Wings of the Wind

Articles with surprising polling data numbers published by the Barna Group keep popping up. Deciding to do some checking for myself, I easily found the much-quoted survey that was most recently published in 2009.

Here is the definition that the Barna Group gave for a “biblical worldview”:

For the purposes of the survey, a “biblical worldview” was defined as believing that absolute moral truth exists; the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches; Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic; a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; and God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today. In the research, anyone who held all of those beliefs was said to have a biblical worldview.

I’m no Bible scholar, but the above descriptions are things that most of the least knowledgeable Bible readers would admit are found in the scriptures.

The question becomes:  “Who believes the words of the Bible?”

Two things surprised me: the numbers and how long it’s been this way.

The numbers haven’t changed much in the last 15 years.

One-third of all adults (34%) believe that moral truth is absolute and unaffected by the circumstances. Less than half of those who call themselves “born again” adults (46%) believe in absolute moral truth.

So, two-thirds do not believe in absolute moral truth.

Might this be a reason for many of our problems?

The Barna Group came up with the following conclusion:

Overall, the current research revealed that only 9% of all American adults have a biblical worldview.

If this number is even close, it is a disappointment for those who hold God’s Word in high esteem.

Chris Reimers

Dr. Francis Schaeffer explained the problem almost 30 years ago:

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE0ox_bDIv4&feature=channel

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=853j7khx0Yo&feature=channel

We all knew the outcome before the vote.  Few of us watched the proceedings.  It was too painful.

Once again our leaders have made an ungodly decision.  If you have any question that abortion is a sin, see the link – posted just today – below.

Do not be surprised by the upcoming decisions of the new Supreme Court Justice.  Not only does it appear that she will be the greatest enemy to the unborn the Court has ever had, she may also be an enemy to our Republic.

A Republican Senator quoted scripture, the Golden Rule no less, to explain his vote for Elena Kagan.

Unbelievable.

Below is a letter that the National Right to Life Committee sent to every Senator before the confirmation hearings began.

I wonder if those who voted for Ms. Kagan bothered to read it.

May God have mercy on us. -CR

June 23, 2010

To the Honorable Members of the United States Senate:

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), representing affiliated right-to-life organizations in all 50 states, respectfully urges you to oppose the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the office of Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

We have studied carefully various memoranda and other material written by Ms. Kagan during her tenure on the White House staff of President Bill Clinton (1995-1999) (although a large amount of material has been suppressed for reasons not adequately explained), as well as other writings and actions by Ms. Kagan as a clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, as an academic, and as Solicitor General of the United States. Our conclusion is that Elena Kagan is first and foremost a social engineer, animated primarily by a desire to shape public policy on a host of issues. Her legal training and talent is chiefly directed to these ends.

Ms. Kagan has demonstrated that she has strong convictions on how public policy should be cast on a wide range of issues, yet it also appears that she has long aspired to judicial rather than elective office. This is perhaps not surprising, because she believes that it “is not necessarily wrong or invalid” for appointed judges “to mold and steer the law in order to promote certain ethical values and achieve certain social ends,” as she opined in her 1983 Oxford University thesis. For one with such a view, a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court is the apex of power – a lifetime license to make law and reshape public policy by decree, on a wide range of issues, without any need to achieve the degree of consensus required in legislative bodies or the distracting requirement for periodic accountability to an electorate.

Thus, if she is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, we anticipate that Ms. Kagan often will treat the U.S. Constitution not as a body of basic law that truly constrains both legislators and judges, but rather, as a cookbook in which may be found legal recipes that will allow the imposition of the policies that Ms. Kagan deems to be justified or advisable, or that are so regarded by whatever groups she sees as the enlightened elites on a given subject. This will be in keeping with the models provided by two of Ms. Kagan’s judicial heroes, Justice Marshall and Aharon Barak, the former president of the Supreme Court of Israel.

The White House documents reveal Ms. Kagan to have been a key strategist – perhaps, indeed, the lead strategist within the White House – in the successful effort to prevent enactment of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act during the Clinton Administration. The picture that emerges of Ms. Kagan is not that of a staffer who presented the President with objective information and disinterested analysis, but rather, a staffer who sometimes presented selective and tendentious information, and who employed a variety of legal and political arguments, to achieve her overriding goal of defeating the legislation.

Early on (in January, 1996, if not earlier), it appears that Ms. Kagan was instrumental in providing President Clinton gravely distorted assertions regarding the frequency of partial-birth abortion and the reasons for which it was typically performed, although more accurate information had been published by a congressional committee and was readily available.

In June, 1996, she described a private briefing from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in which she learned that “[i]n the vast majority of cases, selection of the partial birth procedure is not necessary to avert serious adverse consequences to a woman’s health . . . . there just aren’t many [circumstances] where use of the partial-birth abortion is the least risky, let alone the ‘necessary,’ approach.” Although Ms. Kagan herself described this briefing as “a revelation,” she also advised against immediately conveying its substance to the President.

Moreover, in December 1996, when Ms. Kagan obtained an ACOG draft for a proposed public statement that reported that “a select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which [the partial-birth] procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman,” Ms. Kagan wrote that such a public statement “of course, would be disaster.” It appears that Ms. Kagan was dismayed not by the realities of partial-birth abortion, but by the prospect that public awareness of those realities would harm the White House efforts to prevent enactment of the ban.

In addition, it appears that Ms. Kagan herself was probably the originator of diluting language that appeared in the final public statement approved and released by the ACOG Executive Board in January, 1997 – ostensibly as the judgment of top medical authorities.

Initially, in February 1996, President Clinton favored banning partial-birth abortions, both before and after “viability,” except in any case in which, in the abortionist’s judgment, the pregnancy itself threatened the life of the mother or serious adverse health consequences. But Ms. Kagan objected that this was unconstitutional and that pro-abortion advocacy groups “will go crazy.” She argued for allowing use of the method when any “serious” health benefit was asserted even if the woman and her unborn baby were entirely healthy, and prevailed.

The following year (in May, 1997), Ms. Kagan pushed further. Employing a mixture of legal, policy, and political arguments, she ultimately won Mr. Clinton’s endorsement for a substitute bill proposed by Senator Daschle, which applied no restrictions whatever on partial-birth abortion prior to “viability” (for example, in the fifth and sixth months, which in fact is when the greatest number of partial-birth abortions are performed), and which applied only a loose, loophole-ridden standard on abortionists even in the seventh month and later. Ms. Kagan explicitly recognized, in a memorandum dated December 14, 1996, that Daschle’s purpose was to “provide cover for pro-choice Senators (who can be expected to support it) . . . .”

In a memo dated May 13, 1997, Ms. Kagan advised President Clinton to “endorse the Daschle amendment in order to sustain your credibility on HR 1122 [the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act] and prevent Congress from overriding your veto.”

Some recent commentators have viewed these documents as showing Ms. Kagan in a “centrist” role, since even the Daschle Amendment was criticized by some pro-abortion advocacy groups and by some Justice Department officials, who regarded it as too restrictive. We disagree with this reading. The documents contain clear evidence that Ms. Kagan was in sympathy with the Justice Department’s perspective regarding the Supreme Court precedents (see, for example, Ms. Kagan’s memorandum to Walter Dellinger dated February 24, 1996), but Ms. Kagan had no intention of allowing constitutional technicalities to get in the way of what she viewed as a workable strategy to defeat the bill and keep partial-birth abortion unrestricted.

The bottom line is that Ms. Kagan was instrumental in persuading President Clinton to endorse in 1997 an alternative proposal (the Daschle substitute) that was more protective of the practice of partial-birth abortion than the position which the President had embraced in 1996, but which also was sufficiently artful in its language to provide political “cover” for pro-abortion senators, and thereby to prevent the real ban from becoming law.

Although the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was supported, in the 105th Congress, by more than two-thirds of the House of Representatives and by 64 members of the U.S. Senate, the effort to override President Clinton’s second veto fell three votes short in the Senate in 1998. Thus, the Kagan-backed strategy did, in fact, prevent enactment of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act during the Clinton Administration.

Ms. Kagan played a key role in keeping the brutal partial-birth abortion method legal for an additional decade.

Ultimately, a bill that differed little from the bill that Elena Kagan fought so tenaciously and deemed unconstitutional – a bill that banned partial-birth abortion both before and after “viability,” unless necessary to save a woman’s life – was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007, after having been signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003.

On other issues of interest to our organization, Ms. Kagan also comes across in the White House documents as a goal-oriented staffer who worked hard to push policy decisions in directions that we regard as pernicious.

For example, soon after the first cloned human mammal (Dolly the sheep) was created in 1996, Ms. Kagan defended the position that the creation of human embryos by cloning should be allowed, as long as the embryos were used as research subjects and not allowed to develop to birth (a policy that in later years came to be known as “clone and kill”).

In 1998, Ms. Kagan addressed the question of whether physicians in Oregon should be prevented by federal law from using federally controlled drugs in the practice of assisted suicide. Ms. Kagan opined that federal legislation would be a “terrible idea.”

In the area of First Amendment jurisprudence, Ms. Kagan has troubling views. For decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has read the First Amendment’s command, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .,” to apply to speech – including paid advertising – by organized groups of Americans regarding those who hold or seek federal office.

In an e-mail written October 31, 1996, Ms. Kagan went out of her way to say that she disagreed.

She wrote: “I also think the Court should reexamine its premise that the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment entails a right to throw money at the political system.” But if modes of communication that cost money are excluded from the scope of the First Amendment, then those with control of mainstream media outlets and other entrenched elites gain political advantage, while those who represent unfashionable causes are relegated to the soapbox in the park.

As Solicitor General, in the case of Citizens United v. FEC, Ms. Kagan defended the proposition that the government has the authority to severely restrict or ban not only broadcast ads but even pamphlets, if produced by incorporated groups, that are deemed to be election-related because of their proximity to an election and their reference to federal office seekers.

President Obama singled out Ms. Kagan’s work on this case for special praise at the press conference at which he announced her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. On this issue, in which the social policy favored by most contemporary liberal elites runs headlong into one of the clearest prohibitions in the Bill of Rights, the evidence suggests that Elena Kagan, if confirmed to the Supreme Court, will disregard the command of the First Amendment in order to permit a system of government managed speech about officeholders and office seekers, with the underlying purpose of enhancing the influence of some groups of political stakeholders at the expense of other groups.

In 1995, Elena Kagan wrote that “it should be no surprise by now that many of the votes a Supreme Court Justice casts have little to do with technical legal ability and much to do with conceptions of value.” We respectfully suggest that enormous damage already has been done to the body politic by Supreme Court justices who believe that they have the right to impose their “conceptions of value” even when this requires overriding constitutional laws adopted through the normal processes of representative democracy, as we saw in Roe v. Wade, and even when it requires tortured evasions of clear constitutional prohibitions, such as some justices have employed to justify government-imposed restrictions on political speech.

While all of these matters should be explored in greater depth during the forthcoming hearings, we cannot conceive that anything could be said that would fundamentally alter our assessment of this nominee. Therefore, we respectfully urge that you oppose Ms. Kagan’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sincerely,

David N. O’Steen, Ph.D., Executive Director

Douglas Johnson, Legislative Director

Susan T. Muskett, J.D., Senior Legislative Counsel

Move over “My Favorite Martian.”  The real aliens, the ones without antennae, are upon us. There is a single “footprint” on Mars that would be a bit more convincing if there were a series of indentations that made a trail. The dinosaur/human trails found in the Paluxy River bed in Texas are a good example.  Maybe the alien that made the “track” was a flier and no trail is necessary.  Of course, it doesn’t have to be a appendage fossil print at all.

The highlighted story is typical.  The title announces possible signs of alien life.  There is a picture, “scientific” administrations and institutes and their studies are noted, and an idea that fits with macro-evolutionary thought is put forth.

This particular article includes a surprise that is often neglected.  It states:

Scientists have not yet discovered proof of life on Mars, or anywhere in the universe beyond Earth, though they are getting closer to knowing where to look and how to recognize the signs of life if they are present.

“My Favorite Martian” was a quirky comedy that made us laugh.  I would have to be deaf and blind not to be aware of the serious alien “buzz” that permeates much of today’s airwaves.

A friend pointed me to a movie named “Knowing.” I watched the final half hour.

It’s a sci-fi flick that has an answer.  It explains how a Garden of Eden could have been created.  Man didn’t come from God. He came from aliens.

The movie visually depicts a “theory” put forth by Richard Dawkins, the great modern day macro-evolutionist, that we may have been seeded on Earth by aliens.

Aliens used to be fun.  They have now become an answer.  Some humans would rather believe that evolved aliens, rather than an Almighty God, explain our existence.

Earlier this month, the mainstream media reported the sighting of a UFO over a Chinese airport.  The UFO reportedly grounded airline flights for awhile. I have no idea what the thing in China was.  It appears that no one else admits to knowing either.

Some Christians are saying that the UFO bustle is the result of demonic activity. A student of Bible prophecy that I listen to thinks so.  I don’t know if this is true or not.  I do know that demons are real.  Anyone who has read any of the Gospels knows it.  The Gospels also tell of the good angels.

……I do know one thing about all of this UFO stuff.  It doesn’t prove that the book of Genesis is inaccurate.  Genesis is the story of an Everlasting God who spoke this world into existence.  He created a garden.  He created a man and a woman.  They enjoyed the garden until…

Unfortunately, the beginning has a sad ending.  Sin enters the world.  Sin is something the macro-evolutionists don’t want to discuss.  The Biblical account explains what I observe to my satisfaction.

The bookend to Genesis is Revelation.  Parts of it, particularly the last couple of chapters, seem literal.  It also seems sequential and describes future events that are more tragic, hopeful, and fascinating than anything Hollywood can conjure.

And the aliens?  We will eventually know the truth.  It will all fit very nicely.

Chris Reimers

¹Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away… – Revelation 21

***It is May of 2021, almost 11 years after I posted this originally.  I’ve noticed the recent UFO “buzz” and the recent attempt by NASA to find alien fossils on Mars.  HERE IS THE LATEST.

Area on Mars could hold fossilized remains of life

My Favorite Martian (1963) TV Intro

Paluxy River Bed Tracks

“Knowing” Ending

How are we to respond? (Another WordPress blogger on UFOs)…Walter Martin’s opinion is mentioned here towards the end of the article.  I always liked Walter Martin, went and listened to him speak when he was alive, and I think his opinion is as good as any at the moment. -cr

1. There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools. * * * * * * * *

2. All ballots will be in this nation’s language. * * * * *

3. All government business will be conducted in our language. * * * * * * *

4. Non-residents will NOT have the right to vote no matter how long they are here.

* * * * * * * *

5. Non-citizens will NEVER be able to hold political office. * * * * * * * *

6. Foreigners will not be a burden to the taxpayers. No welfare, no food stamps, no health care, or other government assistance programs.  Any burden will be deported.

* * * * * * * *

7. Foreigners can invest in this country, but it must be an amount at least equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage. * * * * * * * *

8. If foreigners come here and buy land… options will be restricted. Certain parcels including waterfront property are reserved for citizens naturally born into this country. * * * * * * * *

9. Foreigners may have no protests, no demonstrations, no waving of a foreign flag, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies. These will lead to deportation. * * * * * *

10. If you do come to this country illegally, you will be actively hunted &, when caught, sent to jail until your deportation can be arranged. All assets will be taken from you. * * * * * * * * *

Too strict?  The above laws are current immigration laws of MEXICO!

Imagine the outrage if America had the exact laws?

There is no question that Mexico has the natural resources to support its population.  A major problem lies with the corruption in its government.  Now a universal problem, Mexico’s corruption has been deeply embedded for too long.

The other major part of the problem is, of course, American businessmen who take advantage of the weak and unprotected Mexican worker.  To finger the unreliability of the Mexican government without mentioning the irresponsibility of certain American business owners would be inequitable.

I would like to thank Bob for sending me this information.  He knows the border as well as anyone, as he lives near the Mexican border in Texas where many drug related murders have occurred recently.  Bob also sent along this additional information: -CR

The State of Sonora is angry at the influx of Mexicans into Mexico.  Nine state legislators from the Mexican State of Sonora traveled to Tucson to complain about Arizona’s new employer crackdown on illegals from Mexico .

It seems that many Mexican illegals are returning to their hometowns and the officials in the Sonora state government are ticked off.  A delegation of nine state legislators from Sonora was in Tucson on Tuesday to state that Arizona’s new Employer Sanctions Law will have a devastating effect on the Mexican state.

At a news conference, the legislators said that Sonora, Arizona’s southern neighbor, made up of mostly small towns, – cannot handle the demand for housing, jobs and schools that it will face as Mexican workers return to their hometowns from  the USA without jobs or money. The Arizona law, which took effect Jan. 1, punishes Arizona employers who knowingly hire individuals without valid legal documents to work in the United States .

Penalties include suspension of, or loss of, their business license. The Mexican legislators are angry because their own citizens are returning to their hometowns, placing a burden on THEIR state government.

“How can Arizona pass a law like this?’ asked Mexican Rep. Leticia Amparano-Gamez, who represents Nogales.” There is not one person living in Sonora who does not have a friend or relative working in Arizona ,’ she said, speaking in Spanish.

“ Mexico is not prepared for this, for the tremendous problems it will face as more and more Mexicans working in Arizona and who were sending money to their families return to their home-towns in Sonora without jobs,” she said. “We are one family, socially and economically,” she said of the people of Sonora and Arizona.   Wrong!

The United States is a sovereign nation, not a subsidiary of Mexico, and its taxpayers are not responsible for the welfare of Mexico’s citizens.

I’m not a fan of gambling in any fashion and even a number of states that have had lotteries for years don’t have vending machines.  Why do we need them in Arkansas?

The Arkansas Lottery Commission plans to roll out 100 lottery ticket vending machines across Arkansas.  Between now and August 13^th, they are accepting public comments on the vending machines.

If you feel as I do, that the machines are another step in the wrong direction, and you live in Arkansas, please leave a comment at the following location: -CR

http://www.familycouncil.org