of inspiration sets the Christian Scriptures apart from all other claimed divine revelations in that Christians believe the Scriptures are God-breathed. This means the written word communicates to us infallibly the very speaking of God in a miraculously personal manner (Matthew 22:31). The authority of the Word is not based upon the interpreter but upon the inspired text itself. The message of the written Word is the same through the course of time. Without this affirmation, the Word becomes a purely subjective document, incapable of communicating divine truth with certainty. This point cannot be over-emphasized. Allegorical interpretation destroys biblical authority. It replaces the divine message with the imaginations of the interpreter, and as such opens the door wide for every kind of abuse of the text. False teachers, seeking to draw away disciples after themselves (Acts 20:30), utilize such means to release themselves from the unchanging standards of Gods Word and insert, under the guise of thus sayeth the Lord, their own pet doctrines and teachings. The Christian who is untaught and unstable, a novice in the Word, can easily be taken in by such a teacher who exudes confidence and often hides the false teachings behind a veneer of self-professed orthodoxy. So when we defend proper exegetical methodology, we are not merely arguing about tangential issues, we are, in reality, defending the very authority of the Word, and its ability to speak with clarity and force to each generation and in every place. ..........Dr. James White

I am tired...of Change

I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want, so, I've decided to marry my boat.

Why is it I find oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 45% isn't?

Why is it I find the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I ever would?

Why is it I find freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it?

Why is it I find when we pull out of Iraq we actually trust that the bad guys will stop what they're doing because they now think we're good people?

Why is it I find I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves?

Why is it I find that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving an electric "tin can" car?

Why is it I find we are not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive?

Why is it I find that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as IT sees fit?

Why is it I find liberal judges need to rewrite The Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters?
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A Liberal is a person who will give away everything they don't own.

Fear the Lord, and the king, and DO NOT mess around with those given to CHANGE!

.....Prov. 24:21

Signs of the Times

.........by Mike Peters (Mother Goose and Grimm)

A Measure of Understanding

"So why does President Obama so often get history wrong, so often call for utopian schemes he would hardly adopt for himself, and so often distort by misinformation and incomplete disclosure? Partly the culprit is administrative inexperience, partly historical ignorance. But mostly the disconnect comes because Barack Obama believes he is a philosopher-king, whose exalted ends more than justify his mendacious means." --columnist Victor Davis Hanson

Romans 12:3 For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment