General Thanksgiving

By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America
A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;– for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;– for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;– and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;– to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Source: The Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, October 14, 1789

What a long way we as a nation have come! I pray we as a nation will, by God’s Grace, begin to return to our biblical roots.

When: November 20, 2011 at 11:00 AM
Where: Trinity Reformed Presbyterian Church

More information is forthcoming.

We would be delighted if you would also invite your friends and family to come as well. We’ve created a poster, and a church bulletin to help you spread the word.

On October 30th, 2011, Trinity Presbyterian Church held a special election day service. We invited the political candidates from our area to come and hear a sermon on the role of the civil government and their duties before God. We were blessed with the presence of several of these men and their families. Here is the sermon – both video and audio – for your edification.

Does it matter?

Come find out Thursday and Friday, July 28-29 at the Tanglewood Holiday Inn in Roanoke, VA.

Schedule

Speakers

Dr. Joe Morecraft, III, is a preacher of the gospel and a noted lecturer on contemporary political and historical trends in the United States and world at large. In 1986, he was a candidate for the US Congress in the 7th Congressional District of Georgia. He is married to Rebecca and they have four children.

Dr. Morecraft received his Bachelor of Arts degree in history from King College in Bristol, Tennnessee. In 1969, he was awarded a Master of Divinity degree from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decator, Georgia, and in 1982, was awarded a Doctor of Theology degree from Whitefield Theological Seminary in Lakeland, Florida. He teaches classes in the Old Testament and preaching for the Christ Theological Seminary.

He is the founding pastor of Chalcedon Presbyterian Church (RPCUS) located in Cumming, Georgia where he has pastored for over thirty years, and in that position has assisted in the planting of other churches in the Atlanta area. He frequently preaches and lectures at seminars and conferences around the nation and abroad such as the Witherspoon Institue sponsored by Vision Forum.

Dr. Morecraft has addressed civic, medical, military, political, religious and educational groups in such places as Scotland, England, Germany, El Salvador, South Africa, Cypress, Ukraine, Argentina, Paraquay, Chile and Ecuador. He has authored numerous articles and spoken on national defense, international relations, constitutionalism and various economic and social issues.

He has authored several books: Liberation Theology: Prelude to Revolution; With Liberty and Justice for All; How God Wants Us To Worship Him (a guide to biblical worship, which offers a careful exegesis on worship); and his most recent book, Authentic Christianity, which is five volumes. His series of forty-nine sermons on church history are used as college and seminary course references.

Pastor Jeff Black pastors the Providence RP Church in Wytheville, VA and the Grace RP Church in Botetourt County, VA. Previously he pastored churches in TN and NC. He graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary in 1979. He teaches classes in Nrw Testament, Biblical Interpretation and Pauline Exposition for the Christ Theological Seminary. He is married to Vanessa and God has blessed them with three children. Jeff is also the host of The Edinburgh Inn radio program and speaks at various conferences.

Download our printable brochure.

Please come and join us!

While the series is primarily aimed at young-people and their parents, it is a great listen for the entire family.

I highly recommend Pastor Johnson’s series “Portrait of a Godly Spouse“

On several occasions over the years I have asked various individuals within the legal system, including judges, from where have we learned the basic God granted right not to incriminate one’s self. Until this week I had not been given an answer but a scholar by the name of Rousas J. Rushdoony did answer in an article on “Justice and Torture” which is published in his book, The Roots of Reconstruction. Because his explanation is much better than I could ever do I will simply quote a large portion of his article.

Rushdoony writes, “How remarkable it is that men choose to despise God’s law and idolize or a least idealize Greek and Roman law. The Greeks used torture regularly and their methods of capital punishment included crucifixion, beheading, poison, clubbing the person to death, burial alive, stoning, hurling a man from a precipice, and more. The Romans eliminated poisoning and strangling but used torture, and they refined crucifixion.

“Early Christendom more or less followed Biblical law, and the results were good. The two revivals of torture took place in the 13th century, with its effects lasting to the 19th, and again in the 20th century on a most formidable scale. It is worthy of note that in 865 A.D. Pope Nicholas I, in a letter to the Bulgars, forbad the use of torture, because confessions are not to be extracted by coercion and are forbidden as a result.

“When scholars began to study Roman law, and, later, Aristotle, Greco-Roman norms began to replace Biblical ones. Whereas Biblical law required evidence, not confession, now, as Edward Peters noted in Torture (1985), “Confession ascended to the top of the hierarchy of proofs” and remained there (p. 44). The consequences were devastating. First, it simplified the work of law enforcement. The needed “evidence” was extracted by torture from the suspect. There was an analogy, Peters noted, to plea bargaining. Most suspects in plea bargaining cases are guilty; the work of the police and the court is simplified by having the suspect plead guilty to a lesser offense. Torture also simplified the legal process; a majority of the suspects may have been guilty, but , as for the rest, well, human justice could not be perfect.

“Second, in Greco-Roman thought, politics of the state, as Aristotle so plainly outlined it, is the source of morality, not a religion. Such a faith shifts the whole center of the moral universe from God’s word to the state’s word. With the revival of Greco-Roman thought, the shift began in Europe from the centrality of the faith and the church to politics and the state. We are now reaping the consequences of that shift in our operative paganism.

“Third, as a result of this shift, the rational modern state and its philosopher kings or elite became the great defenders of man. Reason, progress, and man’s hope were now defined in terms of the state. The state was seen as man’s savior from the evils and superstitions of Christianity and the church. To suspect the state was for the philosophers of the state like suspecting God. They held plainly that right is what the state does. Marxism holds to the infallibility of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Mussolini said, of the fascist state, “Beyond the state, nothing that is human or spiritual has any value whatsoever.” In Nazi Germany, justice became racial: “The People’s sound sense of justice” governed; “Law is what serves the German people. Injustice is what injures it.” Some of the worst statements came from English idealist philosophers, Bosanquet, Green, and others, who identified the state with Right, after Hegel.

“We have thus had a major revival of torture in our time, and the greatest mass murders as well. A higher percentage of mankind has been killed in the 20th century than ever before by mass murders, death camps, man-made famines, war, revolution, torture, and so on. The end is not yet.

“So routine has man’s torture of man become that in Marxism and fascism the medical profession has been routinely used in sophisticated modern forms of torture. It has taken much of this [20th] century to bring Western psychiatrists even to the point of considering the condemnation of Soviet psychiatric tortures.

“This should not surprise us. As Western medical practice has departed from Christianity, it has become more and more a class of professional technicians rather than healers. The inability of medical societies to condemn and bar abortionists makes clear their moral dereliction. How can men condemn the torture of adults when they will not condemn the murder of unborn babes?

“It is ironic, given the injustices of humanistic law, that men declare God’s law to be “barbaric” and “primitive” and affirm the validity of modern humanistic law. Greek law was brutal towards all save the limited number of elite, and Greek society was a slave society in which the elite few regarded their will as justice. The idealization of the Greeks is by our modern elitists, who dream of a like power over the masses, i.e., over the rest of us. it is an anti-Christian dream.

“The clergy, by their indifference or hostility to God’s law, are thereby implicitly affirming humanistic law. For humanism, man is a product of evolution, not a person created in the image of God. For an evolutionary faith, man is expendable, because, as man controls and guides evolution, he must eliminate the unfit to create the new man of the future. …

“Biblical law is not popular with men even though it limits civil government to a minimal dimension; sharply limits civil taxation to a small sum; preserves the person from torture; requires self-government; and furthers freedom. It has a great fault; it indicts all men as sinners before God, something man refuses to hear.”

Hopefully, Rushdoony has made you think. And hopefully I’ve made you interested in reading his book by giving you this “appetizer.” If so you may purchase this and other books by Rousas J. Rushdoony by going to www.ChalcedonStore.com.

Are the words of Isaiah agreeable to you? “For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; He will save us -” Isaiah 33:22. Is your trust in the civil state or in King Jesus? Whose word is law? The Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20 commands the Church to be “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, …”. Are you familiar with and studying all the commands of Jesus from Genesis to Revelation? It is your royal duty to do so. ]]> http://www.thebiblealone.com/2010/03/torture-biblical-law-says-no-but-greco-roman-law-says-yes/feed/ 4 http://www.thebiblealone.com/2010/03/torture-biblical-law-says-no-but-greco-roman-law-says-yes/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheBibleAlone/~3/a5EiG6kkIOI/ http://www.thebiblealone.com/2010/02/parental-rights-amendment-defended/#comments Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:48:01 +0000 pastorblack http://new.thebiblealone.com/?p=117 In an email exchange with a gentleman associated with the Parental Rights Organization he attempted to defend the Parental Rights Amendment, particularly its Section Two. His defense was disturbing as it revealed that the statist, or totalitarian mindset has infected so many who would be called Christian conservatives.

I was instructed that it was fairly commonplace for the civil government to violate our rights as specified in the Bill of Rights. Specifically he said that the First Amendment right of religion and free speech was routinely violated in the case of someone yelling, “fire” in a crowded theater when there was not a fire!

Surely this man’s explanation, or defense, is chilling and illogical. He argues that to protect a “right” we must write it into the U. S. Constitution even as we acknowledge the “right” of the civil government to violate the specified “right” when it seems to itself good to do so. Does it make you warm and secure to know that your rights are protected by those who have the right to refuse your rights? This is no protection at all. Especially when one considers how our civil government doesn’t feel much constraint to obey the First and Second Amendments.

Here was my answer: “Your example of the alleged violation of the First Amendment in the case of someone yelling, “fire” falsely in a crowded theater is logically false.

The First Amendment, as the others in the Bill of Rights, are in a context and this context was understood and expressed to be the Christian religion and even more precisely the Law of Moses, the Ten Commandments. Witness to this the numerous carvings and paintings of Moses and the two tablets on civil government buildings in Washington, D.C. In other words, when someone yells, “fire” falsely in a crowded theater and he is then convicted and fined for doing so it is not a case of the First Amendment being superseded or set aside for compelling state interest, but rather the violation of the sixth and ninth commandments. He is convicted of endangering the lives of others and of lying. This view equates truth with falsehood.”

Later in this gentleman’s email defending the PRA Section Two he said that this section merely acknowledges the way Washington, D. C. acts today. Well, we ought not accommodate the error of our civil government but confront it. Accommodation to statists will bring the death of liberty and freedom.

This was my reply: “You have argued that Section Two is simply recognizing the way the constitution is now handled and the broad view of the power of the judiciary, legislative and executive branches of our civil government. Sadly, I must agree that this is the present and prevalent view within the beltway. But it is a view that would rightly have been seen as destructive of all constitutional government, and even as traitorous by the framers of our constitution. The present and prevalent view within the beltway is in error. It must be rejected and replaced by our framer’s view. George Washington spoke to this issue when he implored men not ever to ignore the constitution but if they found a change was needed that they should follow the constitutional procedure for amendment. Not to do so, he warned, would be the destruction of the written constitution.”

The website of parentalrights.org was technically very well done, even impressive, but all was not right. The Supreme Court was quoted as settling the understanding of the constitution. Does the Parental Rights Organization accede to judicial supremacy? Our framers declared that each of the three branches of the federal government had equal ultimacy in determining the constitution’s meaning. (This is a trinitarian conception deriving from the equal ultimacy of the three persons in the Godhead yet only one God. Unitarianism absolutizes the one as it denies the three.) In short, the Supreme Court is not the ultimate definer of the meaning of the constitution and their presently adopted evolutionary hermeneutic is antithetical to the framers’ views. Truth requires the doctrine of original intention. Our constitution is not a living evolving document whose meaning today differs from its meaning yesterday or even tomorrow. If the meaning of the U. S. Constitution, or any written document, does not have a settled permanent meaning as intended by those who authored and ratified it, then it will be constantly amended to mean differently than it did originally, yet this amendment process by changing interpretations, violates the amendment process in Article 5 of the U. S. Constitution. Would this not constitute treason? Would this not be a way around the plain, original meaning of the words of our magnificent constitution? Is this not how our Congress, our Supreme Court and our Executives make the constitution mean the opposite of what the words plainly mean?

Would you want to work for me if every day I declared a new, evolving understanding of our contract? Probably not. Do you want to live where the law of the land is ever changing, evolving and has therefore no stated consistent meaning? Better not tell the civil government that it can sit in judgment over the constitution. We were formed to have a civil government under a written constitution but today’s elite want you to think you have a constitution under civil government. Beware, liberty placed in the hands of men will become slavery.

The Parental Rights Organization rightly recognizes that our civil government is at war with the family. Section Two is an accommodation to the enemy not a defense at all but merely an appearance of it. Don’t be fooled into supporting the Parental Rights Amendment as it presently is written. R. J. Rushdoony identified the statist war against the family when he wrote, “The family is the true wellspring of the future, not the state, and the woman is the key to it. The statist school is a citizen-producing factory designed to manufacture people whose every loyalty is eroded. No family ties bind the well-taught statist school product. Thus, all competing institutions or loyalties of family, faith, and heritage are eliminated. The result is a mass man; such a man is easily a rebel, a malcontent, or a drone, but his is not capable of anything but a statist answer to problems, because for him no other agency has any stature or viability. He is a factory product with standardized reactions and responses.” (R. J. Rushdoony, Roots of Reconstruction, Ross House, 1991, page 218, available from www.chalcedon.edu)

The right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is granted to us by that same Creator mentioned in our Declaration of Independence. I am thrilled to see organizations seeking to protect that right, particularly when the United Nations is covertly working to deny it by international treaty. The Parental Rights Organization has written an amendment to our U. S. Constitution intending to protect parental rights. But in Section Two of its amendment it utterly destroys not only parental rights but all rights by granting that the Federal government may, when it thinks it serves its best interest, infringe on parental rights.

What kind of rights are we talking about when we acknowledge that the federal government may infringe them when it thinks it is good to do so?

Didn’t our constitutional framers understand this in 1776? Why didn’t they simply acknowledge that King George III had the authority to violate the colonial rights when he thought it in his best interest to do so? Shoot, if Patrick Henry, George Washington, Robert Morris and the others had understood this there would have been no shooting! And, we would still be a part of the moribund United Kingdom.

So you know what I am writing about, here is the complete text of the Parental Rights Amendment:
“Section One – The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.
Section Two – Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.
Section Three – no treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.”

Your major concern ought to be with Section Two for it destroys our constitutional government.

Section Two subjects the U. S. Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights contained in it, along with this proposed amendment, to the whim of the Federal Government. By so doing we no longer have a functioning written constitution. The truth is that the Bill of Rights is subject to the Law of God but not to the civil state. The very function of the written constitution is to bring the civil state into subjection to the constitution. This was the framers’ conception of a limited civil government “chained” by the constitution. (I think it was Jefferson who used the language of the chain.) Section Two of the Parental Rights Amendment elevates the Civil Government to the position of the highest authority in the USA placing the U. S. Constitution in subjection to its will or “compelling state interest”. No sir! The civil government is subject to the constitution not the constitution subject to the civil government. Section Two is the establishment of a totalitarian state. Section Two is the destruction of constitutional government. I think Lenin would have loved Section Two! As it was he did set aside whatever was in his way even as our progressive justices, congressmen and presidents have done to “legalize” the murder of tens of millions of unborn human babies.

The Parental Rights Amendment could be a good thing if Section One concluded with the words, “granted by Our Creator.” thus mirroring the language of our Declaration of Independence; and if Section Two were entirely deleted; and then Section Three be renamed Section Two.

If Section Two remains in the Parental Rights Amendment then you ought to think carefully. If you do so, I think you will see the necessity of opposing the Parental Rights Amendment. Not only will it fail to protect parental rights to direct the upbringing and the education of their children, it will undermine the entire Bill of Rights, subjecting these to the will of the civil government and its definition of “compelling state interest.”

I hope you still have in mind the chicken coop and the fox with which I began. The point it made was the point I wanted to make but there is an inaccuracy in my picture and I am compelled to correct it. The reality is that the chicken coop or the U. S. Constitution, was not intended to “fence in” the chickens, the citizens of these United States, but rather was intended to “fence in” those who would seek to govern us at the federal level. The U. S. Constitution put chains upon the Supreme Court, the Congress and the President, severely limiting their power so they couldn’t consume our livelihoods or even ourselves. The Foxes have been very good at making us forget who is limited by the U. S. Constitution. (How foolish to let the foxes control education!) Let’s not fall into their trap and give the Foxes a free pass to enter the chicken coop whenever they think it good for foxes. Let’s oppose the Parental Rights Amendment as long as Section Two remains. And pray to our Creator, the triune God of the Bible, not to allow this amendment to become a part of the U. S. Constitution.

Yes, the question is misstated since it presumes that rights are not God given but Civil Government given. Properly asked the question should be: “Do you believe that the Second amendment was meant to be understood as protecting the God given right of self defense which implicitly means keeping and bearing arms?” ‘Where did God give this right to keep and bear arms?’ many will ask. He did so in the Sixth Commandment, “You shall not murder”, (Exodus 20:13). Historic protestant understanding of this can be found in the Westminster Shorter Catechism [1648], Question and Answer numbers 68 and 69 which state, “The sixth commandment requireth all lawful endeavours to preserve our own life, and the life of others. … The sixth commandment forbiddeth the taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbour unjustly, or whatsoever tendeth thereunto.” Much more instruction is given in the companion Westminster Larger Catechism [1648], Question and Answer numbers 134 through 136.

We need to study the Old Testament more. Remember that Jonathan needed to attack the Philistine garrison in order to arm the Israelites? (1 Samuel 13:19-14:1ff) Arms control is an ancient tactic of all tyrants. When a civil ruler doesn’t want his subjects (er, citizens) to have and bear arms it is because he has a plan for his subjects that he is pretty sure they won’t like. Resistance to his will will not be tolerated. Doesn’t sound like a servant of the people, does it?

The Declaration of Independence is part of the organic body of law for the USA. This specifically means that the statements and presuppositions of the Declaration of Independence are the legal context for interpreting the US Constitution. Therefore, the US Constitution legally ought to be read with the understanding that rights have their source not in civil government but in the Creator! How many Christians even understand this fact? Patrick Henry most certainly did! It was this reason which caused him to be against the Bill of Rights for he feared that in the future, unchristian men would argue that the existence of the Bill of Rights demonstrates that the civil government is the source of rights. Further, Patrick feared that unscrupulous, power-hungry politicians would cite the Bill of Rights as the complete enumeration of rights hence saying that citizens do not have any rights EXCEPT those enumerated in the US Constitution. Was the great Patrick Henry correct? Yes, indeed. But I wonder if he could even have conceived that professing Christians would ever come to think of Civil Government as the source of rights? I doubt it for this view fundamentally presupposes the denial of the Rights of King Jesus! Hence a denial of Jesus as Lord.

May God help us to think Biblically on all issues and to reject our unbiblical rationalism. (2 Corinthians 10:5)