The following is from Rick Meyers, the founder of e-Sword. I have found e-Sword to be a powerful search tool and an incredible resource of Bible commentaries, dictionaries, and versions. I highly recommend it.

“Without payment you have received; without payment you are to give.” (Mat 10:8 ISV)

e-Sword is a fast and effective way to study the Bible.
e-Sword is feature rich and user friendly with more capabilities than you would expect in a free software package. The fact that e-Sword is free is just one of the blessings and does not speak of the quality of the software. I make my living writing software and I believe I have put forth my best effort in this endeavor. The real work, however, was put in by the godly men and women who devoted countless years creating the texts that have been made available for our benefit.

The 2004 fourth-quarter GDP is higher than expected. Good news, right? Well, maybe. The economy may be getting better, it may be getting worse, but either way the GDP is nigh on useless for getting a substantial answer.

The first problem is assuming that there is one collective economy that can be measured. Suppose that I used the GDP formulas on several families from the same church. Whatever answer I got would ignore vital things such differences in income and standards of living. To break it down even further, suppose that I tried to compare my finances for the year with those of one of my friends. Both of us make different amounts of money, and as such we have differing spending habits. The averages might make for nice trivia, but as far as being a useful gauge they’d come up lacking.

The other problem with the GDP is that it includes government spending. Federal spending is notoriously wasteful, yet it still counts towards the GDP. So yes, money was spent, but it didn’t accomplish anything.

I’ve only touched the surface of the GDP issue, a quick Google Search will yield plenty of results. My main point is that the GDP is probably not as useful of a tool as it’s commonly made out to be.

Stephen W. Carson, in his latest article, describes the connection between evangelical Christians and George W. Bush. He likens the relationship to the one early Christians had with the Roman emperor Constantine:

Eusebius and the other Christians at the time actually had fairly good reason to be thankful for the ascendancy of Constantine. The early church had been persecuted numerous times by the Roman Empire. Eusebius’ own beloved teacher Pamphilus had been martyred in a recent persecution. When Constantine seemed to genuinely be a Christian and work to stop persecutions of Christians it came as a great relief.

In a very roughly similar way, conservative American evangelical Christians have felt besieged by a secular elite seemingly determined to undermine their way of life through what Murray Rothbard described as “multicultural, socialistic, condomaniacal, anti-Christian public schooling” and in many other ways. Clearly, the parallel is in one sense weak. American Christians have not been fed to the lions. Nevertheless, psychologically Christians have felt besieged. So just as with the arrival of Constantine, the arrival of first Reagan and much more significantly George W. Bush, who has really made a point of speaking to Christian evangelicals in their language, has meant a feeling of real empowerment after many decades of feeling excluded from the mainstream of society.

Carson explains that Bush, like Constantine before him, helped further the intertwining of church and state:

The division between the Empire and the Church began to blur with, for example, Emperor Constantine playing a key role in calling the theologically crucial First Council of Nicea. This process of blurring the lines has already begun in our own time with programs like the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Carson goes on to point out that “the Roman Empire’s embrace of Christianity was an attempt to sustain the Empire with the vitality of the Christian movement. That is, the Empire needed the Church, not the other way around. … Similarly, the American Empire has lurched forward with renewed energy now that the evangelicals are on board.”

The church needs to remember its mission. Becoming another tool for the Empire isn’t it.

Note: cross-posted at Buried Treasure.

In Orwellian fashion, proponents of the “right-to-die” movement emphasize their compassion and humanity in relieving the suffering of those who want to die with dignity rather than suffer pain or humiliation in a so-called vegetative state.

This article notes that death by starvation, often decided by doctors and family members and not based on a patient’s wishes, is increasing in the United States. Some have no compunctions against using the chilling oxymoron “mercy killing.” Though Oregon (my former home state) legalized physician-assisted suicide, other states don’t yet have a formal legal policy to allow such acts. Still, “forced exits” are becoming more common. A bill was just introduced into my state’s legislature, AB 654, allowing physician-assisted murder just as in Oregon. I’m sure other states will soon follow, especially if Terri is allowed to die.

Let’s not believe the lie that death by starvation is a peaceful and humane process. I don’t want to give the impression that lethal injections, such as those legitimately given to condemned prisoners, are any better—any murder of an innocent person is horrific. But let’s be aware of what is in store for Terri and any other person deemed inconvenient to society, when they are not allowed food and water. According to Dr. William Burke, a St. Louis neurologist, this is the process:

A conscious person would feel it (dehydration) just as you and I would. They will go into seizures. Their skin cracks, their tongue cracks, their lips crack. They may have nosebleeds because of the drying of the mucous membranes, and heaving and vomiting might ensue because of the drying out of the stomach lining. They feel the pangs of hunger and thirst. Imagine going one day without a glass of water. Death by dehydration takes ten to fourteen days. It is an extremely agonizing death.

The French revolutionaries using Madame Guillotine had more compassion. At least that death was quick and relatively painless. As Pastor Bret has said, our nation seems to have been drinking deeply from the Jacobin well. It’s no surprise that death has become an accepted answer to solving sticky problems. Well, as Condoleezza Rice recently told the French, trying to get them back on the team, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!” It’s our new national motto.

Wouldn’t it be great if our prolife president would use his influence to speak out against this travesty? Perhaps we should be emailing him, too.

I thought this Asay cartoon went well with Chuck Baldwin’s latest column.

Many of us remember President Bill Clinton saying in 1996, “The era of big government is over.” Of course, that statement was made on the heels of the famous congressional elections of 1994 when a hearty band of 73 freshman Republicans swept into the House of Representatives promising to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. On the strength of that stunning election victory, they pushed through a budget resolution that called for the elimination of scores of federal programs and up to 5 federal departments.

However, it is now time to set the record straight: the era of big government is back! Not only has the Republican Party not decreased the size and scope of the federal government, it has exploded the growth of government to unprecedented levels!

In a recent post on Iraq, I mentioned a report by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA’s think tank, which concluded that Iraq had become “a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills” for those who will eventually disperse to other countries.

In testimony last week, CIA chief Porter Goss confirmed the NIC findings. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that, “Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists.”

Goss went on to say, “These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries.”

Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate panel that American “policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment.” Indeed, Jacoby concluded, “Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world.” Jacoby also testified that the insurgency in Iraq was growing stronger and more sophisticated. Obviously Goss and Jacoby hate America and are undermining national morale and the will of our fighting men. I say throw them in the Bastille!

Meanwhile, over on the other side of Capitol Hill, Don Rumsfeld said he has no idea how large the insurgency may be, and even if he did he wouldn’t discuss the matter with nosy members of Congress.

Richard Myers jumped in and said that foreign fighters represent a very small, indeed miniscule part of the insurgency. Did he mean to say that we really aren’t battling al-Qaida in Iraq? Does he hate America, too? Quick, someone call Tony Blankley and Sean Hannity.

The truth is that the Pentagon has no idea how large the insurgency has become. Rumsfeld himself pointed to the problem in an October, 2003 memo, where he wrote:

Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us? Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists?

It appears that we still lack the necessary “metrics” to gauge success and failure in Iraq.

You would think that Mr. Bush might have stumbled across these words from Jesus in Luke 14 during one of his morning devotionals before watching ‘Sport’s Center’:

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish. Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?”

So what are the costs so far? More than 1,400 American dead and 10,000 wounded; between 15-100,000 dead Iraqis; $300 billion and rising; an incalculable loss in U. S. moral authority.

Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s invade Syria and Iran, too!

Secularism is a myth. You and I have never seen anybody doing anything ’secular.’ There is no such thing as secularism. The notion of Secularism has been created by those who call themselves ‘Secularists’ in order to provide a allegedly neutral territory where people put aside their confessed Faith systems in order to get on with the job of life. Government Schools, for example, supposedly cannot say or teach anything about God therefore in order to seemingly avoid the ‘God’ problem they use smoke and mirrors and come up with education that pretends to be God neutral since it is ‘Secular.’

Since there is no such thing as Secularism we are required to ask what that which is called Secularism really is. The answer to that is the faith system called humanism. This of necessity must be for if all ‘god’ ideas are counted out from the start the god vaccuum must be filled by man as god. Since Secularism is a faith system, then like all other faith systems it does have a sense of the Sacred, and the Holy. It is a system, like all religious systems, that is replete with Priests and blood atonement and catechisms, and Holy books. Since it is a Worldview System in opposition to the God of the Bible it’s sense of the Sacred and its Holy is what Biblical Christians would consider profane and unholy. In Secularism Man, considered either individually or collectively, is that which is ultimately Sacred, and since Man absolutized handles all that he handles apart from God, all that Man absolutized makes sacred is therefore automatically profane from the view of a Christ submitting Christian.

Secularism contends that it provides a “neutral zone” where the beliefs and practices and the moral considerations of other Faith systems may not intrude. It desires to set up a ‘faith free zone.’ Seldom does anybody, in the face of such utter brazenness and bluff, ask where Secularism gets the moral authority to not allow the beliefs, practices and moral considerations of other Faith systems to intrude upon its domain. Seldom does anybody pause to ask, “Well, if my beliefs and practices and moral considerations aren’t allowed whose beliefs and practices and moral considerations will be allowed?”

As an example of this, a few years ago I went to a meeting put on by the Local Government Church (Sometimes Euphemistically called the Local Government High School) and there I was re-introduced to this idea of a ‘neutral zone.’ The Church (School) was trying to get area ministers to support their sex education program. The Teacher who was ‘facilitating’ the meeting said that while she was a Christian herself she couldn’t push her private moral values on Children in a Public place (read… Neutral Zone). I raised my hand and asked her if she would not be teaching her own private moral values would it be safe to assume that she would be teaching somebody else’s private moral values. She gave me her ‘best hands on hip condescending teacher’ look. I meekly explained that I assumed whatever moral values were taught would be moral values that belonged to some private person somewhere. I added that I didn’t think it likely that private moral values were going to be taught to which no private person held. I then asked her why somebody else’s private moral values were to be preferred over her own private moral values. I politely tried to make it very clear that even if they were following a policy that said that ‘private values wouldn’t be pushed,’ that was a result of someone somewhere owning the private value that private values wouldn’t be pushed in sex education. That led to a long and strained silence since it crushed the notion of ‘Neutral Zone,’ and I am still waiting for her answer.

You see the point here is that it is not possible to build ‘Faith Free Zones.’ Since that is so Secularism is seen to be a myth that serves the agenda of those who practice a very real faith but can hide it from the public by insisting that they are just creating an arena where all faiths can come and talk if only they will leave their faith talk outside the arena.

So the idea that of a sacred and secular dichotomy is a myth and we have the culture we have because of the viability of that myth.

One’s belief about God drives everything. Everything about us … including culture is the outward manifestation of our inward beliefs. Many Christians have been duped in to thinking that culture is something that should be secular (as if that were possible) and shouldn’t be a concern as it touches their Worldview. As a Christian people we must wake up to the fact that everything, EVERYTHING that happens around us from School curriculum, to magazine covers, to Presidential Speeches, to forms of government, to what is considered chic in apparel, to hairstyles, to music, to parenting styles, is driven by some faith commitment which in turn descends from some God concept. The only question is which faith commitment and which God.

We must start belly laughing whenever somebody seriously advances the idea that there is any ‘neutral zone’ called Secularism.