GOD Is Not On Our Side!

GOD is not a Republican or a Democrat, He is not on their side or our side! He is GOD and if we are not on His side then we are against Him and that is not a good side to be on.

“If My people, who are called by My Name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14 NKJV

To be a people who are called by GOD’s Name we must be yielded to Him to do His Will as CHRIST was as the Son of Man.

 “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.” Matthew 12:30 NKJV

 “For I have come down from Heaven, not to do My own Will, but the Will of Him who sent Me.” John 6:38 NKJV

“Our Father, who is in Heaven, Holy is Your Name, Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done in the earth as it is in Heaven. Matthew 6:9-10 my version.

To Know!

To Know!

Have you ever been somewhere where you met someone really important; a corporate owner or CEO, a Bank owner, or very wealthy person, a political leader, a social advocate, a star athlete or actor? Whether you are introduced by someone or you introduce yourself, you exchange names and maybe a few pleasantries, you might even have an in depth conversation. But, you still do not know each other. Maybe you’ve read or even studied about their life and career, but you still do not really know them. To really know someone you have to spend lots of time with and around them in all kinds of environments and situations. And, even then you can be surprised by a hidden behavior or action.

So when JESUS says, “For I have come down from Heaven to do not My Own Will but the Will of The One who sent Me. And this is the Will of The One who sent Me: that I should not lose any of all those He has given Me but should raise them up on the Last Day. Yes, this is the Will of My Father: that all who see the Son and trust in Him should have eternal life, and that I should raise them up on the Last Day.” or, “After YESHUA had said these things, He looked up toward Heaven and said, ‘Father, the time has come, Glorify Your Son, so that the Son may glorify You – just as You gave Him authority over all mankind, so that He might give eternal life to all those whom You have given Him. And eternal life is this, to know the One True GOD, and Him whom You sent, YESHUA the Messiah.’” John 6:38-40; 17:1-3 CJB

In Matthew 7:15-29 JESUS makes it clear that many can know about Him but not be known by Him. Some will say and act like they know Him but not do His Will or not hear and act upon His Words. It is not enough to just read or even study the Bible, it is not enough to just pray or even meditate, it is not enough to do the works of GOD’s Kingdom, we must die to ourself, lay down our life and take up our cross daily so that we can work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We must know GOD as our Father who loves us and redeemed us before the earth was created and fear GOD the One who can destroy both our soul and body in eternal damnation.

Being a Christian is not about self anything, it is about being like minded with CHRIST by knowing the fellowship of His suffering, by being conformed to His death so that we can live in the power of His resurrection.

This is not easy, I had a friend who was the worship leader of our Church at the time and he said, “Dying to myself is hard because I like myself.” Christianity is not a feel good religion, it is not a do good religion, it is a personal relationship with the One True GOD through the death of JESUS CHRIST and the in filling of our life (spirit, soul and body) by His SPIRIT which makes us living temples of the Living GOD in the earth.

John 4:45-54 and Luke 7:1-10

John 4:45-54 and Luke 7:1-10

Complete Jewish Bible

“He went again to Kanah in Galil, where He had turned the water into wine. An officer in the royal service was there, his son was ill in K’far-Nachum. This man, on hearing that YESHUA had come from Y’hudah to the Galil, went and asked Him to come down and heal his son, for his son was at the point of death. YESHUA answered, ‘Unless you people see signs and miracles, you simply will not trust.’ The officer said to Him, ‘Sir, come down before my child dies.’ YESHUA replied, ‘You may go, your son is alive.’ The man believed what YESHUA said and left. As he was going down, his servants met him with the news that his son was alive. So he asked them at what time he had gotten better; and they said, ‘The fever left him yesterday at one o’clock in the afternoon.’ The father knew that that was the very hour when YESHUA had told him, ‘Your son is alive’; and he and all his household trusted. This was a second sign that YESHUA did; He did it after He came down from Y’hudah into the Galil.” John 4:45-54

I have heard this passage taught many times on faith and obedience; but not on obedience and trust.

In the movie Risen in which a Roman military officer is struggling with the reality of having seen CHRIST dead on the cross and now being in His presence as a living man with the marks of the crucifixion. As he expresses to YESHUA that he does not even know what to ask, YESHUA says to him, “Imagine the difficulty they (waving His hand over the Eleven Disciples) will have telling those who have never seen.”

This is the true call of obedience and trust, those who never see YESHUA in person (vision or dream) or never get a healing or see a miracle yet believe and obey His call to disciple the nations into His eternal Kingdom.

This is faith and obedience! This is what most Christians face! And, those who teach the good, healthy, prosperous Christian life are lying because the majority of Christians do not and will not live the good, healthy, prosperous Christian life as taught since the twenty century.

The officer trusted because he had heard about YESHUA and he had asked Him face to face, then after his son’s recovery his whole household believed.

“When YESHUA had finished speaking to the people, He went back to K’far-Nachum. A Roman army officer there had a servant he regarded highly, who was sick to the point of death. Hearing about YESHUA, the officer sent some Jewish elders to Him with the request that He come and heal his servant. They came to YESHUA and pleaded earnestly with Him, ‘He really deserves to have You do this, for he loves our people – in fact, he built the Synagogue for us!’ So YESHUA went with them. He had not gone far from the house, when the officer sent friends who said to Him, ‘Sir, don’t trouble Yourself. I’m not worthy to have you come under my roof – this is why I didn’t presume to approach you myself. Instead, just give a command and let my servant recover. For I too am a man under authority, I have solders under me; and I say to this one, “GO!” and he goes, and to another, “Come!” and he comes; and to my slave, “Do this!” and he does it.’ YESHUA was astonished at him when He heard this; and He turned to the crowd that was following Him, ‘I tell you, not even in Isra’el have I found such trust!’ When the messengers got back to the officer’s house, they found the servant in good health.” Luke 7:1-10

Here we have a man who has heard about YESHUA but never seems Him personally, but he does understand the power of authority and command. So just on what he has heard he chooses to believe and therefore he receives. Now in fairness to today, this Roman had heard about YESHUA from people who have seen His authoritive power in person.

All that we have today is the Bible, The HOLY SPIRIT of GOD and the testimonies of other’s experiences. What!?

YESHUA is the Living Word and He has given us through His SPIRIT the written Word (the Bible) so that we can learn of Him! YESHUA gives every person who believes in Him and confesses Him His own SPIRIT (The HOLY SPIRIT) as a seal of our salvation; by filling our spirit, soul and body with His SPIRIT, making us living temples of the Living GOD in the earth! YESHUA gives us testimonies of those who have known Him in the past and the present to encourage and strengthen us in our obedience and trust in Him!

Believe me, I know there are no excuses for not trusting and obeying GOD; that is, doing His Will in the earth as it is in Heaven!

DEMINT: Donald Trump’s Fiscally Conservative Budgets

DEMINT: Donald Trump’s Fiscally Conservative Budgets

One of the most common misconceptions I hear about Donald Trump is that he is not a fiscal conservative.

Yes, everyone acknowledges he is the most successful pro-life president in American history. It cannot be seriously denied he is presiding over the widest and deepest economic expansion in memory. He’s leading a quiet revolution in regulatory reform. He’s ending what were once thought to be “forever wars” in the Middle East. He’s finally taken the stand on illegal immigration the American people have wanted for a generation. And he’s exposed the corruption of the Beltway Swamp like no president in our lifetime.

But on the issue of federal spending, President Trump’s critics on the Left and Right accuse him of being a budget-busting, big-government Republican. Trillion-dollar deficits speak for themselves, they say. And of course, the president has signed many appropriations bills I would have preferred he veto. He went along with bipartisan congressional leaders to bust the budget caps conservatives fought so hard to implement under President Obama.

And yet, every year, when the president has presented his budget proposals to Congress, they have contained more spending cuts than any president in history. They sought to achieve balance within 10-15 years. They outline streamlining reforms to bloated and dysfunctional programs. His chief budget advisers – Mick Mulvaney and Russell Vought – are probably the most fiscally conservative senior members of the Trump administration.

Trump is not an ideological libertarian; we can all agree on that. He never said he was. The budget deficit is understandably not a higher priority for him than, say, the economy, trade, immigration or rebuilding our military. On the other hand, politics – especially budget politics – is a team sport.

And where have most congressional Republicans been since the president took office in 2019? They have been griping about the same spending caps they celebrated when Barack Obama was in office. Last year, Republican Sen. Richard Shelby called Trump’s budget attempts to keep spending below caps “draconian.” They have been working with Democrats in the House and Senate to plus-up spending across the board. They did it in 2017 and 2018 when Republicans had unified control of Congress, and the spending has only accelerated since Democrats took over the House of Representatives last year.

The only way Congress ever restrains spending is when conservatives – in and out of government, on and off Capitol Hill – rally together to fight. The president’s budget and his veto pen are his biggest weapons. For three years, it has been congressional Democrats and Republicans, not the president, surrendering the fight on spending. Indeed, Congress continues to ignore the president’s fiscally responsible budgets, bust the caps and add to the national debt.

Just this week, the Senate Budget Committee – the one controlled by Republicans – announced that it was not even going to hold hearings on the president’s budget submission. Meanwhile, the House Budget Committee hearings, controlled by Democrats, has announced it won’t write their own budget but will surely engage in partisan attacks against the Administration’s proposals.

No president can pass a budget by himself. He can’t make Congress take it up, let alone support his reforms. Nor can he fight on every front all at once. Congressional Republicans have stood with the president on taxes, impeachment, and the Courts. But on spending, they have gone their own way, the way of the Swamp.

It’s an election year now, and Democrats would love nothing more than to trigger another government shutdown in the cynical confidence the media will blame the president. And Washington Republicans love trying to buy goodwill from voters with money borrowed from our grandkids. So this year’s spending totals may end up no better than the last three years.

But it’s not Donald Trump’s fault. And when – not if – he wins re-election in the fall, the second Trump Administration will be ready to fight, and win, on this issue too.

Jim DeMint (@JimDeMint) served South Carolina in the U.S. Senate from 2005-2013. He is now chairman of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit group advocating for limited government.

Can Government Money Save Private Education? By Edwin Benson

Can Government Money Save Private Education?

By Edwin Benson

A current controversy in the State of Florida calls into question some basic premises of the school choice movement. It shows once again that public money risks government control.

The central issue, described by Robert Pondiscio of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is whether schools that accept government money can exclude students who identify themselves as LGBT.

Origins of “School Choice”

The school choice movement began with the famous economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006). A favorite of the Reagan revolution, Dr. Friedman’s 1979 book Free to Choose, and the accompanying PBS series, brought him out of his classroom at the University of Chicago and into the national consciousness.

Unlike most economists of his generation, Dr. Friedman placed great faith in the power of the free market. The school choice movement took off when he applied free-market ideas to education.

The movement began as people experience serious doubts about public education. At the same time, private schools, including Catholic schools, enjoyed a superior academic reputation. However, many of these schools were closing because of a lack of money.

Dr. Friedman suggested that the money that the government spends on schools could be reallocated. Parents could use this money to send their children to any school that they wanted. The market would then decide which schools would stay open or be closed.

A Long Simmering Controversy

The idea attracted both adamant supporters and feverish detractors. Supporters, including many proponents of Catholic education, hail it as their salvation. Detractors see it as the death knell of public schools.

In between lay many who acknowledged that such a plan would help Catholic schools. However, they feared that it could lead to a level of government control that would be inconsistent with Catholic teaching.

The current controversy in Florida revives such concerns. The catalyst is Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program. It provides state tax credits for contributions to nonprofit scholarship-funding organizations (SFOs). The scholarships are then awarded to eligible children of low-income families.

The supporters of the program point out that the scholarship money never enters the public coffers. Therefore, some of the church-state issues that arise from other forms of school choice do not apply.

The Perils of Rejecting the Spirit of the Times

Enter the Orlando Sentinel. The paper claims that the state scholarship program causes “gay-friendly” companies to support schools that are opposed to the LGBT agenda. Sentinel reporters “reviewed documents of more than 1,000 private religious schools that take state scholarships and found 156 have policies that say gay and transgender students can be denied enrollment or expelled or that explain the school opposes their sexual orientation or gender identity on religious grounds.”

Like many states, Florida contains deep ideological divisions. Its three major population centers support liberal Democrats. The rest of the state, consisting of small towns and rural areas, tends to be more traditional.

Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits is the Florida scholarship program’s largest single donor. Based in Miami, it operates in forty-four states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. It places a heavy emphasis on being involved in charitable works in the communities in which it does business. It publishes a “Corporate Social Responsibility Report” that details their favored causes. Education is at the top of its list. Its nondiscrimination policy contains the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender and/or gender identity or expression.”

Southern Glazer’s responded to the Sentinel article “by forwarding a statement saying it opposed “discriminatory behavior, practices and policies against LGBTQ+ students in all public and private schools,” including those that receive scholarship money.

Similar statements came from other corporate donors to the scholarship fund. These included Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bank, Geico, and Waste Management. They all issued statements indicating that the knowledge that some schools were opposed to the LGBT agenda might well affect future contributions.

Can Legislatures be Forced to Act?

According to the Sentinel, two current bills would forbid “discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity” in the schools that accept the scholarships. However, a similar bill was defeated last year.

Political setbacks have led the LGBT movement to adopt a new strategy. The Fordham Institute article claims that “What’s happening in Florida portends a new and divisive raising of the stakes in the battle over school choice that could echo beyond Florida. Having lost in the legislature and in the courts, a new playbook is being written before our eyes: Make ESAs [Education Savings Accounts] too hot for donors to touch.”

Such a situation puts state legislatures in a problematic position. These scholarships help thousands of students get a better education. The new strategy would provide cover for unprincipled legislators to claim that preserving the programs is more important than protecting the traditional values of the schools.

Is State Funding a Trap?

There is nothing inherently wrong with the state supporting schools run by the Church and religious institutions. However, such a course does have pitfalls. Catholic schools cannot allow themselves to become dependent on government funds. To do so is to place themselves in danger of having to choose between closing or violating Catholic moral law.

Under such circumstances, the temptation to render to Caesar the things that are God’s may prove all but irresistible.

The Impact That Religion Has on Education That Teachers Are Ignoring By John Horvat II

The Impact That Religion Has on Education That Teachers Are Ignoring

By John Horvat II

Education and religion are often seen to be incompatible.

There is an underlying notion inside the liberal education establishment that religious belief is backwards and contrary to enlightenment. Schools have long been viewed as gateways to a glorious secular and technological future, free of religious superstition.

After all, the purpose of education is to make children “career and college ready,” not to impart character or moral sentiments. Some educators go to the point of insinuating that the less religious influence upon the student, the better.

The educational establishment treats religion as if it is a deadly disease, not a blessing, for kids

Such convictions would be more convincing if they were based on facts. It would be good to see serious empirical studies that prove these prejudices against the influence of religion are justified. All too often, the assumptions are simply stated without proofs. The public is asked to accept them at face value.

In his recent book, “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” sociologist Robert Putnam actually cites many such studies and the evidence is overwhelming. His conclusion is that religion has not only a good impact, but even a great effect upon the success of a child’s education.

“Compared to their unchurched peers,” Putnam writes, “youth who are involved in a religious organization take tougher courses, get higher grades and test scores, and are less likely to drop out of high school.”

Moreover, churchgoing youth have better relationships with their parents. They are more involved in sports and extracurricular activities. They are less likely to abuse alcohol and drugs that inhibit learning. That is to say, the moral formation influenced by religion provides the framework for students to flourish.

Even more surprising is the finding that religion is not the domain of the unenlightened lower classes of society as is often insinuated. In fact, students from affluent families are now much more likely to be involved in religion than those in poorer families. Religion is a major part of the mix that allows many of them to attain later success in life.

If that were not enough, students enlightened by religion tend to seek higher education. Putnam cites studies that show that a child whose parents regularly attend church is 40 to 50 percent more likely to go on for a college education than a similar child of parents who do not attend church.

Based on such evidence that clearly shows a positive impact, schools should at least recognize that religious involvement in the home helps the educational development of children.

The sad fact is that while religion is good for education, education is not good for religion. The educational establishment treats religion as if it is a deadly disease, not a blessing, upon the child.

The least reference to Christianity is increasingly expunged from the schools more thoroughly than from a Soviet classroom. A secular quarantine is imposed upon the school by taking away references to Christmas and other Christian holidays deemed poisonous to the child. At the same time, immoral or anti-religious material or programs freely circulate and are promoted. It is despite, not because of, educational policy that churchgoing students do better.

While religion tends to help get students into college, college tends to get religion out of students. It is a sad fact that many students find an atmosphere on campus which corrupts their morals and erodes their faith. Openly hostile professors attack and ridicule Christian principles and beliefs. It has almost become a rite of passage that many American students lose their faith at the university.

The welfare of the student should be a major concern for educators. All positive influences upon the child should be encouraged, not banished – especially if the influence is proven effective. In this sense, how much better education would be if it were at least not hostile to God and religion, and how much better it would be if education policy were to be based on facts, rather than prejudices.

As seen on theblaze.com

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A City Without a Soul By John Horvat II

A City Without a Soul

By John Horvat II

Near the bustling industrial city of Tieling in northeastern China, there is a brand new city some 6 miles down the road called Tieling New City. The place has everything going for it. Visitors will find excellent infrastructure, government offices, schools, shopping centers and apartment complexes. Land and labor costs are significantly lower than other areas of China. Tieling New City can now hold some 60,000 residents with projections of triple that number in the near future.

The city even won a special recognition from the U.N. Human Settlements Program as an example of “providing a well-developed and modern living space.” The only problem is that Tieling New City is virtually a ghost town with almost no inhabitants. It is a city without a soul.

Tieling New City is a brainchild of socialist planners who still run the nation with social engineering and old-fashioned communist corruption. These planners spent millions of yuan cleaning up marshland that had been used to dump untreated sewage. The logic was build first and populate later. The project also served as an economic stimulus project. With the downturn in world economy, China is trying to artificially pump up its economy by creating construction jobs, burning up money by throwing up a number of ghost cities like Tieling New City all over the country.

In typical Communist Chinese fashion, these cities are riddled with bad loans and deals crafted by corrupt officials who often trample on the rights of farmers and villagers forced to evacuate the area. This inorganic top-down manner of creating a city out of thin air is a surefire formula for building a city without a soul.

Tieling New City is truly a city without a soul. People simply don’t want to live there. There is no community life. There is no history or warmth. People feel more comfortable in crowded Tieling where they have links with friends, family and place.

Visitors cannot help but get an eerie feeling of being in a corpse-city when, at night, row after row of apartment buildings remain dark and nearly empty, save for a few residents and security guards. The industrial park is not much better. This vacant complex was built to be bustling with some 15,000 employees. Today, only two firms are there, one of which employs around 15 persons. Even with such dismal occupancy, there are still plans to double the park’s size. There is also a warehouse center on the outskirts of town that is virtually unused. Security guards seem to be the only real career opportunity in town with a future.

Despite the lack of enthusiasm for Tieling New City, the socialist planners were not easily discouraged. They came up with a set of socialist plans and schemes to move people in.

According to the Tieling government website, the industrial park created 5,000 jobs for rural workers in 2012. However, officials were soon disappointed to learn that most of the workers found places to live outside the new city. Officials then thought they found the solution when they moved many government offices from Tieling to Tieling New City. However, most government workers just commute from their old homes rather than move to the inhospitable city.

Officials went a step further by closing schools in the old city and forcing some 50,000 students to go to brand new schools in the new city. They hoped (against all hope) that parents would move closer to the schools. Alas, the parents are staying put. Despite the place’s outwardly pleasant appearance, they complain that the absence of community and services make the soulless city unlivable.

In face of such obstacles, socialist planners now believe the problem can be solved by building yet more facilities. According to The Wall Street Journal (8-9-13), the municipal government will be spending another $1.3 billion on new projects. Maybe, just maybe, officials reason, people will be attracted by an art gallery, a gymnasium, an indoor swimming pool, and another (empty) shopping center.

What central planners fail to realize is that cities must either be built organically or they will be empty shells. The most important components of the city are individuals, families and communities not warehouses, industrial parks and shopping centers.

As noted in my book, Return to Order, from the exuberant element of life together in society, there springs forth “unique systems of art, styles of life, socio-political institutions, and economic models that differ from the rigid and soulless central planning and one-size-fits-all solutions so prized by socialists and bureaucrats.”

Indeed, so many fail to consider this human element which is essential to sound economy. They think, like the Chinese socialist planners at Tieling New City, that economic health can be bought by simply injecting money into an area without any link to the inhabitants. Bring back family, morals and institutions to a city and it will acquire a soul. Until then, the world is doomed to continue building cities without souls.