PERFECT STORM FOR ISRAEL -- OR TIME TO STAND WITH HER?

            Media reports Hamas and the Palestinian Authority merging interests and assets into a unity government.  It is good for no one when a terrorist organization merges with a so-called former terror group.  It is especially ominous for modern Israel – a nation that has spent its sixty-seven years of life under constant threat of annihilation and at least five credible attempts to destroy it by enemies more than twenty times more numerous.

            BTW – the United States gives hundreds of millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority each year – tax dollars.  In light of this merger we are now funneling that money to Hamas, the most notorious terrorist group in the world after Al Qaida. 

            The Palestinian Authority theoretically recognizes Israel’s right to exist, but only if she gives up so much of her land over nearly four thousand years to a group of refugees who claim it without ever having owned it.  Hamas won’t even go as far as recognition.  And now the United States – under Barack Obama and John Kerry – have telegraphed our intention to bring Israel to heel by any means necessary.  Kerry recently claimed an Israel that does not return to her pre 1967 borders is ripe to be labeled an apartheid society.  (He hinted at sanctions should Palestinians resume attacks on Israel.  My question would be when did those attacks ever cease?)  There is no more serious anathema to be hurled by one nation at another in our politically correct-on-steroids world.  We have thrown our closest ally under the bus – or at least promised to do so if they continue to displease us.  This is a perfect storm for an isolated Israel.  But what is it for the American People – the vast majority of whom believe Israel is God’s chosen nation, an underdog worthy of support, defense, or both?

            Some will point out Kerry has already pulled back from the apartheid label, that he didn’t really mean that.  Experience shows people speak the truth they truly believe when agitated.  In any case, Kerry and Obama have demonstrated their hatred of Israel since the beginning of their respective tenures in office, as did Hilary Clinton when she helmed the State Department.  My question for the American people remains.

            Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East – as Democrat Barbara Boxer points out in her denunciation of Kerry’s apartheid statement.  She is our closest and most consistent ally, and a light to her region – the most volatile on earth – if they will have her.  After the US she is the first nation to aid others in time of disaster.  We owe many of our medical and computer advances to her tradition of innovation, not to mention her agricultural advances making deserts bloom.  We owe her better treatment than this.

            The people of Israel have suffered more tyranny, butchery, and persecution than any on earth.  In each of the five full scale wars in which she has fought in less than a century the other side has been the aggressor – including the 1967 war in which she won back so much of her ancient territory and made of Jerusalem a holy city in which all faiths are welcomed and honored.  (Palestinian Arabs had turned Temple Square into a slum; Israeli forces restored it.)  The so-called Intifada came about because an Israeli leader had the temerity to seek to worship God on the Temple Mount, which was then and is Israel’s property and holiest site.  Justice demands better treatment than this.

            Finally, the Word of God calls the Jews God’s chosen ones, His firstborn whom He will never abandon.  Christians and Jews, comprising more than a third of the world’s population, believe the prophecies about Israel rising from the ashes – a unique achievement in world history – because they have all come true. Jesus was born and remains a Jew of Israel.  He says if we expect to be acknowledged by His Father we had best acknowledge Him.  Where I come from if you want to acknowledge me you acknowledge those I love.  The Holy Scriptures – and I refer to materials that have proven accurate in the crush of world events – demand better treatment than this for Israel.

            I asked what this means for the American people.  The great majority of us know the truth – and the justice – of what is written here. It means we must rise up as a people and demand our government act with justice, mercy, and a newfound humility toward people who deserve our support.  It means we must stay in the game until truth prevails.  The Israelis have suffered enough and we have waffled enough.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

Gullible Travels

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States of America got a huge Wake Up call.  It was said by many, that this foolhardy move by the Japanese caused a Sleeping Giant to wake up. 

This famous quote was attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the forces of Imperial Japan: 

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Of course, we know that this attack was ultimately the impetus that led America to join together with the Allied Forces and eventually win the war. 

Prior to this time, President Roosevelt, with the acquiescence of the American public, continued to practice and promulgate the prevailing “wisdom” of the day known as “Isolationism.” 

Isolationists sought to avoid alliances, commitments, and agreements for unity, with other Liberty-loving persons in the hopes to selfishly advance their own interests and remain at false peace with the enemy. 

This is an incredibly good description of the Apostate Christian Church.

In the news we see both Catholic and Protestant leaders eerily heading down this same path.    

I find the name “Pearl Harbor” quite revealing.  Of course, Christ is the “Pearl of Great Price” in the Bible.  “Harbor” is a shadow picture for America.  The United States did indeed become the literal “Pearl harbor” for those seeking both religious and political asylum.  The Statue of Liberty stands in a Harbor welcoming those from other shores.  Our forefathers on the Mayflower came to these shores from Europe to avoid religious persecution. 

Today “Pearl Harbor”, a metaphor for our Judeo-Christian culture of freedom and liberty, is under assault once again.  Like the Giant Gulliver, she is being bombarded by annoying kamikaze Lilliputians trying to tie her down while she sleeps.  The Lilliputians are the freedom-killing “victories” being won daily by the abortion lobby, the gay lobby, the atheist lobby and the anti-Israel lobby.   Perhaps like Roosevelt, clueless Christians think we can continue to sit this one out.  Maybe they selfishly think they can cling to their denominational differences and not join together with other like-minded Christians in order to protect their own hides.   

This week there was a very revealing news story in the United States.  It seems that a Cake-baker in Colorado was sanctioned by the governing board in his town and ordered to undergo “re-education” training along with his employees after he refused to participate in baking cakes for gay “weddings.”  What exactly did they want to re-educate him regarding?  His Christian beliefs?  The clear mandate of the Bible regarding the abomination of homosexuality? 

In 2012, Denmark became the first country to vote in legal enforcement for gays wanting to be married in the state’s Lutheran churches.  Yes, you heard that correctly…in Denmark the churches are LEGALLY required to allow gay marriages.  Although many clergy have openly stated that they will not personally comply…this is now the law of the land.   Weirdly…this same state-sanctioned Lutheran Church in Germany also went apostate and sided with Hitler during WWII with notable exceptions such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Indeed…History does strangely repeat itself. 

Now, in England, a wealthy gay couple is currently suing the Church of England, requesting this exact same result.  In July of 2013 the U.K. legalized gay marriage.  Queen Elizabeth had to give her willing consent, which she sadly did.  This was yet another British “Neville Chamberlain” appeasement action which will ultimately bode poorly for England. 

      

Similar to WWII, these appeasement philosophies of Europe will soon invade our shores.  Perhaps we foolishly believe a variation of the silly Las Vegas slogan, "what happens in Europe, stays in Europe."   Britain’s former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has gone down in history infamously as an epic failure example of attempting to placate evil.  His unwillingness to take a hardline stance against Hitler was the turning point for encouraging Hitler’s ruthless aggression.  Truly the thing he feared most (war) came upon him. 

For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.

~Job 3:25

In America, if we refuse to RESIST and REPENT, we will lose the war.  We must FEAR GOD more than anything else.  Then His Glory will come upon us.  Otherwise, we will lose the very thing we cling to…our desire for “freedom” from conflict.   

Those who are more awake in this battle have blown the warning trumpets.  Sadly, much of the Christian Church just keeps hitting the snooze button.  

So once again…let me warn you...GULLIBILITY TRAVELS.   The Church had better start straining against these tie downs or we may soon suffer the same fate as another giant, Samson:  robbed of our strength, blinded and ultimately destroyed along with the collapsing pillars of our civilization. 

Not unlike yet another tale…The Church is still mostly a Sleeping Beauty.  Only a kiss from her True Love can snap her out of this evil spell...A conquering Prince on a White horse.

Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. Its rider was named Faithful and True, for He judges fairly and wages a righteous war.

~Revelation 19:11

With Obama’s recent release of five of the most dangerous and evil terrorists on the planet…perhaps our “Pearl Harbor” is about to be attacked again.  If so, just like WWII overshadowed WWI in the depth and breadth of its destruction, this attack will make 9/11 look like a little skirmish in comparison. 

Come Lord Jesus Come.  Only Your kiss will cause us to

WAKE UP!

Let him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth! 

~Solomon 1:2

America will never be destroyed from the outside.  If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

~Abraham Lincoln

___________________________________

~Posted by permission of Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly

Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly is the author of Repentance—God’s Strategy to Bless a Nation and Zeal to Repent!—A Key to Personal and National Restoration 

–Both are available for FREE at The National Day of Repentance website: www.dayofrepentance.org

JUSTINA PELLETIER: INMATES RUNNING THE ASYLUM

By James Wilson

(Author Note:  Since this piece was written Justina has been transferred to a

facility in her home state of Connecticut and her parents given greater access

to her.  She is again being treated by Tufts’ medical personnel and may soon be

released into her parents’ custody.  Yet she remains a prisoner and her story – as it is written below – must be told as this author originally wrote it.  She is not the only one.)

             Justina Pelletier is a teenaged girl who lives in Connecticut.  She loves her parents, her church, and competitive figure skating.  She has a rare but treatable disease called Mitochondrial Disease.  She was being treated effectively enough at Boston’s Tufts Medical Center to continue her figure skating career until she showed flu-like symptoms in February 2013.  Her doctor at Tufts advised her parents to take her to the Boston Children’s Hospital ER.  Doctors there disagreed with the Tufts diagnosis, claiming her problem was a psycho-somatic disorder, and forcibly placed her in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families when her parents attempted to return her to Tufts.  (They refused to sign a consent form in which they had to agree to seek no second opinion.)  A Juvenile Court judge delayed a hearing on the case for two months despite state laws requiring a hearing within three days in such cases.  He then upheld the DCF finding that she needed to be removed from her parents over what they described as medical abuse – attempting to return her to her doctors at Tufts.  That same judge made his custody order permanent early in 2014.  She is permitted one hour of supervised visitation with her parents each week.

            The abuse this girl and her family have suffered is staggering.  In her sixteen months in the custody of DCF she has gone from being an athlete to being wheelchair bound.  Denied access to school books and teachers – even DCF supplied – she is more than a year behind her classmates at her school back in Connecticut.  Her pastor has been denied access to her and she to him; she has been forbidden the all important – to a Catholic – rite of Holy Communion these sixteen months.  Photos of her in the wheelchair were smuggled out of the hospital, as was a hand written note in which she says she is being physically abused by staff.  And the rules and regs of being a ward of the state in Massachusetts state she can be used as an experimental subject without the consent of Justina or her parents.  Many suspect that is what is happening to her.

            And for those who will say such things cannot happen in America, recall the forced sterilization experiments on minorities eighty years ago, the experimental exposure of American soldiers to atomic radiation in Nevada in the fifties, and the EPA experiments with carbon monoxide on unwitting test subjects uncovered just last year.

            As news coverage of her situation expands and public outcry grows members of the Massachusetts legislature are calling for her release and the cutoff of funds to DCF until she is released.  Her father defied the gag order imposed by the judge and spoke to the media to get the exposure rolling.  The scandal grows as it is discovered more than a hundred children in DCF custody are missing and a number have been found dead.  Olga Roche, the head of DCF, has resigned in the face of the scandal.  But Justina remains a prisoner of the state sponsored gulag in the middle of the birthplace of American freedom.  What should American citizens – American parents – be doing?

            I pray Justina will be free and DCF on hold pending a thorough investigation by the time this posting sees publication.  That investigation needs to include Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard University (of whom the hospital is a creature) and the Star Chamber that passes for the Juvenile Court in Boston.  The hue and cry being raised today may well have achieved that, but in case this case is still pending and even the writ of Habeas Corpus before the Massachusetts Supreme Court has been denied…

            Americans need to stand for the freedom we have too long taken for granted.  I am not talking about violence, but about witness. I have written about the Peter Weir film, Witness, in this space before.  In the film corrupt and well armed police are stopped in their tracks by hundreds of unarmed and pacifist Amish farmers who gather in silent and prayerful witness.  Hundreds and perhaps thousands of Americans need to surround Boston Children’s Hospital – peacefully – and demonstrate – peacefully – until Justina Pelletier emerges from her prison and into the arms of her family.  This needs to be the beginning of a pattern of determined massive resistance against government running amok or – as my own mother used to say – the inmates running the asylum.  It needs to go on until sanity is restored and the arrogant experimenters cast out.

            American Blacks were freed from Jim Crow, the Philippines from a dictator, and Eastern Europe from communist/socialist terrorists by millions who rose in peace and refused to bow any longer to the tyrants.  Jesus Christ set the whole human race free from death in the same way.  But here is a tip – turning to Him is the only way we find the courage and the grace to stay in the game until it is finished.    

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

              

            

OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM

The Yuba College Faculty for early childhood education is staunchly opposing a bill making its way through the state legislature with so little noise one can wonder what all the silence is about.  The bill is SB 837 and it forces four-year-olds around the state out of state funded pre-schools into so-called transitional kindergartens.  It increases class sizes and expels their former teachers unless they hold a state teaching credential.  The problem is these teachers have degrees in Early Childhood Education while most credentialed kindergarten teachers lack any training in ECE.  That means college professors with doctorates would be unable to work except as an aide.  But it also means jobs and union dues for unionized teachers in the push to monopolize our schools.

            Although I have no proof, the old looks-like-a-duck-and-quacks like one school of thought indicates the silence is about unions scratching political backs and vice versa.  But whatever the reasons, this bill is a bad bargain for kids and families.  And – like so many state policies – it works by coercion where it cannot work through persuasion.

            Early Childhood Education longitudinal research began in the 1960s with Project Head Start and the Perry Preschool Project.  More than half a century of solid data backs the concepts and methods of ECE.  SB 837 falsely states this research supports the transitional kindergarten model; in fact this model did not exist until quite recently and has never been tested.  It is a whole different approach to educating young children, but its methods and models already appear to contradict the findings of ECE programs over the years.  The evidence supports ECE, not TK.

            837 places four-year-olds in classrooms with five and six-year-olds, and on campuses with children more than twice their age.  By and large they are not ready for such interactions on a large scale, and these interactions will be largely unsupervised; there are just too many kids on a campus and too few teachers to watch all of them, the bullies and their victims.  ECE schools operate under safety regulations that are neither present nor feasible in large elementary schools.

The children will be forced into learning modalities that are appropriate for grade school students but harmful to pre-schoolers.  And their natural energies can virtually guarantee many will be labeled ADHD and put on heavy psychotropic drugs like Ritalin, or equally inappropriate medications like Strattera.  The latter is intended only for children six or older and its most prominent side effects are suicidal thoughts and serious liver damage – in that order.  Yet it is well known that schools and doctors are increasingly willing to drug the child who is too much in motion rather than attempting to deal with him in an age and learning-style appropriate way.  This is an epidemic in our present culture.

Perhaps the worst feature of this bill is that it denies parents the chance to choose ECE for their children, a choice they have been able to take for granted up until now.  These parents will be forced to place their children in the care of teachers who are credentialed, but completely untrained and unqualified for the children they will be asked to teach.  Let me stress, not one unit of early childhood education training is required for a credential that includes kindergarten.  But those trained in ECE and lacking state teacher credentials will simply find themselves unemployed if this bill passes. Meanwhile California parents and their children will once again be expected to bow and suffer at the altar of one size fits all.  The value added horror is that if this thing goes forward in California it will soon be the pattern for the nation; that is the national trend for the past half century and more.

The bad news is the unions will be the big winners.  More jobs and more educators will come under their control.

The good news is just what Jesus famously says about the little children being the stuff of the Kingdom of heaven, as He recommends we become more like them instead of insisting they become more like us.  He is not saying children are smarter or more socially advanced than adults.  But they are more simply and more purely the persons they are, without masks and layers of dysfunction to hide behind.  Defeating this bill makes a chance to leave the children to develop along more natural lines than crowded classrooms and hard drugs can ever permit.  This posting will come out too late for the vote in the senate; contact your assembly member to voice your concern.  Then spend some time playing with your children. 

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

ANOTHER SHOT AT KEEPING THE COVENANT

            Human beings are designed for covenant.  Unique among the creatures of God we are capable of voluntary, reciprocal, and developmental relationships.  Dogs are either pack or solitary – they don’t choose social or solitary each morning.  If your dog bites my dog, mine will likely bite back, but if your dog bites me I will likely call a lawyer.  And when a dog reaches maturity he is all the dog he can be.  When I reach adulthood I will continue to change and – hopefully – grow the rest of my life.  This maturity occurs in relationships in which I live and move.

            Covenant – as opposed to a contract with fixed terms, conditions and boundaries – is a shaped relationship remaining open at the front end.  When God tells people (Micah 6:8) they know what He requires – to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with Him – He shapes the relationship without limiting its growth.  Ditto when Jesus calls the heart of covenant with God that we love God with all our might and neighbor as ourselves.  We are not just designed for covenant living; we attain the fullness of humanity only within that context, whether in the most intimate setting of the marriage covenant or in the social covenants of friendship and constitutional community. 

            In California we’ve done a poor job – at best – of keeping covenant with God and with one another.    

            We lead the nation in divorce and co-habitation without marriage, and these are covenant breaking and refusal to covenant at all, respectively.  Yet most of us remain blissfully unaware of – and in denial of – the degree to which covenant breaking is a lifestyle in our culture and history.  When our ancestors arrived in California they discovered more varieties of Native American tribes than in any other state.  They entered into covenants – treaties – with more frequency than in any other state – and we have broken virtually all of them.  That breaking has often been accompanied by violence of a unique ferocity.

               The Natural Bridges Massacre is one of the worst examples.  The gold miners of Weaverville lived in peace with the Nor-el Muk band of the Wintu nation until a famine came and six Indians begged food from a hate-filled Weaverville grocer.  He suggested they eat grass instead.  When his body was found with grass stuffed in his mouth a posse formed and reacted.  They never found the suspects, but they murdered more than one hundred fifty women, children and elderly Wintu at Natural Bridges for revenge.  To this day tourists and locals alike think the area a playground instead of the shrine it ought to be; graffiti covers the rocks where the dead are still not permitted to rest in peace.

            Even worse was the Etna area massacre of Shasta people.  Whites entered into a peace treaty with the tribe and – to celebrate – invited the tribe to a barbecue.  They laced the beef with strychnine and three thousand Shastans died.  Those who did not succumb to the poison were gunned down as they fled.  To this day the federal government denies the event took place, but I saw xeroxed copies of contemporary newspaper accounts of the slaughter.  It happened; denial only worsens the atrocity.

            Covenant breaking is unique among the master sins of California in that it does not stop with polluting the physical environment as much as the hearts of we who live in it.  It degrades our very nature as beings designed for one way of living and one only.  What does repentance resemble?

            The first thing is simple enough – fess up where we have messed up.  The second is just as simple – choose to recognize the God Who makes us as the God Who understands our best interests far better than we; re-focus our attention on Him and His ways and forget our excuses that too much time has passed or we are not our ancestors.  We accept the Gold Rush benefits they bequeath cheerfully enough; we can accept responsibility for righting their Gold Rush wrongs with the same cheerfulness.

            Of course such recognition would change our decision-making – one decision at a time – from whatever seems necessary to me to whatever seems important to my Maker.  It would embody Jesus’ words that when we sacrifice life claims for others we come into His abundant life, but when we hang on to self-serving survival we only postpone death for awhile.

            Prayer is the most important third dimension.  When we pray before and after doing we are reminded – should we forget – that the Good Samaritan remains the model of ultimate covenant keeping and Micah 6:8 still defines the covenant lifestyle.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

              

           

SEX AND SIN – NO NECESSARY CONNECTION

            God has given no more beautiful gift than the sexual union He makes possible between a husband and wife.  It is the fullest expression of “having one’s back” – understood as total commitment.  There is good and credible evidence the Jews invented romantic love as expressed in their practice of kissing and making love in the frontal position, making possible the intimate engagement – looking one another in the eye – we associate with “knowing” in the Biblical sense.  Sexual union is also the way we give birth to children whose purpose is to provide an opportunity for sacrificial love as much as to reproduce our species.  This approach to union is unique to humankind. 

God clearly intended this as His gift from the beginning.  A proper translation of Genesis 2:18 reads literally, “one who can look him in the face,” as egalitarian a term as anyone could ask for the status of a wife; “helpmate” is simply not it.  Meanwhile, Genesis 2:24 depicts God declaring a man leaves his parents and becomes one flesh with his wife.  Jesus calls this foundational in Mark 10.  Only then is sex the gift He intends.

            Tragically, we have not been content to walk out God’s plan, and California leads the nation in walking out the tragedy.  Many studies – conducted by major secular universities over the past four decades – show marriages sturdier and stabler when the couple marries prior to co-habitation.  Others show children far less at risk for poverty, crime, or addiction when raised in traditional families.  Studies touting the benefits of raising children in alternative households have been debunked as junk science by studies actually employing the scientific method and painting a picture much more grim.  Although there are times when a marriage cannot endure the strains placed on it, and the one entrusted with the children does the best and often successful job possible against odds, there is no alternative model in which adults and children consistently thrive than the Biblical one.  Yet we keep trying to do the same dysfunctional stuff while expecting a different result for ourselves and our children.

            California plays host to the worldwide pornography industry.  Between eighty and ninety per cent of pornography produced worldwide comes out of the greater Los Angeles area – ironically a place named for the angels of God – and its use is as common in the Church as outside it.  Pornography is by definition an appeal to the absence of covenant relationship in which only the pleasure associated with sexual union is entertained.  The people on both sides of the screen are treated as objects – pieces of meat in essence – and even Christians tend to deny the destruction this wreaks on authentic relationships, although numerous studies document the reality.  Add that to the social tendency for engaged couples to focus more on the wedding than the marriage in their preparation times and it is small wonder our state leads the nation in divorce and marital dysfunction.  What can we do as people of repentance?

            For openers we could check out Ephesians 5:21-25 in God’s Book.   The world was grounded in sacrifice from the beginning.  (I have made my case for this in previous blogs and will doubtless do it again herafter.)  Verse 21 calls on husbands and wives to submit to (read sacrifice for) one another out of reverence for Christ.  The rest speaks to how wives and husbands can accomplish this mutual submission within their respective spheres – and nothing more nor less.  There is no subordination in marriage; only mutual submission leading to mutual joy, if we accept the counter-intuitive precept God gives.  

            We are indeed called to repent in this season of spiritual drought leading to physical drought.  Repentance is not about beating ourselves up over our own behavior, much less that of others.  It is about re-focus on God and on the life He offers to us.  The people of God who observe the lifestyle of repentance as the privilege it is will look first at how they can be better spouses and parents according to the Biblical model.  They will re-discover the joy of covenant engagement with one spouse viewed as a person and not as an object.  And we will beg God on an ongoing basis to lead the rest of us Californians back to Him and to His ways.  Repentance is about seeking abundant life from its Giver through practical acts.  And we can start by celebrating that – while there are sexual sins and they are rampant in our state – there is no necessary connection between the one and the other.  Authentic sex is anything but sin.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net