We Need Camel's Knees

James, the brother of Jesus and the traditional leader of the Jerusalem church, eventually contracted a unique moniker. Not only was he called “James the Just” because of his piety, he was also known as “The Man with Camel’s Knees.”  It seems James was always keeling in intercessory prayer for his fellow Christians, a practice that eventually calloused his knees and gave them the appearance as those of a camel. We need to become intimately acquainted with that malady.

Many of the verbal autopsies of the recent Presidential election make mention of the tremendous support Donald Trump received from evangelicals. I am one of them and only decided to cast my vote for Trump on Monday after months of prayer. As with many other Christians, I had and still have issues with some of the history that is attached to the President-Elect. But when it came to decision time, I felt that the chance for Trump to become a better standard bearer for my beliefs was greater. I had no such estimation for Hillary Clinton.

As Christians, and especially those of us who voted for Donald Trump, we now have a duty. We must actively and continually pray for him. And pray not with a routine prayer “for the leaders of our government,” but for Donald Trump the man. We must pray for him to have wisdom and discernment. We must acknowledge that his behavior needs to reflect our desire that he lead this nation back to some Biblical principals, or at least away from the secular oblivion that was, and still may be, awaiting America. We need to pray that he surrounds himself with counselors that also pray, men and women who understand that America has achieved this level of greatness through God’s divine love and authority, and not with singular military might or technological achievements. And we must pray this prayer not occasionally, but as regularly as we pray for our loved ones. Prayer works. And for those who need them, kneepads are available very reasonably at your local Lowe’s or Home Depot.

A Regrettable Debate

I finally rose up off of my writing rear-end and decided that today is the day that I would continue blogging. After all, with the scheduled debate of the century or, as the television media would have us believe, the most significant political event since Brutus stuck the shiv into the back of Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate, today is a day worth noting.  The two notable aspects of this ritualistic, media-mandated, poll-driven, piece of political malpractice are that neither candidate, when considering the oppositional attitudes of their acolytes, are physically armed. The other is that both candidates adequately represent the culmination of political choices available when a society’s moral compass has gone askew.

I, for one, am not so overly aghast at the non-conservative bona fides of Donald Trump.  I also voted for Romney. And I also voted for McCain, the oft-commended war hero who crosses the political aisle so frequently that he forgets where his seat is located.  Nor do I exhibit too much squeamishness when I consider the voters who support him, the great unwashed as penned by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, or the basket of deplorables as offered by Trump’s adversary, Hillary Clinton. After all, we unwashed deplorables have our standards, too. At this point I would kindly suggest reading a piece by Victor Davis Hanson of National Review. I’m sure any political junkie remembers the gauntlet thrown down at the beginning of the primary season as the austere conservative publication declared that they could not support Trump, as his conservative instincts did not pass muster. Hanson, one of the magazines regular contributors points out the futility of this type of attitude. After all, this is politics we’re talking about. The article is here.

As for Hillary Clinton, she is a known quantity. There is no liberal cause that she will not advocate, no lie she will not tell, and no one she would not throw under a bus to achieve the Presidency of the United States. Not only has she not only abetted a sexual predator as a husband, she knowingly attacked the women who crossed his path. She sells influence for money and steps over the dead bodies of those who did her bidding. She has held high positions and accomplished nothing other than filling the family coffers under the guise of a humanitarian foundation. Hillary Clinton and public service should not be written or mentioned in the same sentence.

Tonight, these two bastions of the democratic process will verbally battle it out on public television. Put the kids to bed early. Tune in the NFL. Dig for worms in the back yard or pick up the dog droppings in the park. The moral decay of a nation has come down to a bragging buffoon and a person who stands for absolutely nothing. To make matters worse, it is our entire fault. God has turned this nation over to its sinful ways. We have a choice between a man who states he has never asked God for forgiveness and a woman who states that we need to change the religious views of Christians to support abortion (here). How can we ask God to bless the United States when we allow these two people to be our only choices?

Obama Visits A Mosque

President Obama’s final year in office, if today is an indicator, is shaping up to be just as forgettable as the first seven. As the first President to visit a mosque on American soil, he took the occasion to preach about the traditional American and constitutionally mandated values of religious tolerance. In typical Obama fashion he aimed his remarks at the wrong people. (here) Where Muslims are concerned, Americans have bent over backwards to respect the Muslim viewpoint, even after repeated acts of Islamic terrorism aimed at the United States and innocent citizens.

President Obama continues to trumpet the liberal viewpoint that Islam is the religion of peace and that some individuals (I call them Islamic terrorists) have used a few verses of the Qur’an and misinterpreted these verses to support their violent views. If that can possibly be the case, then there are a multitude of Imams in some of the most prestigious mosques who seem to follow those same misinterpretations.

On July 6, 2015, Sheikh Muhammad Abed, known as “ Abu Abdallah,” declared that from “the land of the Prophet’s nocturnal journey”—a reference to Jerusalem—“armies will set out to conquer Rome, to conquer Constantinople,” and then he added to the list “Washington and London.”

In an Oct. 27 address at Al Aqsa, Sheikh Khaled Al-Maghrabi called for the annihilation of the Jews all over the world, providing justification by quoting the well-known hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) of the stone and the tree: “Oh Muslim there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” Earlier at the mosque, on May 29, Sheikh Al-Maghrabi explained why Jews were killed in the Holocaust. “On Passover,” he said, the Jews “would knead the dough for these matzos with children’s blood. When this was discovered, the Israelites were expelled across Europe . . . It got to the point where they were burned in Germany.”

The above-italicized paragraphs were spoken in the Al Aqsa Mosque, the holiest Islamic site outside of Saudi Arabia. (full WSJ article here) President Obama needs to be speaking to these Muslim clerics about tolerance, not Americans. This is what is being preached by the Islamic mainstream, not some small madrassa in the mountains of Afghanistan.

And as a final jab at his detractors, President Obama joked that he was thought to be a Muslim by some and that he was not the first American President to be called a Muslim but that “Jefferson was the first.” It should be noted that Jefferson insisted Muslims be given the same freedom of worship as Christians or Jews to ensure the concept of religious tolerance was all encompassing. (here) It should also be noted that Jefferson knew how to handle thugs and pirates as he proved on the Barbary Coast. President Obama would do well to stop worrying about Jefferson’s religious character and study instead how Jefferson handled threats to the United States.

Merry Christmas In Today’s World

I would like to preface this blog with a heartfelt desire for everyone to have a Merry Christmas, one with a deep thankfulness in which we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

The opening sentence was easy to write but less so to live. I was born in 1948. My parents married late in life and then started having children after a few years. My father was born in 1901 and my mother in 1908. Both were adults in the Great Depression and my brother, sister, and I were basically raised in a home with 1940’s values. My parents were conservative democrats (Yes, at one time there were Christian conservatives living out full lives as democrats.) and both of them were unabashed in passing down to us the history and traditions they grew up with. Our upbringing began in the home, and they needed no help from the government or a school to inform us as to what right and wrong entailed. Sometimes in the early morning as I pour coffee and read the newspaper, I wonder how I could ever explain to my parents how the world is today or the price of gasoline (We now consider below $2.00 a gallon as cheap.) All of this is a segue to remind you of some of my prior writings where I cautioned against the ease with which

technology has taken over our lives.

I am linking an article here. It is rather long and somewhat wordy, but I highly recommend a complete reading of it. There are some very interesting comments about some Christians (I am guilty of this.) who equate Biblical teachings with a desire to change the overall social and institutional aspects of the nation without emphasizing some of the personal Biblical teachings. The author discusses a philosophy whereby our youth are being pulled and pushed to more of a technological self-imprint than a human one. In short, they can choose how they want themselves to be represented. This of course, is in direct conflict with Biblical teaching (man, woman, father, mother). The writer goes on to present how our children have no concept of right or wrong, history, and Biblical concepts. Now before you shake your head and remind me that your Church has an active youth group and a full-time youth minister, just read the article and decide for yourself how much good our Churches and Christian parents are doing for our kids. Over the last few years, I have had second thoughts about our Baptist Churches and their active outreach to kids. Look at the methodology our schools use in their curriculum and the results they bring, and then ask yourself if Churches aren’t falling into the same trap as we try to entice kids to come to the Church? I am not attacking any part of any Church, but I am also not willing to give our Churches a pass just because they have youth leaders or sound systems that mimic our secular lifestyle.

U.S. Strategy Against ISIS, the Caliphate, and Dabiq

After listening to the short speech by President Obama last Sunday, the general consensus among those of us not inclined to list this President as a global strategic savant dismissed the speech as more of the same: all talk and redundancy. It certainly did not offer any rational effort to assuage fear in the American populace, nor did it offer any new methodology for combating ISIS, or ISIL, a term for the Islamic State this administration, for some reason has wedded itself to. In actuality, it was more along the lines of a lecture to the American people to be nice to the Muslims among us. This was unnecessary as we have yet to vent our anger or frustration on our Muslim neighbors.

The President did emphasize again that large numbers of boots on the ground, specifically American boots, is not the answer. This is especially interesting since the very basis for the Islamic State is that they must hold ground. Their claim as the rightful heir as a caliphate is based on having a landmass. Without land, they are no better than al-Qaeda or Hezbollah, or the other terror groups that play a murderous game of hide-and-seek with established government militaries. Without territory they cannot issue a jihadist call for Muslims worldwide to come to the Islamic State. They cannot demand jihad against infidels worldwide or obeisance of all Muslims to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed Caliph of the Islamic State. It therefore would seem logical to eliminate the land holdings. So, why don’t we do just that?

Interestingly, the New York Times (full article here) brought up the Islamic apocryphal teachings regarding the jihadist desire for the great battle to commence. I have no idea whether or not the White House prompted the article to give a basis for President Obama’s grand strategy, or whether ISIS uses the Qu’ranic teaching as another type of threat that the situation can only get worse if foreign troops enter the fray, or the Times simply just printed the story.  For ISIS, they embellish the threat.  Peter Kassig, a former US Army Ranger, was beheaded in Dabiq, the prophetic site of Islam’s version of Armageddon, with the statement by the executioner, “Here we are, burying the first American crusader in Dabiq, eagerly waiting for the remainder of your armies to arrive.”

Dabiq is a small town in Syria near Aleppo, the Koran-assigned site of the great battle between crusader forces (that’s us) and the followers of Islam. Dabiq is also the name of the magazine of ISIS. I have linked the first issue of it here if you are interested in reading the well-written and professionally published propaganda of these thugs. Dabiq equates the Caliphate’s operations to Qu’ranic teachings and offers a religious affirmation for their recruitment of soldiers worldwide.

It now comes down to this. Do we allow the American and other western populations to be held hostage to the Islamic end-time prophecy by continuing to absorb the terrorist blows of ISIS, or do we destroy them by any means necessary? Do we believe their version of a great Islamic victory over the crusaders at Dabiq, or do we follow the Christian faith that has offered hope, peace, and salvation through Biblical teachings that has sustained western democracies for 2,000 years? We have no reason to fear Dabiq.