Author: Papa Giorgio

“Jesus was an immigrant” | Nancy Pelosi & the Bible

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally posted August of 2014

(See also Bill Whittle’s video) This great commentary via Godfather Politics:

Nancy Pelosi keeps appealing to the Bible in support of her lunatic policies. Her fellow liberals don’t seem to mind. Whatever happened to opposing “mixing religion and politics”? Only liberals can mix religion and politics. We know this because of the way liberal black churches endorse candidates seemingly in violation of IRS regulations and no one seems to protest.

On Tuesday, Pelosi appealed to how Mary and Joseph escaped the impending slaughter of the children under Herod (Matt. 2:13, 16-18):

“I reference the conference of bishops’ statement in which they say baby Jesus was a refugee from violence. Let us not turn away these children and send them back into a burning building. That’s the bishops, so we have to do this in a way that honors our values but also protects our border and does so in a way that the American people understand more clearly.”

Are we to assume that all the unaccompanied children coming across our border will be murdered by their political leaders if they stay in their home countries?

Isn’t it rather odd that many of these minor children were abandoned by their parents? If a mother leaves her unaccompanied child to play in a park for a few others, she is cited for child endangerment. But if parents send their children a thousand miles away on a trek to an unknown future, that’s praise worthy.

Let’s keep in mind that the infant Jesus was accompanied by his parents. The family remained in Egypt “until the death of Herod” (2:15, 19-21; Hosea 11:1). They then returned as an intact family back to their home country even though danger still existed (Matt. 2:22-23).

Pelosi’s most recent biblical analogy about immigration is the story of Moses:

“These are children coming over the border. They are children,” adding “what would we do if Moses had not been accepted by the Pharaoh’s family. We would not have the Ten Commandments for starters. You understand my point, historically we have a challenge and we have examples of humanitarian assistance that should guide us.”

In the case of Moses, there was a willing family to take in the baby. The mother of Moses actually nursed her own child (Ex. 2:7-10). This is hardly analogous to what’s happening today.

I’m glad Nancy Pelosi has some regard for the Ten Commandments, and by extension, the other laws that were given through Moses (John 1:17; 7:19), including those condemning abortion (Ex. 21:22-25)[1] and homosexuality (Lev. 18:22; 20:13). These laws were also given through Moses. But that’s a topic for another day.

…read it all… (GODFATHER POLITICS, where the quote above is from,  is now a dead site. Sad)

I am glad to see Pelosi endorses Moses, maybe she will follow his example and clear Biblical teaching on abortion now:

Exodus 21:22-24

  • “When men get in a fight, and hit a pregnant woman so that her children are born [prematurely], but there is no injury, the one who hit her must be fined as the woman’s husband demands from him, and he must pay according to judicial assessment. If there is an injury, then you must give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,….“

What does this verse mean for the Judeo-Christian person in the real world — if we rightly shape our worldview according to God’s Revelation? Wayne Grudem explains with an excerpt from from his book, Politics According to the Bible:

For the question of abortion, perhaps the most significant passage of all is found in the specific laws God gave Moses for the people of Israel during the time of the Mosaic covenant. One particular law spoke of the penalties to be imposed in case the life or health of a pregnant woman or her preborn child was endangered or harmed:

When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe (Exod. 21:22-25). [footnote A]

This law concerns a situation when men are fighting and one of them accidentally hits a pregnant woman. Neither one of them intended to do this, but as they fought they were not careful enough to avoid hitting her. If that happens, there are two possibilities:

1. If this causes a premature birth but there is no harm to the pregnant woman or her preborn child, there is still a penalty: “The one who hit her shall surely be fined” (v. 22). The penalty was for carelessly endangering the life or health of the pregnant woman and her child. We have similar laws in modern society, such as when a person is fined for drunken driving, even though he has hit no one with his car. He recklessly endangered human life and health, and he deserved a fine or other penalty.

2. But “if there is harm” to either the pregnant woman or her child, then the penalties are quite severe: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth …” (vv. 23-24). This means that both the mother and the preborn child are given equal legal protection. The penalty for harming the preborn child is just as great as for harming the mother. Both are treated as persons, and both deserve the full protection of the law. [footnote B]

This law is even more significant when we put it in the context of other laws in the Mosaic covenant. In other cases in the Mosaic law where someone accidentally caused the death of another person, there was no requirement to give “life for life,” no capital punishment. Rather, the person who accidentally caused someone else’s death was required to flee to one of the “cities of refuge” until the death of the high priest (see Num. 35:9-15, 22-29). This was a kind of “house arrest,” although the person had to stay within a city rather than within a house for a limited period of time. It was a far lesser punishment than “life for life.”

This means that God established for Israel a law code that placed a higher value on protecting the life of a pregnant woman and her preborn child than the life of anyone else in Israelite society. Far from treating the death of a preborn child as less significant than the death of others in society, this law treats the death of a preborn child or its mother as more significant and worthy of more severe punishment. And the law does not place

any restriction on the number of months the woman was pregnant. Presumably it would apply from a very early stage in pregnancy, whenever it could be known that a miscarriage had occurred and her child or children had died as a result.

Moreover, this law applies to a case of accidental killing of a preborn child. But if accidental killing of a preborn child is so serious in God’s eyes, then surely intentional killing of a preborn child must be an even worse crime.

The conclusion from all of these verses [many are discussed in Grudem’s book] is that the Bible teaches that we should think of the preborn child as a person from the moment of conception, and we should give to the preborn child legal protection at least equal to that of others in the society.

Footnotes:

A. The phrase “so that her children come out” is a literal translation of the Hebrew text, which uses the plural of the common Hebrew word yeled, “child,” and another very common word, yātsā’, which means “go out, come out.” The plural “children” is probably the plural of indefiniteness, allowing for the possibility of more than one child. Other translations render this as “so that she gives birth prematurely,” which is very similar in meaning (so NASB, from 1999 editions onward; similarly: NN, TNIV, NET, HCSV, NLT, NKJV).

B. Some translations have adopted an alternative sense of this passage. The NRSV translates it, “When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows …” (RSV is similar, as was NASB before 1999). In this case, causing a miscarriage and the death of a preborn child results only in a fine. Therefore, some have argued, this passage treats the preborn child as less worthy of protection than others in society, for the penalty is less. But the arguments for this translation are not persuasive. The primary argument is that this would make the law similar to a provision in the law code of Hammurabi (about 1760 BC in ancient Babylon). But such a supposed parallel should not override the meanings of the actual words in the Hebrew text of Exodus. The moral and civil laws in the Bible often differed from those of the ancient cultures around Israel. In addition, there is a Hebrew word for a miscarriage (shakal, Gen. 31:38; see also Exod. 23:26; Job 21:20; Hosea 9:14), but that word is not used here, nor is nēphel, another term for “miscarriage” (see Job 3:16; Ps. 58:8; Eccl. 6:3). However, the word that is used, yātsā’, is ordinarily used to refer to the live birth of a child (see Gen. 25:26; 38:29; Jer. 1:5). Finally, even on this (incorrect) translation, a fine is imposed on the person who accidentally caused the death of the preborn child. This implies that accidentally causing such a death is still considered morally wrong. Therefore, intentionally causing the death of a prebom child would be much more wrong, even on this translation.

Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 159-160.

Why Both Atheists and Christians Need to Believe in Free Will

Published by Papa Giorgio

The audio at the start from Jeff Durbin is bad… so one has to put up with it a little when the initial audio is played. But the same arguments against atheistic determinism can be used against Augustinian/Calvinistic [theistic] determinism:

Dr. Braxton Hunter, President of Trinity Seminary and host of Trinity Radio, joins Dr. Flowers to talk about how the main arguments against naturalistic determinism can apply against theistic determinism, as held by Compatibilistic Calvinists. They demonstrate this by engaging a clip from Apologia Studios with Jeff Durbin which references a quote from Calvinistic apologist, Greg Bahnsen.

 Justin Brierley drives this point home in his article:

… Atheist Determinism 

Calvinistic Christians have more in common with many atheists than they may realize. Determinism has also become a very popular philosophy among their godless counterparts. For some time, prominent voices in atheist circles have also been announcing that the notion of free will is past its sellby date.

Popular atheist author Sam Harris wrote a book titled Free will (Free Press) which, drawing on research in neuroscience, argued that our innate sense of freedom is merely an illusion foisted on us by nature. None of us is actually in control of what we do. So far so Calvinist. But rather than believing God has predestined us, atheists like Harris say the universe is responsible.

Atheist determinism springs from a ‘materialist’ worldview. All that exists is the ‘material’ stuff of the universe. Everything about us and the world we live in can ultimately be explained by the physics of atoms, electrons, quarks and neutrons, interacting according to the predictable regularity of natural laws.

Think of it like this: the skill of the snooker player is in predicting as accurately as possible how the balls will ricochet off each other in order to find the pockets on the table. But, theoretically, if a snooker player lined up their very first shot with perfect precision and perfect force, they could clear the table in one shot. The universe is like that, but on a much bigger scale.

Every single physical event, from the movements of electrons to the orbits of the planets, follows predictable laws of cause and effect. Therefore, the way the universe is now is a direct result of the way it was when it first began. If you rewound the clock by 13 billion years to the exact same physical state of affairs, things would roll out in exactly the same way they already have.

But, in such a universe, the idea that we have any measure of free will evaporates. Every aspect of our existence was predestined by a cosmos blindly following the laws of cause and effect. …

READ IT ALL: “Why Both Atheists and Christians Need to Believe in Free Will“

You cannot have LOVE with people made into dolls with a pull string that say, “I love you.” This is evidence that Calvinists/”Reformed” make Calvary useless.

Here is a favored adapted combination of mine:

One of the most intriguing aspects mentioned by Ravi Zacharias of a lecture he attended entitled “Determinism – Is Man a Slave or the Master of His Fate,” given by Stephen Hawking, who is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, Isaac Newton’s chair, was this admission by Dr. Hawking’s, was Hawking’s admission that if “we are the random products of chance, and hence, not free, or whether God had designed these laws within which we are free.”[1] In other words, do we have the ability to make choices, or do we simply follow a chemical reaction induced by millions of mutational collisions of free atoms? Michael Polyni mentions that this “reduction of the world to its atomic elements acting blindly in terms of equilibrations of forces,” a belief that has prevailed “since the birth of modern science, has made any sort of teleological view of the cosmos seem unscientific…. [to] the contemporary mind.”[2]

[1] Ravi Zacharias, The Real Face of Atheism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), 118, 119.

[2] Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning (Chicago, IL: Chicago university Press, 1977), 162.

This is one of the biggest reasons I [about half-a-year-ago] have rejected the 5-Points of Calvinism. Which is, determinism. I have written, posted, and debated this with atheists for years on the WWW., and when I saw that people like Al Mohler refute the atheist versions of this but does not apply the same thinking to his position — my apologetic bug was brought alive. Here is the video that started this rabbit trail:

Here is the full Al Mohler article: “So . . . Why Did I Write This? The Delusion of Determinism”

The subversion of moral responsibility is one of the most significant developments of recent decades. Though this subversion was originally philosophical, more recent efforts have been based in biology and psychology. Various theorists have argued that our decisions and actions are determined by genetics, environmental factors, or other forces. Now, Scientific American is out with a report on a study linking determinism and moral responsibility.

The diverse theories of determinism propose that our choices and decisions are not an exercise of the will, but simply the inevitable outcome of factors outside our control. As Scientific American explains, determinists argue that “everything that happens is determined by what happened before — our actions are inevitable consequences of the events leading up to the action.”

In other words, free will doesn’t exist. Used in this sense, free will means the exercise of authentic moral choice and agency. We choose to take one action rather than the other, and must then take responsibility for that choice.

This link between moral choice and moral responsibility is virtually instinctive to humans. As a matter of fact, it is basic to our understanding of what it means to be human. We hold each other responsible for actions and choices. But if all of our choices are illusory — and everything is merely the “inevitable consequence” of something beyond our control, moral responsibility is an exercise in delusion.

Scientific American reports on a study performed by psychologists Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler. The psychologists found that individuals who were told that their moral choices were determined, rather than free, were also more likely to cheat on an experimental examination.

As Shaun Nichols reports:

The Western conception idea of free will seems bound up with our sense of moral responsibility, guilt for misdeads and pride in accomplishment. We hold ourselves responsible precisely when we think that our actions come from free will. In this light, it’s not surprising that people behave less morally as they become skeptical of free will. Further, the Vohs and Schooler result fits with the idea that people will behave less responsibly if they regard their actions as beyond their control. If I think that there’s no point in trying to be good, then I’m less likely to try.

Even if giving up on free will does have these deleterious effects, one might wonder how far they go. One question is whether the effects extend across the moral domain. Cheating in a psychology experiment doesn’t seem too terrible. Presumably the experiment didn’t also lead to a rash of criminal activity among those who read the anti-free will passage. Our moral revulsion at killing and hurting others is likely too strong to be dismantled by reflections about determinism. It might well turn out that other kinds of immoral behavior, like cheating in school, would be affected by the rejection of free will, however.

There are limitations to this kind of research, of course, but the report is both revealing and unsurprising. If we are not responsible for our actions, they why would people do the right thing? The most immediate result of such thinking is the subversion of moral accountability.

Of course, this pattern of thought also renders human existence irrational. How can we understand ourselves, our children, our spouses, our friends, or our neighbors if moral responsibility is undermined by determinism. Our legal system would completely collapse, as would the entire experience of relating to other human beings.

Shaun Nichols explains that “the Western conception of free will seems bound up with our sense of moral responsibility.” That “Western conception” is a product of the Christian inheritance and the biblical worldview. The Bible clearly presents human beings as morally responsible. Christians of virtually all theological traditions — including Reformed theology, Arminianism, and Catholicism — affirm moral and spiritual responsibility and the authenticity of the experience of choice.

As a matter of fact, this capacity and accountability is rooted in the biblical concept of the imago Dei — the image of God. Our Creator made us as moral creatures and planted within us the capacity of conscience. All this refutes the concept of moral determinism.

In its most modern forms, determinism is a product of naturalism — the belief that everything must be explained in purely natural terms. Naturalism explains the human mind (including the experience of moral choice) as a matter of chemical reactions in the brain, and nothing more.

Determinism is implied by naturalism and relieves human beings of moral responsibility. There is no moral revolt against the Creator, no Fall, and no need for the Gospel. This subversion of moral responsibility is both a delusion and a trap. And, as the Scientific American report indicates, even those who say they believe in moral determinism are unable to live consistently with this assumption. We know we are responsible.

SOME QUOTES CONNECTING THIS IDEA MORE

ATHEISTS:

THEISTS:

If Mohler applies that to his own theological determinism, he would have to reject it.

THERE IS NO GOSPEL IN TULIP

In other words, a person accepts Christ’s death and Resurrection as secondary to being ELECTED.

Here is more on this via this excerpt of an article and short video:

ARMINIAN PERSPECTIVE:

Calvinist: “That is why Christ said that you must be born again in order to even see the kingdom of God. The new nature must come before faith. God making us willing is not mind control in the sense that you describe it but giving us a new nature and a new mind. Of course the analogy isn’t perfect but it does illustrate the fact that we can be made to love without it being against our will.”

Me: “No it doesn’t. If we were God haters that wanted nothing to do with Christ prior to His irresistible act of “giving us a new heart” that “makes us willing”, then it was certainly “against our will” because our will was to hate and reject God prior to His irresistible working in us. It would be like a man meeting a girl at a bar and the girl doesn’t like him and wants nothing to do with him. In fact, she finds him repulsive. So the man slips a pill in her drink that removes her inhibitions and causes her to begin to find him attractive, even to the point of “making her willing” to sleep with him. Now if this incident was brought before the court, would the court say that the man is not liable for violating the woman against her will, since the pill he put in her drink “made her willing”? Of course not. Nobody would say that she freely chose to be with the man under such circumstances, and no one would say that her will was not violated.”

“As distasteful as this illustration might be, it illustrates the exact same principle behind your claims that while God “makes us willing” this making us willing by “giving us a new heart” is not a violation of the person’s will. Instead of dropping a pill into our drink, God drops a “new heart” into our God hating chest. The only difference would be that in your view of how God works, the “effects” of the “drug” would never wear off. But that doesn’t change the fact that a person’s will has been obviously violated in the process.”

“It really is pretty simple. If God’s working faith into us is not resistible, but irresistible, then it certainly violates freedom and the will. That is so obvious, it shouldn’t even need to be pointed out. If you want to say that God irresistibly brings sinners to faith and love and devotion to Him (by irresistibly removing their “hate God heart” and putting in a “love God heart”) because you think the Bible teaches that, then fine. But trying to then claim that God does this in such a way that we freely come to him in such a way that our wills are not violated is clearly incoherent. You can’t have it both ways. Sorry.”

Dr. Leighton Flowers talk about martyrs who stood against the Calvinists of their day and what happened to them.

Kwanzaa

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Don’t have a lot of time to read? Here is a quick take.) Kwanzaa is a complete fabrication. A make-believe holiday invented by an ex-convict, Ron N. Everett, who is known today as Dr. Maulana Karenga. In addition to having a nasty penchant for torture, Karenga was described by a prison psychiatrist as “both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations.” Not exactly Santa Claus, eh?

QUICK NOTES:

  • The creator of Kwanzaa is Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga, a 77-year-old professor of Africana studies at California State University, Long Beach. His real name is Ronald Everett. He was born in rural Maryland, the fourteenth child of a sharecropping Baptist minister.
  • Karenga was convicted in 1971 for brutally torturing two naked women. The weapons of torture included a soldering iron, a vise and, of course, a toaster.
  • Karenga concocted Kwanzaa in 1966 as a secular, “nonreligious” pan-African holiday. At the time, he was a twenty-something graduate student living in Los Angeles.
  • Members of Karenga’s US Organization murdered two Black Panthers in cold blood. The murders occurred in 1969 when the US Organization and the Black Panthers were fighting over which group would control the then-new Afro-American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
  • Karenga spent just four years in prison. He received a sentence of between one and 10 years for felonious assault and false imprisonment in 1971, related to the torture of Deborah Jones and Gail Davis.
  • The name change. At some point in the 1960s, Karenga decided he didn’t want to be Ron Everett any longer. Instead, he gave himself the name “Maulana,” which is Swahili for “master teacher.” Karenga means “keeper of tradition” in Swahili.

(Originally posted here Dec 25, 2010 at 06:21)

  • [What’s The Bottom Line?] This holiday season, spend your time celebrating real holidays like Christmas or Hanukkah, not a fake holiday invented by a Marxist, racist, violent criminal.

 

Kwanzaa: Racism in Disguise

Preface

This was a “clarification letter” written to my son’s fifth-grade teacher. The in-class activity was to break the kids up into groups and learn about the various holidays, so I politely asked that my son sit in on the Hanukah or Christmas table, as he had been assigned to the Kwanzaa table. I gave some reasoning behind this decision – as I often do about most decisions I make (my wife would beg to differ).

The reason I felt it necessary to clarify the original letter was because the teacher gave the original letter over to the Principle, and I heard through the grape-vine that the Principle called the letter, ergo me, racist. While I sympathized with the Principle a bit… because, well, I “look” like a racist (shaved head and all)… I just couldn’t let this pass by. I am sure that this sixties – Berkley attending – gentleman had gotten away with such a canard before, he unfortunately hadn’t researched his statement in my particular case enough.

First of all, while I look like a racist, I in fact have a wonderful black grandmother. Not only do I have a black grandmother, I also grew up in Detroit, where white kids at the public school and in my neighborhood were a minority. I didn’t just “have a black friend,” I, in fact, had very few white friends… my friends in other words had “a white friend.” Not only did the cultural and geographic peoples and places have an impact on me, but so to did theology. You see, I am a young earth creationist.  Young earther’s believe that Adam and Eve were the originators of the human population and that from these first persons came the darker (say, Ethiopians) and person’s like myself (Irish).  The Hebrew word for “Adam” is rooted in the word meaning “red-clay.” In fact, out of the 220-or-so stories of a world-wide flood from various cultures (Australian, southern/central/northern Native-Americans, Chinese, Russian, Welsch/British, etc., etc.) about half have a creation story of the first man being made as being red in color.

Not only did this principle not know my history or theology, he apparently didn’t realize that I quoted mainly from either black authors as well as from the L. A. Times for the letter. In fact, after having a sit down meeting with my son’s fifth-grade principle, I realized that he had not even read the original paper, he just assumed that any person who spoke out against Kwanzaa (whether rationally or illogically) was a bigot.

Unfortunately this old-school “sweeping-under-the-carpet” argument that I’m sure guided this gentlemen through many a brushing off of a parent just didn’t work in this case.

I made sure he read this second letter.

Enjoy, Papa Giorgio

A Letter from a Concerned Parent

(Fifth-Grade/2002 ~ updated 11-11-05)

Who Created Kwanzaa?

Kwanzaa was invented by Ron Kerenga in 1966 as a means to foster and help the Black Nationalist movement in their goal to segregate and separate the races. Ron Kerenga, thus, views people of Jewish decent, much like the Nation of Islam, as “devils,” to be stamped out like weeds. His views towards whites are very similar ~ racist, in-other-words. Let’s look at some of this history.

Kerenga founded and led the United Slaves, a Black Nationalist organization, which got into gun battles with the Black Panthers on occasion with people murdered as a result.

The biggest dispute between the United Slaves and the Panthers was for the leadership of the new African Studies Department at UCLA, with each group backing a different candidate. Panthers John Jerome Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter verbally attacked Karenga at the meeting, which infuriated Karenga’s followers. After the meeting ended, two United Slaves members, George and Larry Stiner, reportedly confronted Huggins and Carter in a hallway, shooting and killing them.[1] [2]

In 1970, Kerenga and two of his followers were arrested by authorities for the torture of two of his female followers, Debra Jones and Gail Davis. Kerenga did time in prison for disrobing these two women at gunpoint and having them beaten severely. Kerenga told them that “Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what we know,” whereupon he forced a hot soldering iron into the mouth of one while the other had a toe squeezed in a vice.

The Los Angeles Times described the events:

“Deborah Jones, who once was given the title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electric cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes at gunpoint. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vice. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.” [1]

Karenga was sentenced to one-to-ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment. At his trial, the question arose as to Karenga’s sanity. The psychiatrist’s report stated:

“This man now represents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and illusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment.” The psychiatrist reportedly observed that Karenga talked to his blanket and imaginary persons, and he believed he’d been attacked by dive-bombers.

Eight years later, California State University Long Beach named Karenga the head of its Black Studies Department. By this time, Karenga had “repented” of his black nationalism and had become just a harmless garden variety Marxist. This must be our esteemed university system’s idea of repentance![3]

How terrifying for these two women! According to the July 27, 1971 Los Angeles Times, a psychological profile of Kerenga described him “as a danger to society who is in need of prolonged custodial treatment in prison.” The profile noted that Kerenga, while legally sane, was “confused and not in contact with reality.”

The “seven principles” of Kwanzaa that Kerenga created as part of the Nguzo Saba are little more than Marxism transposed into afrocentric key.[4] Therefore, the Kwanzaa celebration, unlike – for instance – the Martin Luther King holiday, celebrates separatism and Black Nationalism. It would be the same as the school teaching and celebrating a holiday created by the Ku Klux Klan, or an offshoot thereof. (I would just as vehemently speak out against this as well, for when the school sets its seal of approval on a celebration, you teach all its goals and aims ~ whether religious or political.)

Created Equal

My point is that I teach my children that all men are created equal and that all men are equal in the eyes of God. This is what Christmas is all about! Jesus came to save the world (John 3:16-17), God’s Word has always stated that He has “made of one blood [i.e. from one man, Adam] all nations of men” (Acts 17:26, cf. 1 Cor. 15:45). Kerenga created Kwanzaa to shun the world and display racism as their main goal for the holiday season, in place of Christmas. In fact, when asked why he designed Kwanzaa to take place around Christmas, Karenga explained, “People think it’s African, but it’s not. I came up with Kwanzaa because black people wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of bloods would be partying.” Great values!

Again, trying to tie in African culture and beliefs with this holiday celebration is a stretch, to say the least. Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by a revolutionary Marxist and racist man – Kerenga – who took here and there from the African culture as well as the Menorah from Judaism[5], and created a new celebration with socialist/Marxist overtones.

I have long-standing family friends who are native-born Africans (Kenyans), who have given their entire life to the mission field. They vehemently oppose this holiday because it creates subversion between the races when love is needed most. Neither do they find a connection with it and African culture. Mason Weaver points out the bottom line:

Professor Ron Karenga made up Kwanzaa in 1961 to counter the Western celebration of Christmas. Dr. Karenga made up a word, made up its definitions and then made up the elements we recognize today as “traditions.” First, “Kwanzaa” does not spell “first fruits” in Swahili or any other language. When I interviewed Dr. Karenga a few years ago, he admitted that the word was changed from the Swahili word “Kwanza” to “Kwanzaa” because he needed seven letters to represent his seven children. Because I spoke Swahili (and he apparently did not) Dr. Karenga was forced to admit that the word “Kwanza” was a Swahili adverb for “first,” and he added the extra “a” and “fruits” because it fit his story. And for all of you who wish to celebrate “first fruits,” the proper Swahili noun would be “Limbuko,” which would have given Dr. Karenga his seven letters for his children had he understood the language. (from Chapter 7 of It’s Okay to Leave the Plantation)

(Updated quote) Ann Coulter, likewise, points out the bottom line:

It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga — a.k.a. Dr. Maulana Karenga — founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. He was also a dupe of the FBI.

In what was ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better.

By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.

[….]

United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named “Jamal” are currently in prison?)

It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called “Anglika,” which he based on the philosophy of “Mein Kampf” — and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.

Origins vs. Current Beliefs

Do the millions of black Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa think of it as the ritualization of socialism? Doubtful. Do they object to the mainstreaming of Kwanzaa symbols and products? Probably not. Do they know anything about Karenga and his past? It doesn’t seem so. When Karenga spoke at the Million-Man March, he went virtually unnoticed. However, the holiday’s origins in a terrible time and with a terrible person are certainly relevant to its legitimacy.

Neutrality?

I do not mind if the school teaches my son true history, which includes the history of Africa, as well as other Continents. However, having said this, I do not pay my hard earned tax dollars for the school to meet some need of trying to teach and include all the cultural holidays of the world, which apparently must include racist holidays founded right here in California’s radical [recent] past. That is not the schools job; it is mine, if I so choose!

This is why this subject is so “political,” you have in a sense undermined my family’s values and put it upon yourselves to teach my son “multi-culturalism” in a “politically-correct” fashion. This, then, requires the school to make value judgments on how to teach this to my child. Which is why I pointed out that by doing so, you have strayed from being neutral to taking a position on how to present other peoples cultural mores (which now includes racism as mainstream) to my child (in rejection of America’s cultural mores… which is Christmas and Hanukah, i.e., Judeo-Christian).

Back to the Original Premise!

So again, I restate my three points in the original letter[6] on why I asked to have my son join either the Christmas table or Hanukah table in class; in contradistinction to Kwanzaa or the Chinese New Year:

It [Kwanzaa] promotes and supports ethnic separation and segregation. For instance, Hallmark Cards and Giant Foods have a policy of any items related to Kwanzaa be produced and sold only by blacks (William A. Henry III, “The Politics of Separation,” Time Magazine [fall 1993]: 75).

This was also the intent of the founder of Kwanzaa, Dr. Maulana Kerenga, separation, not healing. Christmas promotes the latter.

It is not practiced equally with the traditional (Judeo-Christian) practices. For example: one public schools students and parents were asked to come in and share with the class about Kwanzaa, and other religious holiday practices of their Buddhist faith and Muslim faith as well as the traditions and practices of Hanukkah. When one parent attempted to share the true meaning Christmas, using a Nativity scene as a visual aid, the presentation was prohibited. (Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us from Evil: Restoring the Soul in a Disintegrating Culture, p. 57).

It takes a political and moral stance. This type of multi-cultural “politically-correct” inclusive teaching takes a moral and political stance that requires value judgments to be made that are at variance with my (and many others) particular political and moral stance on afro-centric history and teaching… as well as putting one set of moral pre-suppositions (Marxism, racism, segregation) above others. Thus, taking a non-neutral position.

Notes

[1] “Kwanzaa — Racist Holiday from Hell” By Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson; FrontPageMagazine.com | December 29, 2004 –

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16474

[2] Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson (a black-American) is the Founder and President of BOND (the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, www.bondinfo.org). He is also the author of the book SCAM: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America. For more information, please call 1-800-411-BOND (2663), or e-mail bond@bondinfo.org.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Afrocentrism is a political movement that believes Greek culture was borrowed from Black Africans. Among others on the Afrocentrist side is Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern History Martin Bernal who wrote Black Athena. Among others opposing him is Mary Lefkowitz, classical scholar and author of Not Out of Africa who denies the Greeks stole culture from Black Egyptians. There are some moderate positions, but the whole Afrocentrism controversy is based on concepts of race and racism, and is therefore very difficult to discuss without enraging someone.

From: http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/afrocentrism/g/afrocentrism.htm

[5] Kerenga believes that the black race are the real Jewish peoples, much like Christian Identity – the religious movement of the KKK – believes the white race to be the true Jewish peoples. The bottom line is this: both views are founded in racist ideology!

[6] Carlotta Morrow, the main author I quoted from heavily in my first letter to the school, (a black-American woman) began her research on Kwanzaa in the early 1980’s after her sister, who was a member of Dr. Karenga’s black activist group called the United Slaves (US) Organization, denounced her faith in Christ, claiming that Christianity was a white man’s religion.

Determined to find out the teachings that persuaded her sister’s complete change in faith, she went with her sister to “the Center” to hear what was being taught. She was deeply disturbed at the “us””white man” against the attitude that seeped through the meetings, and especially at the negativity directed toward the Christian and Jewish religions.

Seeing the spiritual and racial harm being subtly encouraged, Carlotta began her trek in learning, researching and exposing the real truth and spiritual seductiveness of the principles behind Kwanzaa.

She has had articles on Kwanzaa appear in the Southern California Christian Times, the Twin City Christian Magazine of Minnesota, Tout Timoun Nou Yo also of Minnesota, (a quarterly for families with children adopted from Haiti) and has been a guest on radio talk shows in the Southern California area which included an on-air discussion with Dr. Karenga on the Mason Weaver Show of KPRZ in San Diego, where the author resides.

In case you have never seen or heard Mason Weaver, he has a website called The Mason Weaver Show, as well as writing a book entitled It’s Okay To Leave the Plantation. Carlotta’s site is below.

* Following are some highly recommended resources for the historian/sociologist at heart:

1)  Tunde Adeleke, The Case Against Afrocentrism (Jackson, MS: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2009);

2)  Stephen Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (New York, NY: Verso, 1999);

3)  Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out Of Africa: How “Afrocentrism” Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History (New York, NY: Basic Books);

4)  An audio chapter from Black Rednecks and White Liberals.

5)  Race and Culture: A Worldview (This is really part of a trilogy). Dr. Sowell’s page at Amazon can be found here;

6)  Video of the American Black History videos:

http://videorow.blogspot.com/2010/08/amercias-racial-history-in-black-and.html;

7)  Many, many links to much more here.

UPDATE

(Updated via GATEWAY PUNDIT)

Kwanzaa was created in 1966 as a holiday celebration of African culture and heritage but there’s more to the story. See below.

The Hill reported:

Obamas extend Kwanzaa greetings

President Obama and first lady extended their “warmest wishes” to those celebrating Kwanzaa, the week-long holiday as it began Saturday.

“Today begins a week-long celebration of African-American heritage and culture through family and community festivities,” the couple said in a statement.

“Kwanzaa’s seven principles – unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith – are also shared values that bind us as Americans.”

Ann Coulter recently wrote about the origins of Kwanzaa at Townhall:

Happy Kwanzaa! The Holiday Brought to You by the FBI

I will not be shooting any Black Panthers this week because I am Kwanza-reform, and we are not that observant. Kwanzaa, celebrated exclusively by white liberals, is a fake holiday invented in 1966 by black radical/FBI stooge Ron Everett — aka Dr. Maulana Karenga, founder of United Slaves, the violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.

In what was ultimately a foolish gambit, during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better. By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect.

Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the ’60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. Although some of their most high-profile leaders were drug dealers and murderers, they did not seek armed revolution.

Those were the precepts of Karenga’s United Slaves. The United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names.

And hasn’t that been a huge help to the black community?

THE LID has a good post on Kwanzaa: “Kwanzaa: A Fraud Holiday With A Racist Goal, Created By Criminal Madman”

Those who are around my age woke up one December and discovered that the “holiday season” of Christmas and New Year’s became a trio, with the addition of something called Kwanzaa.  Oh, sure there were rumblings of a new holiday. But strangely in this country where political correctness is on overload, a day invented in 1966 by a rapist who ran a Black separatist group is considered by some as a holiday on par with Christmas, or New Year’s. Kwanzaa is exclusively an American holiday and is not celebrated in any other part of the world (including Africa). The name Kwanzaa comes from a phrase of Swahili origin, “Matunda Ya Kwanza”, and translates as “First Fruits of the Harvest.” That’s right it’s supposed to be spelled with only one “a,” the very name of this supposed holiday is a typo.

Kwanzaa runs from December 26th-January 1st. It’s supposed to be a week-long holiday honoring African culture and traditions but is tainted by its founder and original purpose.

The man who created the holiday, Maulana Karenga was convicted in 1971  of torturing two women who were members of US (United Slaves), a black nationalist cult he had founded. A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times related the testimony of one of the women:

“Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.”

Karanga was convinced that the women were trying to poison him. He and three members of his cult had tortured the women in an attempt to find some nonexistent “crystals” of poison. Karenga thought his enemies were out to get him.

Now I am not a doctor, nor have I ever played one on television, but this Karenga guy sounds like a paranoid psycho.

Somehow I cannot see rational people wanting to observe a holiday created by such a sick violent man (but then again, Al Sharpton led two anti-Semitic pogroms and he is considered a civil rights leader). Especially this year when sexual assault of women has been in the headlines almost consistently for months, why would anybody want to celebrate a holiday invented by a man who tortured women?

Perhaps Kwanzaa is observed because this part of the Kwanzaa story is rarely mentioned by the mainstream media.

When he invented the holiday, Karenga said his goal was to

“give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.”

Arguably, this holiday raised by some to the level of Christmas has the totally opposite purpose. While Christmas is meant to unify, Kwanzaa is meant to divide. Or as the then 16-year-old Rev. Al Sharpton explained the feast would perform the valuable service of “de-whitizing” Christmas.

Heck even the scam’s creator, Maulana Karenga admitted it was a fraud.  In 1978 he told the Washington Post’s Hollie West:

“I created Kwanzaa,” laughed Ron Karenga like a teenager who’s just divulged a deeply held, precious secret. “People think it’s African. But it’s not. I wanted to give black people a holiday of their own. So I came up with Kwanzaa. I said it was African because you know black people in this country wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of bloods (blacks) would be partying!”

The late Tony Snow laid out what was so wrong about the holiday 33 years after it was founded:

There is no part of Kwanzaa that is not fraudulent. Begin with the name. The celebration comes from the Swahili term “matunda yakwanza,” or “first fruit,” and the festival’s trappings have Swahili names — such as “ujima” for “collective work and responsibility” or “muhindi,” which are ears of corn celebrants set aside for each child in a family.

Unfortunately, Swahili has little relevance for American blacks. Most slaves were ripped from the shores of West Africa. Swahili is an East African tongue.

To put that in perspective, the cultural gap between Senegal and Kenya is as dramatic as the chasm that separates, say, London and Tehran. Imagine singing “God Save the Queen” in Farsi, and you grasp the enormity of the gaffe.

Worse, Kwanzaa ceremonies have no discernible African roots. No culture on earth celebrates a harvesting ritual in December, for instance, and the implicit pledges about human dignity don’t necessarily jibe with such still-common practices as female circumcision and polygamy. The inventors of Kwanzaa weren’t promoting a return to roots; they were shilling for Marxism. They even appropriated the term “ujima,” which Julius Nyrere cited when he uprooted tens of thousands of Tanzanians and shipped them forcibly to collective farms, where they proved more adept at cultivating misery than banishing hunger.

Even the rituals using corn don’t fit. Corn isn’t indigenous to Africa. Mexican Indians developed it, and the crop was carried worldwide by white colonialists.

The fact is, there is no Ur-African culture. The continent remains stubbornly tribal. Hutus and Tutsis still slaughter one another for sport.

(…) Our treatment of Kwanzaa provides a revealing sign of how far we have yet to travel on the road to reconciliation. The white establishment has thrown in with it, not just to cash in on the business, but to patronize black activists and shut them up.

So what is Kwanzaa? It’s the ultimate fraud.  It is a holiday created by a man responsible for violently torturing two women–and it has a fascist goal of separating the races……..

(THE REST IS WORTH READING)

THE FEDERALIST as well opined in 2020:

Spanning from Dec. 26 to the first of January is Kwanzaa, the invented African American holiday celebrated solely by white liberals and clueless public school teachers. Overblown by leftist claiming the holiday has immense cultural significance, a survey by the National Retail Foundation discovered only 1.6 percent of Americans celebrate Kwanzaa.

The “holiday” was created in 1966 by Ron Karenga, who renamed himself Maulana. Karenga, the founder of the United Slaves, a violent rival organization to the Black Panthers, created the holiday for black Americans and derived the name “Kwanzaa” from the Swahili phrase “matunda y kwanza,” meaning “first fruits of the harvest.” That’s about the extent of the deep African roots the official Kwanzaa website claims.

The history of the holiday and Karenga has been seamlessly suppressed by leftists who find the facts inconvenient. Since few know its origins, the current definitions of the celebration are usually nonsensical and made up, much like the holiday itself.

The Guardian asserts Kwanzaa is simply an “opportunity [for black people] to celebrate themselves and their history rather than indulge in the customary traditions of a white Christmas.” The Los Angeles Times says it is “a way to honor African heritage and bring Black families and communities together.”

FrontPage Magazine’s Paul Mulshine writes that “the history of the founder of Kwanzaa has disappeared into an Orwellian time warp.” Indeed, CNN informs readers that Kwanzaa’s violent, racist founder was “a black nationalist and professor of Pan-African studies at California State University at Long Beach,” omitting his criminal and misogynistic past.

Kwanzaa, the “African feast,” really has “nothing to do with Africa and everything to do with California in the 1960s,” writes Mulshine. He contends it was made up to divide Americans, not unite them.

Mulshine explains that the paramilitary organization Karenga ran in Los Angeles in the late 1960s was involved in murder and torture: “In 1967, Karenga was accused of having his thugs beat up a student who asked him an impertinent question at a college forum. In 1969, [United Slaves] got involved in a struggle with the Black Panthers for control of the black studies program at UCLA. All involved carried guns on campus. The US guys were quicker on the draw; they killed two Panthers in a shootout at the student center.”

Karenga himself is a convicted torturer. Here is an excerpt from an article about the May 1971 trial of Karenga for torturing two members of his group:

‘Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of [United Slaves], also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.

Karenga served only four to five years in a state prison.

Karenga is currently a black studies professor at California State University, Long Beach where the administration is apparently untroubled by the fact that this radical racist is also a convicted torturer of women. Despite the troubling past of Kwanzaa’s founder, leftists continue to shove this fake holiday down America’s throat every Christmas.

Woke liberals preach that Christmas in the classroom is intolerant and isolates students who don’t celebrate it. Yet Kwanzaa is permitted because the left argue it is a “cultural” holiday. Tons of teacher aids on the web provide elementary instructors with Kwanzaa coloring prints, songs, games, and crafts. But Kwanzaa isn’t actually a cultural holiday. It is best described as a political product of the 1960s, which should qualify it as inappropriate to impose on young and impressionable students.

The seven pillars of Kwanzaa (unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith), said College Fix editor Jennifer Kabbany, “reads like a communist manifesto.”

Patrick S. Poole also noted that the pillars’ claimed “cooperative economics” is an obvious Marxist reference. Poole noted the principle of “collective work and responsibility” is “why Masai and Zulu tribesmen still live in grass huts, wear animal skins and must walk everywhere.”

“It is a good thing that today we do not have to grow our food, build our houses and tend to our own lands,” wrote Poole. “Division of labor and specialization has fueled the prosperity and progress in the West that all Africans envy. And yet it is the express denial of these important economic tools that Kwanzaa lauds.”

“Karenga said [Kwanzaa] practitioners believe one’s racial identity ‘determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding,’” wrote Ann Coulter.

Incoming Vice President Kamala Harris recently shared a “Happy Kwanzaa” video in which she says her favorite Kwanzaa pillar is self-determination, or “kujichagulia.” Harris says kujichagulia means “be, be and do. Be the person you want to be and do the things you want to do and do the things that need to be done” — whatever that means.

[….]

This holiday season, spend your time celebrating real holidays like Christmas or Hanukkah, not a fake holiday invented by a Marxist, racist, violent criminal.

The Amazing History of Christmas

Published by Papa Giorgio

How much do you know about Christmas – about its origins and its many beloved traditions? Do you know where the idea of stocking-stuffers comes from? Or how lights found their way onto the Christmas tree? Or why we all have the jolly, red-suited, white-haired image of Santa Claus in our heads? In this video, historian William Federer explores the holiday’s rich and unique history.

  • “This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We’re gonna press on, and we’re gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he’s gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.” — Clark W. Griswold Jr.

Is The Christmas Tree A Pagan Symbol?

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Video Description from YT Channel) Bobby unpacks the history of the Christmas Tree and whether it has pagan roots or not.

To begin this two part series we are looking at if the Bible forbids Christmas or Christmas customs.

This video looks at the history of Christmas and argues there is no evidence it comes from paganism.

(Video Description from YT Channel) Is Christmas pagan? Many Christians celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25, even though Jesus was almost certainly not born on December 25. Since pagan groups in the ancient world had celebrations that coincided with the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ, are Christians who celebrate Christmas today engaging in pagan activities? In this video, Marie Wood discusses the issue. Merry Christmas!

(Video Description from YT Channel) In this video I discuss the origin of the Christmas tree. Some think it’s condemned by the Bible, in Jeremiah 10:3-5. Others think it’s a Pagan idol. There were Pagan cultures that kept tree branches in their homes during the Winter Solstice, including the Egyptians, Druids, Romans (who also celebrated Saturnalia) and Vikings around the time of Christmas. Martin Luther kept a Christmas tree in his home. The Germans brought it to America. Americans at first protested against it, but if afterwards became popular. [Editor’s Note: A decent channel, but do not agree with all his presentations – to be clear]

The above were short presentations… below is an excellent, more in-depth interview detailing Greek Myths and other topics:

  • Is Christmas pagan? Was Christianity based on pagan celebrations on December 25? In this interview, I talk with Dr. Louis Markos, expert on Greek and Roman mythology.

See Dr. Markos’ book: “The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes“

The Ninth Wave (Assisting Grace)

Published by Papa Giorgio

“The Ninth Wave”
(1850 painting by Ivan Aivazovsky)

The above painting is mentioned in the below excerpt of “Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique” by David L. Allen (Editor), Steve W Lemke (Editor), pages 175-182

All images added by RPT

The Alternative of Prevenient or Assisting Grace. What alternative is there to affirming irresistible grace? The most common alternative to irresistible grace is usually called prevenient or assisting grace.107 In assisting or enabling grace, God through the Holy Spirit convicts, convinces, and impels the unsaved toward repentance and faith. God can exert powerful influences through the Holy Spirit to incline unbelievers toward faith and obedience without literally forcing them to do so or changing their wills (John 15:26–27; 16:7–15; 1 Thess 1:5).

Humans cannot save themselves. This situation was depicted powerfully in an 1850 painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, “The Ninth Wave,” which hangs in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. The painting on an enormous canvas depicts the aftermath of a sunken sailing ship. Only the mast of the ship remains afloat. The survivors of the sunken ship cling to the mast of the ship, buffeted by high waves. Like much of earlier Russian art, the painting communicates a powerful spiritual message. Like most sailing ship masts, this mast is in the shape of a cross. Only those who cling to the cross will be saved. No one can save themselves. It is only by the grace of God that the mast can save them, though they must take hold of it.

While driving home from preaching one Sunday night years ago, I experienced a terrible wreck. The car rolled off the road out of my control, making me feel as if I was being tossed round and round like clothes in a dryer. The airbag crushed my glasses, so I could not find the brake as the vehicle rolled. Since I knew I had been going at interstate highway speed and never touched the brake, I simply waited for the last crash that I thought would end my life. However, when the vehicle stopped rolling, I was alive but in pain. I crawled out of the car into the ditch. I was hurting and alone on this cold night in a remote area. But drivers who saw the wreck called 911, and an ambulance came to get me. I couldn’t even get up myself because of the pain. They put me on a stretcher and took me to the hospital. There the doctors ministered to me, diagnosed the problem, and put me on a path toward healing. But before the medical staff helped me, they first asked me to sign a consent form. I had to consent before I could receive care. I was delighted to receive from them what I could not do for myself!108

Eternal salvation has some similarities to my physical rescue. We cannot save ourselves. We can do no good “works” to rescue ourselves (Eph 2:8–9). The only thing humans can do is assent to be rescued, or at least not resist being rescued. Giving one’s assent to be saved is not a “good work.” Unfortunately, in the world of salvation, all too many refuse to accept Jesus’s gracious offer of salvation. Most do not even recognize they are drowning and reject all efforts to warn them. Some foolishly think they can save themselves, but they cannot. In the end, because of their rejection of the persistent witness of the Holy Spirit and the salvation proffered through Christ, God reluctantly allows them to drown eternally in their own sins (Matt 12:32; Mark 3:29; Luke 12:10; Rom 1:21–32; 5:6–21).

Billy Graham put it so well:

There is also volitional resolution. The will is necessarily involved in conversion. People can pass through mental conflicts and emotional crises without being converted. Not until they exercise the prerogative of a free moral agent and will to be converted are they actually converted. This act of will is an act of acceptance and commitment. They willingly accept God’s mercy and receive God’s Son and then commit themselves to do God’s will. In every true conversion the will of man comes into line with the will of God. Almost the last word of the Bible is this invitation: “And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely” (Rev 22:17). It is up to you. You must will to be saved. It is God’s will, but it must become your will, too.109

We have it from God’s own Word—God chooses how he wants to exercise his sovereignty. We should understand sovereignty from God’s perspective, not from a sinful human perspective. If we truly believe in the sovereignty of God, we must be obedient to the criteria he has laid down. We should let God be God and rule the world and bring about salvation as he has sovereignly established in his Word.

Irresistible Grace Gives God More Glory

Non-Calvinists are happy to affirm the strong emphasis that glorifying God should be our primary vocation, as John Piper has articulated so well.110 However, while agreeing that God’s people should give him the praise he rightfully deserves, we should be mindful that (a) God does not need our praise, and (b) our praise does not make God more glorious. God is glorious! His shekinah glory radiates from him every moment of eternity. There is nothing you or I could do to make him more glorious. We can and should simply join in the heavenly chorus giving him the praise and glory he rightfully deserves. Praising God is one of our responsibilities and privileges as believers, but he is already perfectly glorious. The key question is, what gives God maximal glory?

Moral Problems with Monergism. Many Calvinists believe that only monergistic salvation gives God the maximal glory. According to Matthew Barrett, “Monergism preserves God’s glory”:111

If God’s work in calling and regenerating the sinner is conditioned upon man’s will, then God cannot receive all the glory in salvation. But if God works alone, effectually to call and regenerate dead sinners, then He does receive all of the glory in our salvation. . . . [O]nly monergism can do justice to the glory of God in salvation.112

Let there be no doubt what monergism entails. It entails God’s culpability for reprobation because he predestines a few to heaven and most to hell. Hear the words of John Calvin himself:

God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity, but also at His own pleasure arranged it.113

We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction.114

First, how do Calvin’s words align with God’s Word? Calvin’s words stand in sharp contrast to the words of God recorded in Ezek 33:11: “Tell them, ‘As I live—this is the declaration of the Lord GOD—I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked person should turn from his way and live. Repent, repent of your evil ways! Why will you die, house of Israel?’” as well as the repeated assertions in the New Testament that God desires that all persons be saved (Matt 18:14; 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9; 1 John 2:2).

Second, is God’s refusal to save the majority of persons praiseworthy for God? I think not! Imagine a fireman who goes into a burning orphanage to save some young children because they are unable to escape by themselves and can be saved only if he rescues them. Only the fireman can save them because he has an asbestos suit. He comes back in a few minutes, bringing out three of the thirty children; but rather than going back in to save more children, the fireman goes over to the news media and brags about how praiseworthy he is for saving the three children. He believes he should be glorified for saving a few. Indeed, saving the three children was a good, heroic deed. But the pressing question on everyone’s mind is, What about the other twenty-seven children? Since he has the means to rescue the children and, indeed, is the only one who can save the children since they cannot save themselves, do we view the fireman as morally praiseworthy? We would not. In fact, probably he would be charged with depraved indifference homicide. He had the means to help them, but he would not. If we do not find that praiseworthy in a human, why would we find it praiseworthy in God? If God deliberately decided not to save (i.e., give irresistible grace to) anyone in your family (your parents, siblings, spouse, or children), indeed, if he took a pernicious pleasure in dooming them to destruction, would that make him more glorious for you? For most of us, it would make him less glorious.

[….]

[….]

Questions about Conflict within God’s Will. Second, the notion of irresistible grace also creates questions about the character of God that present him as less glorious. The two callings (the outward and inward, effectual and ineffectual, serious and not serious callings) correspond to two apparently contradictory wills within God (the revealed and secret wills of God). The revealed will of God issues the Great Commission that the gospel should be preached to all nations, but the secret will is that only a small group of elect will be saved through irresistible grace. The revealed will commands the general, outward call to be proclaimed, but the secret will knows that only a few will receive the effectual, serious calling from the Holy Spirit. The God of hard Calvinism is either disingenuous, cynically making a pseudo-offer of salvation to persons whom he has not given the means to accept, or there is a deep inner conflict within the will of God. If he has extended a general call to all persons to be saved, but has given the effectual call irresistibly to just a few, the general call seems rather misleading. This conflict between the wills of God portrays him as having a divided mind. In response to this challenge, Calvinists appeal to mystery. Is that a successful move? No, because God’s revealed will is not a mystery; it is revealed in his Word.

The Remonstrants, against whom the Synod of Dort was directed, raised the concern that the hard Calvinist perspective advocated by the Synod of Dort portrayed God as riddled by inner conflict. The Remonstrants later affirmed in a response written after the Synod of Dort:

  1. All those whom God calls to salvation, those he calls seriously, that is, with an upright and altogether unfeigned purpose and will to save. And we do not agree with those who hold that God externally calls some whom He does not will to call internally, that is, does not will that they be actually converted, even before they have rejected the grace of the calling.
  2. There is not in God such a hidden will which stands over against His will which is revealed in the Word, that He according to that will (that is, the hidden will) does not will the conversion and the salvation of the greater part of those whom He through the Word of the gospel, and according to the revealed will, is seriously calling and inviting unto faith and salvation; neither do we here acknowledge, as some speak, a holy dissimulation, or a double person in God.115

Some Calvinists attempt to downplay this criticism by advocating the “well-meant offer” or “free offer” of the gospel to the lost. As the Synod of Dort affirmed in Doctrine 2, article 5:

Moreover, the promise of the gospel is, that whosoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish, but have everlasting life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations, and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction, to whom God out of His good pleasure sends the gospel.116

However, such a claim appears to be not only logically contradictory but also mean-spirited to proclaim a false offer of salvation to persons who have no possible chance to receive it because they were not one of the lucky ones to get irresistible grace. Obviously, portraying God as having a divided mind and will is not the way we want to go. It seems disingenuous for God to offer a definitive, serious calling to some but not at all offer a serious calling to others. This does not make God appear more glorious!

Irresistible Grace Is Impersonal. The biblical image of God is based on God as love (1 John 4:7–8) and God as holy (1 Pet 1:16). A God who says he loves all people and desires to save all people but intentionally saves just a few is not the God of the New Testament. The God of the Bible deals with persons as persons, as F. Leroy Forlines articulated; for us to be in a relationship with God, we must be dealt with as persons rather than as machines:

In the relationship of the physical to the physical, or the relationship of the parts of a machine to one another, we are dealing with cause and effect relationships. . . . When a hammer hits a nail, the hammer is active and the nail is passive. The hammer causes the nail to be driven into the wood. The nail had no choice. A force outside the nail caused the nail to be driven into the wood. Interpersonal relationships do not submit to such a simple analysis. Influence and response provide more appropriate terms. . . . [T]he inability of one person to cause another person to do something grows out of the nature of what it means to be a person. . . . There is no such thing as a person doing or not doing something without having made a decision. . . . [I]t has been a mistake over the centuries to focus the conflict between Calvinists and Arminians on whether fallen or redeemed man has a free will. The real question is: Is fallen man a personal being, or is he sub-personal? Human beings are personal beings, by God’s design, and were made for a personal relationship with a personal God. God will not violate His own plan.117

The same concern pertains to the distinction that Calvinists make between the “universal” (ineffective) call and the “particular” (effective) call. Suppose we had a “will changer” machine or pill that turned its victim into a mindless robot who always did what he or she was instructed. The 1975 cult movie The Stepford Wives told this story, often repeated with variations in various science fiction story lines. The Stepford, Connecticut Men’s Association had the technology to turn their wives into subservient, robotic women who existed only to please their husbands. If taken to court, the Men’s Association members would definitely not be held up for praise. They would be accused and tried for crimes such as kidnapping, enslavement, and brainwashing. We would not consider the men to be glorious. We would consider them to be depraved. Is this not how Calvinists are portraying God? He is changing people’s will so they will glorify him? Why would the omnipotent Lord of the universe even care about that? To even suggest such a thing is to view the Bible from a radically anthropocentric point of view in which God desperately needs people to give their approval to him, even if he has to force them to do so. Love is only meaningful when it is chosen. Therefore, if we are concerned about God’s greater glory, it would be in a world of free persons, not persons whose will was mechanically overridden.

What understanding of sovereignty gives God greater glory? Does this notion of sovereignty as total control bring the greatest glory to God? No. Suppose a couple desires to have a baby. They have at least two options. Option one is that they can go down to Walmart and purchase a doll. That plastic doll, for every time they pull its string, will say, “Daddy, I love you!” Now that is total control. They can have that doll say, “I love you” anytime they want. They just pull its string; the doll has no decision but to react the way it has been programmed to react. Option two, however, is to have a real baby. Now, they know from the beginning that the baby is going to be more trouble. Babies do not come home from the hospital housebroken. They cry all night. They break their toes, and they break your hearts. But when that child of his or her own volition says, “Daddy, I love you,” it really means something. The parents are more glorified with a real child than with a doll that could not have praised them had they not pulled its string. So, then, which gives God the greater glory—a view that the only persons who can praise God are those whose wills he changes without their permission, or the view that persons respond to the gracious invitation of God and the conviction of the Holy Spirit to praise God truly of their own volition?

NOTES

[107] Although “prevenient grace” is the term most often used in the non-Calvinist tradition, I prefer to use the term “assisting grace,” “enabling grace,” or to simply use the biblical language as in John 16:7–15. For further exploration of the concept of prevenient grace see W. Brian Shelton, Prevenient Grace: God’s Provision for Humanity (Wilmore, KY: Francis Asbury Press, 2014).

[108] For another version of this “ambulatory” model, see Cross, “Resistibility of Grace,” 199–210; and Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty, 103–5. Cross and Keathley use this example to argue that one can affirm both that salvation is monergistically brought about by God and that God’s grace is resistible. My position adds to their view that a positive response is necessary, which, regarding salvation, requires responding in faith to Jesus Christ.

[109] Billy Graham, The World Aflame (Minneapolis: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1967), 134.

[110] John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1998).

[111] Barrett, “Monergism,” 186.

[112] Barrett, 120–21.

[113] Calvin, Institutes, trans. H. Beveridge, 232 (3.23.7); emphasis added.

[114] Calvin, 210 (3.21.7); emphasis added.

[115] “The Opinions of the Remonstrants,” Responses to article 3 of the Synod of Dort, comments 8– 9, in Vance, The Other Side of Calvinism, rev. ed. (Pensacola, FL: Vance Publications, 1999), appendix 3, 604; also available online at “C. The Opinion of the Remonstrants regarding the third and fourth articles, concerning the grace of God and the conversion of man,” The Arminian Opinions (Heretical), A Puritans Mind.

[116] “The Canons of the Synod of Dort,” in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 3:586 (II, art. 5); available online.

[117] F. Leroy Forlines, The Quest for Truth: Answering Life’s Inescapable Questions (Nashville: Randall House, 2001), 313; italics in the original.

How We Got Here

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATED HATE via RICK WILSON!

A-hole Rick Wilson is wishing for President Trump to die

OLD POST

Originally posted July 15th, 2024

This is gonna be a long post. Sorry. But this is going to be an in-depth “discovery” [reminder] of the violent language/ideas of the Leftist Democrats and the #NeverTrumpers.

Lincoln Project

  • WHAT THEY DO: They malign people like myself (a conservative evangelical) as well as mainstream to conservative Republicans as bigots, racists, rubes, anti-American – when they are merely projecting. They contend that they are for true Democracy, while being committed to electing those who hate it. But they are insistent from their beginning that Trump said there are good Nazi’s and that those who support Trump are likewise by association.

I first wish to start with the Lincoln Project. The Lincoln Project are a bunch of Republicans [that is laughable] who malign Republicans as rubes, bigots, and the like:

Their maligning of me and person’s like Trump need to be dealt with first.

Here is a photo somewhat famous to us “politicos.”


A small group of demonstrators dressed as “Unite the Right”
rallygoers with tiki torches outside the bus of Republican
gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin in Charlottesville.

Let me explain this photo. It is the Lincoln Project attempting to defeat Republicans and get Leftists into office by smearing us as racists:

The co-founder of the Never-Trumper Lincoln Project has doubled down on the group’s much-decried decision to stage a political stunt involving fake “white supremacists” supposedly backing Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin.

When asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo Friday if he wanted to apologize, Stuart Stevens said no.

In fact, he told Cuomo, this is why people have donated millions to the Lincoln Project – even though both liberals and conservatives have called him out for trying to smear Youngkin as racist.

“Listen,” said Stevens. “Every day I hear people pleading with the Lincoln Project to help show Democrats how to win, how to play hardball. You know, this is an example.”

(NEW YORK POST)

In fact, a person I know loves Rick Wilson, whom I have a couple snippets of herein:

As I’ve said before, Trump isn’t Hitler. Hitler had normal-sized hands and the ability to concentrate for more than thirty seconds.

Trump is, however, cut from the same modern authoritarian cloth as the leaders he publicly and slavishly worships: Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Kim Jong-un, Rodrigo Duterte, and others.

Rick Wilson, Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump–and Democrats from Themselves (New York, NY: Forum Books, 2020), 74.

Not only was that call for Trump to be assassinated a horrid position, but, the Lincoln Project also chooses, politically, anti-American socialists… nay, Marxists, over Republican candidates and ideals.

As another co-founder of the anti-Trump group, the Lincoln Project left the Republican party on Thursday, another said the group was anything but a reflection of the GOP.

“At this point, we’re as much as never-Republican as we are anything else,” Reed Galen, one of the co-founders of the project, told Politico.

(NEWSWEEK)

The #FakeProudBoys stunt was to defeat a small government Republican in the hopes that an ex-Clinton political wonk win.

To continue with the theme in that video, The Independent – UK notes:

The Lincoln Project targeted more than half a dozen Republicans up for re-election in 2020, including Lindsey Graham (he won), Mitch McConnell (he won), Dan Sullivan (he won), and Susan Collins (she won).

While Democrats won the White House, the GOP lost only one seat in the Senate, and control of the upper house of Congress will be decided by runoff elections in Georgia on 5 January.

“We spent about $20m on Senate races, which is probably somewhere like 5 to 10 per cent of what other people spent on those things but somehow it was up to us to be determinative. And no one was more surprised by the results of that than I was,” Mr Galen said.

Despite the results, the Lincoln Project is continuing campaigning in the Senate with the Georgia runoffs to oust “Trump enablers” Kelly Loffler and David Perdue.

They have partnered with Democratic groups like Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight, the NAACP and BlackPac, as well as lesser-known entities like MeidasTouch for more Twitter videos.

They received $700,000 from the Senate Majority Pac, closely linked with Chuck Schumer, who has vowed to first “take Georgia, then we change the world”. Left-wing lobby group Sixteen Thirty Fund has also bankrolled the Lincoln Project’s gambits with a $300,000 influx of cash.

Beyond January’s two Senate seats, the Lincoln Project is dialling in its sights on the 18 attorneys general and 126 House Republicans that publicly supported the Texas Supreme Court challenge to election results in key states.

As the goalposts move for whatever Trumpism looks like in a post-Twitter presidency, the Never Trumper movement becomes ever more Never Republican.

Among the founders, Steven Schmidt has registered full Democrat, while Ms Horn and Mr Galen have left the GOP as independents. 

What a disgrace #NeverTrumpers are!

The Media

Not much to say about it other than you gotta watch these examples of the travesty of the mainstream media (MSM):

The MSM Convinces Their Lemmings Trump is Hitler

Here is a recent post of mine to finish out this section:

POWERLINE has an excellent article regarding the Left’s predictable turn to their canards… or “cards”. The “Race-Card” or the “Fascist-Card” — here is that article, followed by some historical examples:

With the presidential election slipping away from the Democrats, the apparat is cranking up the old playbook. Behold the cover of The New Republic, once a sober and serious journal of liberal opinion:

It’s crap like this that makes Democrats and their media allies responsible for what happened today.

They have demonized Donald Trump to the point where any loon would think he would be a hero for trying to take out such a major “threat to Democracy.”

Democrats and their media allies have become the threats and unless things change immediately it’s going to get even worse.

(THE FEDERALIST PAPERS FACEBOOK)

Well now, that’s not what the Tomaskys of the 1970s and 1980s said. In the days right after Reagan’s first landslide in 1980, the head of the Joint Center for Political Studies, which the Washington Post described as a “respected liberal think tank,” wrote: “When you consider that in the climate we’re in—rising violence, the Ku Klux Klan—it is exceedingly frightening.” This was also the line from Raul Castro (funny how the American left and actual Communists always say the same thing): “We sometimes have the feeling that we are living in the time preceding the election of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.”  Claremont College professor John Roth wrote: “I could not help remembering how economic turmoil had conspired with Nazi nationalism and militarism—all intensified by Germany’s defeat in World War I—to send the world reeling into catastrophe… It is not entirely mistaken to contemplate our post-election state with fear and trembling.” Esquire writer Harry Stein says that the voters who supported Reagan were like the “good Germans” in “Hitler’s Germany.” Alan Wolfe of Boston College wrote in the New Left Review: “The worst nightmares of the American left appear to have come true.” And he doubled down in The Nation: “[T]he United States has embarked on a course so deeply reactionary, so negative and mean-spirited, so chauvinistic and self-deceptive that our times may soon rival the McCarthy era.”

As I’ve observed here before, this is the oldest cliche of the left, going all the way back to FDR and Truman. Let’s take in the front page of the New York Times, October 25, 1948:

PRESIDENT LIKENS DEWEY TO HITLER AS FASCISTS’ TOOL

Says When Bigots, Profiteers Get Control of Country They Select ‘Front Man’ to Rule DICTATORSHIP STRESSED Truman Tells Chicago Audience a Republican Victory Will Threaten U.S. Liberty

CHICAGO, Oct. 25 — A Republican victory on election day will bring a Fascistic threat to American freedom that is even more dangerous than the perils from communism and extreme right “crackpots,” President Truman asserted here tonight. . .  “Before Hitler came to power, control over the German economy passed into the hands of a small group of rich manufacturers, bankers and landowners,” he said.

(THERE IS MORE TO READ)

Likewise, Larry Elder noted this historical phenomenon a few years back, noting that the tactics of the Left have not changed a bit… just more people truly believe it. And they expect us to be civil, and unite — exactly when did Democrats practice the “civility” to which they wish to return?….

  • When Barry Goldwater accepted the 1964 Republican nomination, California’s Democratic Gov. Pat Brown said, “The stench of fascism is in the air.”
  • Former Rep. William Clay Sr., D-Mo., said President Ronald Reagan was “trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from ‘Mein Kampf.'”
  • Coretta Scott King, in 1980, said, “I am scared that if Ronald Reagan gets into office, we are going to see more of the Ku Klux Klan and a resurgence of the Nazi Party.”
  • After Republicans took control of the House in the mid-’90s, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., compared the newly conservative-majority House to “the Duma and the Reichstag,” referring to the legislature set up by Czar Nicholas II of Russia and the parliament of the German Weimar Republic that brought Hitler to power.
  • About President George Herbert Walker Bush, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said: “I believe (Bush) is a racist for many, many reasons. … (He’s) a mean-spirited man who has no care or concern about what happens to the African American community. … I truly believe that.”
  • About the Republican-controlled House, longtime Harlem Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel, in 1994, said: “It’s not ‘s—-‘ or ‘n——-‘ anymore. (Republicans) say, ‘Let’s cut taxes.'” A decade later, Rangel said, “George (W.) Bush is our Bull Connor,” referring to the Birmingham, Alabama, Democrat segregationist superintendent of public safety who sicced dogs and turned fire hoses on civil rights workers.
  • Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s presidential campaign manager, in 1999, said: Republicans have a “white boy attitude, (which means) ‘I must exclude, denigrate and leave behind.’ They don’t see it or think about it. It’s a culture.” The following year, Brazile said: “The Republicans bring out Colin Powell and (Rep.) J.C. Watts, (R-Okla.), because they have no program, no policy. … They’d rather take pictures with Black children than feed them.”
  • About President George W. Bush, former Vice President Al Gore said: “(Bush’s) executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations, from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. … And every day, they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.” Digital “brownshirts”?
  • About George W. Bush, George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor, said: “The Bush administration and the Nazi and communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear. … Indeed, the Bush administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and communist propaganda machines.”
  • Former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, in a 2006 speech at historically Black Fayetteville State University said, “The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.”
  • Former Gov. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2005, described the contest between Democrats and Republicans as “a struggle between good and evil. And we’re the good.” Three years later, Dean referred to the GOP as “the white party.”
  • After Hurricane Katrina, Democratic Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill said George W. Bush “let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were Black.”
  • Feminist superlawyer Gloria Allred, in 2001, referred to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as “Uncle Tom types.”
  • Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, in 2006, said, “The (Republican-controlled) House of Representatives … has been run like a plantation. And you know what I’m talking about.”
  • Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democratic National Committee chairwoman in 2011, said “Republicans … want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws.”……

I bet almost all of my family believes Trump mocked a disabled man’s handicap; think that when he said “there are fine people on both sides” he was saying there were “fine Nazis or white supremacists;” or think that racists and white supremacists have voted Republican in general; or that the bodies natural defenses in immunity are non-existent and only “vaccines” can bring immunity.

These are dangerous lies to believe.

President Biden and Democrats

President Biden continues to lie about this, saying in a sense that President Trump said there were “fine Nazis”

It has taken only 7-years – but SNOPES has finally given in and announced that the reason for Biden running in 2020 was based on a lie. PragerU officially noted the myth on August 5th, 2019, fact checking the media  and others. I noted this myth, “media lie,” on

“Fine People On Both Sides” (Ted Wheeler Edition)

More Snopes

This may go with the theory by some that the Democrats are actively seeing too replace Biden with someone present, so-to-speak. And these same people want Biden in the debates with Trump so he will fail on a national stage and get the electorate behind the move. Soo the complicit media is getting behind the move. Ergo, Snopes.

Many years ago Powerline asked a question about Snopes – if it was a satire site. Lol. here is the graphic they used:

But this most recent shift towards truth in this matter has caused a “wailing” and “gnashing of teeth” with those that are consumed with TDS, or, Trump Derangement Syndrome. Here are some examples via Right Scoop and :

I respond to one of the TDS’ers:

Dennis Prager Discusses Trump Being Painted as Hitler @Biden’s Inaugural Speech

Montage Of Democrats Calling For Incitement/Violence (Larry Elder)

Trump continually disavowed white nationalists — but the media rejects:

Corey Booker’s Trump Card Is A Race-Card (ACB/BDP/EPMD Edition)

SOME MORE RESOURCES (USED AND RECOMMENDED)

  • Key Democratic Vendors Still Doing Business with Lincoln Project After Sex Scandal (Washington Free Beacon)
  • The Rise and Fall of the Lincoln Project (National Review | Archived Version)
  • Bernie Sanders is Not a Social Democrat; He’s a Marxist (Townhall)
  • The Lincoln Project called out for repeatedly plagiarizing other people’s tweets (Fox News)
  • Lincoln Project Says It Planted White Supremacist Impersonators At Event For Virginia Republican Candidate (Forbes)
  • Lincoln Project co-founder doubles down on ‘white supremacist’ stunt (New York Post)
  • Inside the Lincoln Project’s Secrets, Side Deals and Scandals (New York Times)
  • How the Lincoln Project Hoodwinked Anti-Trump Liberals (Daily Beast)
  • Trump, Biden, and the Shame of the Corporate Media (The Pipeline)
  • The Media Has Taken Their ‘Trump Is a Threat to Democracy’ Narrative Too Far (Townhall)
  • Why Biden’s campaign keeps linking Trump to Hitler (Politico)
  • Colorado Congressman Says Concern For Trump Is ‘Sympathy For the Devil’ (MRC-TV)

TRUMP: Faster Than a Speeding Bullet – Razör Rants

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson Discuss Calvin’s 5-Points

Published by Papa Giorgio

In John Adams letter to Thomas Jefferson he opens with this — and I have GROK put the old English into more modern terms.

The green box that follows the original text is GROK modernizing it

The sight of your well known hand writing in your favour of 25. Feb. last, gave me great pleasure, as it proved your arm to be restored and your pen still manageable—may it continue till you shall become as perfect a calvinist as I am in one particular. Poor Calvins infirmities his rheumatism his gouts and sciatics made him frequently cry out Mon dieu Jusque au quand Lord how long! Prat once Chief Justice of new york always tormented with infirmities dreamt that he was situated on a single rock in the midst of the Atlantick ocean, He heard a voice. “Why mourns the bard Apollo bids thee2 rise, renounce the dust,3 and claim thy native skies.”—

Here’s a modern English update of the excerpt from John Adams’s letter to Thomas Jefferson (dated March 10, 1823), keeping the original meaning, tone, and humor intact while making the language clearer and more contemporary:

Seeing your familiar handwriting in your letter from February 25th gave me great pleasure. It showed that your arm has recovered and you can still write easily—may that continue until you become as much of a Calvinist as I am in one respect. Poor Calvin’s ailments—his rheumatism, gout, and sciatica—often made him cry out, “Mon Dieu, jusqu’à quand?” which means “Lord, how long!” Pratt, who was once Chief Justice of New York and always plagued by health problems, dreamed that he was stranded on a lone rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Then he heard a voice say:

“Why does the bard mourn? Apollo bids you rise, renounce the dust, and claim your native skies.”

(For context: Adams is playfully teasing Jefferson about enduring old-age infirmities with Calvinist patience, referencing John Calvin’s sufferings and a poetic anecdote about Benjamin Pratt, an 18th-century New York judge known for his poetry and health issues.)

Here is the response to Adams via Jefferson:

The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of ‘mon Dieu! jusque à quand’! would make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. he was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Dæmonism. if ever man worshipped a false god, he did. the being described in his 5. points is not the God whom you and I acknolege and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a dæmon of malignant spirit. it would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. 

[….]

Of the nature of this being we know nothing. Jesus tells us that ‘God is a spirit.’ 4. John 24. but without defining what a spirit is. ‘πνευμα ὁ θεος.’ down to the 3d century we know that it was still deemed material; but of a lighter subtler matter than our gross bodies. so says Origen. ‘Deus igitur, cui anima similis est, juxta Originem, reapse4 corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum ratione corporum incorporeus.’ these are the words of Huet in his commentary on Origen. Origen himself says ‘appellatio ασωματον apud nostros scriptores est inusitata et incognita.’ so also Tertullian ‘quis autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi deus spiritus? spiritus etiam corporis sui generis, in suâ effigie.’ Tertullian. these two fathers were of the 3d century. Calvin’s character of this supreme being seems chiefly copied from that of the Jews. but the reformation of these blasphemous attributes, and substitution of those more worthy, pure and sublime, seems to have been the chief object of Jesus in his discources to the Jews: and his doctrine of the Cosmogony of the world is very clearly laid down in the 3 first verses of the 1st chapter of John, in these words, ‘εν αρχη ην ὁ λογος, και ὁ λογος ην προς τον θεον και θεος ην ὁ λογος. οὑτος ην εν αρχη προς τον θεον. παντα δε αυτου εγενετο, και χωρις αυτου εγενετο ουδε ἑν ὁ γεγονεν.’ which truly translated means ‘in the beginning God existed, and reason [or mind] was with God, and that mind was God. this was in the beginning with God. all things were created by it, and without it was made not one thing which was made.’ yet this text, so plainly declaring the doctrine of Jesus that the world was created by the supreme, intelligent being, has been perverted by modern Christians to build up a second person of their tritheism by a mistranslation of the word λογος. one of it’s legitimate meanings indeed is ‘a word.’ but, in that sense, it makes an unmeaning jargon: while the other meaning ‘reason,’ equally legitimate, explains rationally the eternal preexistence of God, and his creation of the world. knowing how incomprehensible it was that ‘a word,’ the mere action or articulation of the voice and organs of speech could create a world, they undertake to make of this articulation a second preexisting being, and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation of the universe. the Atheist here plumes himself on the uselessness of such a God, and the simpler hypothesis of a self-existent universe. the truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. and the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. but we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.

So much for your quotation of Calvin’s ‘mon dieu! jusqu’a quand’ in which, when addressed to the God of Jesus, and our God, I join you cordially, and await his time and will with more readiness than reluctance. may we meet there again, in Congress, with our antient Colleagues, and recieve with them the seal of approbation ‘Well done, good and faithful servants.’

Here’s a modern English update of this excerpt from Thomas Jefferson’s letter to John Adams (dated April 11, 1823), preserving the original meaning, passion, and philosophical tone while making the language clearer and more accessible:

The wishes you expressed in your last letter—that I might live long and healthy until I become a Calvinist, at least in crying out “My God! How long?!”—would make me immortal if they came true. But I can never join Calvin in addressing his god that way. He was essentially an atheist (which I could never be), or rather, his religion was daemonism. If any man ever worshiped a false god, it was him. The being described in his five points is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore—the Creator and benevolent governor of the world—but a daemon with a malignant spirit. It would be more forgivable to believe in no god at all than to blaspheme the true God by attributing such atrocious qualities to Him.

[….]

Of the true nature of this Being, we know nothing. Jesus tells us that “God is a spirit” (John 4:24), but without defining what a spirit is—”πνεῦμα ὁ θεός” (pneuma ho theos). Down to the 3rd century, it was still considered material, though of a lighter, subtler substance than our gross bodies. So says Origen: “Therefore God, to whom the soul is similar, according to Origen, is actually corporeal, but incorporeal only in comparison to heavier bodies.” These are the words of Huet in his commentary on Origen. Origen himself says that the term “incorporeal” (ἀσώματον) is unusual and unknown in our [Christian] writers. Tertullian says the same: “Who will deny that God is a body, even though God is a spirit? For spirit is a body of its own kind, in its own form.” Both of these Church Fathers were from the 3rd century.

Calvin’s portrayal of the Supreme Being seems mostly copied from the Jewish conception. But reforming those blasphemous attributes and replacing them with ones more worthy, pure, and sublime appears to have been Jesus’s main goal in his discourses with the Jews. His doctrine of the world’s creation is very clearly stated in the first three verses of the Gospel of John:”Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. Οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. Πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν.”Which, truly translated, means: “In the beginning, God existed, and reason (or mind) was with God, and that mind was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were created by it, and without it not one thing that was made came into being.” Yet this text—so plainly declaring Jesus’s doctrine that the world was created by the supreme intelligent Being—has been twisted by modern Christians to build up a second person in their tritheism through a mistranslation of the word λόγος (logos). One of its legitimate meanings is indeed “word,” but in that sense it produces meaningless nonsense. The other equally legitimate meaning—”reason”—explains rationally God’s eternal preexistence and His creation of the world. Knowing how incomprehensible it was that a mere “word”—the simple action of voice and speech organs—could create a world, they instead turn this “word” into a second pre-existing being and attribute the creation of the universe to him rather than to God. The atheist here boasts about the uselessness of such a God and prefers the simpler idea of a self-existent universe. The truth is that the greatest enemies of Jesus’s doctrines are those who call themselves their interpreters, who have perverted them to build a system of fantasy that is utterly incomprehensible and has no foundation in his actual words. And the day will come when the mystical story of Jesus being generated by the Supreme Being as His father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the myth of Minerva springing from the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will sweep away all this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors. So much for your quotation of Calvin’s “Mon Dieu! jusqu’à quand!” When addressed to the God of Jesus—and our God—I join you in it wholeheartedly, and I await His time and will with more readiness than reluctance. May we meet again there, in a heavenly Congress with our old colleagues, and receive with them the seal of approval: “Well done, good and faithful servants.”

And here GROK did a redo making it :”more concise”

Here’s a more concise modern English version of Jefferson’s response (April 11, 1823):

Your wish that I live long enough to become a Calvinist—at least in crying “My God! How long?”—would make me immortal. But I can never pray to Calvin’s god. He was essentially an atheist, or his religion was daemonism. If anyone worshiped a false god, it was him. The being in his five points is not the God we both acknowledge—the benevolent Creator and governor of the world—but a malignant daemon. It is more forgivable to believe in no god than to blaspheme the true one with Calvin’s atrocious attributes.

We know nothing of this Being’s nature. Jesus said “God is a spirit” (John 4:24), but did not define it. Until the 3rd century, Christians considered spirit material, though subtler than flesh—as Origen and Tertullian both affirmed.

Calvin’s image of God largely copies the harsh Jewish portrayal. Jesus’s main mission seems to have been correcting those blasphemous attributes and teaching purer, more sublime ones. His cosmology is clearly stated in John 1:1–3:“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God… All things were made through it.”

Properly translated, Logos means “reason” or “mind”: In the beginning God existed, reason was with God, and reason was God. All things were created by it. Modern Christians, however, mistranslate Logos as “word” to invent a second divine person and build their tritheism. This turns a rational account of creation into incomprehensible jargon—and gives atheists an easy target.

The worst enemies of Jesus’s teachings are the so-called experts who have twisted them into a fanciful, groundless system. One day, the virgin birth of Jesus will be ranked with Minerva springing from Jupiter’s head. But I hope the spread of reason and free thought in America will sweep away this artificial scaffolding and restore Jesus’s original, genuine doctrines—the work of the greatest reformer of human errors.

As for Calvin’s “My God! How long?”—when addressed to the God of Jesus, our God—I join you wholeheartedly. I await His will with more readiness than reluctance. May we meet again in a heavenly Congress with our old colleagues and hear together: “Well done, good and faithful servants.”

GROK offered to explain Jefferson’s “5-Points Critique,” here that is:

Thomas Jefferson’s critique of Calvinism’s “five points” appears in his April 11, 1823, letter to John Adams. He did not break it down point-by-point but offered a sweeping condemnation, calling the God portrayed in these doctrines a “daemon of malignant spirit” rather than the benevolent Creator he and Adams revered. Jefferson viewed Calvin’s theology as blasphemous, arguing it would be better to believe in no God at all than to attribute such “atrocious” qualities to the divine. The Five Points of Calvinism (TULIP)These points, formalized after John Calvin’s death at the Synod of Dort (1618–1619) in response to Arminianism, summarize key Reformed doctrines on salvation:

  • Total Depravity: Humanity is utterly corrupted by sin, incapable of choosing God or doing spiritual good without divine intervention.
  • Unconditional Election: God chooses (elects) certain individuals for salvation based solely on His will, not on any foreseen merit or faith.
  • Limited Atonement (or Particular Redemption): Christ’s death effectively atones only for the sins of the elect, not for all humanity.
  • Irresistible Grace: God’s grace effectively calls the elect to faith; they cannot ultimately resist it.
  • Perseverance of the Saints: The elect will persevere in faith and cannot finally lose salvation.

Jefferson’s Core Objection

Jefferson, influenced by Enlightenment rationalism, Deism, and Unitarian leanings, emphasized a God of benevolence, reason, and moral governance. He saw Calvinism’s emphasis on God’s absolute sovereignty—especially in predestination (including “double predestination,” where God decrees both election to salvation and reprobation to damnation)—as portraying a tyrannical, arbitrary deity. This God predestines most of humanity to eternal punishment without regard to their actions, which Jefferson found cruel and incompatible with divine goodness. He contrasted this with Jesus’s teachings, which he believed focused on moral reform, free will, and a loving God. Jefferson also linked Calvinism to historical intolerance (e.g., Calvin’s role in the execution of Michael Servetus) and saw it as a perversion of true Christianity. In essence, Jefferson rejected the five points not for subtle theological nuances but because they collectively depicted a God he considered morally repugnant—a “malignant” being closer to a demon than the rational, kind Creator revealed (in his view) by nature and Jesus’s ethical teachings. This reflected his broader anti-Trinitarian, anti-orthodox stance, favoring a simplified, moralistic Christianity over doctrinal systems like Calvinism.

Keep in mind GROK is not a theologian. I asked GROK about John Adam’s views of Calvinism, this was the short answer:

John Adams, raised in a Puritan New England Congregationalist family with strong Calvinist roots, ultimately rejected core Calvinist doctrines and evolved into a Unitarian Christian.

Early Rejection of Calvinism

He rejected key Calvinist tenets early in life, including:

  • Predestination
  • Total depravity
  • Limited atonement
  • Eternal damnation for most

He called Calvinism “frigid,” irrational, and marked by a “domineering and persecuting spirit.” Influenced by liberal Congregationalist preachers and Enlightenment rationalism, Adams viewed strict Calvinism as incompatible with a benevolent God and human free will. He leaned toward Arminianism (emphasizing free choice in salvation) before fully embracing Unitarianism.

Self-Identification as Unitarian

In later years, Adams explicitly identified as a Unitarian, writing to his son John Quincy Adams in 1816: “We Unitarians, one of whom I have had the Honour to be, for more than Sixty Years…” He rejected the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, original sin, and salvation by arbitrary grace alone, favoring a rational, moral Christianity focused on benevolence, good works, and the Sermon on the Mount.

Playful Teasing in Correspondence

In his famous 1823 correspondence with Thomas Jefferson (the letters you referenced earlier), Adams playfully teased Jefferson about old-age sufferings, joking that Jefferson might yet become “as perfect a Calvinist as I am in one particular”—referring only to enduring infirmities with stoic patience (echoing John Calvin’s own cries of “Mon Dieu! Jusqu’à quand?”). This was ironic humor, not an endorsement of Calvinism. Adams shared Jefferson’s disdain for Calvin’s “atrocious attributes” and predestinarian God, aligning with Jefferson’s view of a benevolent Creator.

Overall Religious Outlook

Adams remained deeply religious—a “church-going animal” who believed in divine providence, prayer, and morality’s role in society—but his faith was liberal, tolerant, and anti-dogmatic. He saw religion as essential for public virtue yet warned against ecclesiastical tyranny. Historians describe him as a blend of Puritan heritage and Enlightenment reason, ultimately a conservative Unitarian who retained belief in Jesus as a moral teacher (though not divine) and an active God.

In short, Adams was emphatically not a Calvinist; he detested its harsher doctrines and spent much of his life moving away from them toward Unitarian rationalism.

Mind you, I am not a Unitarian whatsoever, but needless to say not only would Calvin had burned Christ at the stake in Geneva, he would have done the same to the Founders of America!

BAPTIST MARTYRS

This Baptist History is brought to you by Steve Brady at Fairhaven Baptist Church in Chesterton, Indiana. (Full playlist of 50 Baptists You Should Know here)

Here is what was said in a post that included the above drawing via Facebook:

It has been decreed this day by the Council of the Two Hundred (of Zurich) that the leaders of the Catabaptists shall be cast into the Tower, in which they formerly lay, and allured by bread and water diet until either they give up the ghost or surrender. It is also added that he who after this is dipped shall be submerged permanently (qtti posthac tingatur, prossus mcrgatur); this is not published (Zwingli, Opera, vii. 477).

This is but one of numerous decrees by city councils in Calvinist principalities levied against “Catabaptists”. This word means someone who opposes baptism, but even in their usage of the term the Calvinists reveal themselves to be liars. The Baptists didn’t oppose baptism, they opposed infant baptism, which is nowhere evidenced in Scripture. The Calvinists knew Baptists baptized believing adults – that’s one of the reasons they murdered them – “submerged permanently,” as opposed to submerged briefly, in baptism.

Note that in his final comment, Zwingli writes that this is “not published”. He wanted the homicidal order to remain a secret. So he knew that what he was doing was immoral. He just didn’t want the general population to know about it.

Zwingli and the Calvinists were murderers. They knew they were murderers. They congratulated themselves on being murderers. And history has preserved the evidence of their murders.

I asked GROK to explain the above a little more and then GROK offered up info on Felix Manz

Key Historical Context

In 1525, a group of Zwingli’s former followers (including Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz) broke away because they believed Zwingli and the Zurich authorities were reforming the church too slowly and compromising with civil government. They rejected infant baptism (paedobaptism) as unscriptural, insisting baptism should be for believing adults only—who could consciously confess faith. On January 21, 1525, they performed the first adult baptisms in Zurich, marking the start of the Anabaptist movement (from Greek ana- meaning “again,” implying “re-baptizers” in the eyes of critics, since they viewed infant baptism as invalid).Zwingli strongly defended infant baptism (seeing it as the New Testament equivalent of Old Testament circumcision, a covenant sign for children of believers). After public debates in 1525 failed to resolve the issue, the Zurich Council sided with Zwingli and began cracking down on the Anabaptists, viewing their separatism, refusal of oaths/civic duties, and defiance of authority as threats to social and religious order.

The Decree and Quote Explained

The decree Zwingli describes had two parts:

  • Leaders of the Anabaptists (called “Catabaptists” here—see below) were to be imprisoned in the tower on bread-and-water rations until they recanted or died.
  • Anyone who continued to perform adult (“re-“)baptism would be executed by drowning (a grim, ironic punishment: “whoever dips shall be dipped/submerged permanently”).

This was an escalation from earlier penalties (fines, banishment). A similar but formalized mandate followed shortly after, and the first execution under it was Felix Manz, drowned in the Limmat River on January 5, 1527. Several others followed in Zurich before the movement was suppressed there.

Regarding your quote’s final line: “this is not published (Zwingli, Opera, vii. 477).” Most historical sources (including direct translations of the letter) actually read that the decision was published—or at least do not mention secrecy. It’s possible this is a transcription/translation variant in the specific edition you referenced, or a slight misremembering. Zwingli’s letter was private correspondence, not a public statement, and he expresses approval of the council’s action without hinting at shame or secrecy. The drowning penalty was openly enforced later, so it wasn’t kept hidden long-term.

On “Catabaptists”

This was a term Zwingli and some allies (like Oecolampadius) briefly used in Latin writings around 1525–1527 (e.g., in his 1527 book In Catabaptistarum Strophas Elenchus—”Refutation of the Tricks of the Catabaptists”). From Greek kata- (down/against), it carried a double meaning:

  • “Against baptism” (implying they undermined true [infant] baptism).
  • Ironically, “down-dipper” or “one who submerges/drowns” (playing on immersion baptism and foreshadowing the drowning punishment).

It was a derogatory label, not what the group called themselves (they preferred “Brethren” or similar). The more common term “Anabaptist” stuck. You’re correct that they didn’t “oppose baptism” outright—they practiced believer’s baptism (often by immersion or pouring)—but critics framed it as rejecting the established sacrament.

Broader Perspective

The Anabaptists were seen as dangerous radicals in the 16th century (both by Catholics and magisterial Protestants like Zwingli/Calvin/Luther) because their ideas challenged the unity of church and state. Persecution was harsh and widespread: drowning in Protestant Zurich, burning/beheading elsewhere. Modern historians view this as a tragic episode where Reformation leaders, fearing anarchy, used state power to enforce orthodoxy—similar to how Catholics persecuted Protestants.

From a Baptist perspective (as your text seems to reflect), Anabaptists are often seen as forerunners of believer’s baptism and church-state separation. Zwingli and the Zurich Reformed tradition defended infant baptism and a closer church-government alliance.

This event highlights the deep divisions within the early Reformation—Zwingli started as a bold reformer against Catholic practices but ended up opposing those he saw as going “too far.”

[….]

Background on Felix Manz

Felix Manz (c. 1498–1527) was a Swiss Anabaptist leader and co-founder of the Swiss Brethren, the earliest Anabaptist congregation. Initially a follower and collaborator of Huldrych Zwingli (helping with Bible translation), Manz broke away over theological differences, particularly the rejection of infant baptism in favor of believer’s baptism (adult baptism upon confession of faith). He participated in the first adult baptisms on January 21, 1525, at his mother’s home in Zurich, marking the birth of the Anabaptist movement.Manz was arrested multiple times between 1525 and 1527 for preaching and performing adult baptisms, seen by Zurich authorities as seditious and threatening to social order.

The Decree Leading to Execution

On March 7, 1526, the Zurich City Council—aligned with Zwingli’s Reformed position—issued an edict making adult “re-baptism” punishable by drowning. This ironic penalty (“a third baptism”) was intended to mock Anabaptist views on immersion baptism.

Details of the Execution: January 5, 1527

Manz was rearrested in December 1526 while baptizing in the Grüningen region and imprisoned in Zurich’s Wellenberg Tower. He refused to recant during interrogation.On January 5, 1527, around 3 p.m., he was sentenced to death for persisting in Anabaptism, separatism, and defiance of authority. Led in procession from prison through the fish market to the Limmat River (flowing through central Zurich), Manz praised God and preached to onlookers.

Contemporary accounts (e.g., from Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor) describe:

  • His hands bound behind his knees with a pole inserted (a common binding for drowning executions).
  • Placed in a boat and rowed to mid-river (near a fishing hut/platform).
  • Pushed into the icy water to drown.

A Reformed preacher accompanied him, urging recantation, but Manz remained steadfast. Crowds lined both banks.

Family Presence and Last Words

Manz’s mother (Anna Manz) and brother were present on the shore, encouraging him to stay firm in his faith—her cries reportedly rang out across the water.

As he was thrown in, Manz sang loudly in Latin: “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum” (“Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”—echoing Jesus’ words on the cross, Luke 23:46).His property was confiscated, and he was buried in a common grave.

Zwingli’s Role

Zwingli, once Manz’s mentor, debated against the Anabaptists publicly (e.g., 1525 disputations) and supported the council’s measures. While he did not personally order the execution, sources indicate he approved of the edict and viewed Anabaptism as heretical and anarchic. No record shows him opposing the drowning.

Legacy and Memorial

Manz became the first Anabaptist martyr executed by Protestants (predating radical events like the Münster Rebellion). His death inspired the movement rather than suppressing it.A memorial plaque on the Limmat River wall at Schipfe (opposite No. 43) commemorates Manz and other drowned Anabaptists (1527–1532):The plaque reads (in translation): “Here in the middle of the Limmat from a fishing platform were drowned Felix Manz and five other Anabaptists during the Reformation 1527 to 1532.”This event highlights the tragic intolerance within the early Reformation, where theological disputes led to state-enforced executions.

The Early Church Before Augustine | Winkie Pratney (Jesse Morrell)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The Early Church Before Augustine on Free Will and Original Sin
~ Winkie Pratney ~

Let me just say, this was one of the best presentations I have seen. I will follow it with one I like but the early AI voice is tough.

Winkie Pratney lectures on Augustinianism, Pelagianism, and the Early Church regarding free will and original sin. What did early Christianity, or the early Christians, believe on these issues? Is Calvinism really historic Christianity as Calvinists claim?

This compliments my “kick-off post” on this topic of Calvinism: Augustinian Determinism VS. The Early Church

Did Augustine Corrupt The Church With Gnostic Doctrine? Beyond Augustine Documentary
~ Jesse Morrell ~

Beyond Augustine is a church history and theological documentary that examines the free will debate in light of the Early Church and the Gnostics. Did Augustine corrupt the church with Manichean or Gnostic doctrine? Is Calvinism or Reformed Theology really orthodox and historic Christianity, as Calvinists claim? Or are the Calvinists and Augustinians the spiritual descendants of the Gnostics and Manicheans? Were the Pelagians really the heretics in their free will debate with Augustine? These are the type of controversial questions Jesse Morrell examines in this documentary.