• Justification: by works or by faith?

    Justification by faith alone (Sola Fide) is the sine qua non (the essential thing without which it cannot be) of the Protestant Reformation. It is this doctrine upon which the Reformation stands or falls. However, there is sharp disagreement with the Roman Catholic church on this topic. What does the Bible say? Who is more faithful to Scripture on this matter, the Reformers or Rome?

    According to Scripture, justification (how a sinner is made in right standing before God) is a free, unmerited gift. It is not earned. Believers are justified by God “as a gift by His grace” (Romans 3:24). If our justification is done by God by grace then “it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise, grace is no longer grace” (Romans 11:6). As we can see, God doesn’t ask sinners to work for justification, but rather, to believe. God justifies “the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

    However, the Roman Catholic church teaches that justification by faith without works is heresy:

    If anyone says that the faith which justifies is nothing else but trust in the divine mercy, which pardons sins because of Christ’ or that it is that trust alone by which we are justified: let him be anathema.

    Council of Trent

    An anathema means one is damned and it outside the Body of Christ.

    Rome says faith alone is insufficient grounds for justification [CCC 1815-1816]:

    If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning thereby that no other cooperation is required for him to obtain the grace of justification, and that in no sense it is necessary for him to make preparation and be disposed by a movement of his own will: let him be anathema.

    Council of Trent

    Rome is keenly aware that the Apostle Paul explicitly lists faith as the only necessary response for justification (Romans 3:26, 3:28; 4:3; 5:1). It recognizes that its condemnation of justification by faith as a gift requires some further explanation:

    When the Apostle says that a person is justified by faith and as a gift, those words are to be understood in the sense which the perennial consent of the catholic church has maintained and expressed, namely, that we are said to be justified by faith because faith is the first stage of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God and come to the fellowship of His children.

    Council of Trent

    It should be noted that nowhere in the apostle Paul’s writings, nor anywhere else in the New Testament, does it say that faith is merely the “first stage” leading to ultimate justification. When Rome calls the first stage of salvation faith, and good works the second stage, it ignores the fact that the Scriptures explicitly and emphatically say that good works have no role in justification. This is a huge problem of textual interpretation. It is clear that concerning the justification of a believer Rome engages in eisegesis of the related texts and imposes her own manmade interpretation upon the Scriptures. This is wrongly handling the Word of God.

    But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness

    Romans 4:5

    So, as we have seen, according to the Scriptures, the sole requirement for justification is faith which Rome denies.

    Now let’s look at a Scripture that Rome uses to refute the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone:

    You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.

    James 2:24

    At first sight, this verse might seem to support Rome’s claim that faith and works must precede justification in adult believers. [CCC 161-162, 1248, 1815]. However, as we shall see, when this verse is interpreted in its proper context, Rome’s claim is without support.

    James was not writing to a group of unbelievers or catechumens. His audience was people already professing to be Christians. He knew that some of them were living in wanton sin and that their actions didn’t match up with the faith they espoused. He reminds them that living and mature faith will be accompanied by good works, which God has prepared for us. James hoped that these hypocrites would re-evaluate how they are living, and would start living in a moral way, consistent with the faith they claim.

    Let’s step back and look at the larger context of James 2:24. It is a vital component of a 13 verse long discussion viz. James 2:14-26. The passage opens with 2 questions James wants his readers to consider.

    What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?

    James 2:14

    In other words, if a person claims to have faith, but you don’t see good works evident in his life, is that person truly saved? Do they have genuine faith?

    In the subsequent verses, James shows that true faith will be accompanied by good works. A faith that is only all words, and no actions, is “dead” (James 2:17) and “useless” (James 2:20). James uses Abraham as an example of a person who had genuine faith accompanied by good works. This brings us to the second question James wanted us to consider:

    Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar?

    James 2:21

    James’ answer to the question is yes. In Genesis 22 Abraham, being obedient to God, went to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac on the altar. His actions demonstrated Abraham to be a righteous man of real and active faith. It is in this context that James declares “You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only” (James 2:24).

    A very important point to note here is that this verse did not describe how Abraham was justified by God. We see in Genesis 15 that when God promised Abraham his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in heaven, Abraham believed in God.

    And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.

    Genesis 15:6

    It’s clear from Scripture that Abraham was justified before God before he demonstrated good works (sacrificing Isaac). The ground of God’s justification of Abraham was his belief. Responding to Abraham’s faith, the Lord credited righteousness to Abraham’s account. God declared him to be righteous simply because he believed, and for no other reason. The apostle Paul confirms this point:

    For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”

    Romans 4:2,3

    Despite Rome’s claims, James 2:14-26 does not establish works righteousness, nor does it describe how to prepare oneself for baptismal regeneration (justification), which is itself another fallacious doctrine. The subject of these verses is the type of faith that saves, of living faith as opposed to dead faith (James 2:17). It’s about a faith demonstrated by good works. He challenges us “Show me your faith.” just as Abraham did (James 2:18).

    In summation, we see that works play no role whatsoever in our justification (a juridical act), but they do play a role in our sanctification. Sadly, Rome conflates justification with sanctification. Scripture makes it clear that they are two distinct processes.

  • 1980s British Bands + Elvis

    Always Something There to Remind Me

    Here are two 1980s songs, by two different British bands that I really like.

    The first is “Always Something There to Remind Me” by Naked Eyes. This less well-known New Wave song was a great example of synth-pop. I should point out that this song makes good use of church bells.

    Lyrics

    I walk along the city streets you used to walk along with me
    And every step I take reminds me of just how
    We used to be

    Well, how can I forget you girl
    When there is always something there to remind me?
    Always something there to remind me

    As shadows fall, I pass a small cafe where we would dance at night
    And I can’t help recalling
    How it felt to kiss and hold you tight

    Well, how can I forget you girl
    When there is always something there to remind me?
    Always something there to remind me

    I was born to love her
    And I will never be free
    You’ll always be a part of me
    Oh whoa whoa whoa

    If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share
    Just come back to the places where we used to go
    And I’ll be there

    Well, how can I forget you girl
    When there is always something there to remind me?
    Always something there to remind me

    I was born to love her
    And I will never be free
    You’ll always be a part of me

    ‘Cause there is always something there to remind me
    Always something there to remind me

    Always something there to remind me
    Always something there to remind me
    Always something there to remind me
    Always something there to remind me

    Always something there to remind me
    Always something there to remind me
    Always something there to remind me

    Always On My Mind

    The second song is “Always On My Mind” released on November 30, 1987, by the British group Pet Shop Boys. This is another New Wave song featuring synth-pop. Their song is very upbeat and has a faster tempo than the Elvis Presley cover of this song. I think, although I really enjoy the Pet Shop Boys’ rendition, I prefer the Presley which has a richer tone and expresses more feeling.

    Lyrics

    Maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should
    Maybe I didn’t love you quite as often as I could
    Little things I should’ve said and done, I never took the time
    You were always on my mind
    You were always on my mind

    Maybe I didn’t hold you all those lonely, lonely times
    And I guess I never told you, I’m so happy that you’re mine
    If I made you feel second best, I’m so sorry, I was blind
    You were always on my mind
    You were always on my mind

    Tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasn’t died
    Give me one more chance to keep you satisfied
    Satisfied

    Little things I should’ve said and done, I never took the time
    You were always on my mind
    You were always on my mind

    Tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasn’t died
    Give me one more chance to keep you satisfied

    You were always on my mind
    You were always on my mind
    You were always on my mind
    You were always on my mind
    You were always on my mind
    You were always on my mind

    Maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should
    Maybe I didn’t love you quite as often as I could
    Maybe I didn’t hold you all those lonely, lonely times
    And I guess I never told you, I’m so happy that you’re mine

    (Maybe I didn’t love you…)

    Elvis

    Elvis Presley recorded the song on March 29, 1972, a few weeks after his separation, in February, from his beloved wife Priscilla whom Elvis would later say was the only true love of his life. You can hear the pain and longing in Presley’s rendition of this song. It’s a brilliant performance.

  • Communist takeover of America

    The unfairly maligned US Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was prescient in his vision of communist infiltration and eventual takeover of America in the early 1950s. He saw the problem primarily in the entertainment industry, the state department, and even the army (see more on this below), but the real seeds of destruction, in my view, lay in academia.

    In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy waged war on those he thought were loyalists to the communist party and had infiltrated American politics and its way of life. World War II had happened only a few years earlier, there was growing fear about the danger of having this ideology in America and it was at the forefront of the minds of Americans.

    The conflict, between fascist Germany and communist Russia, two ideological extremes, left people with a palpable sense of the intent and viciousness of these two economic systems that depended on a totalitarian regime as their master.

    Now we live in a time where the American Communist Party has a website and openly advertises its point of view. So much so they have become the mainstream mantra. Almost everything we see in the headlines today can be traced back to the website of the American Communist Party. The so-called social justice movement, Black Lives Matter (BLM) – which was founded by two self-described Marxists, racial tensions between blacks and whites being exacerbated and fueled by sensationalist rhetoric, mainstream media’s attention, and taking isolated incidents of police brutality as indicative of widespread systemic racism. This is pure communism! Marx is clear that the traditional institutions have to be subverted to make way for the proletariat and the worker’s revolution.

    The echoing of Social Justice rings of the past revolutions of the Chinese and Russian communist takeovers. The infiltration of it in our schools, media, and military are the building blocks for its confiscation of not only our private property and private enterprise but the complete seizure of our freedoms.

    With the blood of those that sacrificed now nothing but a dry memory and so cradled in the luxury of liberty, we find our social studies classes not only not accurately portraying the evil that came from these theories but painting them in a glamourous and humanitarian light. Further the assertion by communists/socialists that capitalism is itself problematic, selfish, unjust, greedy, and racist has been a key plank in the American Communist party’s plans. This effort creates division and confusion, pinning Americans against each other while the communist is cherry-picking their conquest around the globe while the referee of civil society is distracted.

    So was Senator Joseph McCarthy correct? Should we not have allowed such ideas to flourish and take root? Quoting Karl Marx. “I will hang the capitalist with the rope he sold me.” Our very freedoms and liberties and the American way of life is under attack. Most public school teachers are communists/socialists and have been slowly but methodically brainwashing children for the past 70 years! They teach hatred for the American way of life, they deride America as a racist and bigoted country, as an aggressive imperialist power, they decry capitalism, they teach the evolution of the species and scientific (atheistic) materialism, they teach revisionist history which makes America the aggressor or enemy in almost every phase of our history. Further, the first wave of communist infiltration in America occurred in academia, in our colleges and universities. Once these professors were radicalized they brainwashed generations of American college students to despise the Amerian way of life, to abhor religion (specifically the Christian faith), to hate free-market capitalism as evil, to label their parents and relatives as racist hateful bigots, to teach them that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality or transgenderism, to stoke and support the labor movement as a means of class warfare.

    This is the Communist Party USA’s website.

    Recent evidence has vindicated McCarthy! See below.

    Although Joseph McCarthy was one of the most demonized American politicians of the last century, new information — including half-century-old FBI recordings of Soviet embassy conversations — are showing that McCarthy was right in nearly all his accusations.   “With Joe McCarthy it was the losers who’ve written the history which condemns him,” said Dan Flynn, director of <http://www.academia.org Accuracy in Academia’s recent national conference on McCarthy, broadcast by C-SPAN.   Using new information obtained from studies of old Soviet files in Moscow and now the famous Vanona Intercepts — FBI recordings of Soviet embassy communications between 1944-48 — the record is showing that McCarthy was essentially right. He had many weaknesses, but almost every case he charged has now been proven correct. Whether it was stealing atomic secrets or influencing U.S. foreign policy, communist victories in the 1940s were fed by an incredibly vast spy and influence network.   The conference, a gathering of old McCarthyites and younger scholars, commemorated the senator’s first speech, in Wheeling, West Virginia 50 years ago, when he first held up a list of names of employees of the State Department whom, he said, were major security risks. McCarthy questioned how, in six short years after America’s winning of World War II, the communist world was triumphant and had expanded to include 800 million people.   Of the lists, a key one consisted of 108 names from a House Appropriations Committee report, of persons declared as “security risks” in the State Department — the Lee List. The House committee chairman had complained that State wasn’t bothering to do anything about the suspects. Details of the list and its accusations were presented at the conference.   Speakers detailed many of the cover-ups used to smear McCarthy. Veteran journalist and teacher Stan Evans, director of National Journalism Center, told of the Tydings Committee, which had investigated McCarthy’s charges of communists in government. Its report had exonerated everybody. Among the accused it stated categorically that there was no evidence against Owen Lattimore, a man McCarthy said was a major figure in the communist conspiracy. Lattimore had been Roosevelt’s key advisor on China policy. Yet Evans showed evidence from 5,000 pages of FBI files on him — files released only a few years ago to the public, although the White House had access to them.   However, evidence before the committee showed that Lattimore had supported Soviet policy at every turn, even declaring that the Stalin purge trials in Russia, “sound like democracy to me.” With then-Vice President Henry Wallace in Russia, Lattimore compared concentration camps to the Tennessee Valley Authority, and later urged Washington to abandon China to communism and to withdraw from Japan and Korea. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who had fed information to McCarthy, broke with him afterwards, fearing McCarthy would prejudice FBI sources of information for its criminal prosecutions.   Although most of McCarthy’s cases involved actual spies and “security risks,” the really important issue was that of communist influence over American foreign policy, argued Evans. Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s closest advisor who lived in the White House, had regular contacts with Soviet intelligence. He helped bring about the disastrous Yalta and Pottsdam agreements. The Morganthau Plan, to prevent German reconstruction and starve the Germans to make them desperate enough to go communist, was the product of Laughlin Currie and Harry Dexter White at the Treasury Department. The abandonment of Chiang Kai-shek by denying military support was the product of “China Hands” led by John Stewart Service, John Patton Davies, and Lattimore. Evans described other major spy networks — in England, the Burgess Maclean group which infiltrated Washington as well as London.   Reed Irvine, chairman of Accuracy in Media, told how he himself had been a leftist in his early career. He had been against McCarthy, but McCarthy’s speeches had made him think and start to read “evidence that I had avoided.” He described how all during his military career as a Marine officer and later in Japan with the U.S. occupation he had never hidden his leftist views and later had even been offered a job at the CIA. Irvine argued that real communists were only in the hundreds, but that thousands of leftists, such as he, all feared McCarthy and had wanted him discredited.   Pulling all the latest evidence together was luncheon speaker Professor Arthur Herman. His new book, “Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator,” and featured in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, shows the vindication of most of McCarthy’s charges. Herman, who is also coordinator of the Smithsonian’s Western Heritage Program, said that the accuracy of McCarthy’s charges “was no longer a matter of debate,” that they are “now accepted as fact.” However, the term “McCarthyism” still remains in the language.   Asked whether McCarthy had understood all the forces arrayed against him, Herman said no, that McCarthy hadn’t realized he’d be fighting against much of the Washington establishment. President Truman was fearful that exposures would reflect on key Democrat officials, he said, and big media and the academic world were very leftist, a heritage of the Depression and World War II. High government officials also feared investigations of their past appointments and associations with people who turned out to be communists or sympathizers.   That was the reason McCarthy was so demonized, he said.   Joe McCarthy had been a Marine air gunner, an amateur boxer, a county judge and towards his end, under constant attack, he began to drink heavily. Herman said he certainly was over his head and his fall came about after sweeping attacks on General Marshall and the Army. Senator Taft and other key supporters began to draw away from him.   If Robert Kennedy, his competent and well-connected co-counsel, had stayed on, McCarthy might have behaved more carefully, said Herman. An argument with other co-counsel Roy Cohn left Cohn in charge, but Cohn and staffer David Schine were disastrous for McCarthy. Still, McCarthy’s original charges helped bring about Eisenhower’s electoral victory and the defeat of the Democrats and key leftist Democratic senators such as Tydings of Maryland. Four years after his original charges, Joe McCarthy was censured by the Senate and died shortly thereafter.   There is more evidence to come. Herb Rome Stein, another speaker, who started out with the old House Un-American Activities Committee, is writing a book about the Vanona FBI intercepts and their links to other evidence from his comprehensive study in Russia of Soviet archives, made available to Westerners since the fall of communism. His book, The Vanona Secrets, will be released by Regnery Gateway this fall. Audiotapes of the “Accuracy in Academia” conference are available online.

    https://rense.com/politics6/mc.htm

    And here is more evidence.

    At the recent conference on “Rethinking McCarthy,” veteran journalist M. Stanton Evans disputed a number of myths about the Senator that have been accepted by leading historians and media figures. Evans, the director of the National Journalism Center who is writing his own book on Senator Joseph McCarthy, said one of the most notorious myths is that the Wisconsin Senator never named any names of suspected communists in government. Holding up a file of material, Evans said, “Here are the names. Right here. Anybody who wants to can look at them.” He produced a letter that McCarthy sent to Senator Millard Tydings in 1950 in which he listed the names.

    The original list, which included numbers of cases and not names, was obtained by McCarthy after it was put together by congressional staffers. It was drawn from the files of the State Department itself. But McCarthy provided the cases to Tydings with the names attached. Critics have said over the years that the list was either outdated, blown out of proportion, that the individuals named were cleared by congressional committees, or that they were just mildly leftist. But none of that was true. Evans quoted from some of them: “…he furnished material to a known Soviet espionage agent…” and “…He is a known Communist Party member.”

    Evans said the biggest piece of disinformation was that these cases had been cleared by congressional hearings. This was false. The chairman of one committee said the information showed “a large number of communists on the rolls of the State Department.” He added, “It makes me wonder if there is any representation of the United States in the State Department.”

    McCarthy also had access to information about Amerasia, a pro-Communist magazine, and State Department diplomat John Stewart Service, who was arrested for passing classified information to its editor. In a major speech, McCarthy called the Justice Department failure to prosecute the case a massive cover-up. “We now know that he was 100 percent correct,” Evans said of McCarthy?s charges. The FBI wiretapped the meeting where the cover-up was planned and the case was fixed to get Service off. Playing a role in the cover-up was Soviet agent Laughlin Currie in the White House. He was a key adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt.

    Another McCarthy target, Owen Lattimore of the Institute for Pacific Relations, was supposedly investigated by the Tydings Committee, which found nothing incriminating in his FBI files. But Evans read from that file, page one, which said back in 1941 that Lattimore was a communist who should be detained in the event of a national emergency.

    All of this mattered for two reasons. One, some of these people engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union. Two, they manipulated U.S. foreign policy to the benefit of the communists. For example, they maneuvered to cut off aid to the Chinese nationalists in order to betray China to the communists. This betrayal left mainland China in the hands of the Communists and the nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan. More than 50 years later, the betrayal continues under the Clinton Administration. But Senator Joe McCarthy tried to prevent it.

    https://www.aim.org/media-monitor/joe-mccarthy-was-right/

    So McCarthy was correct in his assertion that American foreign policy, as well as domestic policies, were being subverted and directed by Communist infiltraitors. Here is a foreboding speech McCarthy delivered.

    You will not learn this in your public schools. You will not learn this in your private schools with leftist leanings. Simply put, the truth about leftism in America is available, but you yourself must seek it. Much of what you are about to read may seem revisionist, even sensationalist, but it is all true. Despite academia and the media’s assertion that Joseph McCarthy was a paranoid extremist, the truth is that there were at least several hundred active Soviet agents within the federal government, many of which were as high up as the State department and even served as advisors to FDR. In addition, many of these communists were instrumental in the establishment of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and even the United Nations.

    McCarthy was right. Communists had infiltrated the American government, but the communists who now dominate American education do not want you to know this.

    Much of this would not be possible were it not for the role the media, popular culture, and labor unions played in instilling sympathy for communism into the minds of the American people. From Isadora Duncan, Lincoln Steffens, John Dewey, Jane Addams, to a vast conglomerate of labor unions, Communist Sympathizers were everywhere. But perhaps the most egregious story was of one of the most trusted newspapers of the time, The New York Times, intentionally covering up Stalin’s genocide against the Ukrainians. Walter Duranty was the Moscow Bureau Chief from 1922 to 1936 for the New York Times. He was assigned with the task of reporting on the inner workings of the Soviet Union. Duranty went on to receive a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.

    But of course, his reporting was not honest. Despite the clear evidence, Duranty reported “no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be” in the Soviet Union in November of 1932. At this point, millions had been deliberately starved in Ukraine by Stalin. This reporting only continued for the remaining four years Duranty spent in the Soviet Union. Years later, there were calls to revoke Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize. Those calls were, of course, ignored. Perhaps Duranty knew that no one would ever consider socialism as an option were the atrocious acts of the communists exposed.

    Things get worse when one considers the fact that the communists had successfully become a part of the US Government. This will be the focus of the article from here on out. With the reveal of these cases, one could see the immense power of the war McCarthy waged to keep communists and agents of the Soviet Union out of the US Government. Much of the information provided here is readily accessible through the 1995 declassified Venona Project files.

    The Venona files are Soviet messages US intelligence intercepted throughout the 1940s. As of now, it is confirmed that at least 350 Americans played an active role in Soviet espionage. This is an extremely conservative estimate since only about one in ten messages have been decoded. With this in mind, we could assume that more names are listed in the still encrypted messages. In addition, no one knows how many messages the US government failed to intercept. Ultimately, no one knows how many American communist sympathizers actively worked with the Soviet Union to bring about Communism in the US, but we can be certain that at least 350 were. But here are the stories of a few of the communists who managed to infiltrate the US Federal Government and impose policies that brought America closer to Communism.

    Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of Treasury, was a Soviet agent who used the code name “Jurist.” Not only was White the Assistant Secretary of Treasury, but he was instrumental in founding the World Bank, and was the first director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). White brought the Soviets one step closer to the establishment of worldwide communism through globalist central planning.

    Alger Hiss, an attendant of the Yalta Convention and legal assistant to the Nye Committee, was also convicted of perjury in connection to acts of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. The Nye Committee was another organization that was fully dedicated to the establishment of international governing organizations upon the end of WWII. Hiss ultimately played an instrumental role in the establishment of entities such as the UN.

    Laurence Duggan, code-named “Frank” and “19,” was in charge of US relations with South America during WWII and was the president of the Institute for International Education. Duggan was a Soviet spy from the 30s until his death. The information that he gave to the Soviets included classified battle strategies of the US Military.

    Lauchlin Currie was an economic advisor to FDR. In this position, Currie devised plans to strengthen the Federal Reserve through 100% reserve banking. Currie also played a major role in the establishment of several New Deal programs. Currie was always capable of whispering into FDR’s ear when Stalin felt America wasn’t becoming communist at a fast enough pace.

    These four stories only scratch the surface of the immense effect the Soviets had on American policy through espionage. When someone claims that McCarthy was a crazy conspiracy theorist, they are further from the truth than McCarthy was. One could claim that McCarthy’s attack on Hollywood was too far, which would be debatable if only McCarthy had attacked Hollywood. Ultimately, Senator McCarthy was only concerned with communists that were working within the US government. The House of Representatives and the House Un-American Activities Committee, however, were concerned with everyday citizens.

    The truth of the matter is that the communists did infiltrate the US government. Communism or socialism isn’t cool or good. Do not believe the lies that the communists were not actively attempting to overthrow capitalism and take over the US government to eliminate private property rights and other freedoms. All this information and more can be found with a simple Google Search. I encourage you to do your own research rather than believe your public school teachers and university professors!

    This so-called Red Scare of McCarthyism as some have named it is supposed to be about the paranoia and lust for power of one man harming innocent lives. This is a flawed narrative. McCarthy was a true patriot who deeply loved America. He saw, before many Americans did, the dangers of socialism/communism.

    McCarthy’s downfall, sadly, l came when he accused the US Army of harboring communists.

    But, as we have seen, McCarthy was a brave patriot who loved America and saw the nefarious and evil plans of global communism. He saw what would happen to America were we to allow communists and socialists to take over our schools, our media, our businesses, etc. He got some things wrong, but overall he was amazingly accurate in his assertions. One has to only look at the current Democrat party in America which officially espouses so-called “democrat socialism” which is nothing more than communism/socialism in a fancy new dress to distract people from their true aims! Communists in Cambodia, Vietnam, China, and the former Soviet Union murdered tens of millions of people. Even now communist China is poised to overtake America as the world’s foremost superpower in terms of the economy and military. This will prove to be disastrous. The Chinese Communist Party has persecuted millions of Chinese Christians with no end in sight.

    Sadly America no longer stands for Christianity, freedom, and civil liberties. It stands for degeneracy such as abortion on demand, no-fault divorce, transgenderism, homosexuality, socialist and communist policies, a depraved entertainment industry, a socialist secular mainstream media, religious pluralism, secular humanism, rampant materialism, unrestrained consumerism, etc. Sadly America has exported this garbage across the world. Europe is even worse and more advanced in its embrace of socialism/communism than America is.

  • Abortion Deconstructed

    Since January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court decision in the matter of Roe v. Wade found in favor of the “Jane Roe” (Norma McCorvey), who was seeking an abortion in Texas. The Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s “right” to an abortion was a constitutional right. Even though the US Consitution explicitly affirms the right to life. With that Satanic decision, the floodgates were open and abortion on demand soon became widespread in all 50 states.

    Let me be clear, abortion is the cold and premeditated murder of entirely innocent and defenseless life. The mother literally commits homicide against her own offspring, and this is a protected legal right? It defies reason, logic, and Biblical morality.

    According to this article, as of January 7, 2022 – 63,459,781 babies have been murdered through abortion since the 1973 decision! That is genocide on a scale unseen in human history. And that is just in America. Abortion on demand has become the norm in the Western world, as well as in the East. China has performed over 300 million abortions since the Chinese Communist Party assumed power. This silent holocaust rages, while every year in America approximately 1 million infants are further murdered through abortion.

    It was a near-unanimous decision by the Supreme Court. Justices Blackmun, Burger, Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, Marshall, and Powell voted in favor of abortion. Only 2 Justices, White and Rehnquist dissented. These Justices are right now burning in the fires of Hell for their role in allowing this evil to flourish. Unless they sincerely repented, believed the Gospel, and trusted in Christ alone for their salvation. According to everything I’ve read, none of them ever regretted their decision and they never had repentance.

    France recently pushed in the European Union (EU) for abortion on demand (even late-term abortion) to be enshrined as a fundamental human right in the EU. Today, only a handful of countries ban abortion outright.

    Abortion was never about the viability of the infant. Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes, and other similar abortion providers have lobbied their nation’s legislatures to have absolutely no restrictions on abortion, even very late-term abortions where it’s certain the child would survive were it to be delivered then via C-section. Premature babies are proving earlier and earlier viability.

    The founder of Planned Parenthood was an odious wretch named Margaret Sanger who, among other things, wanted to get rid of as many black people as possible through abortion. These eugenics she embraced came directly from Nazi Germany. And eugenics is itself based on Darwinian evolution with its cold and brutal survival of the fittest. For more on the role of evolution in Nazi thought, I recommend Professor Richard Weikart’s excellent book “Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism“. One of the first things Hitler did was have the mentally ill and other disabled murdered under the T4 program. Here is more information on it.

    An average of 2,363 babies are killed daily by legal abortion in the United States, with nearly 300 of them aborted in the second or third trimester of pregnancy. The data comes from the most recent statistics published by Planned Parenthood’s former “special affiliate,” the Guttmacher Institute for 2017.

    That year, 862,320 abortions were committed nationwide, versus more than 3.8 million live births recorded that same year. This means that while 10.5K children were born each day, nearly 2,400 were legally, violently suctioned from their mother’s wombs, starved of nutrients with pills, dismembered, or poisoned by lethal injection.

    https://www.liveaction.org/news/average-2363-babies-aborted-daily-later-pregnancy/

    There is no federal requirement to report abortions, and no requirement to report abortions by gestation. Guttmacher’s graph below (from 2016) gives us an estimation of the numbers.

    • 8 weeks or less (65.4%/563,957) –  1,545 abortions daily.
    • 9-10 weeks (14.7%/126,761) – 347 abortions daily.
    • 11-12 weeks (8.2%/ 70,710) –  nearly 194 abortions daily.

    I should mention that abortion is a very lucrative business. See the figures below.

    Planned Parenthood’s income breakdown for the 2019-2020 fiscal year

    • PP non-government clinic income: $370.4 million
    • PP donations revenue: $510.0 million
    • PP government grants and reimbursements: $618.1 million
    • Total profit: $69.7 million
    • Total income: $1.641 billion

    Many people who say they are pro-life are in favor of abortifacient forms of contraception such as the birth control pill. Contraception is absolutely Satanic! It interferes with God’s natural creative order. God’s creation mandate for man is to be fruitful and multiply. Anything which interferes with the natural process of procreation is most wicked. It is not man’s prerogative to play God and decide how many children they will have and when they will have them! Throughout 2,000 years of Christian history, Christians got by without using contraceptives. And life was much harsher and less forgiving than it is now. There were no tax credits, food stamps, Medicaid, welfare, WIC, or other social support programs back then. My maternal grandmother was one of 13 children (Irish Catholic) raised during the Great Depression. None of them starved to death! They all went on to have successful and productive lives. And this was survival on only the man’s income. Most women didn’t work. Single-income households were the norm in Christendom for the past 2,000 years. So this nonsense that two people working can’t afford additional children is utter deception. And contraception was forbidden in Christendom for nearly 2,000 years. It was only during the 1930 Lambeth Conference that the Church of England (Anglican) allowed contraception. They were the first Christian church to allow it, and it wasn’t long thereafter that the majority of Christian denominations allowed them. I have issues with Roman Catholic theology, but I must give them credit for holding firm to the truth of God’s Word and outlawing abortion and contraception.

    Here is what the Lambeth Conference 1930 declared that caused an earthquake in Christianity worldwide:

    “Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipleship and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit.

    “Nevertheless, in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles.

    “The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception-control for motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience”

    Lambeth Conference, 1930, Resolution 15, emphasis added.

    They contradicted their own Lambeth Conference resolutions from a decade earlier in 1920! Talk about a flip flop! Here is what they said then:

    Because many contraceptive measures are abortifacients (drugs that induce or cause abortions), it is important not to overlook the number of children killed by chemical abortions. Since 1965, an average of 11 million women have used abortifacient methods of birth control in the United States at any given time. Using formulas based on the way the birth control pill works, pharmacy experts project that about 14 million chemical abortions occur in the United States each year, providing a projected total of well in excess of a staggering 610 million chemical abortions between 1965 and 2009!

    Here are 21 direct quotes from Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger that show her utter contempt for human life (life that she deems is worthless and disposable), especially black lives.

    Margaret Sanger, founder of mega abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

    1. “But for my view, I believe that there should be no more babies.”
    — Interview with John Parsons, 1947

    2. “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
    Woman and the New Race, Chapter 5, “The Wickedness of Creating Large Families.” (1920) http://www.bartleby.com/1013/

    3. “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…”
    — Letter to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, December 10, 1939, p. 2
    https://libex.smith.edu/omeka/…

    4. “I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan… I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak…In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.”
    Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography, published in 1938, p. 366

    5. “I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world, that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically… Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they’re born. That to me is the greatest sin—that people can—can commit.”
    — Interview with journalist Mike Wallace, 1957

    6. “The most serious evil of our times is that of encouraging the bringing into the world of large families. The most immoral practice of the day is breeding too many children…”
    — Sanger, Margaret. Woman and the New Race (1920). Chapter 5: The Wickedness of Creating Large Families. http://www.bartleby.com/1013/5…

    7. “Eugenics without birth control seems to us a house builded [sic] upon the sands. It is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit.”
    — Sanger, Margaret. (1919) Birth Control and Racial Betterment. The Birth Control Review.

    8. “As an advocate of birth control, I wish to take advantage of the present opportunity to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit,’ admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes.”
    — Sanger, Margaret. (1921) The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda. The Birth Control Review, p. 5. http://birthcontrolreview.net/…

    9. “The most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”
    — Sanger, Margaret. (1921) The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda, Birth Control Review, p. 5
    https://www.nyu.edu/projects/s…

    10. “No more children should be born when the parents, though healthy themselves, find that their children are physically or mentally defective.”
    — Sanger, Margaret. (1918) When Should A Woman Avoid Having Children? Birth Control Review, Nov. 1918, 6-7, Margaret Sanger Microfilm, S70:807.
    https://www.nyu.edu/projects/s…

    11. “A marriage license shall in itself give husband and wife only the right to a common household and not the right to parenthood.”
    — Margaret Sanger, “America Needs a Code for Babies,” Article 3, 27 Mar 1934.
    https://www.nyu.edu/projects/s…

    12. “No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child, and no man shall have the right to become a father, without a permit for parenthood.”
    — Margaret Sanger, “America Needs a Code for Babies,” Article 4, March 27, 1934.

    13.  “Permits for parenthood shall be issued upon application by city, county, or state authorities to married couples, providing they are financially able to support the expected child, have the qualifications needed for proper rearing of the child, have no transmissible diseases, and, on the woman’s part, no medical indication that maternity is likely to result in death or permanent injury to health.”
    — Margaret Sanger, “America Needs a Code for Babies,” Article 5, March 27, 1934.

    14.  “No permit for parenthood shall be valid for more than one birth…”
    — Margaret Sanger, “America Needs a Code for Babies,” Article 6, March 27, 1934.

    15.  “Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.”
    — Sanger, Margaret. “My Way to Peace,” Jan. 17, 1932. Margaret Sanger Papers, Library of Congress 130:198. https://www.nyu.edu/projects/s…

    16.  “… these two words [birth control] sum up our whole philosophy… It means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”
    — Margaret Sanger, “High Lights in the History of Birth Control,” Oct 1923.
    https://www.nyu.edu/projects/s…

    17.  “Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease…”
    — Sanger, Margaret (1922). The Pivot of Civilization.

    18.  “My own position is that the Catholic doctrine is illogical, not in accord with science, and definitely against social welfare and race improvement.”
    — Margaret Sanger, “The Pope’s Position on Birth Control,” Jan. 27, 1932.
    https://www.nyu.edu/projects/s…

    19.  “All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class… Knowledge of birth control is essentially moral. Its general, though prudent, practice must lead to a higher individuality and ultimately to a cleaner race.”
    — Margaret Sanger, “Morality and Birth Control,” Feb-Mar 1918.
    http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sa…

    20.  “Feeble-mindedness perpetuates itself from the ranks of those who are blandly indifferent to their racial responsibilities. And it is largely this type of humanity we are now drawing upon to populate our world for the generations to come. In this orgy of multiplying and replenishing the earth, this type is pari passu multiplying and perpetuating those direst evils in which we must, if civilization is to survive, extirpate by the very roots.”
    — Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, 1922
    https://www.scribd.com/documen…

    21.  “Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives… If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.” — “Woman and the New Race,” 1920

    As you can no doubt tell by reading these quotes, this woman was a true devil. She was likely possessed by one or more demons.

    I’ve discussed the immorality of the act of abortion, what led to it as law of the land, and some statistics. Before I close, I liked to touch upon, briefly, the rationale and the root cause of most abortions. Many abortions result from fornication and adultery. This goes back to the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s when morality was overturned and people were taught basically the Satanic mantra that if it feels good, they should do it (Do what thou wilt). The fact is that many women don’t want to give up their fornicating and adultery, nor deal with the consequences of a pregnancy. They want their unbridled pleasure and to satisfy the lusts of the flesh. Nothing will get in their way, not even their own flesh and blood child. So they sacrifice their unborn children on the altar of expediency and selfishness. How barbaric and how wicked! Abortion perfectly displays the Reformed doctrine of total depravity. The heart of man is desperately wicked. Only Christ can change such a heart.

    Dreher gets right to the contradiction at the heart of the sexual revolution: Its rhetoric emphasizes the value of individual autonomy, which is allegedly so precious that it cannot be accurately evaluated by the moral imagination of the community. In practice, however, the sexual revolution separates individual identity from one’s material being so completely that mutilation, either of the born or unborn, is suddenly compatible with the ideals of human freedom and equality.

    Maintaining this worldview requires active hostility toward the body. It also requires a steady rejection of the physical creature itself, relying more on ideology than biology to explain what a person is.

    https://mereorthodoxy.com/the-sexual-revolution-is-abortion/

    It deeply saddens me to see how many Protestants openly accept abortion and contraception. Even many Reformed couples see nothing wrong with contraception. That is a travesty. It seems the effects of radical feminism are far-reaching, touching even the Church. This is one of many reasons why I believe radical feminism is Satanic. So many evangelicals have gone woke. We must speak up and proclaim the unchanging truth of God’s Word!

    I pray someday abortion is made illegal both here in America and across the world. But I don’t think that will happen until Christ’s Second Coming when He will rule the earth from Jerusalem for 1,000 years during the Millennial Kingdom. In the meantime, let’s do everything we can to minimize and oppose abortion on demand. Every life saved is precious and has worth to God. Abortion has been called the silent holocaust because its victims are too young to speak up. Let’s be their voice!

  • Biggest blizzards in Pittsburgh in my life so far

    So far, in my life, I’ve witnessed 3 epic blizzards.

    I was 3 years old. It was January 1978. A huge blizzard, dubbed The Great Blizzard of 1978, dumped 27 inches of snow between January 22 and 24. I recall the snow was above my head when we opened the front door on Meadowbrook Blvd. in Brentwood (a suburb of Pittsburgh)! Here is a story about that weather system. Here is a WTAE-TV news report on the blizzard:

    On Saturday, March 11, 1993, snow began falling shortly after midnight. By the end of the day, Pittsburgh had recorded 23.6 inches of snow, the largest single-day snowfall since such records began in 1948.

    Despite the storm’s ferocity, the city managed to host its annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. With the exception of snowplows, the parade was one of the last things that were able to move. It would be days before the city dug out and nearly a week before schools could resume classes. I was a junior in Brashear high school, living with my Gramma, Daddy, Aunt Barbie, [Great] Aunt Mary, and younger sister Tanya living in the South Side neighborhood of Pittsburgh at the time.

    In 2018, KDKA TV looked back at what was called the storm of the century:

    And here’s a WPXI-TV special on the blizzard:

    The blizzard started the night of Feb. 5, 2010, and continued overnight into the morning of Feb. 6, 2010. This monster storm, dubbed Snowmageddon, dumped 34 inches of snow in the neighborhood of Carrick, where Vi and I were living at the time, over the course of several days. To see my photos from the Blizzard of February 2010 click here and here! Here’s a KDKA-TV news report on the storm:

  • Highway to Heaven

    Highway to Heaven
    Season 3, Episode 15 “Wally”
    The episode aired Jan 14, 1987

    Michael Landon as Jonathan Smith
    Victor French as Mark Gordon
    Dick Van Dyke as Wally Dunn

    This series centers on Jonathan Smith (An angel who died as a human 40 years ago. He was given a new body on becoming an angel. So doesn’t appear as he did when he was alive on earth.) and his partner Mark Gordon (an ex-cop who is human). They go on assignments, driving around in their beat-up car, from God helping people. It aired for 5 seasons from 1984 to 1989. It was a groundbreaking show and tackled numerous social and moral problems. It paved the way for future series such as Touched by an Angel.

    You can watch this episode below:

    The show opens with a puppet act:

    Bum: Well that’s our show for tonight. Ya learn anything, Mr. Rich?
    Mr. Rich: Not a thing. I’m rich cause I work hard. You’re poor cause you didn’t.
    Bum: Ya just weren’t listening were ya. That’s why ya didn’t get the message.
    Mr. Rich: What message?
    Bum: There but for the grace of God go I.
    Mr. Rich: Ah don’t give me that stuff ya bum. That’s all ya are just a bum.
    Bum: That’s right, just a bum. Ya look at us and that’s all ya see. Ya never listen. It’s easier to say we’re just bums, just bums. I wasn’t born a bum. Maybe I was abused when I was a child. Maybe my parents were alcoholics or druggies. Maybe I fought for this country and saw too much death. Maybe I’m sick and need help. Maybe… never mind. I know it’s easier to say we’re just bums.

    Wally is an elderly hobo. He’s also a street puppeteer. He is Jonathan and Mark’s latest assignment from God.

    He gives his friend Pauly, the blind man, the $5 the rich couple gave him. Wally tells him to get a room because his cough is getting worse. Then he sees Pauly go into the liquor store to buy alcohol.

    Wally lives in an old abandoned train boxcar.

    Jonathan and Mark introduce themselves. Wally offers them some food and tells them they’re welcome to spend the night.

    The next morning Jonathan, Mark, and Wally go visit the house of a very sick boy. Wally performs a little puppet show for the kid. The boy tells Wally he’s now sure what Wally told him about Heaven. Wally tells him Jonathan and Mark are angels too (to pretend). The boy asks Jonathan if he’s an angel and he says “I swear to God I’m an angel.” The boy asks Wally what heaven will be like. Wally says: it will be like being a bird, flying, free and happy. Wind blowing in your face. Joy in your heart. Boy asks “No more pain Wally?” Wally says “No, no more pain. It’s heaven.”

    They then travel to an old folks’ home and Wally performs to the delighted residents. The home’s director tells Jonathan and Mark that Wally has been performing there 3 times a week for 3 years.

    They then go visit Sylvia. She’s a longtime friend of Wally who used to live on the streets. She had a bad stroke and can no longer talk. Mark asks how she ended up on the street. Wally says a day before her sweet 16th birthday party her father molested her, it went on for a long time, she went into mental hospitals several times. Then she started living on the street. Wally tells them that he pays for Sylvia to stay at the care home.

    Later that evening, as Wally is performing on the street his friend Margaret, who also lives on the street, approaches. She had a job and her own apartment. She quit her job. Wally asks her why and she says she doesn’t deserve it. She’s nothing. Margaret walks away saying she’s taking the night train. Wally said she thought she’d make it this time. Mark says, “She had her chance.” and Wally says “Ya. She hates herself too much to take it.” Next, they hear a commotion at the nearby liquor store and they arrive to find Margaret shot by the owner for trying to steal. She tells Wally not to get an ambulance, “I’m not worth it.” Wally tells her she’s a wonderful person. Margaret tells Wally to take care of her pumpkin then she dies. Wally is devastated.

    Mark, Jonathan, and Wally go back to the boxcar. Wally says “Ya know what I wish? I wish I could’ve gotten Margaret to believe that she was a wonderful person. That she was somebody of worth. That she was loved. I wish she couldn’ve believed.” Jonathan says “She believes it now. She’s with her Father. She feels love now. Far more than she ever could’ve here on earth.” Wally says “You really believe that? You’re really sure of it?” Jonathan says “Yeah.” Wally says “I want to believe that. I want to believe that everything I feel inside is true. But sometimes things happen, I wonder. Yes, why? Why Margaret? Why couldn’t she be happy? She went through so much. She never hurt anybody but herself.” Jonathan says “Because she couldn’t accept the love that she needed. Not yours, not God’s. None of us can make it alone Wally. None of us are strong enough. Don’t be afraid to believe what you feel in your heart. There’s more truth there than you’ll ever find in your mind.” Wally says “You’re really sure aren’t ya about all that?” Jonathan says “Wally, I’m very sure.” Wally says “How? How can you be so sure?” Jonathan says “Because I’ve touched the face of God.” Wally goes to bed.

    The next morning Wally shows them the money he’s sending in for life insurance. He says it’s to pay for Sylvia’s care in case anything happens to them. Wally says they’re going to check on Stevie. As they arrive he finds Stevie being taken away by ambulance. The cop tells them he’s being taken to St. James Hospital. Jonathan, Mark, and Wally rush over there. They arrive at the Intensive Care Unit. Stevie’s parents are sitting outside. Wally says he heard about Stevie and asks how he’s doing. His father says Stevie is in a coma and they don’t expect him to come out of it. Wally asks if he can see Stevie and his mother agrees. Jonathan and Wally enter Stevie’s room. Wally says “First Margaret. Now my little Stevie. God, please, let this boy…You’ve worked miracles before. Work one now. Let him live. His life is just beginning. Please, God! God take me instead. My life’s nearly over, and full. Please, let him live.” Wally asks to be left alone and walks away. Mark says “It’s tonight isn’t it?” Jonathan says “Yeah.” Mark says “That’s the way it’s supposed to be Jonathan, but isn’t there a chance?” Jonathan says “No Mark. Wally’s one of the chosen ones. His prayer will be answered tonight.”

    Wally’s friend Pauly is in the liquor store buying alcohol when suddenly a man comes in and pulls out a gun and asks for money. The owner of the liquor store pulls out a gun and the man takes Pauly hostage. Wally is performing his puppet show when he hears someone yell “He’s got a gun! He’s got, Pauly!” Wally runs to the liquor store. The liquor store owner confronts the robber outside who has his gun aimed at Pauly. Wally tackles the gunman and at that instant, the liquor store owner shoots striking Wally. The liquor store owner calls for an ambulance. The ambulance comes and drives towards the hospital.

    Suddenly Jonathan appears inside the ambulance. Jonathan calls Wally’s name as he caresses his face. Wally says “Jonathan?” Jonathan says “You were a real hero tonight Wally.” Jonathan says “Pauly? Is he ok?” Jonathan says “Pauly’s fine.” Wally says “When I saw that gun! Quite a thing about Margaret, Stevie, and now Pauly. All the people I love.” Jonathan says “They love you.” Wally says “I’m hurt bad huh?” Jonathan says “Ya.” Wally says “I don’t feel any pain.” The medic says to his partner “He’s delirious. He’s talking to himself.” Wally says “What’s he talking about delirious. I’m talking to my friend here!” Jonathan says “He can’t see me, Wally. They can’t see or hear me.” Wally says “Jonathan you’ve been drinking some of that cheap vodka!” Jonathan says “No Wally. I’m an angel.” Wally says “An angel. An angel?” Jonathan says “That’s right.” “And you know because you touched the face of God.” Jonathan says “And so will you tonight. And when you do your prayer will be answered.” Wally says “Prayer?” Jonathan says “See I’m an angel now. But you’ve been an angel your whole life. And because of that, your special prayer will be answered.” Wally says “It’s little Stevie! He’s not gonna die?” Jonathan says “Oh no, he’s going to live Wally.” Wally says “And it’s all true?” Jonathan says “Just the way you always knew it was in your heart. Gimme your hand, Wally.” Jonathan takes Wally’s hand. Wally says “Oh! Jonathan! Jonathan! Our Father!” Just as Wally says that his heart monitor flatlines indicating he just died. The medic says to his partner “Slow down Harry. He’s gone. Poor old guy. Just a bum who wasted his life.”

    At that moment we see Stevie’s heart monitor and it begins to increase more and more. It jumps from 34 to 115 beats per minute.” The nurse says Stevie is out of the coma and is calling for his mother.

    Sometime later, we see Jonathan and Mark arrive at Stevie’s house. Mark asks how Stevie is. His mother says “Healthy and hungry! It’s a miracle! The doctors, everybody, it’s all they can say. I mean it’s not just remission, it’s gone! I mean just it has to be a miracle, there’s just no other explanation!” Jonathan says “No there isn’t.” Mark explains that they brought Wally’s little dog as a gift for Stevie. Wally wanted the boy to have it earlier, but the boy objected since he didn’t believe he had long to live. Stevie comes out of his bedroom and says “John Silver! Wally said you had him out here. Wally’s going on a long trip. He stopped by to say so long and he said you were bringing the pup over!” They enter his bedroom and see no one there. Stevie says “Said he was taking a real special trip.” Stevie shows the puppet and says that Wally gave it to him and that his name is Wally too. Stevie’s mother looks astonished.

    The show ends with a shot of the puppet and Wally says “I wasn’t born a bum. Maybe… never mind. I know. It’s easier to say we’re just bums.”

    This episode was heartwarming and touching. It made me laugh and cry. Dick Van Dyke gives a very strong performance. Also excellent, as always, performances by Michael Landon and Victor French. Wally was an example of faith in action. His caring, compassion and agape love for those he met made him truly Christ-like. This is one of my favorite episodes of the series! I highly recommend it.

    By the way, Dick Van Dyke is the only one of the episode’s 3 stars who are still alive. Dick is 96 and still working as an actor! I doubt a show like Highway to Heaven would be made today. The world of entertainment has gotten so much more wicked and depraved! I even highly doubt the show Touched By Angel would be able to be made today. That show ended nearly 18 years ago. A generation. I’m thankful that we can enjoy wholesome TV series such as The Waltons, Bonanza, Little House, Highway to Heaven, and Touched by an Angel!

    I should mention that Michael Landon and Victor French have amazing chemistry together. I can’t think of another acting pair that were so well in sync with their performances. You could see that they were best friends in real life. They had the same fantastic chemistry in the Little House series.

    The 111-episode series featured actor Michael Landon in the role of Jonathan Smith, a man who died 40 years earlier and was back on Earth as an angel on probation to do good work on God’s behalf. In the series, God was referred to as “the boss.”

    Sure, this feel-good series was corny at times, but it did a beautiful job tackling the belief of divine providence. God’s intervention in the universe, through the use of miracles and power of prayer, is a constant of denominations across Christendom, including Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism. Martin Luther, for example, wrote that divine providence began the moment God created the world, including both among physical things and natural laws. In the show, this very concept was referred to as “the stuff.”

    Contrast the end of the series to the start another television show 30 years that also aired on NBC and went on to achieve greater popularity and cultural staying power. The show in question, Seinfeld, was a “show about nothing” that featured four self-centered New Yorkers who complained about everything and everyone. The characters, while funny to watch, really had no redeeming values. The only “religion” they seemed to rally around was the made-up holiday of “festivus.”

    Before there was festivus for the rest of us, Highway to Heaven was a show about something, where an angel helped everyone — or at least he tried to. The series premiered in September 1984 — in the middle of what many call “the decade of greed” — and revolved around Landon meeting and ultimately partnering with Mark Gordon, played by Victor French. At first distrustful of Jonathan, Mark, a former Oakland police officer, eventually joins forces with the angel to help troubled souls each week.

    “I was driving through Beverly Hills to pick up my kids on a Friday night,” Landon told the Los Angeles Times in 1988, recalling how he came to create the series, “and people were honking at each other. There is no worse place for that than Beverly Hills; I think when people have a little bit more money, they really believe that the Red Sea will part and their car will go forward. And I thought, ‘Why is everybody so angry? If they would just spend that same time being nice… It’s obvious the flow of traffic is going to go much better if everybody has his opportunity.’”

    Landon, famous for his role on the 1960s TV hit Bonanza, and French had co-starred together a few years earlier on another classic family show, Little House on the Prairie, based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. That series, which ran from 1974 to 1983, took place in the late 1800s in the town of Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and recounted the hardships of a frontier family. Little House also didn’t shy away from God and religious themes during its run.

    People who craved wholesome TV found Highway to Heaven to be an oasis, offering families a reprieve at a time when the “culture wars” were just starting to simmer. The tear-jerking show (Landon wasn’t immune to shedding some himself while playing Jonathan) highlighted the best of humanity and how God’s love can impact the lives of people in everyday situations. Landon’s character may have been an angel, but he was relatable. He didn’t have a halo or wings, but strived to help others in jeans and a beat up leather jacket. He was like us.

    Despite the passage of time, the show holds up well. Concepts like goodness, charity and forgiveness don’t go out of style that easily. They are universal attributes the show wasn’t afraid to tackle thanks to Landon’s insistence and creativity. The series would go on to tackle such issues as racial discrimination, drug addiction, ageism, police brutality and pollution years before it became a regular thing on television.

    With its melancholy opening theme song, Highway to Heaven aimed at trying to make all of us better. Its message was never done in a condescending manner (the real key to this series) and wasn’t afraid to insert that divine providence so many Christians believe governs the world. The series came over a decade after the left, through producers like Norman Lear, tried to influence the broader culture with sit-coms like All in the Family and The Jefferson’s. Those shows were overtly political; Highway to Heaven was about humanity.  

    In the two-part pilot episode, Jonathan helps a group of nursing home residents retake control of their lives. At the same time, he meets Mark for the first time and the two become friends. In another wonderful episode that aired in the fourth season tied to Halloween, Jonathan reveals to a boy who’s out trick-or-treating that he’s an angel.

    “If there can be angels,” the boy asks, “why can’t there be werewolves?”

    Jonathan replies, “God makes angels. He doesn’t make monsters.”

    “That makes sense,” the boy says.

    The series — currently available on Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and Christian-based PureFlix — proved prophetic for Landon. The series would be his last. Two years after the series was canceled, Landon died on July 1, 1991 at age 54 of pancreatic cancer. His co-star French had also died at 54 of lung cancer before the final season aired.

    Born Eugene Maurice Orowitz on October 31, 1936 in Queens, New York, Landon’s father was Jewish and mother a Roman Catholic. Raised Jewish, Landon had his acting breakthrough at age 22 playing Little Joe Cartwright on Bonanza. By then, he had changed his name to Michael Landon, choosing it randomly by thumbing through the phone book. After the Western-themed Bonanza went off the air, Landon went on to produce and star in Little House. The series would give the world Melissa Gilbert, who played the main character Laura.

    In a 2015 interview, Gilbert said of Landon: “The overall idea that he pounded into me, from a little girl, into my brain was that nothing’s more important than home and family. No success, no career, no achievements, no accomplishments – nothing’s more important than loving the people you love and contributing to a community. Though we were working, really, really hard, we were not saving the world one episode of television at a time. We’re just entertaining people and there are more important things to do.”

    Landon, a father of nine, knew something about family and family values. What Landon produced throughout most of his life did more than simply entertain millions. Highway to Heaven would go on to inspire the creation of other God-themed shows like Touched by an Angel in the 1990s and newer ones like God Friended Me, which premiered last year on CBS.

    Would a series like this be produced today? Would people watch it? It’s hard to know. For now, we have those old episodes, primetime viewing back in the ‘80s, available for streaming on our tablets three decades later. Times may have changed, but the goodness these shows exuded remains. Landon’s legacy lives on through this series and by highlighting the best of humanity. It was inspiring and encouraging. We’re all better for having watched it.

    https://religionunplugged.com/news/2019/7/12/a-look-back-at-highway-to-heaven-and-power-of-divine-intervention
  • In Christ Alone

    I don’t like much contemporary Christian music, but I absolutely love this contemporary hymn, a throwback to classic hymns, “In Christ Alone”. The Irish melody is beautiful and the lyrics are doctrinally rich and sound. It was written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, both musicians of Christian worship music in Britain.

    Written in 2002, “In Christ Alone” was a collaborative effort between Townend and fellow songwriter (and now good friend) Keith Getty. “The song came about in an unusual way,” Townend explains. “Keith and I met in the autumn of 2000 at a worship event, and we resolved to try to work together on some songs. A few weeks later Keith sent some melody ideas, and the first one on the CD was a magnificent, haunting melody that I loved, and immediately started writing down some lyrical ideas on what I felt should be a timeless theme commensurate with the melody. So the theme of the life, death, resurrection of Christ, and the implications of that for us just began to tumble out, and when we got together later on to fine tune it, we felt we had encapsulated what we wanted to say.”

    https://www.crosswalk.com/church/worship/song-story-in-christ-alone-1275127.html

    Here is my favorite performance of this wonderful Christ-exalting hymn. It’s the group Celtic Worship featuring Steph Macleod.

    Here are the lyrics:

    In Christ alone my hope is found;
    He is my light, my strength, my song;
    This cornerstone, this solid ground,
    Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
    What heights of love, what depths of peace,
    When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
    My comforter, my all in all—
    Here in the love of Christ I stand.

    In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
    Fullness of God in helpless babe!
    This gift of love and righteousness,
    Scorned by the ones He came to save.
    Till on that cross as Jesus died,
    The wrath of God was satisfied;
    For ev’ry sin on Him was laid—
    Here in the death of Christ I live.

    There in the ground His body lay,
    Light of the world by darkness slain;
    Then bursting forth in glorious day,
    Up from the grave He rose again!
    And as He stands in victory,
    Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me;
    For I am His and He is mine—
    Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

    No guilt in life, no fear in death—
    This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
    From life’s first cry to final breath,
    Jesus commands my destiny.
    No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
    Can ever pluck me from His hand;
    Till He returns or calls me home—
    Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

  • Coffee!

    I don’t know about you, but I love drinking coffee! Lattes, espressos, cappuccinos, frappuccinos, cold, hot, I love it all! I’ve tried various high-end coffee companies which feature ethically sourced coffee beans and one I’ve found which I really like is Amora Coffee. Amora is an American company based in Montgomery, Alabama. The company was founded in 2011, to learn more about the company click here. Amora has excellent customer support (I’ve used it!) available through email or a toll-free phone number that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Also, if you use an iPhone you can use the Amora app. Click here for more info. Amora uses a 9-stage roasting process that produces amazing coffee that is so delicious! It’s probably the best coffee I’ve ever tasted! Amora also has a wide selection of flavored coffees. My favorites are the french vanilla and the caramel vanilla. One more thing, Amora has a generous referral program. If you click this link you’ll get $10 off your first purchase! Amora also has some great decaf coffees such as Delicata below.

    Delicata blend. My sister Vi loves this!
  • Pitbulls must be stopped

    The American pitbull terrier is the most dangerous dog in the world. 80% of all human fatalities caused by dogs are pitbulls, even though pitbulls make up just 6% of all dogs! They are an ultra-aggressive, vicious, and unpredictable dog breed. The pitbull bite is the strongest and most damaging bite of any dog breed. Pitbulls should not exist. Two aggressive breeds were genetically mixed together to create the pit bull. This resulted in a breed that is psychologically unstable and prone to fits of psychotic rage. Pit bulls will absolutely attack small children and even babies without provocation.

    Dog Bite Statistics by Breed. Top 3 offenders.

    • #1 Pit Bull. Attacks: 3,397. Deaths: 295.
    • #2 Rottweiler. Attacks: 535. Deaths: 8.
    • #3 German Shepherd. Attacks: 113. Deaths 15.

    As you can see, pitbulls are the most deadly and have the most number of attacks by magnitudes!

    From February 2013 to the present, animal control agencies and health departments in 19 U.S. states report that pitbulls are leading all breeds in biting incidents. The studies are summarized and linked at Dogsbite.org, Pitbulls Lead “Bite” Counts Across U.S. Cities and Counties. See further statistics here.

    In the 10 years from 2009 to 2018, pitbulls killed or maimed 3,569 people in the USA and Canada. (Merritt Clifton, Dog Attack Deaths & Maimings, U.S. & Canada, 1982-2018 Log) They killed over 80% of all Americans who are killed by dogs! (Colleen Lynn, 2015 U.S. Dog Bite Fatalities). See further statistics here.

    There are approximately 4.5 million pit bulls in the United States, making up approximately 5.8% of the country’s canine population. (Merritt Clifton, Breed Survey 2019: More Puppies Yet Fewer Homes for Pit Bulls).

    I noticed from spending time reading posts on the popular neighborhood site “nextdoor” that every time someone posts they or a loved one was attacked by a pit bull, you’ll see literally dozens of clueless pitbull lovers claim the breed is not dangerous contrary to common sense and logic and all available evidence.

    In some countries, pit bulls are banned because they are deemed too dangerous. I hope someday we ban pitbulls in America. This vicious breed must come to an end.

    A five-year review of dog-bite injuries from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, published in 2009 in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, found that almost 51 percent of the attacks were from pit bulls, almost 9 percent were from Rottweilers and 6 percent were from mixes of those two breeds.

    In other words, a whopping two-thirds of the hospital’s dog-attack injuries involved just two breeds, pit bulls and Rottweilers.

    Other studies confirm these statistics: A 15-year study published in 2009 in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology revealed that pit bulls, Rottweilers and German shepherds were responsible for the majority of fatal dog attacks in the state of Kentucky.

    And a 2011 study from the Annals of Surgery revealed that “attacks by pit bulls are associated with higher morbidity rates, higher hospital charges and a higher risk of death than are attacks by other breeds of dogs.”

    The authors of that 2011 study go on to say, “Strict regulation of pit bulls may substantially reduces the U.S. mortality rates related to dog bites.”

    https://www.livescience.com/27145-are-pit-bulls-dangerous.html

    Until the day pitbulls are outlawed, we need to take measures to secure our loved ones and ourselves. Never go out walking your dog or children unless you are armed. If a pitbull lunges at you you have the legal right to shoot them to protect yourself and your loved ones.

    Law enforcement usually is not much help in dealing with pitbulls. They are either unwilling or incapable of holding pitbull owners responsible when their dogs escape their enclosures and attack innocent people and other animals.

    Considering the type of damage pitbulls are known to cause to humans, property & other animals, I would love some type of zero tolerance federal legislation that would see pitbulls and other known dangerous breeds taken from their owners at the first infraction with a year ban on owning any additional animals. Real and substantial consequences would be nice for a change. These irresponsible pitbull owners need to have their animals taken from them (and put down if they injured a person or another animal), be forced to pay all damages, and potentially serve jail time! Landlords should refuse to rent to people who own a pitbull. We need more cities and towns to ban the breed. And insurers should make pitbull owners pay hefty insurance rates!

    Pit Bulls: Facts and Figures

    By Attorney Kenneth M. Phillips, author of Dog Bite Law (dogbitelaw.com)

    Pit bulls are disliked by most Americans

    Americans believe that pit bulls are at least somewhat dangerous and that a family with small children should not harbor a pit bull. (YouGov.us, Poll Results: Pit Bulls, July 24, 2014, https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/07/24/poll-results-pit-bull.)

    More than 50% of all pit bulls in the USA are up for sale or adoption. (Merritt Clifton, Breed Survey 2019, cited above.) 

    Most of the pit bulls offered for sale or adoption have been given up by their former owners. (Merritt Clifton, “Rescued” pit bulls now outnumber pit puppies, http://www.animals24-7.org/2017/06/14/rescued-pit-bulls-now-outnumber-pit-puppies)

    Between 19% and 32% of all dogs taken to shelters are pit bulls. (Emily Weiss, Rising from the Pitt [19%]; Merritt Clifton, “Rescued” pit bulls now outnumber pit puppies [32%], cited above.)

    Pit bulls remain in shelters approximately three times as long as other breeds. (Lisa M. Gunter, Rebecca T. Barber, Clive D. L. Wynne, What’s in a Name? Effect of Breed Perceptions & Labeling on Attractiveness, Adoptions & Length of Stay for Pit-Bull-Type Dogs, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0146857).

    Forty percent of pit bulls in shelters are euthanized every year. (Emily Weiss, Rising from the Pitt, ASPCAPro, https://www.aspcapro.org/blog/2017/05/19/rising-pit).

    Pit bulls are less than 6% of all dogs in the USA

    There are approximately 4.5 million pit bulls in the United States, making approximately 5.8% of the country’s canine population. (Merritt Clifton, Breed Survey 2019: More Puppies Yet Fewer Homes for Pit Bulls, https://www.animals24-7.org/2019/07/09/breed-survey-2019-more-puppies-yet-fewer-homes-for-pit-bulls/.)

    Pit bulls bite more humans than other breeds

    From February 2013 to present, animal control agencies and health departments in 19 U.S. states report that pit bulls are leading all breeds in biting incidents. The studies are summarized and linked at Dogsbite.org, Pit Bulls Lead “Bite” Counts Across U.S. Cities and Countieshttp://blog.dogsbite.org/2009/07/pit-bulls-lead-bite-counts-across-us.html.

    In the 10 years from 2009 to 2018, pit bulls killed or maimed 3,569 people in the USA and Canada. (Merritt Clifton, Dog Attack Deaths & Maiming, U.S. & Canada, 1982-2018 Log.) They killed over 80% of all Americans who are killed by dogs. (Colleen Lynn, 2015 U.S. Dog Bite Fatalities, at http://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-fatalities-2015.php.)

    In the 13-year period from 2005 to 2017, pit bulls killed 283 Americans. (Colleen Lynn, 12-Year U.S. Dog Bite Fatality Chart and Colleen Lynn, 2017 U.S. Dog Bite Fatalities.) 

    Pit bull bites are more deadly than those of other breeds

    From 2011 to 2019, 14 peer-reviewed retrospective medical studies from Level 1 trauma centers spanning all major geographical regions in the United States — Northeast, Southeast, South, Southwest, Midwest, West Coast and Northwest — all report similar findings: pit bulls are inflicting a higher prevalence of injuries than all other breeds of dogs. The majority of these studies (12 of 14) also report that pit bulls are inflicting the most severe injuries, requiring a higher number of operative interventions — up to five times higher — than other dog breeds. Four studies from this period — all from Level 1 trauma centers in the Denver metro area — show a mixture of results, possibly due to Denver and the surrounding metropolitan regions enforcing pit bull bans for the last 3 decades. (See compilation of studies with citations by Lynn, Colleen, Level 1 Trauma Center Studies, https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-studies-level-1-trauma-table-2011-present.php.)

    Studies by health care providers establish that pit bull attacks are associated with higher median Injury Severity Scale scores, a higher number of hospital admissions, higher hospital charges, and a higher risk of death. (Bini, John K. MD; Cohn, Stephen M. MD; Acosta, Shirley M. RN, BSN; McFarland, Marilyn J. RN, MS; Muir, Mark T. MD; Michalek, Joel E. PhD, Mortality, Mauling, and Maiming by Vicious Dogs, Annals of Surgery: April 2011, vol. 253, iss. 4, pp. 791–797, cited at http://journals.lww.com/annalsofsurgery/Abstract/2011/04000/Mortality,_Mauling,_and_Maiming_by_Vicious_Dogs.23.aspx.) 

    Another study authored entirely by physicians concludes that injuries from pit bulls are both more frequent and more severe. (Essig Jr., Garth F., et al., Dog Bite Injuries to the Face: Is There Risk with Breed Ownership? A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis, Int. J. of Ped. Otorhinolaryngology 117 (2019) 192-188; accessed 3/25/2019 at https://bit.ly/2HShg80.)

    Similarly, an additional study found that pit bulls inflict “more complex wounds, were often unprovoked, and went off property to attack” and that “[t]he probability of a bite resulting in a complex wound was 4.4 times higher for pit bulls compared with the other top-biting breeds.” (Khan K, Horswell B and Samanta D, Dog-Bite Injuries to the Craniofacial Region: An Epidemiologic and Pattern-of-Injury Review at a Level 1 Trauma Center, J Oral Maxillofac Surg, November 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31816277.)

    Pit bull owners are more likely to be irresponsible

    In nearly all of the cases in which I have been consulted, where a pit bull killed a person the pit bull owners had no insurance and therefore the victim’s family received no justice in the form of compensation.

    Published, peer-reviewed studies in authoritative journals of psychology and forensic science establish that pit bulls owners as a whole — statistically — are more likely to be socially deviant, engage in crimes involving children, domestic violence, alcohol abuse and violent crimes against other persons. (Jaclyn E. Barnes, Barbara W. Boat, Frank W. Putnam, Harold F. Dates, and Andrew R. Mahlman, Ownership of High-Risk (“Vicious”) Dogs As a Marker for Deviant Behaviors, J. Interpersonal Violence, Volume 21 Number 12, December 2006 1616-1634, abstract at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17065657; Laurie Ragatz M.A., William Fremouw Ph.D., Tracy Thomas M.A., Katrina McCoy B.S., Vicious Dogs: The Antisocial Behaviors and Psychological Characteristics of Owners, Journal of Forensic Sciences, Volume 54, Issue 3, pages 699–703, May 2009, abstract at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2009.01001.x/abstract; Allison M. Schenk, B.A.; Laurie L. Ragatz, M.S.; and William J. Fremouw, Ph.D, A.B.P.P., Vicious Dogs Part 2: Criminal Thinking, Callousness, and Personality Styles of Their Owners, J Forensic Sci, January 2012, Vol. 57, No. 1, doi: 10.1111/j.1556-4029.2011.01961.x, available online at: onlinelibrary.wiley.com.)

    Pit bull owners have engaged in extremely bizarre and vicious behavior, including these examples:

    • Laquandra Kinchen Ligons stabbed to death a neighbor who poked Ligons’ pit bull with a metal rod to protect the victim’s cats. (Pablo Lopez for The Fresno Bee, Fresno woman sentenced to 12 years for killing woman in dispute over pets, http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article19643112.html#storylink=cpy.)
    • Matthew Thomas Oropeza killed a man who asked Oropeza to put a leash on his pit bull. (See the article in the Inquirer at Philly.com.)
    • Rashawn T. Washington-Clark ordered his pit bull to bite an officer and then attempted to bite the latter himself. (Charles Winokoor, Taunton police say man sicced pit bull on them, then tried to bite officer himself, https://bit.ly/37eIJcR.)

    When they attack, pit bulls kill or maul their owners and the owners’ family members or visiting babies more than half the time

    In the years 2016 through 2019, pit bulls killed 110 Americans, and 57 of those 110 victims were either the owner of the pit bull or a member of the owner’s family. (See below.)

    In 2016, of the 31 Americans killed by dogs, 23 were killed by pitbulls and their mixes, and 12 of those 23 victims were either the owner of the pit bull or a member of the owner’s family. (See details given by Colleen Lynn, http://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-fatalities-2016.php.)

    In 2017, of the 39 Americans killed by dogs, 29 were killed by pitbulls and their mixes, and 18 of those 29 victims were either the owner of the pit bull or a member of the owner’s family (including a relative). (See Colleen Lynn, https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-fatalities-2017.php.)

    In 2018, of the 34 Americans killed by dogs, 25 were killed by pit bulls and their mixes, and 14 of those 25 victims were their owner, the owner’s family member, or babies that the pit bull owners were watching. (Phillips, Kenneth, Pit Bull Killings – 2018, https://bit.ly/2Wubi1j.)

    In 2019, pit bulls killed their owners and the owners’ family members 40% of the time. That year, of the 48 Americans were killed by dogs, 33 were killed by pit bulls and their mixes, and 13 of the 33 victims were their owner or the owner’s family member. In one additional case, the victim was a visiting baby. (Phillips, Kenneth, Pit Bull Killings – 2019, https://bit.ly/2S5zcko.)

    Pit bulls also have been known to eat their owners. In 2019, when the police went in search for Freddie Mack (57, Johnson County, TX), they could not find him, but they found bits of his bones and clothes in the excrement of his 15 pit bulls. (Sheriff: Missing North Texas man was eaten by his own dogs, Fox4News.com, July 10, 2019, https://bit.ly/2YR4BrD.) In 2017, police looking for Bethany Stephens (22, Goochland County, VA) found her two pit bulls eating her rib cage. (Goochland County Sheriff James Agnew, press conference, Dec. 18, 2017)

    Common sense leads to the conclusion that when they attack, pit bulls bite (without necessarily killing) their owners and their owners’ family members and visiting babies in the same relative numbers, namely more than half the time.

    Pit bulls are the No. 1 canine killers of women and girls, killing more than half of the females killed by a dog

    In 2018, 28 American females were killed by dogs, and 19 of the killings were by pit bulls. (Phillips, Kenneth, Pit Bull Killings – 2018, https://bit.ly/2Wubi1j.)

    In 2019, 26 American females were killed by dogs, and 16 of the 26 were killed by pit bulls. (Phillips, Kenneth, Pit Bull Killings – 2019, https://bit.ly/2S5zcko.)

    Keep in mind: pit bulls are less than 6% of all the dogs in the USA. Yet they are responsible for more than half of the fatal attacks on women and girls. 

    Pit bulls are the No. 1 canine killers of children, killing more than half of the children killed by a dog

    As of 2021, pit bulls have killed 249 American children in recent memory. (See Colleen Lynn, https://www.fatalpitbullattacks.com/children-killed-by-pit-bulls.php.) Yet there are few laws requiring the muzzling of pit bulls in public, even though we require children to wear masks for the prevention of COVID, which has killed far fewer kids (just 172 as of December 2020, per Academy of Pediatrics, https://www.aappublications.org/news/2020/12/29/covid-2million-children-122920). 

    In 2017, dogs killed 15 children out of the 39 total human fatalities. Pit bulls killed 8 of the 15 youths. (See Colleen Lynn, https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-fatalities-2017.php.)

    In 2018, dogs again killed 15 children, and pit bulls killed at least 9 of those 15 (“at least” because the authorities have concealed the breed of one of the dogs that killed a child.) (See Colleen Lynn, 2018 Dog Bite Fatalities and Phillips, Kenneth, Pit Bull Killings – 2018, https://bit.ly/2Wubi1j.) 

    In 2019, dogs killed 16 children, and pit bulls killed 10 of the 16. (Phillips, Kenneth, Pit Bull Killings – 2019, https://bit.ly/2S5zcko.)

    As stated above, pit bulls are less than 6% of all the dogs in the USA. Yet they are responsible for killing most of the children who get killed by a dog. 

    Pit bulls are the No. 1 canine killers of other people’s pets and animals, killing more than 75% of those killed by a dog

    In 2017, pit bulls killed 13,000 dogs, 5,000 cats and 20,000 horses and other farm animals. (See Merritt Clifton, ‘Pit Bull Roulette’ killed 38,000 other animals in 2017.) Having destroyed more than 90% of other animals killed by dogs, the breed became the number one killer of other people’s pets, horses and farm animals.

    In 2019, pit bulls accounted for 91% of all reported fatal attacks on other animals, 91% of all fatal attacks on other dogs, 76% of all fatal dog attacks on cats, and 82% of all fatal dog attacks on other pets, poultry and hoofed species. (Clifton, Merritt, Record Pit Bull Attacks on Other Animals in 2019, https://www.animals24-7.org/2020/01/13/record-pit-bull-attacks-on-other-animals-in-2019-pro-football/.)

    Pit bulls engage in home invasions more often than any other dog

    Approximately once per month during 2015, 2016 and 2017, a pit bull has entered the home of a person not its owner for the purpose of killing or injuring people or pets. In addition to homes, the invaded premises have included apartments, schools and even a police station. There were 16 such incidents in 2015, 17 in 2016, and 11 in 2017, with the first recorded one in 1912. (See Safety Before Pit Bulldogs, Extreme Attacks: List of Invasion Attacks by Pit Bulls, at http://safetybeforebulldogs.blogspot.com/2014/03/collection-of-home-invasion-pit-bull.html.) 

    Pit bull attacks (deaths and disfigurements) are on the rise

    Fatal and disfiguring attacks by pit bulls have risen 830% since 2007. (Merritt Clifton, Record 33 fatal pit bull attacks & 459 disfigurements in 2015, at http://www.animals24-7.org/2016/01/04/record-33-fatal-pit-bull-attacks-459-disfigurements-in-2015/)

    Repealing their pit bull ban was a disaster for Youngstown, Ohio

    Youngstown banned pit bulls from 2007 to 2015,  but repealed the ban in November 2015 under activist pressure. At least two disfiguring pit bull attacks on humans occurred in Youngstown since then, while a pit bull influx has overwhelmed the Mahoning County dog pound, which serves Youngstown. “Currently, 98% of the dogs at the Mahoning County dog pound fall under pit bull breeds,” reported Molly Reed of WKBN earlier in 2018. (Clifton, Merritt, “Educate yourself”: pit bulls in schools run amok, https://www.animals24-7.org/2018/12/16/educate-yourself-pit-bulls-in-schools-run-amok/.)

    The pit bull attack cover-up is on the rise

    The authorities either unwittingly or purposely are engaging in a cover-up pertaining to pit bull violence. In the three decades from 1982 t0 2013, only 45 canine homicides or disfigurements were by dogs of an unidentified breed, but in 2014 there were 36 and in 2015 there were 78. (Merritt Clifton, Record 33 fatal pit bull attacks & 459 disfigurements in 2015, at http://www.animals24-7.org/2016/01/04/record-33-fatal-pit-bull-attacks-459-disfigurements-in-2015/) 

    Breeding pit bulls adds to the pit bull problem

    Over 40% of the USA’s pit bulls are homeless, according to the latest survey (Merritt Clifton, 2018 Dog Breed Survey: At Least 41% of U.S. Pit Bull Population Are Seeking Homes, at https://www.animals24-7.org/2018/06/18/2018-dog-breed-survey-at-least-41-of-u-s-pit-bull-population-are-seeking-homes/). The percent of homeless pit bulls is probably over 50% because rescues and shelters falsely advertise two out of ten pit bulls as being some other breed. This means half or nearly half of the nation’s pit bulls are seeking homes. Breeding pit bulls potentially adds to that number.

  • Super Bowl Shame

    Super Bowl LVI was held on February 13th, 2022 between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals. The Rams won by 3 points (23-20). But that’s not what I’m going to talk about in this article. I wish to discuss the Super Bowl Halftime Show which is held after the 2nd quarter ends.

    The halftime show featured various well-known rappers such as Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and 50 Cent. This music was an abomination! It represented a direct affront to Biblical values.

    As part of a medley of famous rap songs the performers sang, one was the infamous gangsta (gangster) rap song “F**K The Police”, which derides the police and calls for their murder. This represents the zenith of a 10-year trend in the popular culture we’ve seen with the rise of BLM and CRT and anti-police sentiment in America. This music is a direct challenge to the God-given authority of the state to wield the sword. It is this function of police, keeping law and order in society, that is being challenged.

    Further, the music performed glorifies criminality, incites people to acts of violence, and such music normalizes and encourages misogyny towards women. It reduces women to mere sex objects who exist solely for the gratification of men.

    The Super Bowl LVI halftime show was seen by an estimated 208 million viewers! Millions of children and teenagers watched it with their families. It is shameful to see how pervasive and deep-seated wickedness has become in America. The American values we once held only a few generations ago of Christianity, godliness, no profane speech, modesty, respect for authority, and sexual morality have been replaced with profanity, immodesty, lack of respect for authority, sexual immorality, ungodliness, and pagan or atheist forms of belief.

    I will never watch another Super Bowl and I encourage all Christians to also boycott it. The only thing the NFL seems to care about is money.

    This halftime show represented just another marker in the steady decline of the West into degeneracy. The total depravity of the performers and listeners was on display.

    If you like rap music, I recommend Reformed rappers, such as Shai Linne. Here is one of his songs: