psychoceramics: The Revolution Revealed

[elysium @ wolfenet.com (elysium)]

I seem to be stuck on this guy's mailing list - at least he's inventive.
Here's what's evil about the 4th of July (besides all those people blowing
their hands off?)

Oh, and this is my first posting to this neat list. If I commit any sins,
please let me know. Thanks.

>T   H   E      S   O   J   O   U   R   N   A   L
>           2 Corinthians 10:3-6
>
>DISCUSSION       DISCERNMENT        DOCTRINAL ISSUES
>=================================================================
>Supplement:
>July 1996
>=================================================================
>
>THE REVOLUTION REVEALED
>By Albert Soto
>
>"But the day is past.  The second day of July, 1776, will be a memorable
>epocha in the history of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be
>celebrated by succeeding generations, as the great Anniversary Festival.
>It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of
>devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp, shews,
>games, sports, guns, bells, bon-fires and illuminations, from one end of
>the continent to the other, from this time forward forever."
>[John Adams to Mrs. Abigail Adams, 1776]
>
>For the most part this declaration of independence by young America has
>held true for the last 200 years.  It was that fateful year that the pen
>was struck to paper which produced a revolution that the rest of the world
>would see as the beginning of the end of the monarchial system of
>government.
>
>Americans throughout history have looked to this day as a defining moment,
>a day that has become an embodiment of what a true American should be.  We
>continue this celebration, by honoring the dead heros of America's past
>with those of our present.
>
>>From school children on, we have been taught to revere the men of the
>>Revolution as great men, men who sacrifice life for the pursuit of life,
>>liberty and of happiness.   Dr. Elias Boudinot, former president of the
>>Continental Congress in 1783, taught many so.
>
>"It is not then a unreasonable expectation which, I well know, generally
>prevails, that this day should be usually devoted to the perpetuating and
>respectfully remembering the dignified characters of the those great men
>with whom it has been our honor to claim the intimate connection of
>Fellow-Citizens-men who have purchased our present joyful circumstances at
>the individual price of their blood."
>[Speech before the New Jersey Society of the Cincinnati on July 4, 1793.]
>
> It was men like Jefferson who taught the world that God had given man
>certain rights:
>
>"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;
>that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
>that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
>
>He then states that if the government were to trample upon this natural
>rights that God had then given them the right, "to alter or to abolish it
>[government], and to institute a new government. . ."
>
>Are these really truths?  Has God given man these rights, are these TRUTHS
>to be found in scripture?  Were these men, (who claimed to be Godly men of
>the protestant faith) correct in their decision to rebel?  The answer is
>an emphatic, No.
>
>What TRUTHS are Christians to be governed by?  Here are some:
>
>For You Were Once Darkness, But Now You Are Light In The Lord.  Walk As
>Children Of Light (For The Fruit Of The Spirit Is In All Goodness,
>Righteousness, And TRUTH), Finding Out What Is Acceptable To The Lord.
>And Have No Fellowship With The Unfruitful Works Of Darkness, But Rather
>EXPOSE THEM.
>Ephesians 5:8-11
>
>Let us be Children of light and expose some of the darkness of the
>American Revolution. . .
>
>The American Revolution and most of its prominent players in it, were not
>godly men or women, but in fact were wicked in their actions and in their
>beliefs.  We as Christians can say this as 1 John clearly states,
>
>"In This The Children Of God And The Children Of The Devil Are Manifest:
>Whoever Does Not Practice Righteousness Is Not Of God, Nor Is He Who Does
>Not Love His Brother."
>1 John 3:10
>
> It would seem by all indications of what we have to study on, that these
>men, and women, died children of the devil, never repenting of the their
>rebellion.  I asked a professor, Dr. Ridner (At Northridge, whose emphasis
>is on the Early Colonial America and the Revolution) what her view of this
>was.  This is what she had to say,
>
>"Dear Al,
>Nice to hear from you.  Off-hand I can't think of anyone who regretted
>his participation in the Revolution, largely because it was a story and
>an event told by winners, who were proud of their participation and
>seeking to propagandize the whole event.  I do know of some military
>leaders who fought in the west against mainly the Indians--but also
>against the British and loyalists-- who, if they didn't overtly regret
>some of their actions-- did at least show some vague level of compassion
>for the peoples whose lives they had destroyed. "
>
>Scripture is clear what our responsibility toward our Government should be
>(Be it yesterday or today).
>
>Let Every Soul Be Subject To The Governing Authorities.  For There Is No
>Authority Except From God, And The Authorities That Exist Are Appointed By
>God.  Therefore Whoever Resists The Authority Resists The Ordinance Of
>God, And Those Who Resist Will Bring Judgment On Themselves.
>Romans 13:1, 2
>
>The Colonists' act of rebellion flies in the face of this clear
>commandment of God.  Did they overlook this verse?  No, these were not men
>ignorant of Scripture, in fact they used Scripture to support their cause
>in the most devious of ways.  The deception that prevailed during this
>period of history, was immense.   God and Scripture was the vehicle of
>mobilization that unified the cause, that gave it credence and allowed the
>Deists leaders at the top to move the masses toward rebellion.  Scripture
>was the Forefathers' most useful tool of propaganda, in fact at the bottom
>of the original Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress,
>ordered copies of the Declaration to be sent to local ministers who were,
>
>"required to read the same to their respective congregations, as soon as
>divine service is ended, in the afternoon, on the first Lord's day after
>they have received it."
>
>Many Protestants at the time, including Baptists, Methodists, and
>Presbyterians, did so.  No, these men did not shy from these verses but
>twisted them to their own destruction. As Jonathan Mayhew did, who
>preached a sermon entitled, "A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission".
>On the anniversary day of the execution of Charles I, Mayhew preached
>that Romans 13:1-6 was binding insofar as the government honors its,
>"moral and religious" obligations.  He states that rulers,
>
>"have no authority from God to do mischief. . .It is blasphemy to call
>tyrants and oppressors, God's ministers."
>
>Some ministers went farther and called England the beast from Revelations.
>But these men, these "Christian" men failed to remember that Paul wrote
>these verses under the authority of the Roman government which was more
>oppressive than 18th century Britain.  A Roman government which was
>morally vial, worshiped many gods, and enslaved those they conquered.  In
>this context, Paul wrote that we are to submit to the government.  Is it
>really blasphemy, "to call tyrants and oppressors, God's ministers."?  God
>does so in Romans.  This minister failed to see that God raised leaders
>like Pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites.  These same slaves did not raise
>a sword in rebellion.  God would soon raise Napoleon, and some day Hitler.
>And in all cases we are called to submit.  Nowhere in scripture are we
>given the right to rebel against the authority.  There is a time not to
>obey and that is when that authority commands us to do something that
>would disobey God.  We obey the authority, because in doing so we are
>obedient to God.  But when we do disobey we do not do so with sword in
>hand, but suffer for doing good(1 Peter 4:15f).
>
>What the Forefathers were asking the Colonists to do in 1776 would be a
>good example when a Christian could, and should disobey, when they were
>asked to stand in rebellion against Britain.  Many did, in fact almost a
>third of the population were loyal to the crown.  That is not to say that
>the loyalists were anymore godly, but they did suffered as they held the
>moral high ground.
>
>What is now understood as, Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness, was
>before, and more true, Life, Liberty, and Property.  Property is what this
>revolution revolved around.  The right of Parliament to tax the property
>of the Colonists.  This was not lost upon Samuel Adams, one of the leaders
>of the violent gang called the Sons of Liberty, who stated:
>
>"Among the NATURAL rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to
>life; second, to liberty, third, to property; together with the right to
>support and defend them in the best manner they can."
>[Samuel Adams: The Rights of the Colonists: November 2, 1772, OSL 173.]
>This man, who himself along with his cousin, John Adams, claimed to be
>Christians, held a belief that was in rebellion not only to Britain, but
>to God.  Samuel Adams in the same went on to state,
>
>"The NATURAL liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on
>earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but
>only to have the law of nature for his rule."
>
> Is this NATURAL right one that is given by God?  I hope most can see that
>this is completely a lie in light of Romans 13 and what Peter states,
>
>Therefore Submit Yourselves To Every Ordinance Of Man For The Lord's Sake,
>Whether To The King As Supreme, Or To Governors, As To Those Who Are Sent
>By Him For The Punishment Of Evildoers And For The Praise Of Those Who Do
>Good.
>1 Peter 2:13,14
>
>Interestingly, Peter adds this in verse 16, "As Free, Yet Not Using
>Liberty As A Cloak For Vice, But As Bondservants To God." The Forefathers
>had clearly used their liberty for vice!
>
>We must also take note that Peter as well wrote under the governmental
>authority of Rome.  He not only wrote for the citizen to submit to the
>government, but for the slave as well to sumbit to master and government.
>Typically, these slaves were enslaved by conquest (1 Peter 2:18f).  These
>Bibical concepts would enrage the "englightened" thinker of the
>Revolutionary era.
>
>Property was the main contention for the Revolution.  One sees this if we
>look at the events that transpired following the Sugar Act, but mainly the
>Stamp Act.  These were acts that for the first time, struck at the money
>bags of every citizen in the Americas.  After the Stamp Act, is when you
>see the formation of the ban against British goods, the formation of the
>Stamp Act Congress, and the formation of the Sons of Liberty.  It was this
>"obvious" attack upon their PROPERTY that Samuel Adams feels is
>justification for rebellion against the authority--a NATURAL right set
>forth by God, as he stated.  Instead Paul states this in Romans 13:7
>
>Render Therefore To All Their Due: Taxes To Whom Taxes Are Due, Customs To
>Whom Customs, Fear To Whom Fear, Honor To Whom Honor.
>
>What began as a contention for "no taxation without representation" soon
>became just plain no taxation and no authority.
>
>These Sons of Liberty were quick to demand liberty for themselves, but
>when others refused to see the issue involving Britain as they did, they
>resulted to violence.
>
>"Patriots attacked more than buildings.  Isaac Backus noted the apparent
>murder in November 1776 of Ephriam Avery, a supporter of the Crown and the
>Anglican minister at Rye, New York.  Those responsible contrived to make
>his death look like a suicide, an adroit move in a colony where loyalist
>sentiment ran high.  Pennsylvania Quakers also experience significant
>harassment for their pacifism and neutrality. . . In May 1776 a
>stone-throne mob forced Philadelphia Friends to observe a fast day that
>the Continental Congress had proclaimed. . . Patriots, celebrating the
>surrender of Conrwallis in October 1782 ransacked Quaker homes that had
>not displayed victory candles."
>[Jon Butler, professor of Yale University, from "Awash in a Sea of Faith(1990)]
>
>No piece of document of the times was more influential in convincing
>Colonists to rebel than Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine.  This
>pamphlet in its first year of printing was printed over 100,000 times, (an
>amazing number) in the light of the times when printing was still a costly
>and slow process.  It was this document that finally convinced George
>Washington that rebellion was the proper course of action, who stated, "A
>few more of such flaming arguments, as were exhibited at Falmouth and
>Norfolk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning contained
>in the pamphlet Common Sense, will not leave numbers at a loss to decide
>upon the propriety of a separation."
>
>In this pamphlet, which at times reads as a sermon, he makes this
>statement about government,
>
> "Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. .
>.Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best
>state is but a necessary evil. . ."
>
>But Tom Paine does not leave it there but in fact builds a well
>constructed case against monarchy.
>
>"Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens,
>from whom the children of Israel copied the custom.  It was the most
>prosperous invention the Devil ever set on the foot for the promotion of
>idolatry.  The Heathens paid divine honors to their deceased kings, and
>the kings, and the Christian world hath improved on the plan, by doing the
>same to their living ones.  How impious is the title of sacred majesty
>applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into
>dust!"
>[Common Sense, January 1776]
>
>He correctly points out that Israel's desire for a king was wicked and
>wrong, but to go beyond and say that monarchy and its heirs are wicked as
>well is not what scripture teaches.  Tom Paine, failed to see (or kept
>hidden) that monarchy produced David, a man after God's own heart, and in
>that line of kings is our own king, the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, who
>will set up monarchy once more.
>
>This pamphlet shows the success of the secularist ability able to blend in
>religion to fit his cause.  This man was in no way a Christian, but in
>fact was a deist who hated the church as much as he did monarchy.  His own
>contemporaries, years after the Revolution were able to see his true
>colors when Paine published his "Age of Reason".  In 1798 Jedidiah Morse
>attacked Paine's Age of Reason by stating:
>
>"The existence of a God is boldly denied.  Atheism and materialism are
>systematically professed.  Reason and Nature are defied and adored.  The
>Christian religion and its divine and blessed author, are not only
>disbelieved, rejected and contemned, but even abhorred."
>
>Deism was the prevalent belief among the Forefathers, such as Paine,
>Jefferson, Franklin, and many others.  Many contemporaries of the
>Revolution understood that Christianity and religion were the binding
>elements that could bring together the secularists and the religious
>together.  The secularists were children of the Enlightenment, who invoke
>the name of God, but whose god was in fact dead.
>
>". . . to its critics, deism was the epitome of hypocrisy.  It masqueraded
>as religion but was thoroughly irreligious.  Deists admitted the justice
>of religious claims, but they made religion irrelevant to contemporary
>life.  The deists' god was dead.  At best signs of his existence were
>found only in the distant past, not in the present."
>[Jon Butler, professor of Yale University, from "Awash in a Sea of Faith(1990)]
>
>But what makes this topic more abhorrent to the heart, is that this deceit
>is still propagated today.  In the so called Christian realm today, and
>heavily in the Home School movement, the concepts taught in Tom Paine's
>"Common Sense" are still taught as God's doctrine.
>
>"It is more than a passing glance at our country or an occasional
>patriotic thought.  America's Christian history should be a 'as seal upon
>thine heart'(Song of Sol. 8:6) because it pertains to Christ. . .Consider
>the many unusual aspects in the settling of America's thirteen colonies,
>the enduring and winning of the seven years War for Independence, and the
>establishing of the first Christian Constitution the world has ever known.
>All these 'human events' required a 'peculiar' people zealous for good
>works (Titus 2:14; I Peter 2:9)."
>[The Christian History of the American Revolution,Verna M. Hall,
>Foundation for American Christian Education, 1976, Introduction xxiii]
>
>These so called Christians are fooled by the pomp and circumstance that
>the forefathers used to show themselves as godly men.  Invoking the name
>of God does not make one a Christian, but as 1 John which states, "Now By
>This We Know That We Know Him, If We Keep His Commandments." The
>forefathers were disobedient to His commandments by rebelling against the
>king.  But many "Christians" today do not think so:
>
>"Consider the many acts of Parliament which were enacted against the
>colonies with little or no reason for doing so, except the hearts of
>Parliament and the king were hardened against America.  As a result, the
>colonies had no other choice than to sadly and reluctantly defend their
>God-given rights under God's law of Liberty."
>[The Christian History of the American Revolution,Verna M. Hall,
>Foundation for American Christian Education, 1976, Introduction xxix]
>
>Yes, the colonist had a perfect choice, and that to submit and pay their
>taxes.  Ironically, the colonists' disdain for paying taxes was not taken
>away under the new American government, but in fact doubled in many
>states.  It was high taxes and foreclosures of homes that brought about
>Shay's rebellion following the heels of the Revolution.  They were men
>following through with what Thomas Jefferson, and Samuel Adams had
>preached was their NATURAL right to do--defend their property from the
>authority and tyrant.  But in this case they were called rebells.
>
>These "Christians" believe in the lie that the forefathers were godly-men
>defending God's law of liberty, which was, in fact, used for vice.  They
>believe in the lie that these men gave us "political salvation", and that
>the colonists, "were coming from darkness into light, governmentaly
>speaking, for the first time in the history of mankind. . ."(Ibid,xxxv).
>
>Yes, God's hand is in the history of America, as it is in all of
>HIS-story; for man, the ends do not justify the means, and those who were
>involved are still guilty for their sin.  The American Revolution is just
>another example of how God makes vessels of wrath and vessels of honor,
>and ALL for his glory.  Like Balaam, Judas, Pharaoh, and Saul, the
>forefathers were clearly vessels of wrath that God has used to do his
>work.
>
>Has The Lord As Great Delight In Burnt Offerings And Sacrifices, As In
>Obeying The Voice Of The Lord?  Behold, To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice,
>And To Heed Than The Fat Of Rams.  For Rebellion Is As The Sin Of
>Witchcraft, And Stubbornness Is As Iniquity And Idolatry.
>1 Samuel 15:22, 23
>
>It was for disobedience and rebellion that God rejected Saul for king in
>place of David.  If monarchy was so evil, as Paine would like to suggest,
>then why did God not end it?  No, he continued it with David.  There is no
>just cause for the Forefathers to opt for rebellion, when scripture
>teaches otherwise.  The rights they decried were so akin in Nature, were
>not rights that God gave them.  All men are not created equal.  Some men
>are created as vessels of wrath, others for honor.  Some blind and/or
>deaf, others with eyes to see, and ears to hear.  God does as he so
>chooses, and has placed men in either submission or in rulership for his
>own glory.  The natural right of man is this:
>
>Let Us Hear The Conclusion Of The Whole Matter: Fear God And Keep His
>Commandments, For This Is Man's All.
>Ecclesiastes 12:13
>
>And this from a king himself.
>
>Knowing what we know about the American Revolution, do we then honor these
>men by taking part in a celebration, that celebrates and approves of an
>ungodly Revolution, or do we once again walk as Children of light, "having
>no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather exposing
>them."
>
>It is like taking a glass of vinegar and trying to drink it by putting
>water into it to dilute the vinegar.  Do we as Christians want to
>Christianize and dilute July 4th, which is filled with so much darkness
>and wickedness in order to celebrate it?  It was wicked in its inception
>and it continues to be used for wickedness today.  How much water will it
>take to make the vinegar palatable to drink, or do we just pass the cup
>by.  The choice is before you, but I will opt for a clear glass of water.
>
>2 Corinthians 10:3-6
>
>For Though We Walk In The Flesh We Do Not WAR According To The Flesh.  For
>The Weapons of Our WARFARE Are Not Carnal But MIGHTY In God For Pulling
>Down Strongholds, CASTING Down ARGUMENTS And EVERY High Thing That Exalts
>Against The Knowledge Of God, Bringing EVERY Thought Into Captivity To The
>Obedience Of Christ.
>
>Al Soto



                                       Sonya


/...hell is boiling over and heaven is full. We're chained
      to the world and we all gotta pull../Tom Waits/