The Demographic Nightmare

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Not very long after that, He created man, when He did; He ordered them to be fruitful, and to multiply. Today, neither of these are happening as they should be.

America, according to USA TODAY, has a current birthrate 2.1, the bare minimum needed to resupply the population. However, this is expected to drop by 2014 to 1.87. At such a low rate, we are no longer even reproducing ourselves. By contrast, in 1800 the average birthrate for the American family was 6.0. However, America is doing seemingly better than most countries, Taiwan has a birth rate of 1.1, and I have been told that South Korea has a birthrate of .9.

So how did this happen? Ever since the flood the population has been growing (and still is, as people now live longer) what is causing this to happen? Why is no one having children? What has happened in a country where we are richer than anyone before us, have better houses, and, (we think) the best ever technology?

It is an interesting trend in our culture that we are having fewer children. However, culture is religion externalized; therefore, it must be something about the American religion and the world religion in general that is causing this.

Let us look at our religion shall we?

Education is valued highly, and our experts are our oracles. Life is worthless, and comfort is more important than anything else in life. We value things more than relationships, and our view of progress is miniaturization. As Rudyard Kipling said, we have a deep and unacknowledged boredom, everything has to be fast, or else we want none of it.

If this is our religion, is it any wonder that no one wants more children? A child costs money, money that could be spent on ourselves. A child costs time, time that could be spent on ourselves. A child is a life, yet we think little of life, as we are so desensitized to killing and blood by our televisions, games, and films. A child, in Adam Smith’s time was an asset, now, since they no longer work, and are spoiled to the hilt, they are liabilities which we must have tax breaks for.

Western culture is frightened of overpopulation. –Utter nonsense! It is not overpopulation that causes famines, it is worldview. In Communist China, in 1967, 97% farming industry was put under government control. The 3% that was left in private hands produced a third of the food output.1

Perhaps the largest problem in the birthrate conundrum is the childhood of American boys. According to the book The Second Mayflower, Kevin Swanson, a radio broadcaster and pastor, states that 70% of young men are not grown up by thirty years of age. If they are not grown up by then they will not have gotten married, thus, they are not having children.

The problem with America will not be solved by education, it will not be solved by an economic upturn, it will not be solved by a compensation plan for those that have children, it will not be solved by another stimulus package, and there is only one way to fix this problem.

The fear of God.

The fear of God which says we must obey God’s word, which says children are a blessing, which says men must grow up, which says he who finds a wife finds a good thing. That is how you fix a family that is how you fix a church that is how you fix a nation that is how you fix Western Civilization.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

(1 Inclined to Liberty.)

Can You Legislate Morality?

Your source of law is your source of truth, your source of truth is what will ultimately control you.

Throughout all history there have been two types of law and two types only. Man's, and God's. There is nothing else, no other permutation. From these two springs come all the rivers of thought on law. Man or God.

Almost every Christian has subscribed to the idea that man can be a good expositor and creator of law.

Anyone who attempts to bring the law of God to bear on law, is told "Man cannot legislate morality." In one sense, they are right, you cannot make people be moral. However, all you can legislate is morality. Every law you pass is an imposition of morality. If a law is passed for the creation of a state park, a morality is being foisted on us, that the government can allocate land, that it is OK to create sanctuaries from dominion. Whether you agree with state parks or not, it is still an imposition of morality. From laws on blue-jeans, to allocations of funds to schools, from the laws of warfare to whether or not you can use fluoride, morality is being foisted on you every time the dotted line at the bottom of a bill is signed by an executive.

This being true, what then, should be the morality we foist on people?

God's.

If that is said, many people become very emotional and say "Christ did away with the law of Moses." While it is true that we no longer have to follow the ceremonial laws of God, we absolutely must still follow the case laws as well as the moral law of the Old Covenant.

I Corinthians 10 says:

For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? ...

1Co 9:14  Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.

Here we have an old testament law, and then an application. The heart of this law is "Do not hamstring your servants." So while we cannot muzzle our oxen today, it does not mean that if you have no oxen the law does not apply to you, nor does it mean if you have no pastor it does not apply to you. You must find the expositorial application. There is an old testament law that says you must put a wall around the roof of your house. That does not mean if you have an A-frame you have to put a wall around the roof. In there time people sat on the roof, and so you were accountable if someone fell off, so you had to put a roof. So today what would this include? Backs on chairs, seat-belts, railings on balconies, warning signs on electric fences.

However, most Christians do not follow the law of God, and today almost none of our laws our based on it.

There are two main types of false law today.

• Natural
• Positive

Natural law is something that began to be widely propagated in the seventeen-hundreds. It is the idea that by smelling flowers, staring at trees and animals, and watching butterflies, you can find out what law is. However, how in the world do you get law from that? There is no way that you can find out the right or wrong about excise taxes by watching foxes. The animal kingdom, if followed, would teach us one thing, EAT OR BE EATEN. And also, no one agrees on natural law, therefore, we always devolve from that into positive law, which America has today.

Positive Law is that idea which says that man can decide law.

Can man decide law? I will answer with a resounding no! When man decides law on his own, he must look to his own mind, and what he thinks. That is the difference between democracy and monarchy. Monarchy is relying on the  depraved mind of the one, while democracy is relying on the depraved minds of the many.

When man is left to decide law, with no higher law then his own mind to look to, we rely on a broken reed, on a frayed anchor cable. No man has a perfect mind, thus no man can make a perfect law. If man can decide law, who is to say that one man's law is better than anther's? Who is to says Osama Bin Laden cannot decide law, who is to say who can? The lawmakers then become the strongest and right is might. Then truly it is EAT OR BE EATEN.

However, there is hope in all of this mire. God's law is "Love the lord your God with all your strength, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself." If this law is instituted, we need never fear economic downturns, for we know God is Sovereign, and we love his law. So let us not look to man, nor to butterflies, nor to some quaint idea in the mind of a senator, but let us look to God, who has the perfect mind, the perfect law, and the perfect Sovereignty.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott.

The Right to Die.

The room is dark, a young man fresh out of medical school looks at the name tag of the patient. He smiles grimly. She is only twenty-three, his own fiancée. She was having a heart-attack, but now he has figured out a way to save her.

...

In the next room, another person writhes in agony. The grown son closes his eyes in a quick prayer as his father's body continues to fight with the deadly cancer that inhabits it. It is four in the morning. The door opens, the young doctor and a nurse come in. "Mr. Smith, you need to get some sleep, we have tests we need to run on him, we will summon you if anything develops."

"Of course, that is fine." The man sighs and walks out towards the waiting room. The doctor closes the door after him. "OK, we need to get to work." The nurse lays her hand on the body, it is breathing, there is a pulse."

"OK, age sixty-nine. Health bad. Girl more useful to the community. He dies of 'heart spasm.' We need to harvest that heart."

"Alright."

Something out a horror story? A mello-drama? Communist Russia? Hardly.

On 1973 America gave up its most sacred right, the right to life. We excepted the idea that man is god, and is allowed to decide who can live, and who can die. Nine men in black robes decided morality one day. And with the stroke of a pen they brought down the great edifice that our founding father's worked so hard to build.

In William Blackstone's commentaries he defines five innate rights of humans, the first of which, is life.

However, our starting point is not Blackstone, neither is it the law of nature, neither is it even our own Constitution. There is one place to start and one place only, and that is the Bible.

Deu 30:19

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, thatI have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life.

In Peru, in the fifteen hundreds, there was a great empire known as the Incan empire. Technologically advanced, engineeringly brilliant, they built buildings with such precision and accuracy, and, in some cases, out of such massive stones, that today we are incapable of replicating it.
However, for all their brilliance, they chose death over life. They had a ceremony in which they would kill a child, and hurl his body into a pool of water to appease the gods. They would then drink of that water, and some theorize that that is how they eventually killed themselves off, by drinking the carcasses of their own children whom they had murdered.
The Bible says "They that hate me love death." America today hates God. We live in a death culture. From sculls on t-shirts, to abortion clinics, to death songs, to a fascination with crime-science shows in which grotesque types of murder and violence are portrayed, to a million other things which could be pointed out. Americans are fascinated with death. Until this un-healthy and un-biblical fascination stops, we will continue to have Kevorkians. Until this stops, we will never receive the full blessings of God on this nation.
There is no such thing as mercy-killing. God alone can decide who can live, and who can die. Unless we can make life, we cannot take life.
As for suicide, we do not even have complete jurisdiction over our own body. The citizen has designated times at which killing is acceptable. These include defense of property, defense of family, defense of life, defense of faith, defense of self, defense of nation. (The last with caviots.)
In seventeen-seventy-six, fifty-five men met in Philadelphia, and drafted a document which would go down in history. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these right is life..."
Through His Strength We Will Conquer,
Andrew C. Abbott

The Explorer, by Rudyard Kipling.

This is the poem that Hiram Bingham said kept him going on different occasions. (More on Hiram later.)

 

The Explorer

1898

There's no sense in going further -- it's the edge of cultivation,"
  So they said, and I believed it -- broke my land and sowed my crop --
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
  Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop:

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
  On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated -- so:
"Something hidden.  Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges --
  "Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and wating for you. Go!"

So I went, worn out of patience; never told my nearest neighbours --
  Stole away with pack and ponies -- left 'em drinking in the town;
And the faith that moveth mountains didn't seem to help my labours
  As I faced the sheer main-ranges, whipping up and leading down.

March by march I puzzled through 'em, turning flanks and dodging shoulders,
  Hurried on in hope of water, headed back for lack of grass;
Till I camped above the tree-line -- drifted snow and naked boulders --
  Felt free air astir to windward -- knew I'd stumbled on the Pass.

'Thought to name it for the finder: but that night the Norther found me --
  Froze and killed the plains-bred ponies; so I called the camp Despair
(It's the Railway Gap to-day, though). Then my Whisper waked to hound me: --
  "Something lost behind the Ranges.  Over yonder! Go you there!"

Then I knew, the while I doubted -- knew His Hand was certain o'er me.
  Still -- it might be self-delusion -- scores of better men had died --
I could reach the township living, but....e knows what terror tore me...
  But I didn't... but I didn't. I went down the other side.

Till the snow ran out in flowers, and the flowers turned to aloes,
  And the aloes sprung to thickets and a brimming stream ran by;
But the thickets dwined to thorn-scrub, and the water drained to shallows,
  And I dropped again on desert -- blasted earth, and blasting sky....

I remember lighting fires; I remember sitting by 'em;
  I remember seeing faces, hearing voices, through the smoke;
I remember they were fancy -- for I threw a stone to try 'em.
  "Something lost behind the Ranges" was the only word they spoke.

I remember going crazy. I remember that I knew it
When I heard myself hallooing to the funny folk I saw.
'Very full of dreams that desert, but my two legs took me through it...
And I used to watch 'em moving with the toes all black and raw.

But at last the country altered -- White Man's country past disputing --
  Rolling grass and open timber, with a hint of hills behind --
There I found me food and water, and I lay a week recruiting.
  Got my strength and lost my nightmares.  Then I entered on my find.

Thence I ran my first rough survey -- chose my trees and blazed and ringed 'em --
  Week by week I pried and sampled -- week by week my findings grew.
Saul he went to look for donkeys, and by God he found a kingdom!
  But by God, who sent His Whisper, I had struck the worth of two!

Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snowslide shivers --
  Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains,
Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers,
  And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains!

'Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between 'em;
  Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour;
Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen 'em --
  Saw the plant to feed a people -- up and waiting for the power!

Well, I know who'll take the credit -- all the clever chaps that followed --
  Came, a dozen men together -- never knew my desert-fears;
Tracked me by the camps I'd quitted, used the water-holes I hollowed.
  They'll go back and do the talking. They'll be called the Pioneers!

They will find my sites of townships -- not the cities that I set there.
  They will rediscover rivers -- not my rivers heard at night.
By my own old marks and bearings they will show me how to get there,
  By the lonely cairns I builded they will guide my feet aright.

Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre?
  Have I kept one single nugget -- (barring samples)? No, not I!
Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker.
  But you wouldn't understand it. You go up and occupy.

Ores you'll find there; wood and cattle; water-transit sure and steady
  (That should keep the railway rates down), coal and iron at your doors.
God took care to hide that country till He judged His people ready,
  Then He chose me for His Whisper, and I've found it, and it's yours!

Yes, your "Never-never country" -- yes, your "edge of cultivation"
  And "no sense in going further" -- till I crossed the range to see.
God forgive me! No, I didn't. It's God's present to our nation.
 Anybody might have found it, but -- His Whisper came to Me!

Adventure Manifesto

From the earliest days of the existence, when God gave Adam the Dominion Mandate, man has loved adventure. From climbing of Mount Everest, to propelling boats down the wild currents of the Amazon, to crawling through tunnels in England. From discovering Mauchu Pichu, to finding the body of King Tut, to the discovery of the Antacatheric Wreck, to a boy finding a Roman coin in his own backyard. Explorers have ranged from the men that seemed destined for it from birth, such men as Ferdinand Magellan, who became a sailor at a young age, to the less renown Francisco de Pizzaro, a man who seemed as if he would live his entire life in the occupation of an illiterate swine herd, until he was Providently called by God to the new world.

God has called men to adventure, and to dominion, “O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” Psalm 8.

That is the purpose of man! To take dominion, to subdue the earth, to bring all things in subjection under his feet. That is what man was made for, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. To take dominion over the works of the Lord. You were not made to sit on a church pew, sing a few songs, hear another irrelevant sermon, and then go home, go to your bed, rise in the morning, go off to a corporate job, come home, and play video games! God did not make you for your fun, he made you for his own glory! God made man to worship him, and to cause others to worship him, and to take creation, and use it for the glory of God. Man craves this, man wishes for it, for the challenges, for the pain, for the adventure of dominion. That is why boys play video games, because they wish to have hardship, to fight wars, and to conquer kingdoms, but they have no outlet for it, so they go off, and conquer a fantasy world, and go off to kill fake enemies, never realizing that right outside their door is a culture that needs to be conquered for Christ.

Boys who grow up without taking dominion are boys that grow up like walking dead men. They are alive, yet they do not live fully, they do not live for what God has made them for, they live for their own glory and their own pleasure, rather than for God’s. A life without a purpose is like climbing a mountain without a summit. Danger without success. This should terrify you if you are a young man, (or woman), to think that you –you- are living your life without doing what God has called you to do. This is not an oppressive life, this is life at its fullest. This is climbing mountains in exploration, this is spreading the gospel to the far stretches of the earth. This is space exploration for the purpose of dominion, this is deep sea diving for the purpose of dominion, this is hanging on rock walls. Reading ancient codes, so that we may better understand how this nation fits into God’s Word, and his overall plan of history.

As a finale word, as you climb mountains, swim rivers, and hunt wild animals, we must remember that we do not do it for the thrill, if we did things for a thrill we would speedily doing anything and everything that gave us an adrenalin high. We are not thrill seekers, we are kingdom builders. We do not risk our God given necks for a thrill, we risk our lives for eternal glory, knowing God has us in His hand, and we will go in His time. We do not court danger for danger’s sake, we court God’s will, for his sake.

Oh truly, as Kipling said, “Something Lost Behind the Ranges, Go and Find It.”

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

What is Science?

Science began six-thousand years ago, when the first man, Adam, was given the dominion mandate, and told to classify the animals and give each of them a name in the garden of Eden. He became the first counterpart to Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), and he began to take dominion of his world. After him, came Tubal-Cane, and his brother, Jubal. They begin to conduct experiments with metal.

After the flood highly advanced civilizations continued to invent things, to build things, to make massive structures which were not only geometrically correct, but also visually stunning things such as observatories, nunneries, and other things, from Stone-Henge, to buildings in Egypt, to Babylon. Something in man has been made by God to wish to investigate, to learn, to find, to search, to take dominion.

From Galileo  to Werner-von-Bran, there is one thing that all scientists, (real scientist that is) have in common, it is not just the same method of experiment, research, test, test, and then test, it is embodied in one thing, and one thing only. Science is the act of taking dominion, in the fear of God.

The fear of God. It is what has been lost over the last few hundred years. Charles Darwin forgot to tremble a little bit when he was at the Galapagos. He forgot to worship the Creator, not the creation.

Romans 1:23 says “For they turned the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped the creature more than the creator, who is blessed forever, amen.”

Romans also says “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

If you are going to be a scientist, there is one thing that you must remember as you take dominion, to tremble. As you look at the shark, tremble, not at the shark, butatn the God that made it. The God that made the great white, with his blood vessels, his DNA, his brain, his teeth.

The scientific method can only be used on things that are demonstrable, repeatable, and that can be proven true or false.

Evolution is not science. Evolution, is the idea that long ago and far away, in some far off land, something exploded, a primeval soup developed, and man came. This is the big bang hypotheses. Evolution is non-demonstrable, and none observable, an idea like this cannot be proven false, it must be proven true.

For evolution to happen, there must be six stages, in this order.

·         Cosmic Evolution. (Space, time, matter.)

·         Stellar Evolution. (Stars and planets.)

·         Chemical Evolution.

·         Organic Evolution. (Origin of life.)

·         Macro Evolution. (Changes of dogs to cats.)

·         Micro Evolution. (A finch with a long beak growing a short one, or, in other words, changes within a created kind.)

I will begin with the first one, Cosmic evolution. Where did the space, time, and matter come from? What exploded in the ‘big bang’? Where did the state of ‘nothingness’ come from? Where did the empty space for the explosion to take place in originate?

What of the planets? How did the vacuum of space, without gravity, crush the planets into balls? Were they gas clouds? What made them lump into different planets, rather than one huge one? And also, if there was an explosion, why did the matter not distribute itself equally from a central point, rather lumping into galaxies with millions of miles of void between?

What of the chemicals? How did helium break down into hydrogen? Where did oxygen come from? What of water? How did swirling dirt or gas turn into all of the elements?

However, above all, they have the problem of life. Dead things cannot make live things. A rock cannot have a child. A fern cannot give birth. According to the law of Bio-Genesis, a law discovered by Louie Pasture, dead things cannot come to life. It is an impossibility.

As for monkeys changing to humans, or whales to sharks, or birds to dinosaurs, how? Well, here is what they say, “When a fish is swimming around in the ocean, and it breeds with another fish, it might have baby fish with little fragments of bones, and that fish might have little fish with a few more fragments of bone, until, eventually, in the far distant future, a fish has a little fish with complete legs, and then they begin to develop part of a lung.” And here is (after all of their other problems) one of their greatest problems. What is a fish to do with only a part of a lung? How is it to breath under water, when it cannot yet fully breath above water? This is what is called Partial Growth Syndrome, when an animal is not fully developed. When the dinosaur was supposed to be changing into a bird over thousands of generations, what happens when the day comes when it is half bird, half dinosaur, half legs, half wings, completely useless? Who feeds it? Who cares for it? If the world is as they say, with survival of the fittest, how is a little worthless humming-bird more ‘fit’ than a T-Rex?

There is an argument for this called Punctuated-Equilibrium, which means that the changes were not slow and gradual, but immediate. “So, since we cannot prove they happen slowly, let us make them happen quickly.” This is somewhat like saying “As far as we can tell, elephants do not swim across the ocean, therefore, that must mean they do it so quickly we never knew it happened.”

The last article of evolution happens. It is changes within kinds. (I prefer to call it Variation.) It is the breeding of animals, such as dogs, to make a Great-Dane, or of horses, to make a racer. However, these small changes can never change from part to whole. No amount of mutations (however beneficial, although we are unaware of a single beneficial mutation that exists), can change a  finch into a toucan, even though it may give him a longer or shorter beak. Although the changes may become permanent through natural selection (the fruit is different one year so that only birds with certain type beaks can eat it, thus the others die out and leave only the birds with the larger beaks alive) it does not make a bird in any way different from the information already within him, nor does it guarantee that the bird that survives will be better than the one that died. The next year the rain patterns may change, making it difficult for long-beaked finches to get their beaks inside of the fruits, thus, they die out, and leave nothing. Natural Selection is a process of elimination, it does not guarantee the best will survive, only the best in that area. (If there are two plants, and one of them is superior in every area except that it cannot stand overwatering. If these plants are overwatered, the weaker one, which can stand overwatering will be the only one that lives, the stronger one will die, and the weaker genes passed on.)

Science is not the act of staring at the stars and philosophizing, it is the act of looking at the creation and trembling. Trembling before a God that is so big, he can make a raindrop, or he can make a universe. And even to the see that massive expanse of universe, he has to humble himself to find it. I will give the last word to Johannes Kepler, the father of modern-day astronomy. “Science is thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott