Carved In Stone

Ancient and Modern Tyranny

2007-02-17T22:10:00.000-07:00

"In the ancient tyrannies of the Mesopotamina world, kings were said to be divine. The Egyptians believed that their Pharaoh was a divine being, the link between heaven and earth, the sustainer of Egypt's prosperity. This belief led directly to the idea of a divine State, a political order which could not be challenged by 'mere men.' The State, since it was the highest link between man and God, was therefore all-powerful, in the theologies of the ancient world. Of course, you can accomplish much the same thing by denying that there is any God above the political order. Since the State is the most visibly powerful human institution, athiesm removes a concept of some higher court of appeal beyond the State. The State becomes 'divine' by default -- the highest court of appeal, the highest moral authority. Not every athiest is a statist, but where athiesm predominates, the State steadily encroaches on men's freedom, for they are left with no higher authority to appeal to, or to provide them with the moral justification for resistance to tyranny. Where the fear of God is absent, the fear of the State is a convenient, and universal substitute." (Gary North, Unconditional Surrender p.14 - December 1982)

Edmund Burke

2006-06-24T20:03:00.000-06:00

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon thier own appetites...society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there is without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free." (1791)

Peace and Safety

2006-06-11T17:02:00.000-06:00

"When men place peace above other considerations, they are unwilling to face up to anything which tells them that their dream is a futile one. They are ready then to compromise truth in order to gain peace, because they are weary of the struggle. But peace like happiness always eludes men when they make it a goal of human endeavor. Peace and happiness are by-products of other goals. We cannot make ourselves truly happy by deciding we need to be happy... What most People mean by peace is an attitude of, 'Leave me alone, and don't bother me with the problems of the world,' or, 'Do anything, but get rid of all these problems, and leave me to enjoy myself.' Peace in this sense is a retreat. It is more than that: it is a form of suicide, a surrender of life for a retirement to the sidelines of life. Unfortunately for these people, the world is now moving towards a radical confrontation of man by the basic issues and problems of life. All the posponed problems, the deferred and pressing debts of life, are beginning to fall due and are demanding attention. The luxury of indifference is fast waning. Church members who left the defense of the faith to their clergy are now finding that God is requiring them to defend their faith or to surrender it...The widespread apostasy of the clergy is forcing many of the laity out of their slumbers. If the faith is to be defended, they must do it. The result is a spreading revival of doctrinal concern, a re-awakening of faith, prayer and action, and a readiness to stand for the faith which did not exist twenty years ago. The old forms are curmbling, perhaps because they must. We live in a momentous and exciting era, a turning point in history. Before the healing rains come, the sky always darkens, and the thunder and lightning are very much in evidence. We are not in the winter-time of the world, but in its spring. Wise men will plant for the future." Rushdoony "The Roots of Reconstruction." pp. 806 & 807.

Creative Theology by RC Sproul

2006-04-13T23:35:00.000-06:00

"If the reconstruction of theology is going to be meaningful and relevant to the modern age, there must be an element of creativity in it. If when the old structures have collapsed, we reconstruct them according to the same old blueprints, then we are asking for a repetition of the first collapse...It is not enough merely to mix the old and the new. This might only produce a false and grotesque freak. If the combination is to be sound, it must incorporate what is sound from the old with what is sound from the new... If there is a formula for creativity it is this: Challenge the assumptions...It is not good enough to challenge the assumptions arbitrarily or to dismiss the previous working assumptions out of hand. Such dismissals may result in the devolution of the art or science. It is the faulty assumption that must be found and discarded if a breakthrough is to be achieved. The task of isolating faulty assumptions is made difficult by the tendency of scholarship to accept certain assumptions uncritically and to enshrine them in the temple of the status quo. These uncritically accepted assumptions, elevated to the level of dogma, control the activity of a given dicipline. To challenge them is to invite the wrath of those who are comfortable with the traditions." RC Sproul & John Gerstner "Classical Apologetics." pp.64-66

Simeon's Blessing

2006-03-14T18:20:00.000-07:00

"Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother; 'This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.'" Luke 2:34-35

Balaam & Balak

2006-03-14T18:05:00.000-07:00

"Balaam answered Balak, "Did I not tell the messengers you sent me, 'Even if Balak gave me his palace filled with silver and gold, I could not do anything of my own accord, good or bad, to go beyond the command of the Lord -- and I must say only what the Lord says?'" Numbers 24:12-13

My Friend Tim

2006-01-12T07:21:00.000-07:00

I would like to pay a small tribute to a friend who has had the courage to stand up for what he believes in... Men like that are far too rare in our churches, I pray that God would grant us more of them... In his honor, I submit the following... "The type of religion which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of their meanings, or shrinks from 'controversial' matters, will never stand amid the shocks of life. In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight." J Gresham Machen 1923 "Christianity and Liberalism" pp.1-2

Minorities & Majorities

2006-01-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

History has never been dominated by majorities, but only by dedicated minorities who stand unconditionally on their faith...We need to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and His salvation, and to pray for the conversion of the unregenerate. Prayer here, if coupled with Christian efforts, is not only proper but absolutely necessary. But, while only God can convert the wicked, men have the power to control the wicked. And the means of control is a strict sense of law and order, of justice. But today the sentimentalism that parades as Christianity, instead of seeking to control and to convert the evil seeks instead to love it and subsidize it. The result is a destruction of civilization and harm to both the godly members of society as well as to the wicked who cause the destruction. Rushdoony, "The Roots of Reconstruction." pp545 & 547

Bureaucracy in the Church

2005-08-15T19:12:00.000-06:00

Now members of a body do not hold offices; they have functions... Thus, what we call church offices are in reality functions of the body of Christ in this world. This fact is very important. Offices lead to a bureaucracy and a ruling class, whereas functions keep a body alive. In the early church also, we have no evidence of what is commonplace today, regualr, stated bureaucratic meetings of presbyteries, synods, councils, bishops, etc. Instead, beginning with the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, the meetings were called to resolve a problem or meet a need. They were functional meetings, not organizational; they were aspects of the life of a body, not of a bureaucratic organization. Roussas John Rushdooney, Chalcedon Position Paper 97 pp404 The Roots of Reconstruction May 1988.

Plutarch

2005-06-10T06:33:00.000-06:00

"The mind is not a ship to be filled with cargo, but a flame to be kindled."

Mithrdates the Great

2005-06-10T06:20:00.000-06:00

[The Prince] - "Our top general Archelaus, designer of all the Pontic military strategies, chief negotiator of the Peace of Dardanus, and my father's closest confident had defected. Traveling to Pergamum in the night he sought asylum from the Romans, before continuing on to the vast estate outside Athens that he had secretly been gifted by Sulla himself!" [Mithridates the Great] "I would fight the Romans if I were the only man left in Pontus! Archelaus is Wrong! Wrong that our forces cannot stand up to them, wrong that power means right, the traitor! You don't fight for the strongest side, you fight for the right side; Otherwise you are nothing more than a mercenary!" "The Last King" Michael Curtis Ford, St Martins Press 2004 Page 175

Homeschool Day at the Capital

2005-04-07T23:10:00.002-06:00

In honor of tomorrow, "homeschool day at the capital." I submit the following quote. "The first and basic premise of paganism, socialism, and Molech worship is a claim that the state owns the child. The basic premise of the public schools is this claim of ownership, a fact some parents are encountering in the courts. It is the essence of paganism to claim first the lives of the children, then the properties of the people...How can we expect God to honor us, or bless us, when we give our children to the state schools and surrender their minds daily to the teachings of humanism? It is sin and madness to believe so, and those who try to justify their sin only increase it. The true believer will, like Hannah, see children as a gift from the Lord, to be given to the Lord as long as they live." "The Roots of Reconstruction," Rousas J Rushdoony Page 10

Augustine "City of God" Book 4 Chapter 4 Page 147-148

2004-12-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

Justice removed, then, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? What are bands of robbers themselves but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is governend by the authority of a ruler; it is bound together by a pact of association; and the loot is divided according to an agreed law. If, by the constant addition of desprate men, this scourge grows to such a size that it acquires territory, establishes a seat of government, ocupies cities and subjugates peoples, it assumes the name of kingdom more openly. For this name is now manifestly conferred upon it not by the removal of greed, but by the addition of impunity. It was a pertinent and true answer which was made to Alexander the Great by a pirate whom he had seized. When the king asked him what he meant by infesting the sea, the pirate defiantly replied: 'The same as you do when you infest the whole world; but because I do it with a little ship I am called a robber, and because you do it with a great fleet, you are an emperor."

Augustine "City of God" Book 3 Chapter 1 Page 94

2004-12-08T19:35:00.000-07:00

Now, I see, I must speak of the only kind of evils which our adversaries are unwilling to endure: that is famine, disease, war, pillage, captivity, slaughter and the similar things which we have already mentioned in the first book. For evil men regard as evils only those things which do not make men evil. They do not blush to praise good things yet to remain evil themselves even among the good things that they praise. It vexes them more to have a bad house than a bad life, as if the greatest good for a man were to have everything good but himself.

Augustine "City of God" Book 1 Chapter 8 Page 12

2004-12-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

In the same fire, gold glows but chaff smokes... By the same token, when one and the same force falls upon the good and the wicked, the former are purged and purified but the latter damned, ruined and destroyed. Hence it is that, under the same affliction, the wicked hate and blaspheme God while the good pray and praise Him.

Robert Winthrop

2004-09-02T14:13:00.000-06:00

"All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet. It may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the State supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is Religion which must support the State." (Speaker of the House 1847-1849)

John Witherspoon

2004-08-20T20:20:00.000-06:00

Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue. (The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of men, 1776.)