[ by Charles Cameron — where economics meets scripture ]
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The mundane:
Pete Nischt, 32, of Akron, Ohio, didn’t like the shutdown from the start, and now his flight from New York to Cleveland was delayed for three hours. In recent days, as he saw how people who had gone without pay for a month were suffering, he came to view the failure to pay public employees as “a breach of the social contract. Trump has been lying the whole time .?.?. and now we’re paying for it.”
Okay, that’s the mundane “people who had gone without pay for a month” because of the shutdown — how about the spiritual? How about they also give God, in the person of Paula White, a month’s pay?
Trump's spiritual adviser Paula White suggested people send her their January salary or face consequences from God https://t.co/0U5fHNAGz7
Paula White, who heads up the president’s evangelical advisory committee, suggested making a donation to her ministries to honor the religious principle of “first fruit,” which she said is the idea that all firsts belong to God, including the first harvest and, apparently, the first month of your salary.
In any case, the principle is simple enough:
“January is the beginning of a new year for us in the Western world. Let us give to God what belongs to him: the first hours of our day, the first month of the year, the first of our increase, the first in every area of our life. It’s devoted…. The principle of first fruits is that when you give God the first, he governs the rest and redeems in,” she said.
“When you honor this principle, it provides the foundation and structure for God’s blessings and promises in your life. It unlocks deep dimensions of spiritual truths that literally transform your life. When you apply this, everything comes in divine alignment for his plan and promises for you. When you don’t honor it, whether through ignorance or direct disobedience, there are consequences.”
But what if — because of the shutdown, you weren’t paid for a month? Maybe you’re an air traffic controller, and received a check for $0.00? Offer it up?
Pouf! cancels out Pouf! In other words, that won’t cost you anything — beyond the original suffering mentioned above..
An Indiana National Guardsman was arrested outside Columbus on New Year’s Day after a state trooper found nearly 50 bombs and the blueprints for a Navy SEAL training facility inside his car, the Madison County prosecutor said yesterday.
Targeting the SEALs, hunh? Not, I’d imagine, a soft target.
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I guess there’s something like a buzz or ripple going on, and it concerns me. It crops up in various forms in various places, in fact it’s very various indeed, and varied, and variegated too no doubt. Let’s see…
There are calls in certain circles for a coup of some kind in the US of A. Here’s the televangelist pastor Rick Joyner…
One of Joyner’s closest military friends is Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin — ex Delta Force, Mogadishu guy, also ex Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence — seen here talking with Joyner:
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Joyner is one of the more prominent pastors associated with C Peter Wagner‘s New Apostolic Reformation, so it’s worth noting that Wagner doesn’t limit his ambitions to “Christendom” but is working for Christian dominion over the entire world, much as certain trends in the Islamic world look for global Islamic dominion:
My favorite term is “dominion eschatology.” Why? Because Jesus did not give His Great Commission in vain.
The battle will be ferocious, and we will suffer some casualties along the way. However, we will continue to push Satan back and disciple whole nations.
We are aggressively retaking dominion, and the rate at which this is happening will soon become exponential. The day will come when “‘The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever’” (Rev. 11:15, NKJV)!
So that’s one part of the context for Messers. Joyner and Boykin, and Joyner’s thoughts about a coup — also for Boykin’s proffered scenarios for foreign policy, which I addressed in a recent post.
Oath Keepers is instructing its 30,000 members nation-wide to form up special teams and sub-teams in each Oath Keepers chapter, at the town and county level, modeled loosely on the Special Forces “A Team” (Operational Detachment A ) model, and for a similar purpose: to be both a potential operational unit for community security and support during crisis, but also, as mission #1, to serve as training and leadership cadre, to assist in organizing neighborhood watches, organizing veterans halls to provide community civil defense, forming County Sheriff Posses, strengthening existing CERT, volunteer fire, search-and-rescue, reserve deputy systems, etc., and eventually to assist in forming and training town and county militias (established by official act of town and county elected representatives). We want our chapters to organize themselves as a working model that we can then take to other veterans organizations, such as the VFW, American Legion, Marine Corps League, etc. in each town and help them establish such teams within their already existing veterans halls. And likewise, to serve as a model and training cadre to help churches, neighborhood watches, and any other civic organization organize.
These guys are more about resisting government oppression than endorsing a coup, eh? — but there’s morphing potential between one and the other.
What I’m up to here, y’see, is not about presenting a coherent argument starting from a premise and arriving at a conclusion, but creating a mini-topography, manpping a landscape if you will, by identifying certain features, with the suggestion that they are somehow related.
Somehow, I said.
I am not defining the relationships, which may be quite varied, and also subject to individual interpretation. I am suggesting they may be, very likely are, all features of a common terrain — and worth considering as such.
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Picking up on the theological side of things, we have many people, including legislators like Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who view current events at home and abroad as fulfilling one of the various “end times” scnarios now current in both Christian and Islamic circles:
People who hold such beliefs tend to take them very seriously, as sanctioned by the supreme authority — and may therefore be strongly influenced by them when making policy decisions. But is Bachmann’s eschatology right, or Netanyahu’s, or Khamenei’s perhaps? Or one of the secular eschatologies, global warming, nuclear winter, heat death of the universe?
Policies driven by an erroneous eschatology might make an unstable situation even worse, no?
Caveat emptor.
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Let’s move from preachers and pols to regular folks like, well, Josie the Outlaw. What does she have to say for herself — and us all?
This (above) was quite a hit with some of my liberal friends… who mostly didn’t notice the Gadsden Flag on its brief appearance…
They were in some cases less happy with this one…
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And then of course, it has indeed been said that…
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…
The question then arising of how much prudence — prudence, the virtue — is in evidence in this day and age?
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This is where I should really soar, with a short yet powerful invocation af all those virtues one might wish for. We’ve almost forgotten their names. Humility? Is that something to do with humiliation? Sure sounds like it. Prudence? I think I have a great aunt Pru…
Joyner and Boykin — if you believe we’re in the end times, then wait up — no need to go all guns and MRE on us — fast and pray, will you please, and wait for the new heaven and the new earth?
And the rest of you — call your great aunt, we need her STAT!!
Zenpundit is a blog dedicated to exploring the intersections of foreign policy, history, military theory, national security,strategic thinking, futurism, cognition and a number of other esoteric pursuits.
