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Truth in Conviction offers insights related to politics, religion and social happenings in the US and worldwide. The columns' philosophical base is conservative. Regarding
religion, it is evangelical. Concerning social matters, it is grounded in biblical ethics.
Swank has BA and MDiv degrees with graduate work at Harvard Divinity School. Married for 49 years with 3 adult children. Author of several books and thousands of articles in various Protestant and Catholic magazines, journals, web sites, and newspapers. Writer of weekly religion column for PORTLAND PRESS HERALD newspaper, Portland ME. |
Tue Dec 08, 2009
OF COURSE PALIN SAYS AMERICA SHOULD RETURN TO GOD
J. Grant Swank, Jr.
What would one think of a born again, Spirit-filled believer who makes no apologies for her biblical faith?
That’s what yanks liberals totally out of their wormwood trees.
They don’t understand, first of all, what “born again Spirit-filled” means. They have such an individual rolling in the aisles and frothing at the mouth. That’s how ignorant the unbelieving are.
Of course, too many in America are of that caliber when it comes to biblical faith. Because they simply don’t get the Word of God, they are in frenzy when the word “Palin” is even whispered.
Martha Stewart is the latest mean example. She, a sophisticated, learned liberal—that is, learned in the secularist tradition—was asked what she thought of Sarah Palin. She replied, among other negative derides, that Palin was “boring.” When asked the question, one would have thought Stewart’s face had taken on the prune shape.
Stewart said she would not go to hear Palin even if she were paid. In other words, Stewart would not bother walking across the street to hear the former Alaskan governor.
That’s about it for liberals’ understanding of Palin. They loathe her, demeaning her at every slap.
Naturally, Palin knows that this is part of every biblical believer’s turf, not just hers. She and her husband have braced for that reaction ever since committing their lives to Christ.
Does not every Christ disciple know it is basic scriptural knowledge that Christ warned His followers they would be hated just as He was hated? Consequently, when Palin puts herself “out there,” she knows hatred is at the top of reactions.
Yet it is so sad that any American should have to tell reporters that the nation needs to return to God. That should not be news. That should be our cultural milieu. It should be our fundamental reason for being as a country. It should be an accepted given.
All those who shout otherwise put aside, the country was founded upon biblical believers who worshiped Christ, studied the Bible and lived it, taught it in the classrooms and preached it from village pulpits.
Those who rewrite American history scratch all that for secularizing the Republic like unto Europe’s unbelief. But the facts are there, no matter the propagandizing of unbelievers.
America has strayed far from the biblical ethic. When grassroots redefines “marriage” according to the devil’s lexicon, America has gone frighteningly distant from the God who originally smiled upon our origins.
When mainline denominations play heathen rather than preaching clearly the Scripture—even to crowning a lesbian Episcopal bishop—the country has bowed too frequently to hell’s doctrine.
One, sadly, can add to that a long list of various sins that have become “America accepted.”
That puts us under the wrath of the Almighty once we trespass across his patience line. If and when that trespass happens, the Almighty will come with his judgment of condemnation upon our country from coast to coast.
Palin knows that.
She knows her Bible. She knows the prophetic passages regarding the End Times. She has been schooled in biblical detail. It is as close to her as breathing for she has steeped herself in the Word.
All the more one can sense that she is rightfully anxious for our nation’s future. She wants this Republic to return to God’s blessing, detouring His curse. She wants a genuine revival upon the land.
That is why she can take ridicule. She knows that by unbelievers slicing and dicing her she is doing the Lord’s work. She is called to this mission. She will commit the onslaughts against her to His keeping rather than permitting them to fester.
Of course Pailn is correct when saying that our nation needs to return to God. But why should this even makes the news?
It does because there are so many who don’t even get it. They just don’t get how pagan America has become.
CHRISTMAS IS GOD BIRTHING
J. Grant Swank, Jr.
Christmas is celebrating the conceiving and birthing of Jesus, the Christ.
Mary was His mother, the human channel. The Holy Spirit was His Father, the divine channel.
Consequently, Jesus is the God-man, the only personage of His kind in all history.
Christmas’ new life is the zenith of God’s delight in birthing miraculously, such being both prelude and postlude to the virgin conception of Jesus Christ.
For instance, at the creation of the first human, Adam, God birthed this man from the earth. Granted, it was a secondary creation to underline the human’s need for humility; nevertheless, it was a miraculous birthing--from dust to man. Only God could have done it.
From the womb of divine grace was born the original human being, the height of creation’s journey.
Further in history, Abraham and Sarah were promised a son, the child of promise. God gospeled them this; therefore, it was mandated to come to pass.
However, as the couple grew older, they passed childbearing ages. Nevertheless, while Abraham was l00 and Sarah was 90, they experienced a miracle conception in an elderly woman’s womb. Birthing God miraculously sparked Isaac’s life in a womb supposedly not able to carry a child. There is no other explanation possible than that: it was sheer miracle.
Adam and Abraham foreshadow Zechariah. This Jewish priest was informed by God’s angel, Gabriel, that his elderly wife, Elizabeth, would become pregnant. For this to occur, a miracle would have to take place in her aged body. It did take place. Birthing God once again saw to it.
From Elizabeth’s womb came John the Baptist, kinsman to Jesus. The conception / birthing was possible only because God oversaw it.
At the same time Elizabeth was overjoyed with her pregnancy, Mary was overawed by Gabriel’s annunciation of the Messiah’s conception in her womb. However, Mary was not confronting the barrenness of old age; she was dealing with never having had sex for she was a teen-aged virgin.
The GOSPELS inform us that Mary’s conception occurred miraculously by way of the Holy Spirit--the birthing God.
Both Abraham and Sarah as well as Zechariah and Elizabeth realized God’s miraculous energy set loose in conceiving power within wombs that were beyond childbearing.
However, Joseph and Mary realized God’s miraculous energy set loose in conceiving power within a virgin’s womb. Both the elderly and the young came upon God’s conceiving and birthing graces--miraculously so.
No wonder then that this Messiah, when seeing through His public ministry for three years, informed already born Nicodemus that he had to be “born”.
How? Nicodemus, Jewish religious leader, asked of the Nazareth rabbi.
Jesus answered by telling him that the birthing was to be in his soul, not his body. Further, it was to be miraculously conceived by none other than the same Holy Spirit who had conceived Jesus in Mary’s young womb.
From that day till this, believers have thanked God for the “born again experience"--a personal spiritual reality possible only because of God’s gracious miracle energy.
All Christians then come into a child-to-Father relationship with God by being born in the soul--a personal Christmas, indeed. The Holy Spirit conceives in us His mercy by which we are adopted out of the family of satan into the family of God. There is no other explanation for this conversion happening than to state it as compassionate miracle.
Further, the wonder continues: each believer at some point in time dies. However, according to the gospel, he does not die, that is, he is not extinguished. Instead, the Holy Spirit conceives his soul into the birthing of heaven.
Just as an angel welcomed the conception of Jesus in Mary’s womb--and later angelic hosts welcomed Jesus’ birth--so the believer is welcomed into heaven’s birthing by eternity’s angels.
Just as shepherds welcomed the newborn Jesus in the manger, so those redeemed lambs who precede us to glory welcome believers birthed through heaven’s gates.
It is an on-going message of wonder, grace and miracle: God is intent on conceiving and birthing life--from Adam till the end of earthly time.
Even eternal life is never-ending birthing goodness, holiness and love--that beyond human understanding and explanation. God sees to it.
Christmas, for this earth’s stay, is then the apex of that marvelous story.
“. . .glory to God in the highest. . .”
Such a blessing is Christmas!
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