Picking up on last night’s thread about Christians and voting, I found this from Albert Mohler:
” … In other words, if the only person we can vote for is an evangelical Christian then we’re in big trouble. We’re electing a President as a Constitutional officer, not a pastor. At the same time we have to recognize, we’re the people that know that worldview matters. The reality is we know that we’re a composite; that our world view comes out of our most cherished and basic beliefs. And so everything is fair game for interrogation by voters. … ”
And I’ll reiterate, at this point I don’t see how I would be able to vote for Donald Trump. I’m praying that won’t be my (our) choice (Hillary vs. The Donald).
GRANGEVILLE, IDAHO
Over the past six years, two Texas billionaire brothers have bought about 38,000 acres of land on the Joseph Plains in Idaho County and apparently have closed access to local residents for hunting and recreation. …
… Farris Wilks, 63, is married and the father of 11 children. He is the pastor of the Assembly of Yahweh Seventh Day Church near Cisco, a conservative Christian church that was founded by his parents, Voy and Myrtle, in 1947.
Dan Wilks, 59, is married and the father of six children.
The Wilks brothers recently made headlines when they and their wives gave $15 million to the campaign for presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the brothers and their wives previously had donated only $263,000 to federal candidates before going all-out for Cruz.
Not long ago, I mentioned reading about a video that supposedly shows Ted Cruz being anointed in a church, supposedly with the idea that he would be one of the “kings” that God will raise up, & wondering if anyone knew how true that was.
The friend who mentioned it, who is not a nutcase or anti-Christian (in fact he is an evangelical Christian) posted the video. In it, Cruz’s father preaches about how God is going to move the wealth from the wicked to the godly, & raise up Christian priests & kings to run the world. (I may not have the all terminology quite right, but he does speak of priests & kings.) There is a brief scene in the video of Ted Cruz being prayed over.
My friend finds the video convincing enough that Cruz does indeed believe in Dominion Theology (I think it’s called). Since Cruz didn’t say anything himself in the video, I’m not positive.
Here it is. The brief part with Cruz being prayed over is at about 50 seconds in. The whole video is 10:53. What do you think? . . .
(As I tried to post this, with the video URL, I got a message that it could not be posted. So I am removing the URL, & will try posting that separately.)
I don’t know anything about the church his father was involved in, sounds a bit fringe (marketplace?), but “dominion” theology (scare quotes!), in proper context — eschatology — essentially refers to the final victory of the new heavens and the new earth. Nonbelievers won’t understand that, they will see it as a forced takeover (but in post-mil context, the gospel goes out and naturally transforms not only individuals, but whole nations over time — it comes from the bottom up and culminates with Christ’s return; and the time frame is God’s alone).
Great conspiracy theory fodder for unbelievers, though. 🙂
I really like Al Mohler, and I’m not sure exactly where he was coming down on the voting issue (my apologies: I didn’t read the article you linked); however, I do think one statement he makes on the subject is overused in these discussions; specifically, he said:
We’re electing a President as a Constitutional officer, not a pastor.
I think that’s pretty lame for at least a couple reasons. First, who doesn’t know that? Is anyone actually confused about it? The comment is so sarcastic as to border on insult.
But secondly, what is that statement meant to imply? What if someone were to say, “We’re evaluating a father, not a pastor”? Doesn’t the Bible describe what a good father is; doesn’t the Bible command fathers regarding their duties in that role? Of course it does, just as it describes good political leaders. It’s a bit bizarre to imply there is no Biblical instruction for good political leadership, law, or civic duty. In fact, there’s all kinds of that stuff in the Bible. I don’t get it when Mohler and others dismiss that content by saying we’re electing a President, not a pastor.
Grangeville is the big city around here. It has the only stoplight in its county. If they wanted to give my family about one hundred thousand dollars, I would accept it. Meantime, I think husband is signing up to be a truck driver. He has always wanted to be one and once he gets his infusion, he ought to be able to do it for a while.
“What if I told you there was a time in American history when many Republicans supported liberalizing abortion laws, while liberal Democrats protested that fetuses had constitutionally protected rights? That liberals like Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, and Dick Gephart took pro-life positions while Republican governors Ronald Reagan and Nelson Rockefeller signed legislation expanding access to abortion? …”
“Sweden’s prime minister has condemned a “double betrayal” of women after allegations that police covered up sexual harassment by recent immigrants at a music festival in Stockholm. Meanwhile, reports have emerged of attacks on women in Malmö on New Year’s Eve.
Groups of refugees molested concertgoers at We Are Stockholm, Europe’s largest youth festival, in the summer of 2014, according to internal police memos obtained by Dagens Nyheter, a daily newspaper.
“These are so-called refugee youths, specifically from Afghanistan. Several of the gang were arrested for sexual molestation,” one police memo said.
Yet the official police report on the five-day festival attended by 170,000 young people aged mainly 13-19 made no mention of sexual harassment or assaults.
The prime minister, Stefan Löfven, said this amounted to a double betrayal since no one was prosecuted for the crimes and the police did not make them public.
The reports come as police in Cologne, Germany, investigate hundreds of claims of assaults on women on New Year’s Eve. Officials say nearly all of the suspects in the attacks were “people with an immigrant background”. Police and the media have been accused of deliberately under-reporting the events in order not to encourage anti-immigrant sentiment.”
“More than 100 criminal complaints have been filed, 75 percent of which were reports of sexual assault. Two women reported being raped by the men, who were allegedly of North African and Arab appearance. Women in Hamburg and Stuttgart also reported similar attacks.
So far several dozen have been identified, most of whom were asylum seekers.
But due to Germany’s desperation to prove not only that it’s the most tolerant country in Europe but also that letting in hundreds of thousands of immigrants would have no disastrous consequences, the female victims of the attacks were initially ignored by the political class. Had the alleged perpetrators been white members of a fraternity, the international response would have been completely different, as the Atlantic’s David Frum noted.
Suddenly the presumption that accusers of sexual assault must be automatically believed has gone out the window, the latest victim of European “multiculturalism” and Western political correctness.
Gone, too, are the demands that women receive no crime-prevention tips, since that amounts to blaming the victim, instead insisting we “teach men not to rape.”
In the left’s pyramid of grievances, Islamophobia now outranks the war on women.”
“A new report on the Syrian refugee resettlement program reveals that the United Nations — not U.S. officials — initially pick and choose who can move to the United States and even become an American citizen.
What’s more, the vetting system used by the U.S.-funded United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is wide open to rampant fraud, raising the specter that potential terrorists could buy their way into the United States, according to the analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies.
The report focused on a little-known path to how refugees get into America: The United Nations makes the first pick, not the State Department.
Under the system, the UNHCR considers those seeking to come to America before turning that list over to the United States to consider.
“Out of the four million-plus registered Syrian refugees in the region, UNHCR has so far submitted 22,427 cases to the United States for resettlement consideration. Of those, about 2,000 were accepted last year. The United States is welcoming Syrian refugees only from the 22,427 who made it through UNHCR referrals,” said the report from senior analyst Nayla Rush.
The report raised two huge issues. First, it found that the U.N. system is simply overloaded. Just consider this: Since there are over 4 million refugees and and 2,038 UNHCR staffers, each interviewer is responsible for vetting 2,100-2,800 refugees each.”
The other day, Chas mentioned the book “The Camp of the Saints” here. It bears repeating how prescient that book was, and how these refugee stories seem to be plucked out of that book’s pages. It was written in 1973 (or so).
“All of the paid staffers for Ben Carson’s super PAC in New Hampshire have quit their jobs in order to become volunteers for rival candidate Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign.
WMUR-TV reported that the five staffers made the decision after deciding that the Texas Republican is the most viable candidate in the race to win both the GOP nomination and the presidency.
Jerry Sickles, a spokesman for the group, added that the retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon spent little time campaigning in the Granite State, a trait that became frustrating to him and the other staffers as they tried to build support for their (now former) boss in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
He told the station:
“We hold Dr. Carson in the highest regard.
This is a man we revere, but we think it is important that our party nominate a conservative and get behind a single conservative who can win, and we strongly believe that candidate is Ted Cruz.””
“The Fox Business Network on Monday announced the seven Republican candidates they have invited to their primetime debate in South Carolina — and Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina didn’t make the cut this time.
During his show Monday evening, host Lou Dobbs said those who will have podiums on the main stage are Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich. The primetime debate at the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston is set for 9 p.m. EST on Thursday.
The four other candidates who didn’t qualify for the main stage — Paul, Fiorina, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum — are being invited to participate in an undercard debate, set for earlier that evening at 6 p.m. EST.
Paul is suggesting he will not participate in an undercard debate, saying he deserves to be on the main stage.”
” … This came back to me as I read a note this morning from Republican political consultant Alex Castellanos posted at CNN, where he suggests that the candidate/campaign that is having the most fun will win. Call it the ‘fun indicator’ of presidential politics. …
“Donald Trump is having a lot of fun, isn’t he?
“More than anyone else.
“Yup. And conversely, does anyone think the Hillary Clinton campaign is much fun to be around? And Bernie Sanders? Probably as much fun as an alcohol-free union local meeting.”
________________________________
Wandering Views 
Picking up on last night’s thread about Christians and voting, I found this from Albert Mohler:
” … In other words, if the only person we can vote for is an evangelical Christian then we’re in big trouble. We’re electing a President as a Constitutional officer, not a pastor. At the same time we have to recognize, we’re the people that know that worldview matters. The reality is we know that we’re a composite; that our world view comes out of our most cherished and basic beliefs. And so everything is fair game for interrogation by voters. … ”
http://www.ligonier.org/blog/it-sin-vote-mormon-or-roman-catholic/
And I’ll reiterate, at this point I don’t see how I would be able to vote for Donald Trump. I’m praying that won’t be my (our) choice (Hillary vs. The Donald).
LikeLiked by 1 person
But if it turns out that is the choice, I suspect we’re getting exactly what we deserve. 😦
Lord have mercy.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Hmmm
http://www.theolympian.com/news/state/washington/article54032035.html
______________________________
GRANGEVILLE, IDAHO
Over the past six years, two Texas billionaire brothers have bought about 38,000 acres of land on the Joseph Plains in Idaho County and apparently have closed access to local residents for hunting and recreation. …
… Farris Wilks, 63, is married and the father of 11 children. He is the pastor of the Assembly of Yahweh Seventh Day Church near Cisco, a conservative Christian church that was founded by his parents, Voy and Myrtle, in 1947.
Dan Wilks, 59, is married and the father of six children.
The Wilks brothers recently made headlines when they and their wives gave $15 million to the campaign for presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the brothers and their wives previously had donated only $263,000 to federal candidates before going all-out for Cruz.
_________________________________
LikeLike
Not long ago, I mentioned reading about a video that supposedly shows Ted Cruz being anointed in a church, supposedly with the idea that he would be one of the “kings” that God will raise up, & wondering if anyone knew how true that was.
The friend who mentioned it, who is not a nutcase or anti-Christian (in fact he is an evangelical Christian) posted the video. In it, Cruz’s father preaches about how God is going to move the wealth from the wicked to the godly, & raise up Christian priests & kings to run the world. (I may not have the all terminology quite right, but he does speak of priests & kings.) There is a brief scene in the video of Ted Cruz being prayed over.
My friend finds the video convincing enough that Cruz does indeed believe in Dominion Theology (I think it’s called). Since Cruz didn’t say anything himself in the video, I’m not positive.
Here it is. The brief part with Cruz being prayed over is at about 50 seconds in. The whole video is 10:53. What do you think? . . .
(As I tried to post this, with the video URL, I got a message that it could not be posted. So I am removing the URL, & will try posting that separately.)
LikeLike
Let’s try again. . .
LikeLike
oooh, more bad theology. 🙂
I don’t know anything about the church his father was involved in, sounds a bit fringe (marketplace?), but “dominion” theology (scare quotes!), in proper context — eschatology — essentially refers to the final victory of the new heavens and the new earth. Nonbelievers won’t understand that, they will see it as a forced takeover (but in post-mil context, the gospel goes out and naturally transforms not only individuals, but whole nations over time — it comes from the bottom up and culminates with Christ’s return; and the time frame is God’s alone).
Great conspiracy theory fodder for unbelievers, though. 🙂
LikeLike
Hi Donna J,
I really like Al Mohler, and I’m not sure exactly where he was coming down on the voting issue (my apologies: I didn’t read the article you linked); however, I do think one statement he makes on the subject is overused in these discussions; specifically, he said:
We’re electing a President as a Constitutional officer, not a pastor.
I think that’s pretty lame for at least a couple reasons. First, who doesn’t know that? Is anyone actually confused about it? The comment is so sarcastic as to border on insult.
But secondly, what is that statement meant to imply? What if someone were to say, “We’re evaluating a father, not a pastor”? Doesn’t the Bible describe what a good father is; doesn’t the Bible command fathers regarding their duties in that role? Of course it does, just as it describes good political leaders. It’s a bit bizarre to imply there is no Biblical instruction for good political leadership, law, or civic duty. In fact, there’s all kinds of that stuff in the Bible. I don’t get it when Mohler and others dismiss that content by saying we’re electing a President, not a pastor.
LikeLike
Grangeville is the big city around here. It has the only stoplight in its county. If they wanted to give my family about one hundred thousand dollars, I would accept it. Meantime, I think husband is signing up to be a truck driver. He has always wanted to be one and once he gets his infusion, he ought to be able to do it for a while.
LikeLike
I remember those days:
http://www.breakpoint.org/features-columns/articles/entry/12/28703
“What if I told you there was a time in American history when many Republicans supported liberalizing abortion laws, while liberal Democrats protested that fetuses had constitutionally protected rights? That liberals like Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, and Dick Gephart took pro-life positions while Republican governors Ronald Reagan and Nelson Rockefeller signed legislation expanding access to abortion? …”
LikeLike
Looks like Germany isn’t the only country with a muslim molesters problem.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/11/swedish-police-accused-cover-up-sex-attacks-refugees-festival?CMP=edit_2221
“Sweden’s prime minister has condemned a “double betrayal” of women after allegations that police covered up sexual harassment by recent immigrants at a music festival in Stockholm. Meanwhile, reports have emerged of attacks on women in Malmö on New Year’s Eve.
Groups of refugees molested concertgoers at We Are Stockholm, Europe’s largest youth festival, in the summer of 2014, according to internal police memos obtained by Dagens Nyheter, a daily newspaper.
“These are so-called refugee youths, specifically from Afghanistan. Several of the gang were arrested for sexual molestation,” one police memo said.
Yet the official police report on the five-day festival attended by 170,000 young people aged mainly 13-19 made no mention of sexual harassment or assaults.
The prime minister, Stefan Löfven, said this amounted to a double betrayal since no one was prosecuted for the crimes and the police did not make them public.
The reports come as police in Cologne, Germany, investigate hundreds of claims of assaults on women on New Year’s Eve. Officials say nearly all of the suspects in the attacks were “people with an immigrant background”. Police and the media have been accused of deliberately under-reporting the events in order not to encourage anti-immigrant sentiment.”
LikeLike
How Europe is enabling a rape culture….
http://nypost.com/2016/01/10/europe-is-enabling-a-rape-culture/
“More than 100 criminal complaints have been filed, 75 percent of which were reports of sexual assault. Two women reported being raped by the men, who were allegedly of North African and Arab appearance. Women in Hamburg and Stuttgart also reported similar attacks.
So far several dozen have been identified, most of whom were asylum seekers.
But due to Germany’s desperation to prove not only that it’s the most tolerant country in Europe but also that letting in hundreds of thousands of immigrants would have no disastrous consequences, the female victims of the attacks were initially ignored by the political class. Had the alleged perpetrators been white members of a fraternity, the international response would have been completely different, as the Atlantic’s David Frum noted.
Suddenly the presumption that accusers of sexual assault must be automatically believed has gone out the window, the latest victim of European “multiculturalism” and Western political correctness.
Gone, too, are the demands that women receive no crime-prevention tips, since that amounts to blaming the victim, instead insisting we “teach men not to rape.”
In the left’s pyramid of grievances, Islamophobia now outranks the war on women.”
LikeLike
Figures. I have even less confidence in the so-called “vetting process” for Syrian refugees now.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-u.s.-lets-united-nations-pick-which-syrian-refugees-to-let-in/article/2580092?custom_click=rss
“A new report on the Syrian refugee resettlement program reveals that the United Nations — not U.S. officials — initially pick and choose who can move to the United States and even become an American citizen.
What’s more, the vetting system used by the U.S.-funded United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is wide open to rampant fraud, raising the specter that potential terrorists could buy their way into the United States, according to the analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies.
The report focused on a little-known path to how refugees get into America: The United Nations makes the first pick, not the State Department.
Under the system, the UNHCR considers those seeking to come to America before turning that list over to the United States to consider.
“Out of the four million-plus registered Syrian refugees in the region, UNHCR has so far submitted 22,427 cases to the United States for resettlement consideration. Of those, about 2,000 were accepted last year. The United States is welcoming Syrian refugees only from the 22,427 who made it through UNHCR referrals,” said the report from senior analyst Nayla Rush.
The report raised two huge issues. First, it found that the U.N. system is simply overloaded. Just consider this: Since there are over 4 million refugees and and 2,038 UNHCR staffers, each interviewer is responsible for vetting 2,100-2,800 refugees each.”
LikeLike
The other day, Chas mentioned the book “The Camp of the Saints” here. It bears repeating how prescient that book was, and how these refugee stories seem to be plucked out of that book’s pages. It was written in 1973 (or so).
LikeLiked by 1 person
“I think this election is the Republicans’ to lose…[but] Republicans need to win the independents big” — Brit Hume
LikeLike
Interesting…..
http://www.ijreview.com/2016/01/512112-all-of-carsons-super-pac-staff-walked-out-on-him-but-its-where-they-went-that-might-surprise-you/?utm_content=bufferd19bb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
“All of the paid staffers for Ben Carson’s super PAC in New Hampshire have quit their jobs in order to become volunteers for rival candidate Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign.
WMUR-TV reported that the five staffers made the decision after deciding that the Texas Republican is the most viable candidate in the race to win both the GOP nomination and the presidency.
Jerry Sickles, a spokesman for the group, added that the retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon spent little time campaigning in the Granite State, a trait that became frustrating to him and the other staffers as they tried to build support for their (now former) boss in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
He told the station:
“We hold Dr. Carson in the highest regard.
This is a man we revere, but we think it is important that our party nominate a conservative and get behind a single conservative who can win, and we strongly believe that candidate is Ted Cruz.””
LikeLike
Also interesting……
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/11/fox-business-announces-debate-line-up-rand-paul-and-carly-fiorina-dont-make-it/
“The Fox Business Network on Monday announced the seven Republican candidates they have invited to their primetime debate in South Carolina — and Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina didn’t make the cut this time.
During his show Monday evening, host Lou Dobbs said those who will have podiums on the main stage are Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich. The primetime debate at the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston is set for 9 p.m. EST on Thursday.
The four other candidates who didn’t qualify for the main stage — Paul, Fiorina, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum — are being invited to participate in an undercard debate, set for earlier that evening at 6 p.m. EST.
Paul is suggesting he will not participate in an undercard debate, saying he deserves to be on the main stage.”
LikeLike
Are we having fun yet?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/01/the-fun-indicator.php
_______________________________
” … This came back to me as I read a note this morning from Republican political consultant Alex Castellanos posted at CNN, where he suggests that the candidate/campaign that is having the most fun will win. Call it the ‘fun indicator’ of presidential politics. …
“Donald Trump is having a lot of fun, isn’t he?
“More than anyone else.
“Yup. And conversely, does anyone think the Hillary Clinton campaign is much fun to be around? And Bernie Sanders? Probably as much fun as an alcohol-free union local meeting.”
________________________________
LikeLike
Did no one sit these folks down and explain the law before they let them in?
LikeLike
Haha — Drudge nails it:
STATE OF THE LEGACY: Obama ‘will be talking about himself’…
To tell us who he’d like us to be…
LikeLike