SHEMITAH

Some people have excitedly sent me emails about the Shemitah (Leviticus 25) and its application to America as a result of reading Jonathan Cahn's book, The Harbinger, and watching him on TV. They believe wholeheartedly in what Cahn is saying, but I am a bit of a "Berean" and want to make sure it is not just a false hermeneutic.

I have been trying to find if there is a biblical basis to Shemitah and other Old Testament prophecies for America today.  I am a bit late in reading Jonathan Cahn's the Harbinger. It is not a well-written book, but he tries to build the case for God working in events in America based on a verse in Isaiah and 7 & 50 year cycles related to the jubilee years.  America is in trouble  but are his interpretations accurate?  It is clear that God judges nations, but is America's judgment a result of prophecies in Isaiah written to the nation of Israel or more because we are a nation violating God's moral principles (Romans 1)?

I am also concerned because money and marketing are involved and in addition after doing some internet reading, some people are seeing signs in some strange things like the number "7" on a cow's face. It also strikes me a bit like the old "British Israelism" heresy that was using Old Testament verses to argue the British people descended from Israel and were finding Old Testament verses to support its case.

Here is an ad for a $20.00 DVD arguing Cahn's case:  http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/featured.html.  But on YouTube you can see a number of interviews.  He is a very good speaker.

Here are a couple of people who are questioning his biblical interpretation.  These critics may be wrong, but they do point up issues and failures of the 7 year cycle to have any apparent consistent impact looking back into recent history.

• http://www.examiner.com/article/shemitah-year-of-2015-may-bring-financial-upheaval
• http://standupforthetruth.com/2014/09/will-christians-snookered-shemitah/
• http://www.biblicalintegrity.org/2014/09/19/mystery-of-the-shemitah/

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF PUTIN

A description of the average day of Vladimir Putin.

The President wakes late and eats shortly after noon. He begins with the simplest of breakfasts. There is always cottage cheese. His cooked portion is always substantial; omelette or occasionally porridge. He likes quails’ eggs. He drinks fruit juice. The food is forever fresh: baskets of his favourites dispatched regularly from the farmland estates of the Patriarch Kirill, Russia’s religious leader.

It goes on from there.  I wonder if someone has done the average day of President Obama?

DISAPPEARANCE OF HYMNALS IN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES

15 Reasons Why We Should Still Be Using Hymnals.

THE PERSONALITY CULT OF CHE GUEVERA

What Michael Totten observed in Cuba regarding the glorifcation of Che Guervara in Cuba. . .and how at least one American is brain dead regarding the horrible atrocities committed by Che in the name of his communist revolution.  There are more posters of him in Cuba than of Fidel and Raul Castro!

“Just as Jacobin Paris had Louis Antoine de Saint-Just,” wrote French historian Pascal Fontaine, “revolutionary Havana had Che Guevara, a Latin American version of Nechaev, the nineteenth century nihilist terrorist who inspired Dostoevsky’s The Devils. As Guevara wrote to a friend in 1957, ‘My ideological training means that I am one of those people who believe that the solution to the world’s problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain.’…He was a great admirer of the Cultural Revolution [in China]. According to Regis Debray, ‘It was he and not Fidel who in 1960 invented Cuba’s first corrective work camp,’ or what the Americans would call a slave labor camp and the Russians called the gulag.”

ARE MEN BEING TURNED OFF BY CHURCH?

What one church in Canada did to increase male attendance. . .one thing was to balance the music offerings!

THE WHITE WIDOW

A discussion of converts to Islam and the radicalization that takes place.  Based on the role Samantha Lewthwaite has played in Islamic terrorism.

Lewthwaite is a convert. There is a theory that the ranks of radicalized Muslims are disproportionately filled by converts. And there is an understandable resentment on the part of converts that they are considered a “suspect” category.

Engaged in research into the dynamics of radicalization at the Home Office from 2008 to 2010, I interviewed converts who had journeyed in and out of extremism. I learned three big things about the relationship between conversion and extremism.

AN INTERNATIONAL STUDENT LOOKS AT AMERICA

A student from India describes his observations of life in America.  He discusses how university life is different but also notes how "equal" everyone appears to be in society. . .except that poor people seem to be fat while rich people seem to be slim!

BECOMING A GENTLEMAN

Is the word "gentleman" an oxymoron in today's culture? 

A gentlemen is, first of all, a cultural achievement. No boy is born opening doors or laying his jacket across puddles for his sisters and girlfriends. A boy doesn’t naturally keep his word or forbear a slight when an excuse or a score settled is within easy reach. All those things we might call virtues, and good manners must be learned. But to be learned they must be taught, and that requires first of all that they are esteemed. So you’ll immediately see our predicament: Mr. Darcy is not born, ladies, he is made.

 A plea for women not to lower the bar in relationships with men.  These reflections come out just as we are ready about Miley Cyrus' recent performance.

FAILURE OF US HIGH SCHOOLS

From CNBC. The big headline of the week everyone is missing.  I am afraid the American public continues to live in la-la land with regard to the quality of public education.  But I think some of this blame also rests on our culture which affirms irresponsibility and prolonged immaturity.

It was this one: "Three-quarters of high school grads are failing".

That's right. According to ACT, one of the big college testing companies, only a quarter of this year's high school grads have the combined reading, math, English and science skills necessary to succeed in college or a career.

THE FAMILY & ECONOMIC GROWTH

MereOrthodoxy discusses the importance of the family to economic growth.  Unfortunately the media does not discuss this issue because it is politically incorrect in an age of when marriage commitments are not applauded and children are seen as interfering with one's life style hopes.

As Jason DeParle wrote last year in The New York Times that “changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40% of the growth in certain measures of inequality.” David Leonhardt, also of the Times, noted a recent finding that “family structure was one of the four factors with a clear relationship to upward mobility.” As Schulz himself found, only 5% of married families were poor at any point this year, while 30% of single-parent households felt the blow of poverty. These data points paint a bleak portrait; those being raised without a mother and a father will face immense social and economic barriers.

THE END OF HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS?

Daniel Johnson writes in Standpoint about the decline in historical consciousness and the impact it has on society and culture.

What has become problematic is the assumption that general historical knowledge, an informed consciousness of our past, is the essential framework for Western civilisation. It is the decline of history in this sense that lies behind the heated debates about the teaching of history at school and university. The loss of such a temporal dimension has brought about a profound change in the outlook of the West: a loss of organic connection, not only with those who came before us, but with our place in the world. Clive James memorably described this phenomenon as "cultural amnesia", and Eric Voegelin adopted the theological concept of "anamnesis" to describe our attempts to preserve transcendent memories.

BANNING THE "EASTER" BUNNY

Diversity is great for everyone except if you are a Christian.

Heritage Elementary School in Madison, Alabama is taking the word “Easter” out of Easter, according to WHNT19 News.

What does that mean?  Well, they’ll still tolerate someone dressed as a giant bunny, but it will no longer be called the “Easter bunny.”  Similarly, “Easter eggs” are just “eggs,” and it might be better just to use “different shapes.”

HIGH SCHOOL FASHION 1969

"No one is fat!" (according to one post)

GRADE INFLATION & HIGHER EDUCATION

The impact of grade inflation in higher education is a sore point at many universities.

It was my second recommendation that sparked doubts. I argued that, “to increase transparency and accountability further, the Legislature should require all universities to include on transcripts not only the grade the student received for each class, but also the overall average grade for the class. This would tell prospective employers whether or not a given student’s high grade-point average was the product of exceptional work or of enrolling in what today’s students call ‘Mick’ (for ‘Mickey Mouse’) courses.

Another article from the NYT : The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement, albeit an expensive one, for getting even the lowest-level job.

GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP IS PERMISSIBLE

This is a bit frightening to have an appointee in the Obama administration who believes that the government can limit free speech.  Evidently it is okay in some cases for the government to censor information, but who in the government decides what should be censored? There are matters of national security that need to be classified, but how will he deal with political dissent?   And he also denies the concept of universal human rights.  In some subjective way he will determine that some countries will get a pass on human rights while others must be held accountable--sounds like he or someone will be playing "god" as they judge the actions of people or countries.

DECLINE OF MARRIAGE IN AMERICA?

Kathyrn Jean Lopez. quotes from Abby Schacter in the Wall Street Journal. 

Today in America, 26% of children are raised by a single parent, including 72% in the black community. Among poor families with children, 71% are headed by single parents, mostly single mothers.

The economics are plainly better for married couples with children—their joint income averages $80,000, while single mothers average $24,000. And getting out of poverty from a single-parent situation isn’t easy. A 2010 Pew report found that “among children who start in the bottom third of the income distribution, only 26% with divorced parents move up to the middle or top third as adults, compared to 50% of children with continuously married parents.”

Update (1/18/2013).  From Commentary.

What we’re seeing is a rapid hollowing out of marriage in Middle America–with 44 percent of the children of moderately-educated mothers born outside of marriage. “We’re at a tipping point with Middle America,” W. Bradford Wilcox, a leading scholar on marriage, told National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez, “insofar as Middle Americans are on the verge of losing their connection to marriage.” 

ANTI-GAY PROTESTS IN FRANCE

I wouldn't have expected this kind of protest in France which generally has had a much more liberal attitude toward sexual values than America.  Hundreds of thousands of French citizens are protesting a gay marriage proposal--this is not something seen in America which presumably has a more "conservative" Christian culture.

About 340,000 people joined today’s marches, according to police estimates, while organizers indicated a turnout of more than 800,000. Protesters dancing to hip-hop music carried pink flags with white images of the traditional family: man, woman and two children.

But a gay marriage bill has stalled in the Illinois State Senate even with some business leaders and corporations such as Google and Orbitz favoring it.  Religious groups, including Muslims, have lobbied against it. 

From the Witherspoon Institute. 

Since the late 1990s, France has offered same-sex couples “PACs” or civil unions, so the issue of lovers living together is not the powder keg. Though still mostly (if nominally) Catholic, the French are by and large willing to stay out of the bedrooms of people who love one another, irrespective of sex.

Such live-and-let-live philosophy does not apply when the citizens see a threat to the nation’s children. Here is where Americans must follow their playbook closely, because it is probably the surest way to break the stalemate in the United States about marriage and the Fourteenth Amendment.

And an evangelical pastor has to pull-out of the inaugural prayer because of a sermon he gave in the 1990s on homosexuality as a sin.
 

TODAY'S COLLEGE STUDENTS

Recent studies do not print a pretty picture of the values of today's college students--9 million students have taken the survey over the last 47 years so it must reflect a "reasonably" accurate assessment.  Students see themselves as above average, but this isn't reflected in test scores and writing ability compared to past decades.

However, one in four recent students responded to a questionnaire called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory with results pointing towards narcissistic self-assessments.  Narcissism is defined as excessive self-love or vanity; self-admiration, or being self-centered.

Twenge said that's a trait that is often negative and destructive, and blames its boom on several trends - including parenting styles, celebrity culture, social media, and easy credit - for allowing people to seem more successful than they really are.

SPENGLER IS BACK!

I assume that most people acquainted with the work of Oswald Spengler are historians.  Maybe this article is a sign of the times we are in and that perhaps his ideas may be revived as talking points.  Spengler was a German historian writing after World War I who believed the West was in decline. 

A question haunts America: Is it in decline on the world scene? Foreign-policy discourse is filled with commentary declaring that it is. Some—Parag Khanna’s work comes to mind—suggests the decline is the product of forces beyond America’s control. Others—Yale’s Paul Kennedy included—contend that America has fostered, at least partially, its own decline through “imperial overstretch” and other actions born of global ambition. Still others—Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution and Stratfor’s George Friedman, for example—dispute that America is in decline at all. But the question is front and center and inescapable.

The purpose of this article is to hold up the Spengler thesis as a prism through which we might view the state of the world in AD 2013 and probe the question of American and Western decline. I do so without endorsement but with a conviction that elements of that thesis might enlighten efforts to understand our time. Spengler’s work might be viewed as somewhat akin to a potent medicine that can be beneficial in appropriate doses but dangerous when ingested whole, given its metaphysical, dogmatic and extreme qualities cited by Hughes. Besides, Spengler’s thesis is unyieldingly deterministic, which makes it philosophically suspect as well as psychologically unacceptable, given the human aversion to the amoral essence of determinism and its assault on the concept of salvation, whether divine or temporal.

And the author ends with the question that more people are thinking about. . .

And so we come to the truly haunting question that confronts America in these times of growing global instability—whether, as the last nation of the West, America is destined to fulfill Spengler’s vision of hegemonic zeal mixed with a push toward dictatorship.

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

After the recent Newtown school attack a lot of attention has been focused on guns as the cause of violence and mass-killings in America. Mass-killings is a phenomena my generation did not grow up with.  I am still not sure why someone needs an AK 47 or an Uzi, but I don't think guns are the real problem.

This afternoon I went to the theater to watch "Lincoln."  Before it began there were a number of the usual previews. 

The first preview was for "Gangster Land" which deals with Mickey Cohen's gangster activities in Los Angeles sometime before the 1960s. The film previews showed extensive gratuitous violence and people being shot in cold blood.  It got me thinking about the old black & white gangster movies I saw on TV as a teenager with Eliot Ness chasing Chicago gangsters and the later 1960s television program "The Untouchables" starring Robert Stack.  In those movies guns were fired and the bad guys died, but I never recall seeing gratuitous violence and the vivid depiction of gruesome death or killing.  And then I saw a preview of "Jack Reacher" starring Tom Cruise and more violence.  And in 2013 a remake of the "Lone Ranger" starring Johnny Depp is coming. . .but in the short preview it appears that it, too, is a far cry from the original Lone Ranger's fight against bad guys (most of whom were arrested and taken to jail).

I forget the other previews, but only one seemed to be non-violent and that was "Parental Guidance."  So out of 6 or so previews, only one seemed not to contain some kind of experiential excitement with death and violence. 

As I thought more about the movies of my younger and even college years and I just do not recall the blood and gore that I saw in today's movie previews.  Sure there were cowboy movies and bad guys got killed, but it was not done in a way that glorified the process of killing and dying.  And the good guys did not seem to get some kind of gruesome satisfaction about the whole process.  And even old monster movies did not dwell on the excitement of mass killing with the gore and blood that followed.  There was terror but the focus was not on watching the process of killing or dying. These movies may seem hokey today (they do to me), but killing did not create an adrenalin rush.

All this has cause me to consider holding Hollywood accountable for the violence in America today.  There were no gun laws to my knowledge until sometime in the 1990s, yet as I have said I don't recall the level of violence that I see today.  So are guns really the major problem?  If what I saw today is typical of Hollywood, shouldn't its violence be part of the media discussion.  Or is Hollywood producers just giving American audiences what they want?  If so, the problem goes deep into the American soul.

But as I watched "Lincoln" I saw a movie focused on the human struggle of Lincoln and others to deal with racial justice and civil war.  While battle scenes were graphically portrayed the focus was not on the process of killing, but the results of the horrors of war.  Violence is portrayed as something destructive, not something to create emotional excitement. I would hope one would leave the movie thinking about deeper issues of humanity than being titillated by the gruesome process of killing and psychopathic destruction.