Ted Cruz: Why?

I am proud to be a supporter of Senator Ted Cruz for President of the United States, and I ask you to join me.  Here is why:

Barack Obama entered the White House espousing the MoveOn.org philosophy which says that the nations cannot/should not be led by the United States.  So Obama adopted a position which he described as "leading from behind."  Never mind that this philosophy didn't stop him from instituting his own kind of "regime change" in the form of the Arab Spring which made the Middle East and North Africa a more violent and dangerous place.  The result of Obama's foreign policy for the past seven years is that our allies (Great Britain, France, the other NATO countries, and Israel) don't trust us; and our enemies (Iran, North Korea and other state sponsors of terrorism) along with Russia and China think we are fools. 

Despite the fact that the world is a more dangerous place than it was seven years ago, our military capability has been greatly diminished by this administration.  The branches of our armed services are being treated as laboratories for social engineering experiments rather than efficient fighting forces designed to keep our country (and the world) safe.  The Veterans Administrations is a scandal, and our veterans have been treated shamefully. 

The nation is more divided than it was seven years ago.  The candidate who promised to unite America has instead become the Great Divider; and the nation now stands divided along lines of race, class, age in ways not seen in generations--possibly not in its entire history.  Obama could have been a president who encouraged respect for law enforcement in a way that would have been an example for the African American community; but instead he has repeatedly undermined our law enforcement agencies, and respect for the police among African Americans is at an all time low. 

Instead of supporting our system of legal immigration that admits more legal immigrants each year than any country in the world, Obama has encouraged open borders with the result that several million undocumented migrants have swarmed our borders--an influx that threatens to overwhelm our social safety net and is already increasing crime in many parts of the country.

Every program with "Affordable" in its name (The Affordable Housing Act, the Affordable Care Act) has only made those things less affordable.  That's not hard to understand: When you make loans for housing more easily available, despite the creditworthiness (or lack thereof) of the recipient, it inflates the price of housing.  When you saddle the healthcare industry with extra regulations and suddenly add millions of people to the system, it makes healthcare more expensive.  Using the IRS to fine people for not buying health insurance is not the same as providing them with healthcare. 

Another effect of Obamacare, with its requirement of insurance for anyone working 30 hours per week or more, has been that employers have reduced their workforces, both in numbers and in hours, and the result is that we have a higher number of chronically unemployed than any time in modern history.  Government figures on unemployment don't take into account those who have quit looking for work.  Nearly half of the American public is on food stamps.  Employers are exporting jobs overseas where the economic and regulatory climates are more favorable.  Many college graduates cannot find jobs, and this generation has been predicted to be the first American generation to do less well than their parents.

The United States cannot continue in this direction and survive.  The corrupt Hillary Clinton and the Socialist Bernie Sanders cannot fix problems that the very positions they espouse have brought into being.  They are "doubling down" on Obamacare and promising to give "free everything" to voters; and when it doesn't happen, they will simply blame the Republicans.  But as Margaret Thatcher once observed, "the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."  With a national debt that has doubled under Obama--in fact, he has added more to the national debt than all previous presidents combined--no one can pay for all the things the Democrats say they want to give people.

And, so, I am proud to be a Republican who supports Ted Cruz for President.  He is the kind of principled conservative who would fix our economy and our national defense the way Reagan did after Carter.  He is a bright, courageous, articulate leader, who has none of the negatives I see in Donald Trump.  Ted Cruz is truly the Ronald Reagan of this current generation, and the Republican Establishment needs to get behind him.  Indeed, the future of the Republican Party may depend on it.  

The danger I see in Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, or anyone on the Democrat side is that while their kind of liberalism talks about equality, it does not raise people up, it only levels them down through redistribution of wealth, endless regulations, and mindless political correctness.  I see a nation that follows this path as doomed.  It will soon come to resemble the kind of societies depicted in George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984.

So I see it as imperative that we take steps to fix this country.  But I am worried--the only thing that disturbs me more than the past seven years of the Obama presidency is the kind of electorate that would give us a president like Barack Obama--twice.  So I have extra reasons to pray these days.

God help us!  And God bless America!

Robert Stevenson Munday

(I use my full name only to mention that I am a nephew/cousin of the Adlai Stevensons (I, II, and III) from Illinois, who made a choice in 1975, while on staff for Representative (later Senator) Paul Simon to walk the road less traveled (at least in my family) and become a proud conservative Republican.

   

Dear GOP: Unite behind Ted Cruz or Deserve Your Fate

I really don't like discussing Presidential politics in a blog I started more than a decade ago for the purpose of advancing Christian theology and world missions.  But the political environment in which we live can have a profound impact on religious liberty and the advance of Christianity.  (I won't go so far as to say the survival of Christianity, since Jesus promised that the Church will still be around until his return.  But the freedom and well-being of Christian believers can depend to a great extent on the system of government under which they live—as those who have lived under totalitarian systems such as Communism and Naziism can attest.)

So, through the years, I have found myself getting involved in politics, believing that the party and the candidates who most support religious liberty and Christian morality, along with strong national security and economic prosperity should be supported.

After growing up in a Democratic family, being related to the Adlai Stevensons (I, II, and III) in Illinois, and serving briefly on staff for Congressman (later Senator) Paul Simon in his first term in the House of Representatives, I converted to become a conservative Republican in 1975 and supported Ronald Reagan in his primary challenge to incumbent Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination for President.  Incumbents are always hard to beat.  Ford won the nomination, lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter, and the US was subjected to four years of the misery index of double-digit inflation, interest rates, and unemployment.  In 1980, the country elected Reagan in a landslide, and the nation went from four years of misery to eight years of remarkable prosperity.

Electorates are fickle; they run after promises of hope and change, and they notoriously fail at learning the lessons of history.  In the past seven years, we have experienced the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression and remain saddled with policies, regulations, and programs that would keep us in recession indefinitely.  Despite the fact that the stock market has done well (largely through being pumped up by the Federal Reserve's easy money policy), real unemployment is unacceptably high, record numbers of people are receiving Food Stamps, and record numbers of recent college graduates are having trouble finding jobs.

According to U.S. News, the country's labor force participation rate – which measures the share of Americans at least 16 years old who are either employed or actively looking for work – dipped last month to a 38-year low, clocking in at an underwhelming 62.6 percent.  And the number of unemployed, together with those who have given up trying to find a job, now stands at nearly 94 million people.  

As the father of one of those recent college graduates who cannot find a job, I recognize all too well that this generation may be the first generation (and the first of many if we aren't careful) to do less well economically than their parents.

So, just as I supported Ronald Reagan in 1976, 1980, and 1984, I am supporting the kind of Constitutional conservative who can undo the damage of the past eight years: Senator Ted Cruz.

I realize that Donald Trump hysteria is sweeping the nation.  I do not believe that is a good thing if we want the kind of principled conservative changes that we need and that only Ted Cruz can deliver.  So what I would say, especially to the Republican establishment, is best summarized in the following excerpt from National Review:

After 24 contests, the pattern is emerging.  Cruz battles Trump for first, while Rubio and Kasich tend to battle each other for last.  This is true in the South, the West, the Northeast, and the Midwest.  Can conservatives finally get serious?  Can we finally unify, now, before Trump starts sweeping winner-take-all states with 35 percent of the vote?  If not, then a foolish GOP will richly deserve its fate.

Read the rest. 
  

Quotes of the Day

From Ace of Spades, where there is more...

Quote of the Day I

The United States within nearly a century of its founding became the wealthiest nation in the history of mankind.  It accomplished this without an income tax, free university tuition, universal health care, or even Social Security.  In Bernie Sanders' lifetime, he witnessed the fall of National Socialists, Soviet Socialists, and more benign iterations of the collectivist ideology.  But he imagines the command economy, rather than the free market, as our savior.

-- Daniel J. Flynn in Socialism, The Nightmare That Never Dies

Quote of the Day II

I'm enjoying the irony of American Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of Socialism and what it really means!  Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please keep it there.  In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions of people out of poverty.  Talking about Socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury that was paid for by the successes of capitalism.  Income inequality is a huge problem, absolutely.  But the idea that the solution is more government, more regulation, more debt, and less risk is dangerously absurd.

-- Garry Kasparov [Russian (formerly Soviet) chess Grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, and political activist]

Quote of the Day III

Arabs have no more creative force.  Islam does not contribute to intellectual life, it suggests no discussion.  It is no longer thought.  It produces no thinking, no art, no science, no vision that could change the world.  This repetition is the sign of its end.  The Arabs will continue to exist, but they will not make the world better.

-- Arabic poet Adunis Asbar

Read the rest.
  

Possibly the Only Thing Bill Maher Ever Said That I Agree With

Col. Allen West wrote recently:

The only aspect of Obama’s presidency we can consider “strong” and “effective” is in paving a path for Donald Trump’s meteoric rise.  Trump’s popularity is seen by many as a direct rebuke to the past seven years and a reflection of widespread anger.

One of the few issues Bill Maher has been right on, going against his fellow liberals, is his criticism of radical Islam.  The regressive left refuses to criticize Islam under any circumstances, and that’s why Bill Maher believes Donald Trump is going to take the presidency this November.

Col. West then went on to quote Bill Maher, who said,

Forty countries in the world have some version of Sharia law.  I just don’t understand how liberals who fought the battle for civil rights in the ’60s, fought against apartheid in the ’80s, can then just simply ignore Sharia law in 40 countries.  Apartheid was only in one.  I am not anti-Muslim and never have been: I am anti-bad ideas.  Killing cartoonists and apostates, these are terrible ideas and practices, and it would be lovely to think that they were confined only to terrorists.  They unfortunately are not.

Not to be an “I told ya so,” but when the Syrian refugee crisis happened, I said, “Certainly our hearts go out to these refugees, but the answer can’t be to empty Syria and every other country in the Middle East where people live under repressive conditions and bring them all to Europe.”  Now Sweden is sending 80,000 refugees back and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is saying, “Hey, when we said you could come here, we didn’t mean permanently.”

Rather than letting them settle in Germany, these millions of young Muslim men, how about let’s train them to go back and fight for their own country?  That’s another one of my issues — the soft bigotry of low expectations.  How come Saudi Arabia didn’t take in any Syrian refugees?  I would think they’d fit in there a little more than in Cologne.  Why don’t they fight their own battles?  Why are Muslim armies so useless against ISIS?  ISIS isn’t 10 feet tall.  There are 20,000 or 30,000 of them.  The countries surrounding ISIS have armies totaling 5 million people.  So why do we have to be the ones leading the fight?  Or be in the fight at all?

So no, Donald Trump is not right — but he will win the election if the American people have to choose between his demagoguery and a party that won’t even say the words “Islamic terrorism.”  I think the Democrats could lose on that issue alone, especially if there’s another attack.

Of course, we all hope and pray there is not another terrorist attack.  But Maher is right about the anger of the American people: anger at Democrats who have responded to the threat of terrorism with an astounding inability to speak clearly and frankly about its source.  

But there is a second anger that is propelling Trump's candidacy: anger of the American people at the Republicans who have failed to present an effective challenge in Congress to the Democrats' lemming-like support for Obama's radical agenda.
 

My Dog, the Democrat?

If it weren't so cold outside, my dog would be in the doghouse.  I caught Cricket staring at the television this morning.  It seems she has found a candidate who speaks her language:

But who pays for Cricket's "free" food, housing, education, and healthcare?  Take a guess.

Bernie Sanders: The Bum Who Wants Your Money

Personally, I take a dim view of people who want to redistribute other people's money because, despite a good education, they were never industrious enough to earn any of their own.

From Investors.com: 

2016: Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said Monday his parents would never have thought their son would end up in the Senate and running for president. No kidding. He was a ne’er-do-well into his late 30s.

“It’s certainly something that I don’t think they ever believed would’ve happened,” the unabashed socialist remarked during CNN’s Democratic town hall forum, as polls show him taking the lead in Iowa and New Hampshire.

He explained his family couldn’t imagine his “success,” because “my brother and I and Mom and Dad grew up in a three-and-a-half-room rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn, and we never had a whole lot of money.”

It wasn’t as bad as he says. His family managed to send him to the University of Chicago. Despite a prestigious degree, however, Sanders failed to earn a living, even as an adult. It took him 40 years to collect his first steady paycheck — and it was a government check.

“I never had any money my entire life,” Sanders told Vermont public TV in 1985, after settling into his first real job as mayor of Burlington.

Sanders spent most of his life as an angry radical and agitator who never accomplished much of anything. And yet now he thinks he deserves the power to run your life and your finances — “We will raise taxes;” he confirmed Monday, “yes, we will.”

One of his first jobs was registering people for food stamps, and it was all downhill from there.
Sanders took his first bride to live in a maple sugar shack with a dirt floor, and she soon left him. Penniless, he went on unemployment. Then he had a child out of wedlock. Desperate, he tried carpentry but could barely sink a nail. “He was a shi**y carpenter,” a friend told Politico Magazine. “His carpentry was not going to support him, and didn’t.”

Then he tried his hand freelancing for leftist rags, writing about “masturbation and rape” and other crudities for $50 a story. He drove around in a rusted-out, Bondo-covered VW bug with no working windshield wipers. Friends said he was “always poor” and his “electricity was turned off a lot.” They described him as a slob who kept a messy apartment — and this is what his friends had to say about him.

The only thing he was good at was talking … non-stop … about socialism and how the rich were ripping everybody off. “The whole quality of life in America is based on greed,” the bitter layabout said. “I believe in the redistribution of wealth in this nation.”

So he tried politics, starting his own socialist party. Four times he ran for Vermont public office, and four times he lost — badly. He never attracted more than single-digit support — even in the People’s Republic of Vermont. In his 1971 bid for U.S. Senate, the local press said the 30-year-old “Sanders describes himself as a carpenter who has worked with ‘disturbed children.’ ” In other words, a real winner.

He finally wormed his way into the Senate in 2006, where he still ranks as one of the poorest members of Congress. Save for a municipal pension, Sanders lists no assets in his name. All the assets provided in his financial disclosure form are his second wife’s. He does, however, have as much as $65,000 in credit-card debt.

Sure, Sanders may not be a hypocrite, but this is nothing to brag about. His worthless background contrasts sharply with the successful careers of other “outsiders” in the race for the White House, including a billionaire developer, a world-renowned neurosurgeon and a Fortune 500 CEO.

The choice in this election is shaping up to be a very clear one. It will likely boil down to a battle between those who create and produce wealth, and those who take it and redistribute it.

  

Anglican Communion Acts--18 Years Late

When the Bishops of the Anglican Communion met at the Lambeth Conference, in 1998, one of the key resolutions passed was number 1.10.  The resolution stated that the Conference, "in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage".  The resolution went on to say that the Conference of bishops, "cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions".

What happened in the years following is well known:  in 2003, the Episcopal Church's General Convention gave consent to the election of a gay bishop, Gene Robinson.  Subsequent General Conventions gave approval to individual bishops who wished to authorize the blessing of same sex relationships, trial rites for the blessing of those relationships; and finally, in 2015, the General Convention gave formal approval to same sex marriages.  

There were plenty of warnings along the way that the effect of these actions would be to rupture the fabric of the Anglican Communion.  To Mend the Net, a 2001 report produced under the leadership of two archbishops, Drexel Gomez and Maurice Sinclair, outlined a series of steps by which an Anglican province considered to be erring might be encouraged to repent and return to orthodox faith and morals.  These steps would start with an initial request not to allow changes considered to be outside the limits of diversity and lead to a "godly admonition."  A diocese or province that refused to cooperate would be reduced to "observer status," followed by suspension of communion, and, finally, as a last resort, the establishment of a new alternative province or diocese.  

To Mend the Net was published in January 2001 and widely read by Anglicans.  Conservatives in the Communion had high hopes.  But when the primates met in March 2001, the report was referred for study to the the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission.  And, while the published report continued to be a study guide among conservatives as to what ought to happen to set the Communion right, To Mend the Net was never officially brought up again.  The Windsor Report, prepared in the aftermath of the Robinson consecration, and the attempt to implement an Anglican Covenant were similarly derailed and disregarded.

It took six years for conservative primates to take another run at bringing discipline to the erring provinces of the Communion: the Dar es Salaam meeting in February 2007.  There, conservative primates from the Global South, tired of being outmaneuvered by conference organizers and western parliamentary tactics, succeeded in imposing an ultimatum:  TEC would be subject to discipline if it failed to give assurances by 30th September 2007 not to authorize Rites of Blessing for same sex unions nor to consecrate persons in such relationships as bishops. 

But, as with To Mend the Net, the will of the primates was once again to be frustrated, as then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, set aside the Primates’ decision by inviting the TEC bishops to the 2008 Lambeth Conference before the deadline.  This resulted in the unprecedented withdrawal of over two hundred orthodox bishops (mostly from the Global South) from attending the conference.  Those bishops and others inaugurated the first Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem later in 2008.  

The most significant outcome of that first GAFCON meeting was the invitation extended to conservative Anglicans in North America to form an alternative province: the Anglican Church in North America.  The rending of the Communion through the disobedience of Communion liberals had occurred, and the final steps envisioned in To Mend the Net--the suspension of communion and the establishment of a new, alternative province--had become a reality.

In retrospect, the tragedy of this history can more clearly be seen:  the painful departure of thousands of North American Anglicans from their church homes, countless millions of dollars spent in litigation.  All of this might have been avoided if the three Archbishops of Canterbury under whose watches all this has occurred had provided faithful, godly, unequivocal leadership.

But there is an even greater tragedy:  "For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? (1 Corinthians 14:8).  Of the three great streams of apostolic Christianity--Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism--two stand unequivocally for historic Christian faith and morals.  Only Anglicanism has equivocated at the highest level.  

The churches of formerly mainline Protestantism have embraced the zeitgeist.  Too many Anglican leaders have chosen the path of mainline Protestantism rather than biblical, apostolic, and catholic faithfulness.  And damage has been done to countless souls through the ambiguous or downright immoral witness of these Anglican leaders and church bodies.  

Many count it a sign of God's grace that, in this week's meeting of the primates in Canterbury, the GAFCON and Global South primates have finally taken an effective stand to restore godly order and discipline to the Anglican Communion.  This is a first step--a baby step--that, though it goes in the right direction, does not go nearly far enough.  Will this first step ultimately lead to the restoration of the Anglican Communion to historic Christian faith and morals?  For that to happen a lot of hearts will have to be changed.

Witness these reactions from the Anglican left:  

  Giles Fraser @giles_fraser Disgraceful communique from the Anglican Primates, disciplining the US church for their prophetic commitment to gay equality.

"Prophetic commitment..." Conservatives have had to listen to this kind of talk for decades.  It is the prophetic voice of Balaam who perverted the message of God.  

Tracey Bishop @Thebishoptrace  @giles_fraser As a Deacon, I wonder, how do I now minister to the lost? What do I now say? Are those not Christ's arms outstretched?

Tracey, we minister to the lost by telling them that God loves them. It does not mean that he loves their sins. If we want God's salvation, we cannot be like the rich young ruler who held on to those things that kept him from truly following Jesus.

And, finally, remember the liberal, Roman Catholic celebrity priest who was received into the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida in 2009? :

Father Albert Cutie  @padrealberto Those who seek to divide and discriminate others should never deceive themselves into thinking they are doing God's work. #Primates2016

Alberto, we do not seek to discriminate against anyone but to help them to know the transforming love of Jesus Christ.  Leaving people in their sins because the culture says it is okay is not being a minister of Christ's redemption to them.  

As you can see, there is a very great deal to be done to win the hearts and minds of even those who are Anglican clergy if we are to restore the Communion to faithfulness.  Although we have been praying for such a restoration for years, we are going to have to work and pray as never before if we are to see the Anglican Communion once again embrace the apostolic and catholic faith, and submit its common life to the authority of Scripture.
  

New York Times: Germany Should Close Borders, Conduct Mass Deportations, AND Merkel Must Resign

From the New York Times:

On New Year’s Eve, in the shadow of Cologne’s cathedral, crowds of North African and Middle Eastern men accosted women out for the night’s festivities.  They surrounded them, groped them, robbed them.  Two women were reportedly raped.

Though there were similar incidents from Hamburg to Helsinki, the authorities at first played down the assaults, lest they prove inconvenient for Angela Merkel’s policy of mass asylum for refugees.

That delay has now cost Cologne’s police chief his job.  But the German government still seems more concerned about policing restless natives — most recently through a deal with Facebook and Google to restrict anti-immigrant postings — than with policing migration.  Just last week Merkel rejected a proposal to cap refugee admissions (which topped one million last year) at 200,000 in 2016.

The underlying controversy here is not a new one.  For decades conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have warned that Europe’s generous immigration policies, often pursued in defiance of ordinary Europeans’ wishes, threaten to destabilize the continent.

The conservatives have made important points about the difficulty of assimilation, the threat of radicalization, and the likelihood of Paris-style and Cologne-style violence in European cities.

But they have also trafficked in more apocalyptic predictions — fears of a “Eurabia,” of mass Islamification — that were somewhat harder to credit.  Until recently, Europe’s assimilation challenge looked unpleasant but not insurmountable, and the likelihood of Yugoslavian-style balkanization relatively remote.

Read the full article here.

Why Thomas Aquinas Distrusted Islam

Just as I was quoting Hilaire Belloc on Islam in my previous post, Breitbart ran this brief but cogent article citing the great Doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas' views on this subject, which is once again timely after 800 years.

From Breitbart:

Why Thomas Aquinas Distrusted Islam

(by THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.  27 Dec 2015)

The 13th-century scholar Thomas Aquinas, regarded as one of the most eminent medieval philosophers and theologians, offered a biting critique of Islam based in large part on the questionable character and methods of its founder, Mohammed. 

According to Aquinas, Islam appealed to ignorant, brutish, carnal men and spread not by the power of its arguments or divine grace but by the power of the sword.

Aquinas, a keen observer of the human condition, was familiar with the chief works of the Muslim philosophers of his day–including Avicenna, Algazel, and Averroes–and engaged them in his writings.

Since Islam was founded and spread in the seventh century, Aquinas—considered by Catholics as a saint and doctor of the Church—lived in a period closer to that of Mohammed than to our own day.

In one of his most significant works, the voluminous Summa contra gentiles, which Aquinas wrote between 1258 and 1264 AD, the scholar argued for the truth of Christianity against other belief systems, including Islam.

Aquinas contrasts the spread of Christianity with that of Islam, arguing that much of Christianity’s early success stemmed from widespread belief in the miracles of Jesus, whereas the spread of Islam was worked through the promise of sensual pleasures and the violence of the sword.

Mohammad, Aquinas wrote, “seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure.”

Such an offer, Aquinas contended, appealed to a certain type of person of limited virtue and wisdom.

“In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men,” he wrote. “As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity.”

Because of the weakness of Islam’s contentions, Aquinas argued, “no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning.” Instead, those who believed in him “were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms.”

Islam’s violent methods of propagation were especially unconvincing to Aquinas, since he found that the use of such force does not prove the truth of one’s claims, and are the means typically used by evil men.

“Mohammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms,” Aquinas wrote, “which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants.”

At the time Aquinas was writing, Islam was generally considered a Christian heresy, since it drew so heavily on Christian texts and beliefs. Aquinas wrote that Mohammed “perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be seen by anyone who examines his law.”

According to the noted historian Hilaire Belloc, Islam “began as a heresy, not as a new religion. It was not a pagan contrast with the Church; it was not an alien enemy. It was a perversion of Christian doctrine. Its vitality and endurance soon gave it the appearance of a new religion, but those who were contemporary with its rise saw it for what it was—not a denial, but an adaptation and a misuse, of the Christian thing.”

In his Summa contra gentiles, Aquinas ends his argument against Islam by offering a backhanded compliment to Mohammed, noting that he had to keep his followers ignorant in order for them to remain faithful.

It was, Aquinas wrote, “a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity.”

“It is thus clear that those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly,” he wrote.

Many thanks to Dr. Williams for making contemporary readers aware of Aquinas' insights.

Hilaire Belloc's Prophetic Words about Islam

The words of Roman Catholic writer, Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), writing in the early 20th century, when Christianity was the world's predominant religion and Islam was at a critical low, now seem prophetic in the light of current events.  Consider these quotes from chapter five of Belloc's book, Survivals and New Arrivals and from chapter four of The Great Heresies,"The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed":

"Islam presents a totally different problem from that attached to any other religious body opposed to Catholicism.  To understand it we must appreciate its origins, character and recent fate.  Only then can we further appreciate its possible or probable future relations with enemies of the Catholic effort throughout the world." 

"When the man who produced it (and it is more the creation of one man than any other false religion we know) was young, the whole of the world which he knew...was Catholic.  It was still, though in the process of transformation, the Christian Roman Empire, stretching from the English Channel to the borders of his own desert."  

"Now what Mohamet did was this.  He took over the principal doctrines of the Catholic Church--one personal God, Creator of all things; the immortality of the soul; an eternity of misery or blessedness--and no small part of Christian morals as well...  But at the same time he attempted an extreme simplification." 

"Many another heresiarch has done this, throwing overboard such and such too profound doctrines, and appealing to the less intelligent by getting rid of mysteries through a crude denial of them.  

"With the energy of his personality behind that highly simplified, burning enthusiasm, he first inflamed his own few desert folk, and they in turn proceeded to impose their new enthusiasm very rapidly over vast areas of what had been until then a Catholic civilization; and their chief allies in this sweeping revolution were politically the doctrine of equality and spiritually the doctrine of simplicity.  Everybody troubled by the mysteries of Catholicism tended to join them; so did every slave or debtor who was oppressed by the complexity of a higher civilization.  

"For centuries the struggle between Islam and the Catholic Church continued.  It had varying fortunes, but for something like a thousand years the issue remained doubtful.  It was not until the year 1700 that Christian culture seemed for a time-- to be definitely the master.  

"During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Mohammedan world fell under a kind of palsy...  At last by the end of the nineteenth century, more than nine-tenths of the Mohammedan population of the world...had fallen under the government of nominally Christian nations, especially of England and France." 

"Millions of modern people of the white civilization--that is, the civilization of Europe and America--have forgotten all about Islam.  They have never come in contact with it.  They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them.  It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past." 

"On this account our generation came to think of Islam as something naturally subject to ourselves.  We no longer regarded it as a rival to our own culture, we thought of its religion as a sort of fossilized thing about which we need not trouble."  

"That was almost certainly a mistake.  We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near future.  Perhaps if we lose our faith it will rise."  

"Remember that our Christian civilization is in peril of complete breakdown.  An enemy would say that it is living upon its past; and certainly those who steadfastly hold its ancient Catholic doctrine stand on guard as it were in a state of siege; they are a minority both in power and in numbers.  Upon such a state of affairs a steadfast, permanent, convinced, simple philosophy and rule of life, intensely adhered to, and close at hand, may now that the various sections of the world are so much interpenetrating one and the other, be of effect. 

"We must remember that the subjection of the Mohammedan --a purely political subjection --was accomplished by nothing more subtle or enduring than a superiority in weapons and mechanical invention.  We must further remember that this superiority dates from a very short time ago." 

"A little more and there will cease that which our time has taken for granted, the physical domination of Islam by the disintegrated Christendom we know."

As Belloc predicted, a radical and militant Islam has arisen to fill the void left by Christianity's decline and the decadence of the West.  The ultimate answer to the threat of Islam from within or without the United States is not primarily a military solution; it is a spiritually renewed and virtuous people who believe and live their lives with faith in Jesus Christ.  
  

[CORRECTION:] Is the Pope Catholic?

Well, it appears that, according to Snopes, the quotation below, attributed to Pope Francis is a fake. 

“Jesus Christ, Jehovah, Allah.  These are all names employed to describe an entity that is distinctly the same across the world.  For centuries, blood has been needlessly shed because of the desire to segregate our faiths.  This, however, should be the very concept which unites us as people, as nations, and as a world bound by faith.  Together, we can bring about an unprecedented age of peace, all we need to achieve such a state is to respect each others beliefs, for we are all children of God regardless of the name we choose to address him by.  We can accomplish miraculous things in the world by merging our faiths, and the time for such a movement is now.  No longer shall we slaughter our neighbors over differences in reference to their God.”

Read the rest (from the website that posted the fake quote!)

However, I am struck by the fact that, if you read my previous post about the professor at Wheaton college who is wearing a hijab during the season of Advent, she also believed the Pope said we all worship the same God.  To quote Professor Hawkins again:

"I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book.  And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God," Hawkins stated.   

The great tragedy is that, given the rise of an uncritical, unthinking pluralism among so much of establishment Christianity, it was entirely believable that Pope Francis could have said the words falsely attributed to him.  After all, a professor at Wheaton College bought this line of thinking to the point she started wearing a hijab and got suspended for it!  She may well have read the same fake quote that I did and said to herself, "Yup, sounds good to me!"

So the rest of what I had to say about the theological issues at stake when trying to say that Christianity and Islam are compatible still applies.  Professor Hawkins, quoted this sentiment approvingly in order to gloss over the differences between Christianity and Islam, and, in doing so, is engaging in universalism and syncretism that diminish and even deny the uniqueness of the Christian Gospel. 

Which is all the more reason to cite Pope John Paul II, who, while being very impressed by the religiosity of Muslims, nevertheless wrote in Crossing the Threshold of Hope,

Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation.  It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God said about Himself, first in the Old Testament through the Prophets, and then finally in the New Testament through His Son.  In Islam all the richness of God's self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside. 

Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us.  Islam is not a religion of redemption.  There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection.  Jesus is mentioned, but only as a prophet who prepares for the last prophet, Muhammad.  There is also mention of Mary, His Virgin Mother, but the tragedy of redemption is completely absent.  For this reason not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity. 

That the revelation of God through his Son has been "set aside," as John Paul says, is seen in verses from the Koran such as these,

• “The Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, was no more than God’s apostle . . .God is but one God. GOD FORBID THAT HE SHOULD HAVE A SON!” (4:171)
• Those who say: “The Lord of Mercy has begotten a son, preach a monstrous falsehood, at which the very heavens might crack . . .” (19:88)
• “Praise be to Allah who has never begotten a son; who has no partner in His Kingdom . . .” (17:111)

The challenge of Islam to both Christianity and Judaism is seen even more clearly when one considers the construction of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque (completed in AD 691 and 705, respectively) on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which was a popular site for Christian pilgrimage in the Byzantine era, thus precluding Jewish worship at Judaism's holiest site, while, at the same time, challenging Christianity with words emblazoned in Arabic on both buildings: “God has no Son.”  In the very place where God says his Son's throne will be established (Psalm 2:6, 10-12), Islam challenges the very existence of the Son and the reality of the promise.

Pope Benedict XVI invited controversy when he said, regarding Islam, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The early 20th century Roman Catholic author,  Hilaire Belloc, was prophetic in predicting: “We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near future.  Perhaps if we lose our faith, it will rise.”

I plan on posting more quotes from Belloc later this week because his warnings are prescient.  And while most of the world would rejoice at the prospect of genuine peace between Christians and Muslims, naïveté and bad theology in the face of a radical and aggressive Islam are not the way to achieve that end.
  

The Hijab-wearing Wheaton College Professor: Why It Matters

Last week Wheaton College Associate Professor of Political Science, Larycia Hawkins, announced that she would wear a hijab — a Muslim headscarf — during the season of Advent.  Controversy ensued in the evangelical world and the professor has since been suspended.

While I am a strong supporter of both the freedom of speech and academic freedom, I applaud Wheaton College's decision.  An academic institution such as Wheaton, if it is to continue to be considered an evangelical Christian school, must be clear about the uniqueness of the Christian faith.  Prof. Hawkins' decision about wearing the hijab and her comments in defense of it raise a number of very serious theological issues

Hawkins made her announcement on her Facebook page, saying her outward gesture — she’ll don the hijab everywhere she goes during Advent — is a demonstration of “human solidarity with my Muslim neighbor.”

Larycia Hawkins (Image source: Facebook)

"I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book.  And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God," Hawkins stated.  "But as I tell my students, theoretical solidarity is not solidarity at all.  Thus, beginning tonight, my solidarity has become embodied solidarity."

“As part of my Advent Worship, I will wear the hijab to work at Wheaton College, to play in Chi-town, in the airport, and on the airplane to my home state that initiated one of the first anti-Sharia laws, and at church,” Hawkins said, adding that she hopes others will join her cause.

Hawkins said she also sought the “advice and blessing” of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to make sure her gesture wouldn’t be “haram (forbidden), patronizing, or otherwise offensive to Muslims.” Well, it was all good with CAIR, she said.

One would hope that even political science professors at Wheaton College, long considered a bastion of evangelical Christian higher education, would have a better understanding of the religious and theological issues involved in such a statement.

The God of the Christian New Testament is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--the First Person of an eternal Trinity, which consists of one God in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  The eternal Second Person of that Trinity, the Son, became incarnate as Jesus, the Christ, through being conceived in the Virgin Mary by the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  This same Jesus died as an atonement for sin, rose bodily on the third day and ascended to the right hand of God the Father, from whence he shall come again to judge the living and the dead.

This is the teaching of the New Testament and the witness of the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.  And herein lies the problem: Islam completely and absolutely denies and rejects everything about this description of God.  Consequently, the Allah of Islam and the God of biblical Christianity cannot possibly be the same.

We all too often hear it said that Christians Jews and Muslims are all "people of the book."  People of what book?  Just as the Allah of Islam is not the God confessed by orthodox Christians and Jews, the Koran is totally incompatible with the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.  The Koran mentions Jesus but denies that he is God's Son and that he died and rose again.  Indeed, the Koran denies the cardinal teachings of the New Testament concerning Jesus and corrupts the teaching of the Old Testament concerning Abraham to the extent that the teaching of Islam can only be accurately described as apostasy from the teaching of Judaism and Christianity.

So, no, despite the attempt of some religious leaders to equate "the three Abrahamic faiths" and to say that they are compatible, they are not.  Christian - Muslim relations will not be helped by blurring the distinction between the two religious but rather by being very candid and truthful about the differences.  Wheaton College is taking a very clear and necessary step in that direction.
 

After Muslim Truckers Refuse to Deliver Beer, Obama Administration Sues... Their Employer!!!!

[Verified on Truth or Fiction:]

The administration of Barack Obama just sided with Muslims to enforce Islamic Sharia Law on an American business, leaving many outraged and two Fox News anchors absolutely stunned.

Two Muslim truck drivers — former Somali “refugees” — refused to make deliveries of beer to stores for their employer.  So they were understandably fired.  They claimed it was a violation of their religious beliefs — even though Islam bars only the consumption of alcohol.  And, as the employer pointed out, the workers knew they would have to deliver alcohol before they took the job.

So guess what Barack Obama did.  He SUED the employers on behalf of the pair, Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale, claiming religious discrimination.

Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) represented them in the case, providing tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars in legal support, judicial filings and court appearances against the employer who was hopelessly outgunned by the Federal government.

And this week the Muslims were awarded a stunning $240,000 by a jury, presided over by an Obama appointee who stunned analysts by allowing the case to go forward at all.

Fox News hosts Megyn Kelly and Andrew Napolitano were flabbergasted:




“The Obama administration actually represented the two Muslims in this case.  But has sometimes taken a very different position in the case of Christians trying to assert their religious beliefs.”

She then said to Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano:  “So in the case of the Muslim truck drivers, the Obama administration through the EEOC is all in.  This is what they said: ‘We are proud to support the rights of workers to equal treatment in the workplace without having to sacrifice their religious beliefs or practices; it’s fundamental to the American principles of religious freedom and tolerance.’  But when it comes to the Christian bakers, it’s not as fundamental.”

Napolitano was equally perplexed:  “That’s correct.  It’s unfortunate when the government interferes in a private dispute over religious views, and takes sides, and chooses one religion over another.”   To their point, the Christian owners of “Melissa’s Sweet Cakes” were fined $135,000 by the state of Oregon for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple.  And Kentucky clerk Kim Davis was jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

Napolitano offered an explanation for the administration’s interest in the Muslim truck driver case:  “The way the feds intervened … they wanted this case because they wanted to make the point that they've now made.”

The U.S. Government and the courts can't legally have one set of laws for Christians and another set of laws for Muslims and other religious groups.  But now they do.  Obama’s actions and this court’s ruling makes it clear that not all Americans are legally recognized as possessing religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

As George Orwell might put it, Obama has now established that Muslims are more equal than Christians in America.
 

A Country Founded by Geniuses but Run by Idiots

Often attributed to Jeff Foxworthy, but actually first published by Fritz Edmunds, who posted it to his "Politically True" blog back on 3 February 2013 (albeit with a disclaimer noting that "some of the ideas were from an e-mail that did not contain any copyright"):

If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If the government wants to prevent stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines that hold more than ten rounds, but gives twenty F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders [Muslim Brotherhood] in Egypt — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If, in the nation’s largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not one 24-ounce soda, because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If an 80-year-old woman who is confined to a wheelchair or a three-year-old girl can be strip-searched by the TSA at the airport, but a woman in a burka or a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If a seven-year-old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher is “cute” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government regulation and intrusion while not working is rewarded with Food Stamps, WIC checks, Medicaid benefits, subsidized housing, and free cell phones — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If being stripped of your Constitutional right to defend yourself makes you more “safe” according to the government — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.​

GOD HELP US - WE DO LIVE IN SUCH A COUNTRY THAT IS RUN BY IDIOTS--OR WORSE!!!
  

Yes, Virginia, There Is a War on Christmas

VA Medical Center Reportedly Bans Christmas Trees From ‘Any Public Areas This Year’ — and Now Lawyers Are Making a Demand

From The Blaze where there is more:

A conservative legal firm fired off a letter to a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical center on Tuesday in an effort to push back against a memo that was reportedly emailed to staff last week, effectively banning Christmas trees from display in public areas within the facility. 

That decision was overturned following outrage, but the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal firm, is now requesting a written assurance that the medical center will respect the religious rights of its employees and of those it serves. 

The veterans’ center, located in Salem, Virginia, purportedly said in the memo that staff members could only engage in ”private religious expression in their personal work areas that are not regularly open to the public” in an effort to be welcoming to all. 

“The wording of the memo leaves open the possibility that employees could be punished for Christmas decorations or ‘merry Christmas’ greetings to veterans except in personal workstations that are out of public view,” reads a press release from the Alliance Defending Freedom. 

Here’s the memo that was reportedly emailed to staff:

A copy of the memo that was reportedly distributed (Alliance Defending Freedom)
The document reportedly took specific aim at Christmas trees as well, with the text proclaiming that such decorations are unwelcome in public areas. 

“Please note that trees (regarless of the types of ornaments used) have been deemed to promote the Christian religion and will not be permitted in any public areas this year,” reads a copy of the document that was posted by the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Read the rest.
  

French Lesson

This World War II poster illustrates a lesson about ISIS that should be clear from the tragedy in Paris:

Col. James S. Munday, Happy 100th!

I was in Savannah, Georgia last weekend for my last surviving uncle's 100th birthday.

Lt. Munday in 1942

Col. James Stanley Munday's flying career began several years prior to World War II, when he and some buddies barnstormed all over the Midwest.  When the war arrived, "Uncle Stan," as many in the family now call him, went off to flight training for the US Army Air Force (before the US Air Force became a separate branch of the military) and emerged as a First Lieutenant and pilot (yes, you read that right, he skipped 2nd Lieutenant), commanding the crew of a B-24 "Liberator" bomber.

Before he could depart for overseas duty, the Air Force commandeered his squadron's B-24s for anti-submarine duty and switched Lt. Munday over to the venerable B-17 "Flying Fortress."  With barely more than a few hours to get "checked out" on the B-17, Lt. Munday found himself and a crew ferrying their own B-17 over to the 384th Bomb Group at Grafton Underwood, England, which would be their base for the duration of the war.

Bastille Day, July 14, 1943 found the Americans engaged in a "maximum effort" assault to show our French allies that we were determined to win their freedom and achieve victory over the Nazis.  After bombing the Nazi-occupied Villacoublay Airfield and aircraft factories outside Paris, Lt. Munday and his crew succumbed to enemy flak and strafing from Focke-Wulf 190s.  Lt. Munday himself took an enemy machine gun round from a FW 190 in the leg.  Keeping the B-17 aloft while his crew bailed out, Lt. Munday finally bailed out almost too low for safety.

Col. Munday (2nd from left) with Alex Gotovsky (left)

Landing in his parachute in a grove of trees, near the village of Les Essarts-le-Roi, Lt. Munday was aided by a young French boy, Alex Gotovsky, who hid Munday's parachute and directed him to a hiding place.  (Young Alex' family had become refugees in France following the Communist Revolution in Russia.)

The treatment and recovery from the wound in Munday's leg would take many weeks.  Finally, with the help of the French Underground, Lt. Munday was disguised as a French surveyor, equipped with forged identity papers and sent south.  Being out of uniform and in civilian clothes with forged papers meant Munday would be shot as a spy if caught.  The long journey led over the Pyrenees (traveling through the mountains at night on foot) to Barcelona, then Madrid, then at last to Gibraltar, where he could secure a flight that would take him back to his base in England.

Col. Munday in 1963

Thus began an Air Force career that would take James Stanley Munday through B-29 duty in the Pacific, hurricane hunting over the Atlantic, and finally into the ranks of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in which he would spend the remainder of a long and distinguished career.  In those years, he flew every model of bomber and tanker (and most of the transports) that the Air Force possessed, becoming a Command Pilot and rising to the rank of Colonel.

In 1997, Col. Munday returned to the village of Les Essarts-le-Roi where he was awarded a medal and had the opportunity to be reunited with Alex Gotovsky, the young boy who had once helped him hide from the Nazis, both of them now much older.

The celebration of Col. Munday's birthday took place at the national "Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum" ourside Savannah, which Col. Munday helped found and where he volunteered each week as a guide for many years.  There was nothing quite like hearing about the Mighty Eighth Air Force's many adventures from a pilot who had been a part of them all.

Col. Munday with yours truly at his 100th birthday celebration.

If you are ever in the Savannah area, I strongly encourage you to take a tour of the museum, with its many exhibits and aircraft, and the magnificent grounds with a chapel that is a reconstructed English parish church like the one near their World War II base at Grafton  Underwood, England.

Col. Munday turned 100 years old on November 1 and is still sharp, vigorous, and in good health.  In what I consider to be a real act of faith, he just bought a new computer.  He will probably outlast this one too.

John Rhys-Davies on political correctness, Islam, and the greatness of western civilization

Gimli takes an axe to political correctness in this interview:

But the real point is, if you play down the things that bind you, you weaken a society. If you do not believe that America is great, if you’re not allowed to say ‘My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,’ you will find sectional forces in your country trying to break it down. All countries have centrifugal forces trying to tear them apart. The way that you hold your society together is because you have that extraordinary document, the Constitution. Be very wary of people who seek to change the Constitution because it is the glue that holds your disparate peoples together.

Western Christian civilization, of which you’re a part, is one of the great glories of mankind. These are the things we stand for. We stand for liberty, liberty of association, freedom of speech. We stand for the equality of everyone in our society before the law, men as well as women. We could make a list of all the things. But let’s get back to respecting these things. These are the glories of our ancestors. These are what thousands of our ancestors died to protect and preserve. And if we allow those things to go because we are afraid of being politically incorrect, or of hurting somebody by suggesting that perhaps their value system may not be quite as nice as ours, then we are fools, and ultimately, scoundrels.

 There's much more. Read it all.
 

Will the World End on October 7th?

Well, since it is now October 8, I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, the answer is, "No!"

Chris McCann, the founder of the fringe Christian group eBible Fellowship, said the world was going to end on October 7, 2015.  He confidently claimed that the Earth would be completely “annihilated.” 

According to McCann, God “shut the door to heaven” on May 21, 2011, meaning that "salvation is ended."  (I am wondering how he explains all those who have come to faith in Christ since then.)

But none of this means that McCann isn’t hedging his bets.  Looking at the website yesterday, I couldn't help but notice that they had a schedule of broadcasts posted for October 8th and the days following.

Of course, in making this prediction, McCann is simply adding himself to the list of those down through history who have predicted the end of the world.

There comes a point at which orthodox Christians must say "Enough!" to foolishness of this sort.  Why?  Because our Lord is going to return and the world is going to end someday, and the Scriptures have much to say concerning that end.  Scripture tells Christians to be watchful and to be ready.  But it also admonishes us, "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Matthew 24:36).

Just before his Ascension, the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”  Jesus replied, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority (Acts 1:7).  

The damage done by Christians who purport to know the date of Jesus' return or the end of the world is that it brings the legitimate prophecies of those events, the totality of the Bible, and even Christianity as a whole into disrepute.  Misguided teachers seeking the limelight end up making the Christian faith the subject of jokes and ridicule.  

As one who teaches systematic theology, I firmly believe that we are called to teach about eschatology—the study of prophecy and the end times.  And as a pastor I know that we are called to be prepared, sober, and vigilant.  But part of being "sober" in this context means that we are commanded to avoid those things that "promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God's work—which is by faith" (1 Timothy 1:4, 1 Timothy 6:4, 2 Timothy 2:14, Titus 3:9).

When people make sensational predictions about the return of Christ or the end of the world, it is more about them than about the Gospel, because people focus more on the prediction and the one making it than they do on Jesus.  But when the prediction doesn't come true (as it hasn't 100% of the time thus far) the world scoffs not only at the prediction but at the Lord the one making the prediction claims to represent.

My advice to Mr. McCann and other end-time speculators: Preach the Gospel, win souls for Christ, build up his Church.  It may not get your name in the media as much, but it will bring more glory to Christ, which is what Christian ministry is about in the first place.