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Recently the flurry in the public sector and the media has become a real snow job. As a result many of the traditional roles of clergy and church organizations have become obfuscated. It might seem odd for a Messianic Jewish or Christian institution such as WEAP to make statements about Civil or criminal law in the United States. It might seem odd to quote from legal documents such as the United States Constitution. But it shouldn’t. The United States was formed by Religious individuals who sought a place to build a better life than was possible under the remnants of European Colonialism and Feudal, totalitarian traditions. Many of the residents of the early colonies were there, initially, to escape persecution under State established Roman Catholic, or Anglican, or Protestant Churches that violated their deeply held beliefs. Whenever this nation has since engaged in a shameful behavior it has been built on the foundation of religious dogma or anti religious (religious free zone) propaganda. Whatever we have done that is noble, good and resides in history as a ‘shinning moment’ has always been precipitated by the grass-roots move of Christian people.
When Pennsylvania allowed Roman Catholics to escape execution by the Presbyterian Pilgrims in New England, it was the Quaker beliefs of the Pennsylvania Colonists that motivated the compassionate movement. When the Methodist movement built the underground railway and brought the Abolitionist movement to a crisis point it was their deeply held Christian Faith that sustained them and empowered them. And when the United States finally Entered World Wars I and II it was largely in response to the religious conviction that Totalitarian regimes that attempt to Conquer Europe and persecute, or prosecute the Jews, remain our responsibility to eliminate. It was Christian Faith and the recognition of the spirit of Anti-Christ in the person of Hitler that prompted this intervention.
Why then are we afraid to speak out and to affect change now? It is the Biblical imperative that we be compelling in proselytizing the world, That we ‘be bold’ and ‘strong’ for the Lord our God is with us, and to ‘go out into the [public and dangerous places] and compel’ those we find there to come to our way of faith. Further it is our heritage and legacy to take countries that oppose our beliefs and convert them so that they cease to be antagonistic. How is it that in the United States we have allowed a Satanically inspired doctrine of false egalitarianism to persuade us to stand idly by and take away our God given and Constitutionally guaranteed Right to be and to persuade others to follow?
The first question is do we in fact have those rights under the constitution? The following are Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America:
ARTICLE [I.]
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Article I makes the doctrine of a Religious Free Zone a ludicrous farce. Since religious opinion is an essential part of the make-up of the psyche of every human, it is ludicrous on the basis of practicality. But, beyond that, The Constitution forbids the establishment of Laws governing religion. Some so called scholars have argued that it is forbidding the establishment of a particular national religion. That is not so. The article doesn’t say congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of a national religion. It says, ‘Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion.’ A modern 21st century writer would have said the same sentence as follows:
Congress shall make no law regarding religious establishments.
If you doubt my reading of the passage, simply take it in its natural context and look at the second clause in the sentence. ‘or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’ powerful words. If you use Standard English construction to make this clause more readable it says, Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religious establishments. In other words the Constitution — which is the Bible of the US legislature, Courts and Executive Branch ‘ says it is illegal for the legislature to make any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Taken in conjunction with the first clause (as it was written), it make laws regarding what are acceptable religions and therefore free to exercise, illegal abuses of power. Further, gag laws designed to make it illegal for a Church or other religious institution to maintain its tax-free status, while engaging in social and political activism are equally illegal. To further enforce the illegality of such laws it says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. What that means is simple. No one has the legal authority, even if they have the power, to tell you that you can’t publicly announce your feelings on any subject or regarding any person on the basis that your words are ‘hate, sedition, destructive, delusional, or otherwise socially, personally or politically objectionable.’
What’s more, one of the primary motivators in the Revolution against British tyranny over the United States, was the premise that those in power and governance were above the law and that any speech designed to incite people to act to remove the authority or the power of that person was a violation of the law and punishable by imprisonment or worse. The sedition acts passed in parliament were a sort of straw that broke the camel’s back. Many, who would otherwise have been complacent under British rule and taxation without redress of grievances against the monarchy that imposed those taxes, saw that this measure was intolerable to a free people. The central theme in the creation of the United States was that of the freedom to be, and say what you like, without threat from the Judiciary, tax collectors or enforcement officers.
The following three amendments further guarantee the protection of the people from the establishment of norms or prejudice whereby a group or individual can be kept from expressing his or they’re personal or religious beliefs even if those beliefs are rightly opposed and reviled by the general population of the community; a community that has the equally guaranteed opportunity to speak out in opposition.
ARTICLE [IX.]
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
ARTICLE [X.]
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
ARTICLE XIV.
SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This clearly makes religion the power and purview of the private citizens of the United States rather than legislators, Jurists or enforcement officers. The history of the Christian church establishes an immutable precedent for involvement in political issues being a basic tenet of the Faith. More importantly we have examples of the Apostle Paul appealing to his civil rights under Roman Law in order to escape unfair prosecution. Still more significant is Jesus command that we be ‘Salt and Light’ to kill the ‘germs and mildew’ that build up society. The natural corruption that rises as a result of man’s sinful nature affects every aspect of human existence and this includes political, legislative, executive and legal institutions.
But what we have here is a recognition and codification of Machiavelli’s precept that, ‘those who are governed are governed by the will of the governed.’
Every government ultimately derives it authority from the consent of the people, whether that authority is elicited by fear of retribution or by an enlightened active system of franchise and representation. The Constitution of the United States, takes the latter approach reserving what authority is not vested in the Federal government by that document, or in the States by that document or the constitutions of those states and commonwealths, for the people. The Constitution expressly states that the people retain all authority that they have not specifically delegated. The legislature are not the people, they are a branch of the government. The courts are not the people; they are branches of their respective governments.
The people of the United States are Sovereign. Our government serves us in the way that theoretically the government of Great Britain serves the Monarchy. The difference is that we are a vital and active ruler. The government has power of its own because it has grown so massive and because we have allowed it to do so. But the authority to wield that power is delegated by the people, from the people. The government does not have the legal and legitimate authority to govern or to pass laws that contravene the will of the people. Nor does the Judiciary have the right to set precedents and contravene the constitution or the will of the people. They do have the power because they have linked with the law enforcement agencies, crossing the boundary between branches and eliminating some of the checks and balances that we the people in OUR wisdom chose to establish in order to prevent the abuse of power that we have witnessed in every nation across the globe.
Our Judiciary has obfuscated the law behind legal jargon and polemic until the common citizen has no idea what is being said. They have established precedents and use these as if they themselves are a separate body of law. And, on the basis of these precedents, they contravene the will of the people by ‘interpreting’ the constitution. The constitution is a simply worded and direct document lacking obscurity or shading. It was written to be accessible to the common man because it is the written will of those common men. It is not a contract; it is a license to exist and to practice, issued to the congress, the president and the Supreme Court by the people of the United States. Aside from the provisions in it there exists no authority to govern, only the power to impose the will of a minority or an individual.
What’s more they have endorsed wholesale, a doctrine that religious expression is not inviolate but must be judged, by them, against the precepts of human psychology. Recently a minister from a full gospel church was illegally arrested and tried, for praying for a child to be released from demons. Now the doctrines relating to unclean spiritual beings, fallen from God’s grace are never dwelt on in great detail because ideally a man filled with the spirit of God and placed in a position to pray for a demoniac is typically going to have a high success rate. However, during the course of the service the child became violent and died.
Now the death was clearly due to the use of traditional Roman Catholic Exorcism and not Pentecostal Power, but the precedent for exorcism goes back at least to the first century, and was practiced by Jesus and by his disciples. It falls under the ‘these works and even greater” directive given by our Lord. But court TV had the audacity to call an ‘expert’ commentator to evaluate the trial. We’ll give this commentator the pseudonym, Peter Byblow. Byblow had no expertise in the subject whatsoever. He is a JD and therefore a qualified lawyer, and he is a psychiatrist and therefore a medical doctor and a psychologist. what he is not is 1) a Christian, 2) a person inhabited bodily by the spirit with the exhibition of miraculous gifts and fruit, or 3) a person gifted with discerning of Spirits and healing. He had no basis on which to form an informed opinion on the ethics, practice or qualifications of the minister in question. In addition, his choice to equate the influence of the Holy Spirit ( ???????? ), to a drug or other mind altering ailment that interferes with competency, is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. he committed the same sin that certain of the Sephardim committed when they accused Jesus himself of being Demon Possessed. They committed the unpardonable sin from which you can never be saved or forgiven. Byblow repeatedly stated that the Minister should plead insanity because ‘he was under the influence of God and as a result didn’t know right from wrong.’ Last time I checked God was the author of the final authority on what is right and what is wrong. If that minister was operating ‘under the influence of God’ then everything he did was right by definition; end of case lets move on to the next item on the docket.
No, the issue of the ethics and the application of that minister is a purely religious matter and not for the court to hold any authority over. The issues that were ignored in that case were the lethal drugs prescribed by the psychiatrist who was seeing the boy and the truly violent histrionics that the boy was prone to experience. When the mother was asked, how did the boy typically let people know he did not want or like something, the answer was ‘by hitting, biting and scratching.’ So the courts theory was that the preacher had offended the demon and that because it caused the boy to hit bite and scratch him that he was responsible for the death of that boy and a murderer. I’m sickened by this sort of depraved cynicism, when the victim of violence is held responsible when the attacker dies; but more importantly when a minister is accused of murder because he is praying. This cannot be tolerated.
But a psychiatrist said that religion is being crazy. Doesn’t that mean that we don’t have the right to practice our religion? Of course not. Psychology is an opposing religion. Psychology dates back to before Jesus time. It was begun in the western world by philosophers who argued as to the nature of the human soul and how that soul creates mental ability in the human. The early arguments all attribute the soul to one form or another of Ancient Greek God. To be blunt they thought the mind was a figment of the mind of Zeus or Apollo or Diana. ‘The biblical word soul or Psyche is the basis of the word Psychology. Psychology is the study of the soul. It is no more science than Dianetics or pyramid power.
Psychiatry takes the issue into a whole new arena. We are forbidden in the Bible from practicing sorcery. Everyone says, ‘oh yeah got it,’ and moves on because we all know that sorcerers are Mickey Mouse wearing a long pointed hat and robe covered in stars and moons, right? Wrong. The biblical word for sorcery is pharmachia, from which we get our modern words Pharmacy, Pharmacist, and pharmaceuticals. Sorcery is the attempt to use herbs or synthetic drugs to alter the mind of man, or soul, and thereby heal or alter reality. A psychiatrist, by using psychoactive (Psyche-Activ ‘ Soul moving) drugs such as depressants, stimulants, antidepressants and hormones to alter the mental state of patients, even if done for the patient’s own good is a religious activity. Further it is one forbidden to Christians and is itself potentially lethal.
‘We the People, of the United States of America, in order to ” This is the only mandate by which any agency has authority within the territorial United States. When that is forgotten, we are no better than the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Roman Catholic Spain or any other totalitarian, partisan government. Our history bears this out, in the forced march of my ancestors from Georgia to Oklahoma, in the rape of the Black Hills and in the squalor present on most reservations alleviated only by the creation of tourist traps and casinos.
So how does this affect you? It affects you when they tell you that your children must have a scientific education that is free of religious creation myths, or that they the school have the authority to present a myth that they have approved as an alternative. It affects you when the Schools teach your kids how to have sex, ‘safely’. To an immature mind ‘safe’ means acceptable and encouraged. They take it as a license and the natural barriers to premature sexual activity by underdeveloped juveniles rises dramatically. It affects you when you have to raise your grand children so that your child can finish her education. It affects you when your child is taught that the faith that you and your family have held for generations isn’t wrong, or mistaken, but a sign of mental illness. It affects you when your taxes are raised by initiatives that you not only are given no vote on, but aren’t even informed of, because it’s a ‘national security’ issue. It affects you when private data protected by the constitution is made available without a warrant to a shadowy government agency that answers to no one except the executive branch of the United States government, in order to protect you from weapons of mass destruction that never existed. It affects you when the charities and religious institutions that you give donations to are required by the IRS to report the size and purpose of your donation in order to keep their doors open, becoming agents of the government reporting your assets to that government. It affects you when policies that the vast majority of you oppose, such as same sex marriage, abortion of a viable human baby by pulling the baby out of the uterus feet first then decapitating that baby, or gag orders making it illegal for your clergy to evaluate the issues you face in daily life and the political arena from a religious perspective in order to help you make an informed choice, are slipped in as “departmental policies” of the IRS or the Department of Homeland Security.
This is the Orwellian Brave New World Order decreed by George Herbert Walker Bush and this is the kinder, gentler America that this family has perpetrated. Does that mean I am endorsing his opponents? Not in the slightest. I’m simply pointing out that it takes more than just showing up to vote in order to be a responsible citizen. You need to be a careful elector, informed by your religious faith and guided by your instinctive desire to live in freedom not bound by tyranny, however expedient. And I am pointing out that the corollary to Machiavelli is that you don’t deserve any better government than you tolerate through complacency and a feeling of false security. Paul pointed out repeatedly that compromise is a synonym for corruption and that the Christian must recognize that he stands apart from the world and has a moral obligation to work in the world to effect change. This is a part of your obligation, as a Jew or a Christian.