A people is not freed by the ballot.
The vote only reports what men already are, not what they want to be. Weak faith, envy, and lawlessness do not become virtue when they are counted. They are simply broadcast farther.
Reformation does not start in Washington. It starts when a man is made new, when he governs himself, his household, and his work under a law far higher than the next election. The state is one government among many, and the very least of them. Its task is to punish the evildoer, not to regenerate a nation or manufacture character from the top down.
A swollen central power is the proof that families have handed over education, churches have retreated from the law, and men have surrendered self-government. That is how a people votes itself out of liberty.
The ballot does not seize freedom in a single night. It merely records the earlier surrenders: the father who no longer catechizes, the mother who no longer forms, the church that no longer applies the law, the locality that no longer judges. When the lower governments abdicate, the higher one swells to replace them. Men then go to the polls and merely ratify their own dispossession.
If you would rather rebuild than merely react, then begin where government actually starts:
the man who governs himself,
the home that forms its own children,
the congregation that applies truth instead of hiding in private piety,
the locality that still knows justice is not the will of the majority.
That work is slow. It is unglamorous, and it will not trend.
It is also the only work that lasts.
Do not wait for a better occupant of high office.
Become the man whose self-government needs no overseer.
Become the family that needs no nanny.
Become the congregation that needs no substitute gospel from the capital.
Become the locality that still remembers its own law.
Then you will be the kind of people whose character no election can overthrow.
The claim that a consistent pro-life position must reject the death penalty confuses the protection of the innocent with the punishment of the guilty, and it sets the church’s recent prudential judgments above the clear ordinance of God. Scripture does not treat every taking of life as the same act. Genesis 9:6 establishes the death penalty precisely because man is made in the image of God: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” The command exists to uphold the sanctity of life, not to deny it. When the magistrate refuses to execute the murderer, he declares that the image of God in the victim may be violated without covenant consequence.
Abortion and euthanasia take the life of the innocent who have not forfeited it under God’s law. Capital punishment, by contrast, is the state’s duty toward the one who has. Numbers 35:31 forbids ransom for the life of a murderer; the land is polluted when blood is shed and left unavenged. Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 19 likewise require the death of the killer after due process, not as optional policy but as the means by which God restrains bloodguilt. Romans 13:4 confirms that the civil ruler “beareth not the sword in vain” and is “the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” To call the refusal of that sword “pro-life” is to substitute a modern sentiment for the law that God gave to protect life.
The Roman Church’s present opposition to capital punishment therefore does not render God inconsistent; it renders the church’s application inconsistent with the text it claims to honor. God instituted the penalty in the Noahic covenant, repeated it in the Mosaic law, and left it standing under the New Testament’s recognition of civil authority. A society that spares the murderer while permitting the destruction of the unborn has inverted biblical justice. The consistent witness of Scripture is that innocent life is guarded by the certain punishment of those who take it.
The claim that a man may keep both Christ and the practice of lying with another man rests on a division Scripture does not permit. God’s law is one. The statutes that order sexuality belong to the moral law that binds every person and every nation, not to the temporary ceremonies of sacrifice, diet, or fabric that marked Israel’s separation until Christ. Those ceremonial rules passed with the priesthood they served. The creation ordinance did not. Genesis 1:27–28 and 2:24 establish male and female as the pattern of marriage, fruitfulness, and household dominion. Matthew 19:4–6 records the Lord Himself returning to that pattern and declaring that what God has joined no man may put asunder. The later prohibitions simply guard the same order.
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 therefore stand with the commandments against adultery and incest, not beside the laws of mixed cloth. The penalty is death because the offense strikes at the family, which is the basic unit of inheritance, authority, and continuity. Paul does not soften the point. When he writes that neither the sexually immoral nor arsenokoitai shall inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9–10), the second term takes its force from the Levitical phrase for a male who lies with a male. The same exchange of natural use for that which is against nature appears in Romans 1:26–27 as the judicial consequence of suppressing the truth about the Creator. The texts are not limited to temple prostitution, gang violence, or idol feasts; they name the act that denies the created distinction. First Timothy 1:10 places the same offense among the lawless and disobedient. To require the apostles to employ a twentieth-century phrase before their words may count is to set the reader above the text.
Grace does not repeal the commandment. Ephesians 2:8–10 teaches that salvation is by grace through faith, and that those so saved are created for good works prepared beforehand. Romans 6:1–2 forbids the inference that one may continue in sin so that grace may abound. The new creature of 2 Corinthians 5:17 puts off the old manner of life; he does not rename it and retain it as identity. “Such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6:11) marks a change of practice, not a license to continue under a different label. Romans 8:38–39 assures the elect of God’s love; it does not redefine sin or empty the warnings that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom.
A social order that treats the prohibition as an insertion while retaining the language of faith has already chosen another god. The family is the nursery of dominion and the channel of inheritance. Where that institution is denied in principle, the civil order built upon it cannot stand. The law remains the standard for every man because every man is God’s creature. The call is therefore repentance toward the commandment and faith in the Redeemer who upholds it, not the adjustment of the commandment to the life already preferred.
The claim that the Spirit’s voice may be received through any vessel, irrespective of the order God has established, confuses the freedom of the Spirit with the disregard of His written Word. Scripture does not leave the matter of teaching and authority to private discernment. Paul states plainly, “I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (1 Timothy 2:12), and he grounds the prohibition not in a local custom or temporary circumstance but in the created order: “For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Timothy 2:13–14). To set this aside as “hyper-literal” is to treat the apostle’s reasoning as optional while retaining the language of submission to Scripture.
The same pattern appears elsewhere. In the assembly, women are to keep silence and to ask their husbands at home if they would learn anything, “for it is a shame for women to speak in the church” (1 Corinthians 14:34–35). This does not deny that women may teach children or other women (Titus 2:3–5; Proverbs 1:8; 31:1), nor does it diminish the honor of the godly wife and mother. It does, however, forbid the exercise of teaching authority over men in the gathered church. Authority in that sphere belongs to the office of elder, which Scripture restricts to men who rule their own houses well (1 Timothy 3:2, 4–5; Titus 1:6). When that order is reversed, the result is not richer wisdom but the very usurpation Scripture condemns.
God’s law distinguishes roles without denying equal standing before Him in redemption (Galatians 3:28). The man is the head of the woman as Christ is the head of the church (1 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 5:23). To call the clear application of these texts rigid is to prefer the spirit of the age, which resents every hierarchy not of its own making, over the law-word that defines both calling and limit. The church is not free to revise the creation ordinance in the name of hearing the Spirit; the Spirit who inspired the prohibition is the same Spirit who confirms it.
The statement that neither Jew nor Gentile slew the Lord Jesus is true only in the limited sense that no man could take His life from Him. Our Lord Himself declared, “I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:17-18). The cross was no accident of history, nor the triumph of human malice over divine purpose. It was the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23). Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatsoever God’s hand and counsel determined before to be done (Acts 4:27-28).
Yet this in no wise excuses the actors. The covenant people, having the oracles of God, delivered Him up by lawless hands. The Roman power, representing the Gentile world that knew not the law, executed the sentence. Both were instruments, and both were guilty. To isolate the guilt in one race or the other is to miss the point of Scripture. Man as man, in Adam, violated the law of God; therefore the Second Adam must make atonement. The meaning of the cross is that God’s law was broken by man, and only the God-man could satisfy it.
The Jews stumbled because they sought a nationalistic conqueror rather than the suffering Servant who would establish God’s Kingdom, not Israel’s. The Greeks counted it foolishness because a crucified Messiah contradicted their wisdom. Unto them that are called, however—Jew and Gentile alike—Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:23-24). The gospel therefore leaves no man guiltless and no man without hope, save those who persist in unbelief.
The tensions you describe are no accident of politics or markets. They are the harvest of a long apostasy. When nations cast off the law of God and enthrone the state as savior, the result is perpetual civil war under another name. Statism cannot admit its own failure; it must therefore find enemies—classes, parties, “the people” who will not submit—and wage war upon them. Unrest is not a surprise; it is the logic of a government that has made itself a rival to God.
Civil government was never given the office of messiah. Its calling is limited: to be a terror to evildoers and a praise to them that do well. When it claims the power to postpone elections, to declare emergencies that know no law, or to manage the wealth of a people by fiat, it has already declared itself sovereign. “Necessity knows no law” is a pagan proverb; it is the creed of every totalitarian order. A banking collapse under such conditions would not be an unforeseen calamity but the just consequence of dishonest weights and measures—paper and debt standing in the place of honest money. Inflation is legalized theft; a people addicted to debt have already consented to their own impoverishment.
Midterm contests, like all elections under humanism, merely decide which faction shall wield the sword of a state that has already exceeded its bounds. The will of the people is no more infallible than the will of a king. Both become tyranny when they refuse the higher law. The remedy is not another cycle of voting or another emergency decree. It is the reconstruction of every sphere—family, church, school, marketplace—under the law of God. Self-government under Christ is the first government; all others are derivative and limited.
I do not speak as one who fears the shaking. The kingdoms of this world are being judged so that the kingdom of our Lord may appear. The prudent man watches the markets and the magistrates, but he does not look to them for salvation. He looks to the Word that outlasts every state.
The New Testament is not first of all a Jewish book, nor a Gentile book. It is the Word of the living God, given through men whom He appointed as His instruments. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). The human authors were for the most part of the house of Israel, for “unto them were committed the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2). That is historical fact and covenantal priority. It is not the last word.
The gospel is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). What began with the fathers and the prophets is fulfilled in the Son and now goes out to the nations. The writers were Jews; the Author is God. The law they assume and the kingdom they announce bind Jew and Gentile alike until every enemy is made His footstool.
The Scriptures do indeed trace God’s dealings from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through the prophets and into the New Testament. That is not the question. The question is who constitutes Israel and how the covenant is now administered.
Paul is unambiguous. “They are not all Israel, which are of Israel: neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Rom. 9:6–8). The same apostle declares that those of faith are the sons of Abraham (Gal. 3:7), that the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed, which is Christ (Gal. 3:16), and that if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:29). He closes Galatians by invoking peace upon “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16)—the church, not a political entity in the Levant.
Our Lord Himself told the chief priests and Pharisees that the kingdom of God would be taken from them and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matt. 21:43). Peter applies the old covenant titles—“a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people”—directly to those who once were not a people but now are the people of God (1 Pet. 2:9–10). Ephesians 2:11–22 describes Jew and Gentile made one new man in Christ, the middle wall of partition broken down, fellow-citizens of the household of God.
To treat a modern secular state as the continuing, privileged object of the Abrahamic covenant, irrespective of faith in the Messiah, is to make the New Testament of none effect. It substitutes blood for faith and geography for the new creation. The covenant is a treaty of law and grace; it is not an irrevocable land grant to an unbelieving people. Those who reject the Son remain under the old covenant’s curses, not its blessings (Heb. 8:6–13; John 8:39–44).
The church is now the heir. Our calling is not to underwrite a nation that still stumbles at the stumbling-stone, but to disciple the nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:18–20), until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That is the Israel that endures.
The Scriptures do indeed trace God’s dealings from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through the prophets and into the New Testament. That is not the question. The question is who constitutes Israel and how the covenant is now administered.
Paul is unambiguous. “They are not all Israel, which are of Israel: neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Rom. 9:6–8). The same apostle declares that those of faith are the sons of Abraham (Gal. 3:7), that the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed, which is Christ (Gal. 3:16), and that if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:29). He closes Galatians by invoking peace upon “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16)—the church, not a political entity in the Levant.
Our Lord Himself told the chief priests and Pharisees that the kingdom of God would be taken from them and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matt. 21:43). Peter applies the old covenant titles—“a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people”—directly to those who once were not a people but now are the people of God (1 Pet. 2:9–10). Ephesians 2:11–22 describes Jew and Gentile made one new man in Christ, the middle wall of partition broken down, fellow-citizens of the household of God.
To treat a modern secular state as the continuing, privileged object of the Abrahamic covenant, irrespective of faith in the Messiah, is to make the New Testament of none effect. It substitutes blood for faith and geography for the new creation. The covenant is a treaty of law and grace; it is not an irrevocable land grant to an unbelieving people. Those who reject the Son remain under the old covenant’s curses, not its blessings (Heb. 8:6–13; John 8:39–44).
The church is now the heir. Our calling is not to underwrite a nation that still stumbles at the stumbling-stone, but to disciple the nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:18–20), until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That is the Israel that endures.
The Scriptures do indeed trace God’s dealings from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through the prophets and into the New Testament. That is not the question. The question is who constitutes Israel and how the covenant is now administered.
Paul is unambiguous. “They are not all Israel, which are of Israel: neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Rom. 9:6–8). The same apostle declares that those of faith are the sons of Abraham (Gal. 3:7), that the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed, which is Christ (Gal. 3:16), and that if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:29). He closes Galatians by invoking peace upon “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16)—the church, not a political entity in the Levant.
Our Lord Himself told the chief priests and Pharisees that the kingdom of God would be taken from them and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matt. 21:43). Peter applies the old covenant titles—“a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people”—directly to those who once were not a people but now are the people of God (1 Pet. 2:9–10). Ephesians 2:11–22 describes Jew and Gentile made one new man in Christ, the middle wall of partition broken down, fellow-citizens of the household of God.
To treat a modern secular state as the continuing, privileged object of the Abrahamic covenant, irrespective of faith in the Messiah, is to make the New Testament of none effect. It substitutes blood for faith and geography for the new creation. The covenant is a treaty of law and grace; it is not an irrevocable land grant to an unbelieving people. Those who reject the Son remain under the old covenant’s curses, not its blessings (Heb. 8:6–13; John 8:39–44).
The church is now the heir. Our calling is not to underwrite a nation that still stumbles at the stumbling-stone, but to disciple the nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:18–20), until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That is the Israel that endures.
From Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, throughout the Old Testament and into the New Testament, Scripture repeatedly points to God’s eternal relationship with Israel and the Jewish people. Israel is important to God, so Israel should be important to you! Israel today, Israel tomorrow and Israel forever!
"Hey friend, Rascal texted and said we got some "work to do" ."
"Wait, what? You aren't carrying? What is wrong with yo... Nevermind, we'll talk about that later, just take this and get in the truck."
Yeah, it's a Ruger RXM COA 9mm, yeah @SummRidge pitched in so be nice, and yeah he's coming too. Now get in.
"You don't know how this works? What're we doing? The crew will fill you in, now take a few breaths and pull yourself together. This hay ain't gonna put itself in the barn."
The two-percent cap is a modest adjustment to a system that has no warrant in the law of God. Education is a parental and ecclesiastical duty, not a civil one. When Caesar underwrites the schooling of the young, he inflates its price, secularizes its content, and binds the next generation in debt to a humanistic order. Capping the interest merely makes the bondage cheaper; it does not end the bondage. The remedy is not a lower rate from Washington but the restoration of education to the family under biblical law, so that neither the state nor the lender holds the child in perpetual servitude.
The figure now circulating—that every taxpayer stands indebted for more than three hundred and sixty thousand dollars—ought not to surprise any man who has read the law of God. It is the arithmetic of a people who have chosen slavery and called it prosperity.
Scripture is plain: “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another” (Romans 13:8). Debt that stretches beyond the seventh year is forbidden because the years themselves belong to the Lord (Deuteronomy 15:1–6). When a nation binds its children and its children’s children to the payment of today’s appetites, it commits a form of paganism. It sells what is not its own. “The borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7); a people who live by perpetual debt have already placed the yoke upon their own necks and then wonder why the state tightens it.
The modern budget is not an instrument of stewardship. It is a device for appropriating money that does not exist. Agencies present their “needs,” legislators enact them, and the difference is borrowed. The resulting mountain of paper is then called a national blessing. It is no blessing. It is the monetization of covetousness, “which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). Inflation is simply dishonest debt by another name—the state expanding the money supply so that yesterday’s promises can be paid with tomorrow’s cheaper dollars.
A debt-ridden people have no standing to complain of a debt-ridden government. The same spirit that mortgages the household for a larger house or a newer automobile mortgages the commonwealth for programs that purchase votes. Both rest upon the same idolatry: the refusal to live within the increase God has given and the determination to seize what belongs to the future. “Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men” (1 Corinthians 7:23).
The remedy is not another round of political accounting. It is repentance. Return to the tithe that belongs to God (Malachi 3:8–10), to the limited poll-tax that Scripture permits the civil magistrate (Exodus 30:11–16), and to the six-year limit on all indebtedness. Until that occurs, the numbers will only grow, and the slavery will only deepen. God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7). A nation that will not keep His law of debt will keep the law of the lender instead.
This time around its the LIVE FREE OR DIE Giveaway.
We start out at a 12 x 8 Maple Live Free or Die Laser Engraved sign and a Live Free or Die Candle from:https://t.co/aUHsrz5pZ7
Check out there staore even if its just to see the cool names and superb Photography.
But Buy a Candle
Im gonna try something by having a stretch goal. for every $150.00 worth of sales I will add an Item in the theme.
Next Friday the 2nd of October I will do the drawing. Check out the shops in the meantime. https://t.co/qg5lAEXEIs https://t.co/3Ezxggulcy have Includes a Live Free or Die Candle from:
@LFODCandles
https://t.co/aUHsrz5pZ7
Additionally we wouldnt mind a boost .
Good Luck and God Bless And yes I did use the Data Centers for this super cool image. But the product is real.
The Day of Atonement was never a festival of man’s resolve. It was the day God appointed a substitute, a high priest, and blood. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Lev. 17:11). The high priest entered once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the errors of the people (Lev. 16; Heb. 9:7). That day pointed forward to the one Sacrifice that actually takes away sin. When the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom (Matt. 27:51), the type was finished. “By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14).
What remains in the synagogues is a day without the priest and without the blood. Men afflict their souls, recite their prayers, give their alms, and ask that their names be sealed for another year. That is not the atonement of Scripture. It is man attempting to cover himself. “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). It is humanism wearing a sacred calendar.
A supposed Christian magistrate who takes that language on his lips and offers it as a blessing is not being gracious. He is treating an empty form as if it were still the ordinance of God. He is saying, in effect, that there is a way of life apart from the Cross. There is not. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The Book of Life is not sealed by ten days of effort. It is “the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev. 21:27; 13:8). The names written there were written because Another stood in their place. “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities… and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:5–6).
The Israel of God is not a bloodline that rejected the Messiah. “And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16). It is the people bought by His blood and gathered into His church. To wish a man “sealed” on any other terms is to leave him in his sin and to deny the only Atonement God has provided. “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Speak Christ, or be silent. The law and the prophets are fulfilled in Him, not in a greeting that has no priest and no sacrifice.
As Yom Kippur ends this evening, Heidi and I wish a g’mar chatima tova to all of our Jewish friends in Texas, America, and around the world. May you be sealed in the Book of Life.
It is actually starting to cool, thank The Lord, and the nights are starting to arrive just a bit earlier. Soon that superior season will be upon us. Autumn.
This reminds me of story from a few autumns past when Rascal had to deal with some ne'er-do-wells raising Cain late one night at the shop.
When I got there I found the creature dressed in his best 1800's sleepwear and holding a .45 revolver.
"You take the light, i'll lead the way." was all the talk he would allow.
He handed me the Humming Meadow Silo Taper Hurricane and deeper into the dark warehouse we went. Given that this was years before Humming Meadow was stocking these I have no clue how he came by it. No, I did not bother to ask.
How that evening unfolded is a story, perhaps, for another time. For now I will thank @SummRidge for always supporting us and will say that this week's fun is a Taylor's and Co. Remington Conversion .45colt revolver paired with a lovely Humming Meadow Silo Taper Hurricane Candle holder (will be throwing in a candle too!)
I hope all of you have an amazing and blessed week and are looking forward to fall as much as we are!
Good luck to all and Keep Going even when it gets spooky!