The Government, the Media & the Truth!- Jerry Johnson

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Ningúem Desaponta Jeus!

Uma compilação


Ninguém desaponta Jesus. Pedro que o diga!


Olhando superficialmente, parece que a oração de Jesus não foi atendida.[1] Afinal de contas, a última vez que olhei, trata-se do mesmo Pedro que veio a negar Jesus três vezes. Eu acho que Jesus teria toda a razão para ficar desapontado. Mas essa perspectiva só é válida se acharmos que Jesus estava orando para que a fé de Pedro não falhasse jamais.


A fé de Pedro falhou – mas não totalmente.


Jesus sabia que Pedro ia negá-lO, e não orou contra isso. Mas orou para que essa não fosse a última palavra contra Pedro. E, logicamente, a Sua oração foi atendida. Pedro falhou na fé, mas se reergueu e tornou-se o líder da Igreja Primitiva.


Pedro não poderia desapontar Jesus, assim como você não poderia. Sabe o que significa “desapontar”? Significa produzir um resultado além do esperado, ou seja, aquém da expectativa do outro.


Como vai dar a Deus um resultado inesperado?


Deus sabe que você vai falhar. Aquilo que você fez ontem, Jesus já sabia que ia fazer. O mesmo com o que fez hoje e fará amanhã.


Dá um medinho quando pensamos nisso, mas, na verdade, deveria ser um incentivo. Afinal, se Deus já sabe, e sabe desde a eternidade e não desistiu de você, por que haveria você de desistir de si mesmo?


E muito mais do que isso, deveria ficar encorajado, porque mesmo que a sua fé falhe por um momento, em última análise você será bem sucedido, pois o mesmo Deus que sabe que você vai falhar já tem um plano para reerguê-lo. —Steven Furtick


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Se as coisas dão errado, o que é inevitável,

Se a estrada é difícil, o que é muito provável,

Apertado de dinheiro e as contas amontoando,

Quer resolver e sorrir, mas não sabe quando,

Mesmo que ande perturbado, sempre resista,

Dê uma trégua, se preciso, mas nunca desista.

Apesar dos muitos altos e baixos na vida

Todos perceberemos na hora devida,

Que é possível perder antes do tempo

Se desistir diante de um contratempo.

Não se entregue às muitas dificuldades

Pois poderá vencer na próxima rodada.

Muitas vezes, a meta está mais perto,

Do que percebe aquele que hesita,

Muitas vezes ele luta e perde

Porque desiste de alcançar o objetivo.

E só muito depois entende

Quão perto estava do prêmio.

Sucesso é o fracasso do avesso,

Longe das nuvens de dúvidas cinzentas,

Pois nunca sabe a que distância se encontra

Pode estar pertinho quando parece distante.

Então fique firme na hora do aperto

Mesmo tudo dando errado, acredite no acerto.—Frank Stanton

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Pensar que Deus fica desapontado conosco é uma das técnicas de constrangimento e culpa do inimigo contra nós para nos deixar sentindo condenados. ...mas as Escrituras confirmam que é impossível deixar Deus desapontado. Ninguém consegue desapontar Deus.


Sabe por quê? Por causa do significado dessa palavra. Pense um pouco. Desapontamento resulta de uma expectativa que não se cumpre. Ficar desapontado significa contar com um resultado e constatar um resultado diferente. Por isso, achar que Deus ficaria desapontado conosco significa que Ele não sabe tudo, pois achou que agiríamos de uma certa forma, mas agimos do contrário!


Não, isso jamais acontecerá. Deus não espera nada. Ele sabe de tudo antecipadamente, com 100% de certeza. O que poderia desapontar Deus? Nada que fizemos ou faremos jamais O surpreenderá.


Sugerir que o pecado deixa Deus desapontado é ignorar a Sua obra plena na cruz. Quero lembrá-los que ao tomar sobre Si os nossos pecados na cruz, Jesus viu claramente todos os pecados que viríamos a cometer... Ele sabia exatamente o que faríamos um dia. Viu e tratou da situação, tratou de todos os pecados. Deus sabe tudo que você vai fazer na sua vida e já resolveu tudo na cruz. Nós talvez fiquemos desapontados com nossa conduta e reações, mas Deus jamais fica desapontado conosco.


Deus… entende que somos incapazes de fazer as coisas por conta própria. Na verdade, não passa de legalismo puro achar que podemos, por esforço próprio, superar a tentação de pecar. Na verdade, Jesus disse, ‘sem Mim, nada podeis fazer’.


Só porque digo que Deus não fica desapontado quando erramos, não significa que Ele aceite nossos pecados. O seu Pai o ama e detesta vê-lo se prejudicar, que é o resultado do pecado. A realidade é que Deus não nos castiga por nossos pecados, mas nossos pecados é que nos punem pelos próprios pecados. ...Ainda assim, no final existem consequências.


São as consequências de nossas próprias escolhas, mas com certeza é impossível desapontarmos Deus. Ele nos ama de paixão e não espera nada em troca. Por isso Ele quer que recorramos a Ele para ser a nossa força diante da tentação. Se achar que essa realidade vai incentivar as pessoas a pecar, está perdendo a essência da graça. A graça de Deus nos ensina quem somos e nos motiva e capacita a viver retamente como filhos de Deus. Mas nunca pegamos Deus de surpresa quando agimos de maneira contrária. Ele está sempre pronto para nos pegar quando caímos.—Steve Mc Vey[2]


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Nos momentos difíceis serei a sua luz; nos momentos tristes serei a sua alegria; nas lutas do dia a dia serei o seu libertador; nos momentos de fraqueza eu lhe darei forças; quando questionar, eu lhe mostrarei soluções. E, o mais importante, é que Eu o amo. Você jamais perderá o Meu amor.


Não desanime. Não desfaleça, e não olhe para trás. Não fique com remorso por causa dos erros e pecados, pois o que passou, passou. Assim que buscou o Meu perdão e clamou a Mim, Eu o perdoei. Então não precisa se preocupar, temer ou querer carregar o fardo.


Não se angustie por causa do passado nem tema pelo futuro. Contemple a Minha amorosa face. Venha a Mim e encontrará perdão, perfeito consolo, forças, e perfeito amor, desde agora até o dia em que Eu voltar para buscá-lo. —Jesus, falando em profecia[3].


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Deixemos todo o embaraço e o pecado que tão de perto nos rodeia, e corramos com paciência a carreira que nos está proposta, olhando para Jesus, autor e consumador da fé.—Hebreus 12:1–2.


Publicado em abril de 2012. Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli. Revisão Denise Oliveira.


[1] Lucas 22:32.


[2] Do site http://gracewalkministries.blogspot.com/2010/01/you-cant-disappoint-god.html


[3] Publicado originalmente em janeiro de 2002.

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Top Military Officers Targeted in Syrian Conflict!

By Bassem Mroue, AP, Apr 24, 2012

BEIRUT (AP)—The gunmen walked into an apartment building before dawn earlier this month in the quiet Damascus suburb of Jaramana, went to the fifth floor and knocked on the door. When the police commander opened up, the men shot him dead and left.

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s opponents appear to be resorting increasingly to assassinations of loyalist military officers in an escalation of their campaign to bring down the regime. At least 10 senior officers, including several generals, have been gunned down in the past three months, many of them as they left their homes in the morning to head to their posts.

The latest occurred Tuesday, when attackers shot and killed a retired lieutenant colonel and his brother, a chief warrant officer, at a home supplies store in another suburb of the capital, according to the state news agency. Elsewhere in Damascus, an intelligence officer was killed, opposition activists said.

Such targeted slayings are rising as an intensified crackdown by regime forces in recent months has dealt heavy setbacks to Syria’s rebels. For the moment, Assad’s troops have shattered the rebels’ strategy of trying to seize ground in several cities and provinces.

Their pace appears to have accelerated even more sharply since a cease-fire plan brokered by U.N. and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan went into effect April 12—and just as quickly began to unravel.

The peace plan was meant to halt 13 months of violence by government forces to put down an anti-Assad uprising in which the U.N. says more than 9,000 people have died. A spokesman for Annan said in Geneva that satellite imagery and other credible reports show Syria has failed to withdraw all its heavy weapons from populated areas as required by the cease-fire deal.

It remains murky whether the recent slayings are being carried out by rogue elements in the opposition seeking revenge or whether they represent a coordinated strategy by rebels to destabilize the regime. A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, the Turkish-based umbrella group for armed opposition groups in Syria, denied it was behind the string of attacks, although he said the victims were legitimate targets.

Mohamad Bazzi, a Syria expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the killings are “likely a tactic by the Syrian rebels who are fighting from a much weaker position.”

“In many ways, it’s a classic guerrilla tactic—to strike at weak points in the regime’s military and security apparatus,” he said.

The Syrian government consistently blames “terror groups” for the killings, just as it blames the country’s turmoil in general on terrorists, denying there is a popular-based uprising. The regime says more than 2,000 members of the military and security forces have been killed in the past year, almost all of them in rebel attacks on checkpoints or convoys, or in gun battles.

The last time Syria saw any such major string of assassinations was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Muslim Brotherhood waged a campaign of violence against Assad’s predecessor and father, Hafez Assad. One of the most notorious attacks came on June 16, 1979, when gunmen killed dozens of cadets at Aleppo Artillery School in northern Syria. The dead were mostly Alawites, the sect to which the Assad family belongs.

Hafez Assad eventually responded with a three-week siege of the main Brotherhood stronghold, the city of Hama, that leveled parts of the city. Amnesty International has estimated that 10,000 to 25,000 were killed in the Hama assault, and the Brotherhood was all but wiped out of the country.

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I Know Who Holds Tomorrow-Susan Cox and Alison Krauss

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A New Record is Set for Spending on War!

The Shame of Nations

By Lawrence Wittner, Common Dreams, April 23, 2012
On April 17, 2012, as millions of Americans were filing their income tax returns, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released its latest study of world military spending. In case Americans were wondering where most of their tax money—and the tax money of other nations—went in the previous year, the answer from SIPRI was clear: to war and preparations for war.
World military spending reached a record $1,738 billion in 2011—an increase of $138 billion over the previous year. The United States accounted for 41 percent of that, or $711 billion.

Some news reports have emphasized that, from the standpoint of reducing reliance on armed might, this actually represents progress. After all, the increase in “real” global military spending—that is, expenditures after corrections for inflation and exchange rates—was only 0.3 percent. And this contrasts with substantially larger increases in the preceding thirteen years.

But why are military expenditures continuing to increase—indeed, why aren’t they substantially decreasing—given the governmental austerity measures of recent years? Amid the economic crisis that began in late 2008 (and which continues to the present day), most governments have been cutting back their spending dramatically on education, health care, housing, parks, and other vital social services. However, there have not been corresponding cuts in their military budgets.

Americans, particularly, might seek to understand why in this context U.S. military spending has not been significantly decreased, instead of being raised by $13 billion—admittedly a “real dollar” decrease of 1.2 percent, but hardly one commensurate with Washington’s wholesale slashing of social spending. Yes, military expenditures by China and Russia increased in 2011. And in “real” terms, too. But, even so, their military strength hardly rivals that of the United States. Indeed, the United States spent about five times as much as China (the world’s #2 military power) and ten times as much as Russia (the world’s #3 military power) on its military forces during 2011. Furthermore, when U.S. allies like Britain, France, Germany, and Japan are factored in, it is clear that the vast bulk of world military expenditures are made by the United States and its military allies.

This might account for the fact that the government of China, which accounts for only 8.2 percent of world military spending, believes that increasing its outlay on armaments is reasonable and desirable. Apparently, officials of many nations share that competitive feeling.

Unfortunately, the military rivalry among nations—one that has endured for centuries—results in a great squandering of national resources. Many nations, in fact, devote most of their available income to funding their armed forces and their weaponry. In the United States, an estimated 58 percent of the U.S. government’s discretionary tax dollars go to war and preparations for war. “Almost every country with a military is on an insane path, spending more and more on missiles, aircraft, and guns,” remarked John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus. “These countries should be confronting the real threats of climate change, hunger, disease, and oppression, not wasting taxpayers’ money on their military.”

Of course, defenders of military expenditures reply that military force actually protects people from war. But does it? If so, how does one explain the fact that the major military powers of the past century—the United States, Russia, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and China—have been almost constantly at war during that time? What is the explanation for the fact that the United States—today’s military giant—is currently engaged in at least two wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and appears to be on the verge of a third (with Iran)? Perhaps the maintenance of a vast military machine does not prevent war but, instead, encourages it.

In short, huge military establishments can be quite counterproductive. Little wonder that they have been condemned repeatedly by great religious and ethical leaders. Even many government officials have decried war and preparations for war—although usually by nations other than their own.

Thus, the release of the new study by SIPRI should not be a cause for celebration. Rather, it provides an appropriate occasion to contemplate the fact that, this past year, nations spent more money on the military than at any time in human history. Although this situation might still inspire joy in the hearts of government officials, top military officers, and defense contractors, people farther from the levers of military power might well conclude that it’s a hell of a way to run a world.

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She told her son, "Hit him hard"-- and she learned a lesson.

By Amy MacKinnon, CS Monitor, April 12, 2012


I told my son to hit him hard and fast.
“Aim for the nose,” I said. “It will make him cry. He’ll bleed—a lot. Then hit him again. Harder. If you get in trouble with the school, don’t worry. You won’t be in trouble at home.”
My son always said no. “I don’t want to hurt anybody. It’s not who I am.”
Each day for endless months my son came home from seventh grade with stories about the boy. How he humiliated my son in front of the class with a clever putdown or a quick smack when the teacher turned her back. At first my son’s friends laughed it off. Then they turned primal and wouldn’t let him sit at their lunch table. I was enraged, my son was stunned and becoming glummer by the day. Hit him, I pleaded, wishing I could somehow inhabit my son’s body and do it myself. My son always said no.
“That’s not who I am,” he said. “You’re only making it worse.”
The turning point came one day in the locker room when the boy looked at my son as they changed and said, “I dreamed I [hurt] you.”
I didn’t trust the principal to help and my son didn’t trust me; I called the police instead.
The officer showed up at the school, but the principal met him at the office. He told the cop it was his school, he would handle it. The principal called my son and the boy down to office over the public address system for the whole school to hear. Everything became instantly worse. When I found out, I called the principal.
He said he brought them into his office and told both of them to stop or else.
“If there are any more problems,” the principal said, “call me and I’ll take care of it.”
Months of fury and impotence and hurt that I couldn’t direct at the boy swelled within me. I was grateful there was a phone line between the principal and me, and not something so flimsy as a desk. “Why would I call you?” I said. “You’re useless to me.”
That night, the officer called my son and listened to him awhile. In the morning, he bypassed the principal and headed straight for my son’s class, taking a seat next to him and near the boy. He told the boy my son was his friend and he didn’t want anyone bothering him. The cop told the boy he could be his friend, too, but the boy didn’t say much of anything.
“After that,” my son said, “I asked him if he wanted to be partners in English.”
“Why?” I cried.
“Mom,” said my son, “I heard he has problems at home. I couldn’t hurt him more than that. It’s not who I am. Don’t you understand?”
Finally, I did.

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3 Lessons I learned Through Tragedy- John Tiller

John Tiller, April 20, 2012


On January 9th, 2003, my life was going according to the plan that I had envisioned. I was thankful for many things. At the top of the list was my healthy three-year-old, Eli. I had no idea that everything could change so quickly.
On that day, our precious toddler pulled a little red Playskool chair across his playroom under an open window. He then climbed upon the chair, hoisted himself over the window sill, and pushed out the protective screen.
Just moments later my wife went searching for him, noticed the empty room and the missing screen, looked out the window and witnessed our only child laying on the asphalt driveway thirteen-feet below.
Eli had suffered a severe head trauma and was med-flighted to the nearest university hospital. For the next three weeks, no matter how hard I pressed, doctors could not tell me if he would survive.
He did survive, but our lives would never be the same. Here are three lessons that I’ve learned through this life-altering event:
1. Determine your values before a crisis hits. In crisis, you act on instinct. You default to what you truly believe. John Maxwell makes a case in his book, Today Matters, that we really only make a handful of true decisions in life.
For example, we might make a decision at some point in our lives to manage our money well, serve our family, live healthy, or live out our faith. In our daily choices, thereafter, we simply manage those decisions that we have already made.
Crisis creates defining moments because it reveals the decisions we have already made. Upon arriving in the emergency room on the day of the accident, I found my wife huddled in the corner of a small room crying uncontrollably. She explained what happened and it was clear that our son might die.
I looked her in the eyes and I said, “No matter what happens, we will NOT let this come between us.” She agreed. We didn’t make a decision that day. We were simply affirming a decision that had already been made.
Eighty percent of marriages fail after the serious injury or death of a child. Today our marriage is stronger than ever, despite our tragedy. I’m convinced that’s because our decision to make our marriage succeed had already been made before the crisis hit.
2. Work like it depends on you and pray like it depends on God. Mark Batterson introduced me to this phrase in his recent New York Times best seller, The Circle Maker.
When our son was hurt, we worked and we prayed. We did everything humanly possible to make our son well. We invested tens of thousands of dollars into uninsured therapy equipment.
We received training to administer an intensive home-based therapy program. For three years, eighty percent of our waking hours were spent doing therapeutic treatment. We worked like it depended on us.
We also prayed consistently, like it depended on God, because we needed supernatural help.
3. Be willing to burn your old vision and embrace a new one. Despite years of prayers and the best treatment possible, Eli’s brain injury has left him with significant symptoms. Now twelve-years-old, he walks with a cane, the entire left side of his body is weak, he has a severe stutter, and his sight and memory are seriously impaired.
One of the hardest things that we had to do was to acknowledge, several years after the accident, that it was time to live life with disability. It had become a reality that we could not change.
Instead of continuing to try to fix what we could not fix, or denying that this new reality existed, we had to develop and embrace a new vision for our child: A vision to make a positive impact on the world, despite his challenges.
Eli has pushed through his challenges and he has lived into our new vision. He plays Miracle League baseball and participates in one-mile running races. He may not finish first, but he always finishes!
He now sings, speaks, and races to raise money for organizations that help kids with special needs, such as the Miracle League and Children’s Hospital. He has become a voice that advocates for other kids, some of whom cannot speak for themselves.
This was not my original plan. Some days I still dream about my old vision. But that’s gone. It’s time to embrace our new realities and experience the blessings that come with a new vision.

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Rapture Theology: Jerry Johnson

Rapture Theology: The Arrogance of the West
by Jerry Johnson, President,
NiceneCouncil.com

Hello, I'm Jerry Johnson and I welcome you to this edition of Against the World.

Since its inception the Christian Church has suffered numerous tribulations, beginning with Jesus Himself who suffered the trials of the cross.  Jesus declared “If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you”. (John 15:18)  After the death of Christ, the persecution of the Christian Church became even more intense.  Saul, one of the first “ordained” persecutors sought out these Christian renegades and had them imprisoned or murdered. (Acts 8:1)  Stephen, who was the first to suffer for the faith, was stoned to death by an angry mob. (Acts 11:19)  Paul tells Timothy in his second letter, “…[A]ll who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution”. (II Timothy 3:12)

The first century Christians new well that a public profession of faith in Jesus Christ meant certain death.  Up until 70 A.D. most of the persecution was done at the hands of the Jews.  Just prior to the destruction of the temple, Nero Caesar instituted a reign of terror against the benevolent followers of Christ.  Children of the believers were thrown into the Roman Arena to be torn apart by wild beasts as onlookers cheered, while their parents were made to watch!

In fact, it was not until the reign of Constantine that the Christians were finally allowed to openly worship their Savior without the fear of reprisal.  But this was short lived.
After the ascension of the Papacy, for the next 1000 years terror fell upon all those who would disagree with the Roman Catholic Church. One only needs to casually glance at any work on Church history to see the tyranny and murderous ways the Rome Pontiff dealt with nonconformists.  A short list speaks of the Hussites, the Waldesians, the Huguenots, or men like William Tyndale and Martin Luther who has a price on his head.

In modern times the persecution has not ended.  Various dictators and governments have made the Christian Church the focal point of their hatred.  Thousands have died in the concentration camps of Eastern Europe.  In the Former Soviet Empire, professing Christians were sent to Siberia.  And I need to mention the Middle East were converts have had body parts chopped off in retaliation for converting to Christ.
 
By the grace of God and in the midst of all of these tribulations the Church has endured. Western Christians, specifically those in the Untied States of America, have escaped any real threat to their existence.  I will speculate as to why this is true 1) God has protected the Church in the West so we can give aid and comfort to those who suffer these persecutions OR 2) we (those in the West) really do not have any strong convictions about our faith and therefore our enemies are not threatened by our existence.

Whatever the reason, after two hundred years of being somewhat free to worship without fear from our government, many Christians believe, to one degree or another, that the United States of America will one day face a great persecution under the hands of the “anti-Christ.”
But all is not lost.  They also teach that Christians who are alive will be raptured out of this world, so as not to have to endure the “wrath to come”.  Numerous advocates of this doctrine even refer to it as “the great escape”.

 In recent years, books on “the great escape” have filled the Christian bookstore shelves.  Who can forget “88 Reason Why The Rapture Will Happen in 1988”?  Or Hal Lindsey, and his “textbook” on the rapture entitled “The Late Great Planet Earth” and the recent rapture craze  fueled by the "Left Behind Series."

Rapture theology has so become entwined with American Christianity that anytime an international crisis occurs, videos, books and pamphlets by the thousands hit Christian bookstores declaring that the end is near, again!
But think about it! Does it really seem plausible that Christians in the United States will some how avoid these “great tribulations”?

Without saying it directly, many self-proclaimed prophecy experts seem to imply that the Beast of Revelation cannot be revealed until we are “out of here.”  And that we being the American church.

So here is my question, is it possible that the modern doctrine of the rapture is based upon an arrogant Western presumption, that God MUST first rapture the American Church before persecution comes, even though he never did it for Christians in the Middle East or Communist Block countries?  Are American Christians more important to God than Chinese Christians?  Many pews sitters seem to think so.  Though they do not say it in proper words, it appears to be a fair inference to make.

 Those who hold to the view of modern rapture theology see things worked out this way:  The Church will be raptured (caught up) and taken into heaven. This event will precede the second coming of Christ by either seven years or three and a half years, depending on your view of pre-trib or mid-trib. Then the anti-Christ will take over and rule. During this time the “great tribulation” will be waging on planet earth.  This event, the “great tribulation”, is what American Christians must escape.

What most do not know is that “rapture theology” of the pre-tribulation variety is a recent doctrinal concoction.  The historic church never taught this view.  No one taught the pre-millennial pre-tribulation view until the early the nineteenth century.  This teaching made its appearance with dispensationalism in circa 1830.  One is hard pressed to think that all of the great minds from St. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, that though they had read I Thessalonians 4 failed to understand the important teaching of a pre-millennial, pre-tribulation rapture.

Dispensational rapture theology is at its foundation conceited!  It trivializes the sufferings of the early church, as well as the church in third world countries that are currently being told they cannot “buy, sell or trade” or have any freedoms and are imprisoned because of their faith in the Lord Jesus.

Besides its sheer arrogance rapture theology fails to see Christians as salt and light in the world and may ultimately lead to the total surrender of western civilization.  What if Christ does not return for another 200 hundred years?  How will future generations remember those who did not carry out the command to bring "every thought captive to the word of God"?  How will they remember those of us who allowed the blood bought treasures of western freedom to die out one by one in the name of this aberrant theology?

This is Jerry Johnson, standing Contra Mundum - Against the World.

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Is America a Free Country?

By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, April 22, 2012

The “war on terrorism” has inaugurated a new era in the American polity, a sea-change that has not only threatened to overturn traditional limits on government power but also corrupted the political culture—and opened the way to the terminal crisis of the Constitution.

In a revealing series of interviews on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now” program, three individuals targeted by the American surveillance state—William Binney, former top NSA official, Jacob Applebaum, an internet security specialist who works with WikiLeaks, and Laura Poitras, an Oscar-nominated documentary film-maker whose work has brought her to the attention of US authorities and led to her harassment by US government agents—give compelling evidence that the answer to the question in the title of this piece is clearly an emphatic no.

Binney resigned his position with the National Security Agency (NSA) after 40 years in protest at the government’s increasingly totalitarian methods of data-collection and retention, without judicial oversight. The government has targeted him: in 2007, his home was invaded by FBI agents after he went to the Senate Intelligence Committee with revelations about illegal NSA spying on American citizens: they pointed guns at him, and warned that he would “not do well” in prison. Applebaum and Poitras have been detained, searched, and interrogated every time they have re-entered the US from abroad—Poitras over 40 times—and had their laptops seized and presumably copied. None of these individuals have been charged with a crime.

The degree to which our constitutionally-protected liberties have been usurped is shockingly described by Binney:
“AMY GOODMAN: Do you believe all emails, the government has copies of, in the United States?
WILLIAM BINNEY: I would think—I believe they have most of them, yes.
GOODMAN: And you’re speaking from a position where you would know, considering your position in the National Security Agency.
BINNEY: Right. All they would have to do is put various Narus devices at various points along the network, at choke points or convergent points, where the network converges, and they could basically take down and have copies of most everything on the network.
While this level of surveillance started during the Bush administration, under President Obama, says Binney:
“The surveillance has increased. In fact, I would suggest that they’ve assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about U.S. citizens with other U.S. citizens.
AMY GOODMAN: How many?
WILLIAM BINNEY: Twenty trillion.”

What are they doing with all those emails? They’re targeting their enemies, domestic as well as foreign, and combining this information with “meta-data”—i.e. financial records, credit card transactions—to create comprehensive profiles of those on their enemies list. There’s nothing to stop them from “leaking” this information to anyone, for any purpose—because it all takes place in the dark. And if they want to find something on you, they will find it and use it. This, in short, is what it means to say one lives in a police state. Glenn Greenwald wrote about this in a recent column, and he said something very important that we should all focus on:

“So just look at what happens to people in the U.S. if they challenge government actions in any meaningful way—if they engage in any meaningful dissent. We love to tell ourselves that there are robust political freedoms and a thriving free political press in the U.S. because you’re allowed to have an MSNBC show or blog in order to proclaim every day how awesome and magnanimous the President of the United States is and how terrible his GOP political adversaries are—how brave, cutting and edgy!—or to go on Fox News and do the opposite. But people who are engaged in actual dissent, outside the tiny and narrow permissible boundaries of pom-pom waving for one of the two political parties—those who are focused on the truly significant acts which the government and its owners are doing in secret—are subjected to this type of intimidation, threats, surveillance, and climate of fear, all without a whiff of illegal conduct.”

All modern dictatorships employ the same method of limited freedom in certain realms, expanding and contracting the parameters of the permissible according to the tactical advantage of the moment, and yet always upholding the first principle of any and all tyrannies: that the government grants such “rights” as “free speech” and “free assembly” at its sole discretion. Which means they can be rescinded at a moment’s notice.

This state of conditional freedom that allows these governments to maintain the official fiction they are “liberal” democracies. With Fox News and MSNBC braying at one another, and the airwaves filled with corporate-funded political ads detailing the dirt on this or that candidate, the illusion of liberality persists. Yet all one has to do is challenge the “national security” prerogatives of an ever-expanding American empire—as Binney, Applebaum, and Poitras did—and suddenly one is transported into the world of It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis’s masterful evocation of what a distinctively American dictatorship might look like, Orwell’s 1984, or some other dystopian vision of a totalitarian future. Reading these warnings today, one cannot escape their archaic air: not because the visions projected in these novels turned out to be wrong, but precisely because they have already come true.

Take Orwell’s classic work, which posited a world in a state of perpetual warfare (check!), where constant and universal surveillance is the norm (check!), where “thoughtcrime” is ruthlessly punished, and where most ordinary people (the “proles”) are basically left alone, with totalitarian methods of repression directed almost exclusively against rebellious elites (check!) This last item is the point Greenwald made in his piece, and it bears repeating and elaboration. The idea is to make it possible to exert control without affecting how most people live their lives. If you aren’t a “whistle-blower,” a Julian Assange, or a Bradley Manning: if you don’t reveal closely-guarded government secrets, if you aren’t making documentaries about how the Americans conquered and lorded over the Iraqis, then you have nothing to worry about. There are no political prisons, no gulags—but if you step out of bounds the government has enough information to discredit, destroy, and/or imprison you. Two journalists—Tom Vanden Brook, a writer for USA Today, and Ray Locker, an editor—who were writing about the Pentagon’s use of military contractors to whitewash its sorry record in Iraq and Afghanistan, found that a website and a false Twitter account in their names made a sudden appearance, in what appeared to be a coordinated effort to discredit them and their work.

The contractors deny all involvement, and, yes, this happened under the Obama administration—last week. Barack Obama is an essential element of the developing totalitarian trend in the United States: indeed, I would argue his reelection is the essential factor pushing this process forward.

I’m a libertarian, and so my jaundiced view of the President is not all that surprising. Yet even I am surprised by the deafening silence in the “liberal” community—and the lack of real anger on the left at Obama’s escalation of the war on our civil liberties. Leading “progressives” are apparently indifferent to this administration’s vindictive pursuit of “whistle-blowers”—insiders like Binney who cry foul at government abuses—and the lack of outrage is … outrageous.

With the left co-opted, and the right pushing for an even more draconian crackdown on what is left of our constitutionally-protected rights, we are left with only Ron Paul holding up a copy of the Constitution and demanding its restoration. Unfortunately, even that voice will be stilled—at least, insofar as presidential politics is concerned—after the Tampa convention, in August, when the Republicans anoint Mitt Romney. What this means is that the authoritarian trend in American politics will continue, unabated and unopposed. In this context, it is appropriate to recall the warning of John T. Flynn, a financial writer purged from The New Republic and polite liberal society for his vocal opposition to the policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

“Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans, as violently against Hitler and Mussolini as the next one, but who are convinced that the present economic system is washed up and that the present political system in America has outlived its usefulness and who wish to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing millions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society. There is your fascist. And the sooner America realizes this dreadful fact the sooner it will arm itself to make an end of American fascism masquerading under the guise of the champion of democracy."

 They began to flirt with the alluring pastime of reconstructing the capitalist system. They became the architects of a new capitalist system. And in the process of this new career they began to fashion doctrines that turned out to be the principles of fascism. Of course they do not call them fascism, although some of them frankly see the resemblance. But they are not disturbed, because they know that they will never burn books, they will never hound the Jews or the Negroes, they will never resort to assassination and suppression. What will turn up in their hands will be a very genteel and dainty and pleasant form of fascism which cannot be called fascism at all because it will be so virtuous and polite.”

Those words were published in 1944, and they are truer today than on the day they appeared in print. The dictatorship of the virtuous is being prepared, ever so politely.

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The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing

By Aiden Tozer

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.—Matthew 5:3

Before the Lord God made man upon the earth He first prepared for him by creating a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are called simply “things.”1 They were made for man’s uses, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.

But sin has introduced complications and has made those very gifts of God a potential source of ruin to the soul.

Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and “things” were allowed to enter. Within the human heart “things” have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.

This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets “things” with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns “my” and “mine” look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

Our Lord referred to this tyranny of things when He said to His disciples, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.”2

Breaking this truth into fragments for our better understanding, it would seem that there is within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at our peril. Jesus called it “life” and “self,” or as we would say, the self-life. Its chief characteristic is its possessiveness: the words “gain” and “profit” suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is in the end to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ’s sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life eternal. And possibly also a hint is given here as to the only effective way to destroy this foe: it is by the Cross. “Let him take up his cross and follow me.”

The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the “poor in spirit.”3 These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things.4 “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Let me exhort you to take this seriously. It is not to be understood as mere Bible teaching to be stored away in the mind along with an inert mass of other doctrines. It is a marker on the road to greener pastures, a path chiseled against the steep sides of the mount of God. We dare not try to by-pass it if we would follow on in this holy pursuit. We must ascend a step at a time. If we refuse one step we bring our progress to an end.

As is frequently true, this New Testament principle of spiritual life finds its best illustration in the Old Testament. In the story of Abraham and Isaac we have a dramatic picture of the surrendered life as well as an excellent commentary on the first Beatitude.

Abraham was old when Isaac was born, old enough indeed to have been his grandfather, and the child became at once the delight and idol of his heart.5 From that moment when he first stooped to take the tiny form awkwardly in his arms he was an eager love slave of his son. God went out of His way to comment on the strength of this affection. And it is not hard to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to his father’s heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhood to young manhood, the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father and son from the consequences of an uncleansed love.

“Take now thy son,” said God to Abraham, “thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”6 The sacred writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on the slopes near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, but respectful imagination may view in awe the bent form and convulsive wrestling alone under the stars. Possibly not again until a Greater than Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visit a human soul. If only the man himself might have been allowed to die. That would have been easier a thousand times, for he was old now, and to die would have been no great ordeal for one who had walked so long with God. Besides, it would have been a last sweet pleasure to let his dimming vision rest upon the figure of his stalwart son who would live to carry on the Abrahamic line and fulfill in himself the promises of God made long before in Ur of the Chaldees.7

How should he slay the lad! Even if he could get the consent of his wounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the act with the promise, “In Isaac shall thy seed be called”?8 This was Abraham’s trial by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars still shone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleeping Isaac lay, and long before the gray dawn had begun to lighten the east, the old saint had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God had directed him to do, and then trust God to raise him from the dead. This, says the writer to the Hebrews, was the solution his aching heart found sometime in the dark night, and he rose “early in the morning” to carry out the plan.9 It is beautiful to see that, while he erred as to God’s method, he had correctly sensed the secret of His great heart. And the solution accords well with the New Testament Scripture, “Whosoever will lose for my sake shall find.”10

God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point where He knew there would be no retreat, and then forbade him to lay a hand upon the boy. To the wondering patriarch He now says in effect, “It’s all right, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there. … Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take him and go back to your tent. Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.”11

Then heaven opened and a voice was heard saying to him, “By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.”12

The old man of God lifted his head to respond to the Voice, and stood there on the mount strong and pure and grand, a man marked out by the Lord for special treatment, a friend of the Most High. Now he was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who possessed nothing. He had concentrated his all in the person of his dear son, and God had taken it from him. God could have begun out on the margin of Abraham’s life and worked inward to the center; He chose rather to cut quickly to the heart and have it over in one sharp act of separation. In dealing thus He practiced an economy of means and time. It hurt cruelly, but it was effective.

I have said that Abraham possessed nothing. Yet was not this poor man rich? Everything he had owned before was his still to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his wife and his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He had everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation.

After that bitter and blessed experience I think the words “my” and “mine” never had again the same meaning for Abraham. The sense of possession which they connote was gone from his heart. Things had been cast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His inner heart was free from them. The world said, “Abraham is rich,” but the aged patriarch only smiled. He could not explain it to them, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal.

…We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety; this is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.

Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be recognized for what they are, God’s loan to us, and should never be considered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim credit for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles. “For who maketh thee to differ from another? And what hast thou that thou didst not receive?”13

The Christian who is alive enough to know himself even slightly will recognize the symptoms of this possession malady, and will grieve to find them in his own heart. If the longing after God is strong enough within him, he will want to do something about the matter. Now, what should he do?

First of all, he should put away all defense and make no attempt to excuse himself either in his own eyes or before the Lord. Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other; but let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself. Let the inquiring Christian trample under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful heart and insist upon frank and open relations with the Lord.

Then he should remember that this is holy business. No careless or casual dealings will suffice. Let him come to God in full determination to be heard. Let him insist that God accept his all, that He take things out of his heart and Himself reign there in power. It may be he will need to become specific, to name things and people by their names one by one. If he will become drastic enough he can shorten the time of his travail from years to minutes and enter the good land long before his slower brethren who coddle their feelings and insist upon caution in their dealings with God.

Let us never forget that such a truth as this cannot be learned by rote as one would learn the facts of physical science. They must be experienced before we can really know them. We must in our hearts live through Abraham’s harsh and bitter experiences if we would know the blessedness which follows them. The tough old miser within us will not lie down and die obedient to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. He must be expelled from our soul by violence as Christ expelled the money changers from the temple. And we shall need to steel ourselves against his piteous begging, and to recognize it as springing out of self-pity, one of the most reprehensible sins of the human heart.

If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God He will sooner or later bring us to this test. Abraham’s testing was, at the time, not known to him as such, yet if he had taken some course other than the one he did, the whole history of the Old Testament would have been different. God would have found His man, no doubt, but the loss to Abraham would have been tragic beyond the telling. So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.

Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

From “The Pursuit of God,” published 1948. Public domain. Excerpted and republished on Anchor April 2012.

1 Genesis 9:3.
2 Matthew 16:24–25.
3 Matthew 5:3.
4 2 Corinthians 6:10.
5 Genesis 21:1–5.
6 Genesis 22:2.
7 Genesis 12:1–3.
8 Genesis 21:12.
9 Hebrews 11:17–19; Genesis 22:3.
10 Matthew 16:25.
11 Genesis 22:12.
12 Genesis 22:16–18.
13 James 1:17; 1 Corinthians 4:7.

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