Self-Esteem?

‎"You don't need self esteem. You need the knowledge of God". 

- Paul Washer

Behold your "lesser evil" has come home to roost

Here's John McCain, who many  Christians voted for and continue to vote for, saying that voters need to embrace amnesty for illegal aliens and leave the issue of abortion alone if you want to win an election.

He's not the only one getting bold in tossing out principles supposedly part of the GOP:

Condaleeza Rice also says the GOP needs to be a bigger tent.

Boehner caves on taxes and illegal immigration.

Shawn Hannity, "Conservative" Republican talk radio host also has caved on illegal immigration.

Chabliss, a top Republican senator ditches anti-tax pledge.

Top GOP lawmakers also hope to gain voters by jumping on the amnesty bandwagon.

I've been saying there is no difference of substance between the GOP and the DNC (see Fox News' Judge Napolitano's video clip below, its excellent). The GOP will drop any  value or principle that gets in the way of beating the opponent they love to hate. 

Lower taxes, legal immigration, pro-life (anti-abortion in all cases), anti-homsexuality, traditional marriage. None of these is apparently a matter of conviction based on principles and values. The leaders you voted in at the expense of these issues are now removing these very issues so they won't get in the way of competing with the Democrats.

If you keep voting in your "lesser evil", your party will continue down the evil road, not reverse itself. Abortion, traditional marriage, illegal aliens are all thrown out by the GOP, the "Conservative" party, in order to gain liberal votes. As I've said, the GOP will offer more and more liberalism to compete with the DNC. Its got NOTHING to do with principles. They have none.

Here's another person who also sees this compromise as wrong:  Richard Viguerie:
“The idea that conservatives need to abandon our principles and move left is nonsense,” he said. “The way that we win elections and not just appeal to the base but to the American people is when we make the campaign about our issues, our views our values. Republicans never win national elections unless we nationalize the elections and present to the voters two dramatically different worldviews – a worldview of a big, all-encompassing, powerful government versus a small government, individual responsibility, traditional values, lower taxes (and a) balanced budget.” ~ Source

While I disagree with Viguerie on his positive view of Romney's campaign, although saying Romney stopped too short of expressing conservative values (of course he did, Romney's liberal, NOT conservative), Viguerie is right concerning the GOP. 

The problem is that the GOP is filled with liberals and pragmatists. Pragmatists do not have values and principles that  dictate their decisions and behavior; rather they take what is really an opinion, labeling it as a "principle" or "value" , and then throw them away in order to win an election, move ahead, be accepted, gain votes, get money, make friends, move a group to the desired goal.

Wait until 20016 or 2020 ---when the GOP will offer a competitive liberal against the DNC who will be fiscally "conservative" and socially liberal....like a homosexual.

Think there's any difference between the two parties? Not really. 



So I've asked before and I'll ask again: What makes a Conservative a Conservative? Because they say they are or because they really are and its shown  by their actions?

Do You Know Who Jesus Christ Truly Is?

The Lord Jesus Christ is God — possessed of all divine attributes, and entitled to all divine honors. He is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit — God over all, and blessed for evermore! He is naturally, essentially, perfectly, and eternally possessed of everything peculiar to Deity.

He owes His existence to none. He says, "I am Jehovah, and beside Me there is no Savior!" He is God — and there is no other. There is no other name given under Heaven, or among men, whereby we can be saved. He is the Rock of Ages. He is the infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, gracious, just, holy, and unchangeable I AM!

Angels worship Him,
devils obey Him,
saints love Him, and
sinners will bow to Him!

He is the author of . . .
  Creation,
  Providence,
  Redemption,
  and Glorification!

He . . .
  produced all things by His power,
  formed them by His wisdom,
  supplies them by His bounty,
  rules them by His instruments, and
  employs them according to His sovereign will.

He is above all — in the glory of His nature.
He possesses all — by essential right.
He will judge all — according to His righteousness.

All things are dependent upon Him, and
all rational beings are accountable to Him.

Nothing can escape His eye;
none can fly out of His hand!

He is exalted above all,
and remains King forever!

He is . . .
  the King of kings,
  the Lord of lords, and
  the only supreme Law-giver of the universe!

He is naturally, essentially, and eternally God:
  one with the Father,
  equal to the Father,
  and infinite as the Father.

Thus, the Scriptures reveal Him; as such, saints acknowledge Him, and join the angelic host in worshiping, praising, and adoring Him! 

As such, He loves all His people — yes, He is love to them. 

As such, they love Him — and trust their eternal interests into His hands!

No person can have right views of the love of Christ — who has not right views of the deity of Christ. His divinity gives lustre and glory — to Hislove. If He were not God — His love would be only a passion like ours, and would fluctuate and change. But being divine — His love is an infinite perfection, and remains immutably the same!

He loves with all the majesty of God — and with all the tenderness of man! 

His love has the strength of God — and the gentleness of sinless man!

He is all-loving — and altogether lovely!

~James Smith "The Love of Christ"

"Having loved His own who were in the world — He loved them unto the end!" John 13:1

A Task You Can't Do But Must Do

O my reader, be not deceived on this vital matter: to mortify the lusts of the flesh, to be crucified unto the world, to overcome the Devil, to die daily unto sin, and live unto righteousness, to be meek and lowly in heart, trustful and obedient, pious and patient, faithful and uncompromising, loving and gentle; in a word, to be a Christian, to be Christlike, is a task far, far beyond the poor resources of fallen human nature.



~A.W. Pink, "Studies on Saving Faith"


Php 2:12  So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13  for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. 

Eze 36:25  "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26  "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27  "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. 

Compel them to come in!

Feminism

How striking it is that we should read of “silly women” in this inspired list of “last days” characteristics! How remarkably this is fulfilled in modern Feminism! Observe the words “led away with divers lusts,” which might be freely rendered “ambitious desires.” This craving for publicity, this deplorable masculinity, this denial of man’s headship, this usurping of authority, is one of the most striking Signs of the Times.



-A.W. Pink, "The Redeemer's Return"

You Are Not A Christian

If the cross of Christ has not radically disrupted the very epicenter and citadel of your life, from self-righteousness, self-esteem, self-worth, self-promotion, self-accomplishment, self-confidence, self-rule, self-glory, self-satisfaction, self-desire, self-will, self-honor, self-praise, self-regard, self-pity, self-sufficiency, self-love, self-admiration, and a host of the many disguised manifestations of the abomination of selfhood....friend, you're not a Christian.

If only you have experienced but a minor shift in a few of your ethical, moral and religious values neurotically tickled by the sensual excitement of idolatry masquerading as "worship", that proves nothing but simply a sewing together the fig-leaves of humanism to both inadequately cover the nakedness of our sinfulness and adorn & indulge the wretchedness of our fleshly nature....friend, you're not a Christian.

If the engorged egotism and flatulent narcissism that plagues the ir
reverent and mediocre religion of disobediently postmodern evangelicals is all that you have clung to by the vainglorious tendrils of smoke in the popularity of false religion and thereby have held to many Scripturally untenable positions by a false carnal hope, whilst emphatically calling Jesus your 'Lord, Lord'....friend, you're not a Christian.

If you did not die with Christ Jesus, and if you do not die daily to self, and if you are not living a crucified life in Christ: my dear friend, I lovingly plead with you to hear me when I soberly tell you....you are not a Christian.

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." -- Galatians 2:20

(Thanks for posting Doron Gladden from Chris O via Facebook)

Who Do Atheists Thank?

All Dressed Up And No One to Thank

Thankfulness is one of the distinguishing traits of the human spirit. We sense the need to say thanks, and we realize we ought to be more grateful than we are. We furthermore perceive that we are indebted to (and accountable to) a higher power than ourselves—the God who made us. According to Scripture, everyone has this knowledge, including those who refuse to honor God or thank Him (Romans 1:19–21).

Ingratitude is dishonorable by anyone’s reckoning, but to be willfully ungrateful toward the Creator in whose image we are made is to deny an essential aspect of our own humanity. The shame of such ingratitude is inscribed on the human conscience, and even the most dogmatic atheists are not immune from the knowledge that they ought to give thanks to God. Try as they might to suppress or deny the impulse, “what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them” (Romans 1:19).

During a November 2009 debate in England sponsored by a rationalist group known as Intelligence Squared, Richard Dawkins admitted that when he looks at the Milky Way or the Grand Canyon, he is overcome by a profound feeling of thankfulness. “It’s a feeling of sort of an abstract gratitude that I am alive to appreciate these wonders,” he said. “When I look down a microscope it’s the same feeling. I am grateful to be alive to appreciate these wonders.”

But to whom does an atheist like Dawkins express such gratitude?

I’m by no means the first person to point out this conundrum. In fact, the Internet is peppered with failed attempts to justify an atheistic celebration of Thanksgiving. Atheists insist they are not ungrateful. They confess that they feel thankful, and they clearly sense a need to avoid the ignominy of brazen ingratitude on a cosmic scale—especially at Thanksgiving.

One atheist has practically made a hobby of writing articles to explain why atheists feel the need to be thankful. He tackles the question of whom an atheist is supposed to thank. His best answer? Atheists can be grateful to farmers for the food we eat, to doctors for the health we enjoy, to engineers for the advantages of modern technology, to city workers for keeping our environment clean and orderly—and so on.

Here’s the problem with that: Tipping the waitress or tipping one’s hat to sanitation workers doesn’t even come close to resolving the problem of whom Dawkins should thank when he looks at the stars, stands at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or studies the world of countless wonders his microscope reveals in a single drop of pond water.

Of course we ought to be thankful on a human level to people who help make our lives better. But if thanking people exhausts your sense of blessedness and satisfies that “sort of ... abstract gratitude” you feel when pondering the vastness of the universe, you have already suppressed your own conscience to a frightening degree. Your worldview is spiritually bankrupt.

Another atheist writer, acknowledging this problem, says the answer is easy for her: she thanks her lucky stars. “What it comes down to,” she writes, “is that an atheist is generally thankful for good luck, serendipity.”

That’s an odd and ironic answer from a point of view that repudiates theism on the grounds that it is not “rational” to believe in God. (Not that atheism itself truly stands on solid rational grounds. After all, the starting point for atheistic materialism is the equation Nobody times nothing equals everything. What could possibly be more irrational?)

Chance, luck, fortune, happenstance, fate, kismet—whatever label you want to put on it—is not a force or intelligence. “Chance” has to do with mathematical probability. Flip a coin and there’s a 50-50 chance it will come up tails. But “chance” has no power to flip the coin, much less design an ordered universe.

Nevertheless, this is how atheistic materialists have trained themselves to think: chance is the ultimate creator. In the words of one Nobel Prize-winning atheist, “Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution.” Fortune has thus been personified—imbued with the power to determine, order, and cause everything that happens.

That’s mythology, not science. At the end of the day the atheist is no more rational and no less superstitious than the astrologist (or the animist) who thinks impersonal “lucky stars” determine one’s fortune.

On some level, atheists themselves surely realize this. Proof of their internal angst is seen in the fact that so many of them are not content merely to disbelieve. They are militant in their opposition to God. They hate the very thought of God and would love to have every mention of Him removed from public discourse—as if that would somehow remove the burden of their own ingratitude and relieve the pangs of a guilty conscience.

Such hatred is as irrational as atheism itself, and it is further evidence that atheists have some awareness of God that they desperately want to bury. Who nurtures such hatred for someone they truly believe doesn’t even exist?

Indeed, as Scripture says, it is the ultimate folly to try to suppress our own innate sense of obligation to our Maker. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). In short, to deny God is to debase one’s own mind and dehumanize the whole person (Romans 1:28).

That’s why we remind ourselves to give thanks to God—specifically, the one true God who has revealed Himself in Scripture as a God of grace and forgiveness, who so loved the world that He gave His Son as an atonement for sin, so “that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).

He graciously compels us to thank Him, and He himself should top the list of things we are thankful for.

by John MacArthur

Kay Arthur's Precepts International Offers False Teacher Steven Furtick To Young People

Update on Kay Arthur.

"Knowing the nature and reputation of PMI, then, it may surprise some to discover that its student ministry arm, Transform, has in the past utilized the teaching of Steven Furtick and his book, Sun Stand Still, to encourage and teach followers of its blog. "

~Erin Benziger 


For more specifics go here.

More on the dangers of Author: here and here.

Depart From Iniquity

2Ti 2:19  But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: "The Lord knows those who are his," and, "Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity."