Lord's Day 26
69. Q. How does holy baptism signify and seal to you that the one sacrifice of Christ on the cross benefits you?
A. In this way: Christ instituted this outward washing[1] and with it gave the promise that, as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly His blood and Spirit wash away the impurity of my soul, that is, all my sins.[2]
[1] Matt. 28:19. [2] Matt. 3:11; Mark 16:16; John 1:33; Acts 2:38; Rom. 6:3, 4; I Pet. 3:21.

70. Q. What does it mean to be washed with Christ's blood and Spirit?
A. To be washed with Christ's blood means to receive forgiveness of sins from God, through grace, because of Christ's blood, poured out for us in His sacrifice on the cross.[1] To be washed with His Spirit means to be renewed by the Holy Spirit and sanctified to be members of Christ, so that more and more we become dead to sin and lead a holy and blameless life.[2] [1] Ez. 36:25; Zech. 13:1; Eph. 1:7; Heb. 12:24; I Pet. 1:2; Rev. 1:5; 7:14. [2] John 3:5-8; Rom. 6:4; I Cor. 6:11; Col. 2:11, 12.

71. Q. Where has Christ promised that He will wash us with His blood and Spirit as surely as we are washed with the water of baptism?
A. In the institution of baptism, where He says: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned (Mark 16:16). This promise is repeated where Scripture calls baptism the washing of regeneration and the washing away of sins (Titus 3:5; Acts 22:16).

There is beginning in this land and around the world a groundswell of common people sensing what seems to indicate that we are sojourners in an epic time.

Bankrupt are the bastions of American enterprise, the auto industry. It seems that like their railroad brethren, they did not recognize the business school standard, which they were in the transportation business, rather than creators of automobiles. Of course the railroads were helped to their demise by General Motors and Standard Oil, which bought up privately owned public transportation, shut them down, and eliminated true market choice for American land based conveyance.

Automobiles were preceded in stupendous change, by the meltdown catastrophe of the financial universe. From which the concept too big to fail has now redefined the wisdom of Forrest Gump, “Stupid is, as stupid does, don’t mean nothin’.”

Let’s see – cheap monetary policy, coupled with easy credit, financially leveraged to the utmost, speculating in unregulated commodities, or bundled in high-risk real estate securities did not last forever. It sure seems our enlightened leadership believed that it would and even more amazing, that they can bring it back just like before.

Of course the oil players are back at it again, betting that economic recovery and unlimited demand increases are just a fall economic recovery away.

Then recent news indicates that solar activity is at a long time low, creating cool temperatures and the potential for a greatly decreased world food supply. All the while global warming alarmists are still promoting an agenda, that mankind can control climate by limiting carbon emissions and animal flatulence, or just have everyone painting their roofs white.

What is missing in the debate of TV pundits discussing the this or that, is that it really isn’t about this or that at all. The real issue is the concept of human enlightenment. Broken down into its most basic tenet we see the inability of humanity to save itself from itself. The problem is not at all about the stuff, the problem lies within the philosophies or religions of man.
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Tags: capitalism, common sense, Natural Law, enlightenment, renaissance, Adam Smith, auto industry, United States

Tags: Adam Smith, Invisible Hand, Natural Law, seeds, money

Lord's Day 25
65. Q. Since then faith alone makes us share in Christ and all His benefits, where does this faith come from?
A. From the Holy Spirit,[1] who works it in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel,[2] and strengthens it by the use of the sacraments.[3]
[1] John 3:5; I Cor. 2:10-14; Eph. 2:8; Phil. 1:29. [2] Rom. 10:17; I Pet. 1:23-25. [3] Matt. 28:19, 20; I Cor. 10:16.

66. Q. What are the sacraments?
A. The sacraments are holy, visible signs and seals. They were instituted by God so that by their use He might the more fully declare and seal to us the promise of the gospel.[1] And this is the promise: that God graciously grants us forgiveness of sins and everlasting life because of the one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross.[2]
[1] Gen. 17:11; Deut. 30:6; Rom. 4:11 [2] Matt. 26:27, 28; Acts 2:38; Heb. 10:10.

67. Q. Are both the Word and the sacraments then intended to focus our faith on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as the only ground of our salvation?
A. Yes, indeed. The Holy Spirit teaches us in the gospel and assures us by the sacraments that our entire salvation rests on Christ's one sacrifice for us on the cross.[1]
[1] Rom. 6:3; I Cor. 11:26; Gal. 3:27.

68. Q. How many sacraments has Christ instituted in the new covenant?
A. Two: holy baptism and the holy supper.[1]
[1] Matt. 28:19, 20; I Cor. 11:23-26. Holy Baptism

Tags: common sense

Volume 11, Issue 24

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With all the complex happenings currently going on in our world, you may be just hearing the sad news that Common Sense has died. I think I first heard the report some years ago, but I guess it just slipped my mind.

The obituary for “The Death of Common Sense” was filed on March 15, 1998 by Lori Borgman. You can find a number of places on the net for the obit, but one of the most interesting is the link above, which has other similar tidbits from Alan R. Miller, Emeritus Professor of Engineering at New Mexico Tech.

Since much of my writing has to do with various sorts of common type events and personalities, as opposed to specific unique revelations, it has recently come to my attention that rather than being a human personality, Common Sense may indeed be an entity more mundane. Could it be that Common Sense is really just a common seed, a seed many would call a weed?

Reminding you of nature, seeds may look dead, but the spark of life still remains deeply sequestered within the protoplasm, waiting for just the right climatic conditions in which to sprout, grow, and in due season provide a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even one hundred fold.

I would submit that the season for the sprouting of Common Sense is now upon us. As is the general rule, seeds are planted in the spring, sometimes outdoors and sometimes in a greenhouse, or cold frame. In the proper time the seeds emerge and some are transplanted into the garden. In spite of all the best efforts of man, plants we call weeds, do this very well without our husbandry.

The sun provides the light and the energy for photosynthesis. Rain or human watering provides the liquidity to make our gardens and Common Sense grow. With all the enlightened wisdom we can muster, we think we have science on our side, but if you just grow your garden with science you will miss the wonder of it all, the art of passing times, passing seasons, and the joy of harvest.

Many enlightened folks believe that Common Sense is just a primitive and noxious weed, but they fail to understand the symbiosis within the Garden of God. Neither do they dare a taste of the fruit of Common Sense, and hence ignore its life giving properties.

A few people of humble spirit understand the times and the seasons. Hence they are given seeds of Common Sense to plant wherever their pilgrimage may take them. Some of those seeds will take root, for Common Sense grows well in unfertile ground as well as good soil. Common Sense grows best when it is stressed, for the tension makes Common Sense fruit quite savory.

Besides its delectable fruit, the leaves of Common Sense make a healing tea and a curative balm. Common Sense bark can be ground to produce a piquant spice. Its wood is of unquestioned strength and beauty.

So if you believe in the diverse properties of Common Sense, fill your life’s seed satchel each morning, and broadcast the seeds wherever you adventure. While it may appear that the world now is forever winter, really we have trouble understanding the vigor of just a little Common Sense. For once it becomes established; Common Sense is an evergreen growing year around.

So citizens of the world unite, and profess the benefits of Common Sense. For as its branches mature, in its shade can grow the precious crops of Liberty, Peace, and Freedom. They for now are just as endangered as our personal and communal Common Sense.

Do not fear those who may ridicule your Common Sense planting role,
For nothing ventured, nothing gained, remains a proverb true.
Life’s too short and each day too precious to be wasted.
For wisdom not derived from Common Sense is completely and temporally obscure.

Common Sense did not die, nor will it ever,
For as long as man walks the earth, Common Sense,
The weed to many, will always pioneer the way secure.


Podcast

Tags: common sense, seeds, weeds

You are sitting in front of your computer screen looking for some place to go, that sounds really cool and definitely some place none of your friends have ever heard of. You think about birds and a lake which has been recently set aside for bird habitat. So thoughts of the Audubon Society added to lakes lead you do a web search for “Audubon Lake.”

Somewhere down the page after all the real estate developments and apartments you find a link to “Reardan’s Audubon Lake.” From that link you find out that it is a 277 acre wildlife preserve near the small town of Reardan, Washington. Chances are, as you continue, you will find some more information such as these links below:

Inland Northwest Land Trust

Spokane Audubon Society

Washington Wildlife and Recreation

Bird Web

Well, that is all very good and wonderful, but a couple of significant question remains, has anyone from any of these fine organizations ever been to the place? What does it look like?

Now all your fears and heartburn have been answered. Please visit our photo tour of Reardan’s Audubon Lake under our Creation Media Tab, with the direct link here.

Tags: Reardan Washington, Audubon Lake, bird watching

Lord's Day 24
62. Q. But why can our good works not be our righteousness before God, or at least a part of it?
A. Because the righteousness which can stand before God's judgment must be absolutely perfect and in complete agreement with the law of God,[1] whereas even our best works in this life are all imperfect and defiled with sin.[2]
[1] Deut. 27:26; Gal. 3:10. [2] Is. 64:6.

63. Q. But do our good works earn nothing, even though God promises to reward them in this life and the next?
A. This reward is not earned[1]; it is a gift of grace.[2]
[1] Matt. 5:12; Heb. 11:6. [2] Luke 17:10; II Tim. 4:7, 8. -

64. Q. Does this teaching not make people careless and wicked?
A. No. It is impossible that those grafted into Christ by true faith should not bring forth fruits of thankfulness.[1]
[1] Matt. 7:18; Luke 6:43-45; John 15:5.

Last week I learned what I had perceived, calling an American a serf is not a way to win friends and influence people. That is especially true when you mix in a little Bible teaching with an audience of what is generally called evangelicals. Being called a serf really doesn’t make you feel good about yourself, and especially the plan that God has for your life. That plan of course being what Francis Schaeffer called, “personal peace and affluence.”

I didn’t write the book, “The Road to Serfdom.” F. A. Hayek wrote it a long time ago, even before I was born. The book basically describes the rise of pre WWII fascism in Europe, along with the compassion and complacency of what would soon be the Allies against Hitler and Mussolini. Hayek’s thesis basically warns about establishing what American pundits are now calling “European style socialism” during the reconstruction after the close of the war. All I did was just merge the two to make a somewhat logical point.

This road in Europe has pretty much been an autobahn, with really the only barrier being Margaret Thatcher’s British experiment in the 1980s, which found a following in America under President Reagan. In true American style, we however introduced steroids to the mix, pumping up everyone with mass body building exercises of cheap credit, expansive monetary policy, and real estate speculation.

As with drug steroids, economic steroids might help your major league career, but once drug testing and old age begin to show their effects, life goes down in a hurry. Can I get a witness on what has happened since mid 2007? Amen!
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Tags: Warm Fuzzies, F A Hayek, serf, serf stop, Europe, auto industry, real estate, service sector, Mammon

Lord's Day 23
59. Q. But what does it help you now that you believe all this?
A. In Christ I am righteous before God and heir to life everlasting.[1]
[1] Hab. 2:4; John 3:36; Rom. 1:17; 5:1, 2.

60. Q. How are you righteous before God?
A. Only by true faith in Jesus Christ.[1] Although my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all God's commandments, have never kept any of them,[2] and am still inclined to all evil,[3] yet God, without any merit of my own,[4] out of mere grace,[5] imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ.[6] He grants these to me as if I had never had nor committed any sin, and as if I myself had accomplished all the obedience which Christ has rendered for me,[7] if only I accept this gift with a believing heart.[8]
[1] Rom. 3:21-28; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8, 9; Phil. 3:8-11. [2] Rom. 3:9, 10. [3] Rom. 7:23. [4] Deut. 9:6; Ezek. 36:22; Tit. 3:4, 5. [5] Rom. 3:24; Eph. 2:8. [6] Rom. 4:3-5; II Cor. 5:17-19; I John 2:1, 2. [7] Rom. 4:24, 25; II Cor. 5:21. [8] John 3:18; Acts 16:30, 31; Rom. 3:22.

61. Q. Why do you say that you are righteous only by faith?
A. Not that I am acceptable to God on account of the worthiness of my faith, for only the satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ is my righteousness before God.[1] I can receive this righteousness and make it mine my own by faith only.[2]
[1] I Cor. 1:30, 31; 2:2. [2] Rom. 10:10; I John 5:10-12.

Back in “America’s Tensioned Prosperity” we pointed out that the greatness of the United States has always been associated with the somewhat tensioned symbiosis between government programs, especially federal government programs, creating incentives by which enterprise innovation provides economic growth and wealth creation, pretty much through free market capital.

Since the 1970s that model has shifted dramatically towards leveraged debt consumerism, at the expense of both required government programs and sustainable wealth creation. That has shifted that historic tension to the not “fair and balanced” but to policies of the extremes.

In a recent article in the “Washington Monthly,” entitled “Introduction: The Next Frontier,” Paul Kedrosky, Senior Fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation fills in the gaps of our tensioned blog.

President Obama has taken the United States in short order to the left big government ditch of the road, from the right laissez faire ditch of the Bush Administration. However neither seemed or seems to realize that current American problems really don’t have much to do with the ditches and their current state, but rather the state of the Interstate, highway, road, path, and trail. Relying on fixing the current debt consumerism model is not going to help, no matter how much money is thrown or wasted on the ill-fated attempts.

Entrepreneurial enterprises require a garden in which financial liquidity is timely and sustainable, in a soil in which economic conditions can and will be sustained until such time new wealth can be harvested.

So far the Obama Administration has not even given lip service to this reality. Especially when this is compared to what he has spoken obtusely about Iran’s right to nuclear power. We must note new growth opportunities in nuclear power have been taken off the American agenda, along with domestic oil drilling, clean coal carbon sequestering, and low head small hydro,

Instead he has nationalized the domestic auto industry and will force it to build small cars, thereby eventually cutting new auto sales by 75% from 2007 levels, This while he attempts to institute a bungling bureaucratic bourgeoisie, that will attempt to micromanage, through cap and trade taxation, twentieth century corporate behemoths and dinosaurs. All the while true sustainable energy innovation languishes from deficit and debt burdens which surpass the totality of all human historic development.

Tags: wealth, entrepreneurship, Barack Obama, consumerism, bungling bureaucratic bourgeois

Solar energy, especially photovoltaics is one of the leading contenders for a sustainable energy future. Because of the American emphasis on leveraged debt consumerism, which amounts to about three-forths of the United States GDP, we lag behind both Germany and Japan in developing this technology.

For the techno geeks, engineers, and green enthusiasts we offer the following MIT video featuring Tonio Buonassisi discussing the Next Generation of Solar Cells. There is also a direct link to this video timing: 1:21:25 under the Resources Tab

Tags: solar cells, consumerism

Tags: czar, Barack Obama, Russia, United States

Last Sunday Christianity marked the historic festival of Pentecost. While long disconnected from the Jewish rendition of the same, the Pentecost Sunday is recognized as the birthday of the church. Churches with worship roots in a formal liturgy, focus upon three Biblical readings each Sunday, one from the Old Testament, one New Testament, and a Gospel reading. In Protestant circles these reading date at least from the Reformation, but probably the reading’s roots go much further back, perhaps even to before the schism between Rome and the Orthodox. These Pentecost readings shared in many denominations are: Old - Ezekiel 37:1-14; New - Acts 2:1-21; Gospel - John15:26,27; 16:4b-15. For those seeking a more contemporary addition, “Rushing Wind, by Steve Green is found on iTunes by Steve and other artists.

If you read these passages within in the construct of what is happening currently in the financial turmoil facing the world, they seem totally in sink with our reliance upon our own knowledge and wisdom, and how all the best, from all the finest, is dismally inadequate in its comprehension of present reality.

When have written specifically about the Ezekiel passage in “Dry Bones Valley” in November 2007 (PDF link), as well as mentioned it briefly in other articles. In that article we built upon how the passage refers to the restoration of national Israel which took place in the mid-twentieth century, it also should apply to the restoration of the church, which currently finds it glory not in God, but in the affairs and riches of the world, not much different than the nation of Israel in Ezekiel’s day. If you combine the two restoration principles you find them, discussed amazingly in Romans 11, where in order for we “wild olives” to be grafted in, the olive tree must first be restored.

Just as we can look back in the Bible and see applications and the reality of today, in similar fashion we can see similar parallels in common grace or the society as a whole. Conservative pundits have been calling President Obama a socialist from the time he became a candidate up to the present. From pretty much is inauguration the terms fascism, as been added to describe his developing regime. On some occasions even the word communist has been used. An interesting article in the English version of Pravda used the term Marxism to describe the whole current American scheme. “American capitalism gone with a whimper” is well worth the read.

From the liberal side of the political spectrum and much of the general population however still give the President high or glowing marks for his ability to “not let this crisis go to waste” as “you ain’t seen nothing yet,” to use the President’s own words.

What seems to be missing in all of this however, is really a touch with the reality of the whole situation and tying it into history, a history in which President Obama is just the current player in a line, much like the Pravda article describes. To say that Obama is trying to install “European style socialism” is the United States, grossly simplifies European culture, as well as it dumbs down the natural diversity of the American landscape as well as the true diversity of the American people.
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Tags: Pentecost, F A Hayek, feudalism, serf, Barack Obama, socialism

Back in the early 80s in one of my first college graduate courses I learned that temperate climate zone produced ethanol from corn took two calories of energy to produce one calorie of energy. About a decade later I was presented with a “great business opportunity” to help convert an old brewery in Tacoma, Washington to produce biofuel ethanol from midwest corn. After LOL (laughing out loud) I told the group that theirs was possibly the most stupid business idea I had ever heard of. Over the years I have continued to read the reports, and finally if you spin the numbers just right, you can show it might work energetically in the perfect world (at least if you believe the report). However for the foreseeable economic horizon ethanol needs a huge tax break to compete in the even a cartel price controlled energy sector.

This problem is not a problem with tropical ethanol produced from sugar cane residuals. That is because the sunshine is more intense, sugar cane does not need high quantities of energetically intensive nitrogen fertilizer, nor the intense tillage and harvesting energetic requirements.

All of that does not matter to the ethanol special interest — special rights corn lobby in the United States, which helped the Bush Administration create a domestic energy boondoggle and tax incentive, that is and will continue to be perhaps the most stupid idea that it ever conceived. Thanks to that, gas mileage has been reduced approximately ten percent without any environmental benefit.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal points that out quite well, and says that President Obama plans to raise ethanol in gasoline to fifteen percent even though the EPA and the Congressional Budget Office concur that at best ethanol is a push environmentally and in some cases a strong negative in the greenhouse gas debate. We still have not even discussed the “ten to fifteen percent increase” of “Ethanol’s Grocery Bill.”

This points directly that this country’s leadership is no longer concerned about free markets, but only on a system by which you buy money from the government. It seems as the only alternative to this is eventually, after everything runs out of gas, to institute a flat tax to run needed government programs and open up truly free opportunities to create wealth. That, after all, was once called “free enterprise” which was the energetic paradigm that made the United States the world leader it became, but is rapidly disappearing by the entropic work of a bungling bureaucratic bourgeoisie.

Tags: ethanol, Special Interests, bungling bureaucratic bourgeois, free enterprise