Abraham Lincoln

That would be a staunch "yes". I don't recall anything he's said about Lincoln, but I remember years ago watching his telecast, when he was speaking on Thomas Jefferson. He had said that any accusations that Thomas Jefferson had sexual relations with Sally Hemmings were false, and implied that such accusations were an attempt by liberals to discredit the Christianity of our founding fathers. It was a year or two later that descendents of Jefferson/Hemmings were identified via DNA. Kennedy has since changed his tune, and this year, stated that Jefferson was indeed a Christian nominally, but that the question as to whether he had been transformed by the Holy Spirit cannot be answered difinitively one way or the other.

Now don't get me wrong, I think D James Kennedy is a great speaker and teacher. But he did contribute to the deification of our Founding Fathers, and Framers of the Constitution. </font>[/QUOTE]Good points, John. I agree. Sometimes it's hard to believe that Kennedy is the same guy who wrote "Evangelism Explosion."

One of my friends, a devoted Civil War re-enactor, said he cannot watch Kennedy's TV program. His reason? He said it's too much like the history channel or a college history class. There's isn't enough spiritual meat or actual church atmosphere, he said.

Roscoe

 

Here's one of mine, "The one who endures to the end will be saved." I hardly think she is 'enduring' at present.

 

This post is going to get me in hot water but here it comes anyway. I think Martin Luther King Jr.was a great man in fighting against racism and for civil rights. The things he stood for were very noble. However, have you ever studied his theology? He was a graduate of Crozer Theological Seminary where he was taught that the Bible stories were not literally true (modernism). He was a "Harry Emerson Fosdick" Baptist. He did not believe in the old testament stories or in miracles. Martin Luther King did not believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead the third day. Sometimes great men are not wise to the things of the Lord.

 

Andy,

I think it's common knowledge that MLK had liberal theology. No need to feel you'll be tossed into boiling oil. Oops. I mean... hot water.

Roscoe

 

Helen this is what you said,

1 : to establish in a position or office
2 a : to originate and get established

It is true that God's people and nation is Israel and God was paticular in His attention to that nation by giving Israel His laws...but it not as you say,

The point I was making is this-God sets up every govrernmnet, and because of this fact, we need to obey and submit to the authority unless that authority is asking us to disobey God.

Ken and others are justifying rebellion and this is sin.

That is not correct as well. We can know the heart according to what Christ states,

Luke 6
43 "For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. 44For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. 45A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart[1] brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

We can know if a man is a evil man with a evil heart, if what consistently comes out of that person's mouth is evil. For example false teachers.

In His love,
al soto

 

Ken, one need not be perfect and sinless to expose the unfruitful works of darkness (Eph 5:11).

al

 

I will not descend to your level of mudslinging but I will point out a few rash errors that expose your ignorance and lack of temperance. The South lost the war in military terms but it retained its honor, dignity and glory. Furthermore, we have a saying: "Truth though crushed by might is still the truth." The South was right.

Your preceding tirade marks you for what you are more than anything that I could say. The readers will judge you by your intemperate words. So be it.

You raise some interesting points. Let's look at the word choice you used.

"rag tag" -- Yes, the Army of Northern Virginia, as well as the other Confederate armies, was under-manned, under-fed, and under-equipped, yet it held at bay and defeated the best equipped, best fed, and well manned Yankee armies that the North could field for four long years. Grant was amazed when he found that Lee had held him off at Petersburg with only about 20,000 men. They marched bare-foot and hungry in face of great obstacles but they fought hard and defeated the enemy. They were the best fighting army on earth at that time.

“terrorist” – This is an absolute LIE! (Sorry, I just got carried away with such blatant nonsense.) When the Confederate army marched into PA prior to Gettysburg, Lee sternly instructed his men that they were not to take anything from the civilians without paying for it. On the other, there was the rape of the civilian South by Sherman and his bummers. Looting, pilfering, terrorizing the civilian population, etc. were the characteristics of the Yankees, not the Confederates. The civilians cheered John Hunt Morgan during his forays into Ohio. Southerners were gentlemen as a whole. History is not as kind to the Yankees.

“libertarians who hated having an authority over their head” -- Nonsense! Southerners weren’t libertarians. They wrote and approved a constitution that was more progressive and far thinking than the U.S. Constitution. Have you read the Confederate Constitution? They had a very orderly, benign, and freedom-loving government but they weren’t liberatarian. They stood in the same tradition as the American Revolution when the colonists demanded their rights as Englishmen; likewise Southerners demanded their rights of self-determination as sovereign states. They were morally and legally correct to do so.

“The South started it” -- Poppycock! Lincoln started it when he tried to force the South to remain in the Union. He could have allowed them their rights and let them go in peace. This is exactly what the South wanted. However, Mr. Lincoln wanted to be boss of all. He was the consummate politician—ambitious, designing, wily, etc.

“the North crushed them like scum” -- I don’t know what revisionist history books that you have been reading but this ain’t true. The Yankees struggled and struggled before winning the war. For a long while, it appeared that the North might lose. The crushing came only after the surrender when northern politicians, carpetbaggers, scalawags, et. al. raped a helpless people who surrendered honorably and in good faith. Have you ever heard of Reconstruction? It is a blot on American history when opportunists committed atrocities on a civilian population.

Deo Vindice

 

The South was militarily defeated but it retained its conservative political principles and love of liberty. The same issues and battles are being fought today in the political arena—strong centralized government versus local control, pervasive government versus limited government, etc. We still believe in self-determination and self-government in Dixie. We have not absorbed the socialists, big-government ideals of other parts. So, please don’t be so trite and smug in your attitude. Read a little more deeply in serious works before reaching as quick opinion. Thanks.

 

Dr. Bob, you are right on track! It causes me to cringe when A Beka tries to make a saint the scoundrel.

 

Mark, you made a lot of assumptions and errors. You make an obvious gaffe in asserting that the North and South would be two third world countries. Wrong. You are equating size with top nation status. France, approximately the size of Texas, ranks in the first order of world players. Third world status is not size but such factors as a developed infrastructure, etc.

Furthermore, you have the typical modern misconception of slavery. Whereas one cannot condone or justify it in modern terms but it appeared in an entirely different light over 150 years ago. You must consider life was different then. There are many points here that I just don’t have the time to elaborate. However, the war was not about slavery—it was about political POWER. Even the South realized that slavery was on the way out. Most progressive thinking Southerners just wanted time to achieve a gradual transition without an economic collapse. What the North refuses to see and admit is the hardship and poverty that the war brought upon the blacks, the former slaves. In the South, everyone, white and black, suffered at the hands of the North. In fact, much of the black poverty in the South today can be attributed in some extent to the conditions created by the North in the war and Reconstruction. They were crushed into an underclass position from which they have had a hard time rising.

 

Sorry, but admission to the union as a state is permanent. There's no Constitutional implication that it is limited by time. This has been tested in the courts several times. The only way to change one's statehood status is to secede from an existing state, into another state. This was the case with West Virginia (which many Virginians think was also unconstitutional, a notion that is also incorrect).

If I as a Californian raised the idea of seceding from the US and returning California to Mexico, I'd be called a traitor. For some reason, when a Southerner does it, he's not branded with the same iron. </font>[/QUOTE]JohnV, you should read a little more deeply into Constitutional history. You don't seem particularly well versed here. From the writings of the Founding Fathers, it is generally agreed that it was unthinkable for a state to relinquish its sovereignty and enter the Union if it did not believe that it could also withdraw. BTW, the U.S. Constitution itself was framed under somewhat dubious circumstances where the framers exceeded what they were empowered to do. However, it is doubtful that the states would have ratified it if they thought they were giving up sovereignty. In the early years, secession was often threated by states outside the South. BTW, CA was all cactus, coyote and prickly pear then.