Lord's Day 9
26. Q. What do you believe when you say: I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth?
A. That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and all that is in them,[1] and who still upholds and governs them by His eternal counsel and providence,[2] is, for the sake of Christ His Son, my God and my Father.[3] In Him I trust so completely as to have no doubt that He will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul,[4] and will also turn to my good whatever adversity He sends me in this life of sorrow.[5] He is able to do so as almighty God,[6] and willing also as a faithful Father.[7]
[1] Gen. 1 and 2; Ex. 20:11; Job 38 and 39; Ps. 33:6; Is. 44:24; Acts 4:24; 14:15. [2] Ps. 104:27-30; Matt. 6:30; 10:29; Eph. 1:11. [3] John 1:12, 13; Rom. 8:15, 16; Gal. 4:4-7; Eph. 1:5. [4] Ps. 55:22; Matt. 6:25, 26; Luke 12:22-31. [5] Rom. 8:28. [6] Gen. 18:14; Rom. 8:31-39. [7] Matt. 6:32, 33; 7:9-11.

by Jerry Bannon

Yesterday I saw some projections on television of United States historic debt/GDP ratios. Intrigued, I decided to do some web research of just what this multi-trillion dollar budget/deficit might have upon the future. What I found was far from reassuring. Did anyone had a valid idea of what all this all meant?

First, things look much different depending upon whether you put your ratios in dollars or in percentages. Things look much better in percentages because you divide everything by 100, which has a tendency to level out the graphs.

Then it really gets complicated because you find out that all the reports are generated by people with vested interests to promote a specific economic worldview. Hence conservative economists state that the current deficits are binding our children with debts they cannot hope to repay. The more liberal spin is that these deficits are basically inconsequential when we look at long term future liabilities related to future entitlements.

There are gems of truth in it all; it is just that all the findings get buried in the noise of the rhetoric. So both sides are really trying to raise or suppress the fears of specific interest groups that pay their bills. Which verifies the effects of the natural law of the stasis of present reality over an unknown future.

In similar light, leadership from each side promotes the findings to foster their present economic self-interest and the noise again increases accompanied with an increased probability of chaos or entropy. What this does is to increase the certainty that we always overestimate the best and underestimate the worst. This all dependent upon our primary presuppositions.

What all these numbers quantify, is that numbers are incapable of imagination. Imagination is the one quality of the human personality that has allowed for the rise of all human civilization. In short, the imaginative rule and prosper, the unimaginative are eliminated from the gene pool.
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Tags: debt, economics, leadership, imagination

As I was listening to some of the discussions of our current financial crisis, one of the commentators began listing some of the impressive creations of literature that came out of financial hardships, wars, and similar stupendous change events. One of the books mentioned was “All Quiet on the Western Front” chronicling the events that brought about the end of WWI, the war to end all wars.

Shortly thereafter I was treated to both far right and far left pundits interrupting each other with pedantic talking points, none of them showing any civility to each other or to the host. Since this financial catastrophe finds its roots in the material crusades of Western Culture, I mused that what we were all hearing was “All Noise on the Western Front.”

Human beings are unique in all of God’s creation, in that we have some cognitive understanding of life. Yet we have developed or fallen to such a desperate condition that we have become completely hostile to others who do not share our appreciation of dead stuff in the way we suppose is the proper way that stuff and money should be acquired. The noise is deafening, almost like artillery attacks, but we have completely missed the fact that we all share a tremendous transcendent gift and that is life itself.

The talk for the last few months is that we have to save the financial system. The current Administration’s conscience is that somehow, someway, throwing enough money at the problem, we hope, we can fix it. There is one truth in all of this; we are throwing money at the problem, definitely not wealth. Eventually wealth will again surface and money will again become worthwhile, but the way things look now, there needs to be a significant change in attitude and policies.

Tuesday Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said he hoped that the recession would end this year. This hope gave the stock market hope and it regained much of what it lost last Friday. Later that evening President Obama gave a similar speech to a joint session of Congress. Today and following we will find out if those words, just words, will change the perception of economic realities. It seems from my perspective that he is intent on growing government with little understanding on how to pay for it.
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Tags: Barack Obama, money, fear, noise and toys, fiscal responsibility, money, diversely unified civility

Lord's Day 8
24. Q. How are these articles divided?
A. Into three parts: the first is about God the Father and our creation; the second about God the Son and our redemption; the third about God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification.

25. Q. Since there is only one God,[1] why do you speak of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
A. Because God has so revealed Himself in His Word[2] that these three distinct persons are the one, true, eternal God.
[1] Deut. 6:4; Is. 44:6; 45:5; I Cor. 8:4, 6. [2] Gen. 1:2, 3; Is. 61:1; 63:8-10; Matt. 3:16, 17; 28:18, 19; Luke 4:18; John 14:26; 15:26; II Cor. 13:14; Gal. 4:6; Tit. 3:5, 6. God the Father and Our Creation

The Roots of Liberal Condescension by William Voegeli

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Proverbs 9:10

We began last week with the above quotation from Proverbs, which is the ultimate causative agent in the affairs of man. If the road to passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 doesn’t verify that reality, you truly are not inclined to face the real world.

Blame it on television, especially the Friday night show Numb3rs, where the bad guy almost got away with murder by tampering with the jury. Then math, especially probability theory, figured out how he did it. He succeeded, but only to the closing scene. Add to that a link in Saturday’s WSJ Online email on the Committee on Doubt and Uncertainty, concerning the House Financial Services Committee and we have a program for this week’s column.

Fear is the prime motivator in all-human decisions, or more precisely, the desire for security in the face of the unknown is what makes us do certain things pretty much all the time. To shine some light into that darkness we created the following equation. (For Windows users rather than use a specific math character set, we have attempted to express the variables in standard keyboard text.)

What we want to find out is what is the true Success Probability of any action we take to solve some perceived problem using a Process Factor or factors, which is basically defined as the way we have always done it. This is coupled directly with the Perceived Success over the years we have followed that path. We multiply that average by our Hoped Results and an undefined Fear Factor, which is divided over the Actual Results achieved over time. To use this equation for future predictions we must estimate the Actual Results to calculate the estimated Fear Factor.
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Tags: exclusively exclusive, Barack Obama, socialism, Natural Law, Glenn Beck, Join or Die, diversely unified civility

Lord's Day 7
20. Q. Are all men, then, saved by Christ just as they perished through Adam?
A. No. Only those are saved who by a true faith are grafted into Christ and accept all His benefits.[1]
[1] Matt. 7:14; John 1:12; 3:16, 18, 36; Rom. 11:16-21.

21. Q. What is true faith?
A. True faith is a sure knowledge whereby I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in His Word.[1] At the same time it is a firm confidence[2] that not only to others, but also to me,[3] God has granted forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation,[4] out of mere grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits.[5] This faith the Holy Spirit works in my heart by the gospel.[6]
[1] John 17:3, 17; Heb. 11:1-3; James 2:19. [2] Rom. 4:18-21; 5:1; 10:10; Heb. 4:16. [3] Gal. 2:20. [4] Rom. 1:17; Heb. 10:10. [5] Rom.3:20-26; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8-10. [6] Acts 16:14; Rom. 1:16; 10:17; I Cor. 1:21.

22. Q. What, then, must a Christian believe?
A. All that is promised us in the gospel,[1] which the articles of our catholic and undoubted Christian faith teach us in a summary.
[1] Matt. 28:19; John 20:30, 31.

23. Q. What are these articles?

A 1. I believe in God the Father almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth.
2. I believe in Jesus Christ,
His only begotten Son, our Lord;
3. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary;
4. suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;
He descended into hell;
5. On the third day He arose from the dead;
6. He ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand
of God the Father almighty; III.
7. from there He will come to judge
the living and the dead.
8. I believe in the Holy Spirit;
9. I believe a holy catholic Christian church,
the communion of saints;
10. the forgiveness of sins;
11. the resurrection of the body;
12. and the life everlasting.

The external link to Glenn Beck’s website.

Tags: Glenn Beck, nine principles, twelve values, sense of humor

Today on Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday, we should pause to reflect on one often overlooked benefit of Honest Abe’s administration. That was the creation of the original Greenback Dollar, which put the United States monetary system on a solid foundation after the Civil War. Until it was replaced by The Fed in 1913, that Greenback maintained and fueled the growth of a half a century of continual, if not always steady economic growth.

In our columns over the not so recent history, we have outlined the need for a similar world money supply that actually meant something. Just as investors have found out as their investments have disappeared on Wall Street, the unworthiness of major banks and other financial institutions become more apparent, and government debt now is habitually described in trillions, what are people to do with the limited funds they might be hoping to save for a future monsoon of inflation?

Humorously the concept of burying it in the backyard, or putting it under the mattress have been used. Most of those concepts stem from the Great Depression, where the lack of money was universal, but its value was not questioned. Today that concept has change to the point, where world governments, led by the US Treasury and The Fed, are creating ex nihilo money in a fashion not much different from paper companies making high end toilet paper.

Precious metals throughout human history have been the source of maintaining wealth in turbulent times. Calling February 2009 a turbulent time is pretty much an understatement. There is a significant database on the Internet forecasting the demise of western civilization essentially on the lack of a foundation for the world’s money. Just as with all commodities, precious metals, along with energy and currencies themselves are subject to manipulation by market making players, using abhorrently leveraged electronic transfers of these colorful pieces of national sovereignty.

The thing that makes precious metals attractive these days is that you can take possession of it physically and bury it in the backyard or put it under your mattress if you so choose, even though a more secure storage is advisable. As uncertainty increases however, there will be an increasing call to put currencies back on the gold standard. One of the those advocates is Judy Shelton who’s recent column, Capitalism Needs a Sound-Money Foundation in the Wall Street Journal, makes that case.

There may be gold already in your backyard, or back forty, if you are a rural landholder. If you would like to know for sure I will be more than happy to help you get it into a form that can be marketable. However most people really have no concept of how small $1000 of gold really is in today’s market, more like a bean than even a cherry. Silver today is about $13.50t/oz and you can buy an old fashioned silver coins, which are 90% silver, in straight or mixed bags. I found non-collectable silver dollars priced from about $16 -20 depending on quality. If things get really bad it can be used as de facto money, even if it is more fact than paper tender. The same can be true for old silver coins of all sizes.

Precious metals have never been worth nothing, never. Money, paper money or electronic bits, can be made to have real value if governments were or are willing to reel in their historic inflationary tactics. Don’t expect that to happen soon, we still have a number of economic stimuli and related economic noise to fund before that opportunity presents itself. In the mean time, a few silver coins, or small silver bullion bars, will give you some security for the uncertain financial future.

Tags: Abraham Lincoln, gold, Great Depression, money, Judy Shelton, gold standard, silver coins

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Proverbs 9:10

Just nineteen words that you do not hear in any context today about the unfolding crises in the world. Everyone seems to have some idea or plan to save the world, but it is totally amazing, none of those plans include God in any fashion. Some of that I suppose is that God doesn’t consider a top priority that everyone on earth currently, have a large flat screen TV and a retirement account which you can use to quit early and become a human consumptive vegetable.

What we see almost everywhere is greed, cancerous greed, empowered by collusion. Much of that collusion is political, which means in this country that the two political parties maintain control of all elections by forcing political candidates to espouse exclusively exclusive views to receive funding to run for office.

Putting it in a larger context and expanding this enlightened view of extremism, the United States just finished the eight-year leadership of a true laissez-faire capitalist, evangelical Christian. Under the leadership of George W Bush we have seen the demise of both laissez-faire capitalism and religious right Christendom.

The significant fruit of that exclusive exclusiveness is that Americans elected the most leftist president in the history of the country. While Barack Obama claims that the American economy is on the brink of collapse if his economic stimulus package is not enacted immediately, it is impossible to recall another first three weeks of a president in modern times, bungling so much, so soon
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Tags: exclusively exclusive, God, Barack Obama, exclusively inclusive, socialism, Fox News, George W Bush

Lord's Day 6
16. Q. Why must He be a true and righteous man?
A. He must be a true man because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should pay for sin.[1] He must be a righteous man because one who himself is a sinner cannot pay for others.[2]
[1] Rom: 5:12, 15; I Cor. 15:21; Heb. 2:14-16. [2] Heb. 7:26, 27; I Pet. 3:18.

17. Q. Why must He at the same time be true God?
A. He must be true God so that by the power of His divine nature[1] He might bear in His human nature the burden of God's wrath,[2] and might obtain for us and restore to us righteousness and life.[3]
[1] Is. 9:5. [2] Deut. 4:24; Nah. 1:6; Ps. 130:3. [3] Is. 53:5, 11; John 3:16; II Cor. 5:21.

18. Q. But who is that Mediator who at the same time is true God and a true and righteous man?
A. Our Lord Jesus Christ,[1] whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption (I Corinthians 1:30).
[1] Matt. 1:21-23; Luke 2:11; I Tim. 2:5; 3:16.

19. Q. From where do you know this?
A. From the holy gospel, which God Himself first revealed in Paradise.[1] Later, He had it proclaimed by the patriarchs[2] and prophets,[3] and foreshadowed by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law.[4] Finally, He had it fulfilled through His only Son.[5]

The oldest tale in The Book is about a couple that made the wrong choice. That choice was between the perceived understanding of present security compared to the uncertainty of passing time. This choice was precipitated by another created being, who had made a similar choice and now was seeking company for his loneliness.

Following along in that Book of myths we find a time when people thought that they could find eternal happiness by developing mechanisms by which through their intelligence and wisdom they could have it all. The reason given in The Book for that failure was the confusion of languages. I suppose people got so engrossed in doing things their own way, they failed to communicate.

Some may say this was a religious phenomenon, true, for I once heard a leader in the secular Christian TV community using this Book discussion to promote his idea, which if his followers all worked together, they could do what Babylon failed to accomplish. Now if that isn’t a concept rooted in the demise of enlightenment thinking, I have not heard a better.

Finishing up with our brief survey of The Book we find in the last compendium a similar story where in the Babylon of that time, the people of all lands ceased to buy all the things the great leaders of the world provided, for a variety of allegorical reasons. The interesting thing about this Babylon was that the normal ordinary folks were not sad to see the whole thing collapse even though it meant more personal hardship.

There is a whole lot of other wisdom in The Book that is probably applicable to our day and age, but it is just a book, and as we know books are filled with words, just words. To think that words have transcendent meaning to convey something called Absolute Truth is just fiction, maybe interesting fiction, but nothing more. After all reality beyond the concept of man’s own understanding just does not happen in our enlightened age.
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Tags: Babylon, consumers, choice, economics, money, Reformation, debt

Money historically is the medium for the exchange of goods and services. It could be argued that money is the capital upon which human civilization and culture is based. What happens when governments decide to alter that balance? There are examples from throughout history, pre Nazi Germany quickly comes to mind. However, this tsunami debasement of the basis of money has never happened before on a global scale.

The synopsis of the wisdom of this explosion of debt around the world is, We have nothing else left to try and if this doesn’t work we are all out of ideas. Perhaps the most sagacious speech made at the recent World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland came from Russia’s historic free market guru Vladimir Putin. Actually, I was just kidding about Putin’s free market history, but the speech, did point to some spy type reality that no western leader had the guts to proclaim.

The St. Louis Monetary Base graph below shows the expansion of money in the United States, and comes from information that was presented last week on the Glenn Beck Show on Fox News. Accompanying the graph is Inconvenient Debt video that compares this debt expansion as more deadly in all forms than someone’s illusionary inconvenient truth.

Tags: money, Glenn Beck, debt, Vladimir Putin