Confronting Darkness

by Rich Farm

To defeat darkness out there you must first defeat the darkness within. ~ Narnia; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I believe over the last year there has been a line drawn in the sand.  A separation is taking place if you will.  There is no neutrality, even though the neutrality we’ve known has been nothing but an illusion.  This is not between party lines though; it is between right and wrong, good and evil.  Why would I say neutrality is an illusion?  I say that because there is no such thing.  In an effort to be “neutral” you have to compromise some of your beliefs to appease the other side.  How is that neutral when you surrender some of your convictions?  From what I see in society it only seems to be those who profess to be Christians that are willing to become neutral for the sake of peace.  The other way the other side achieves a “victory” for neutrality is to bully until those who are weak in their convictions cave and back down.

Is the reason we are weak in our convictions because we have been trained to be passive and not trained for the warfare that is before us? We need to understand that there is a time for war and a time for peace.  We have been in a time of false peace for way too long and I believe this is why we are where we are as a nation, fighting to save what little we have left of our freedoms and morality.  We have taken a back seat as the Church for way too long and now we have an uphill battle against the winds and rain of the evils that have plagued our nation for way too long.  We have to understand that we are not battling people, we are battling ideas and philosophies—more so as Paul so finely laid out in Ephesians 6—spirits of wickedness.

So, there are two fronts we need to do battle; prayer and knowledge.  The Book of Hosea says, “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” Just like Israel, we have allowed for violence and deceit, and the more we allow for deception and shun truth the further from God we get.  Or is the reason we hold back because we ourselves have hints of darkness, and rather than confronting it and allowing God to cleanse us we do what Adam did; run and hide.  So, the opposite is inevitably true then, that if we will embrace truth and allow it to cleanse us from the darkness within, we then can stand with confidence and we stand against the deception and darkness of the world.  We can become a powerhouse for the advancement of the Kingdom.

It is surely not going to be easy, surrendering to the process, but the rewards will be countless.  We need to remember and I will reiterate once again, future generations are depending on us to take our stand.  It may be painful at times but we need to put some things to death.  If we are unwilling to do that, I feel we are unwilling to carry our cross, and if we are unwilling to carry our cross, we can’t be His disciple.  Don’t be afraid of the resistance you encounter, because it only seeks to strengthen you in your character and faith.

The End of Law

by Susan Snelling

John Locke was an enormous philosophical influence on the Founding Fathers including Thomas Jefferson in his drafting of the Declaration of Independence.  One of the beliefs of Locke that the Founding Fathers embraced was that law was to protect and increase freedom, not diminish it.  Locke wrote: The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.  There are those today, however, who think that the government can ensure our happiness through its expansion and largesse, furthering its intrusion into our lives and control over us, diminishing our freedom.

No one needs to look any further than events by leaders in government and its bureaucracies in the last couple of years with the pandemic.  When one right is infringed upon others are affected. For example, consider property rights.  Property is not only what we own but what we do, what we generate.  Locke believed that the purpose of government was the preservation of property. He says: Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.

Locke’s statement that the end of law was to enlarge freedom is the foundation of America’s primary purpose, which is to reconcile liberty with law.  Our representative republic does that, but there are those who seek to undermine the very premise which the Founding Fathers fought for, that underlying grand plan for a country that enshrined in its founding documents the God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Each citizen must pay attention to the different governmental agencies, federal, state, and local to determine if they are encroaching on his person and property, whether it be his opinions or possessions, his “pursuit of happiness.”

The American people have a right to the protection of property in all its forms, as it is a natural right given to them by God.  There should be no infringement by the government. James Madison explained it in the National Gazette Essay, March 27, 1792, when he wrote: As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. Property rights are considered vulnerable, and some historians call them “the first line of defense” for all other rights. Property rights and personal rights were just as important to the Founders.

W. Ely, Jr. in “The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights,” makes the case that property rights guarantee all other rights and that it was a primacy with the Founding Fathers. Property rights are tied into economic freedom, of which the Founding Fathers were also concerned. Where people are not economically free, they have no freedom. Consider what many of our elected leaders and unelected bureaucrats have done to infringe on this freedom during the pandemic with the ensuing financial loss for the average American business owner.  Not to mention the following emotional/mental/physical distress from lockdowns and restrictions and complete disruption of everyday life.

Consider “no jab, no job,” no travel, no church, no shopping, no eating in restaurants, no school, and the attempts to mandate a vaccine pass in order to participate in American life.  Think about it.  How many of our unalienable rights have been infringed upon just in recent years?  These actions by the government, and cooperating institutions and businesses that do the bidding of the government, are saying that our rights come from the government.  Of course, they don’t come from the government, they come from God.

Is the trend of America and particularly the actions of government recently the enlargement of freedom as is demanded in our Republic or a systematic diminishing?  Are our rights protected such as the right of property, to speak our minds without being censored, make personal decisions about what we are willing to put into our bodies, or have we become slaves to the edicts and decrees of elected and unelected officials?  We can look back over American history and observe this trend towards diminishing rights but it appears to have become more intense in the last couple of years.

I’ve seen the statement “this is the hill to die on” crop up recently in podcasts and social media comments regarding proposed vaccine mandates.  Feeding into this is the suppression and demonizing of medicines proven to be effective in preventing serious illness or in some cases eliminating it.  Instead of reconciling liberty to law, many government officials have become lawless, exerting their power in mandates and decrees over the peasants and at the same time going about their lives in a hypocritical fashion.  Note that this is just one area.  The lawlessness extends into many aspects of American governance.

This ship must be righted.  We the people are the fount of power.  When that is understood and embraced then tyrannical, Constitution-loathing leaders become afraid.  We become that which the statists and authoritarians fear.  That is when we know we are a free people when the government fears the people.  The end of law is to enlarge our rights, but with a lawless government, that protection is violated.  There is no freedom without the law, and the end of law or its purpose is to protect and expand our rights.  Our God-given rights.  Are our rights preserved and enlarged or abolished and restrained?  That is the question.

We have a citizen duty to resist tyranny wherever it rears its head.  Benjamin Franklin said, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”  If tyranny is not resisted, our liberties are lost. Once gone, the Founders believed they are impossible to restore. Have you noticed, in cooperation with and in addition to the government (including actively participating or silent congressmen), the “mainstream” media and Big Tech censoring and vilifying people for questioning the powers that be? They want to shut down the debate.  Yet it is a basic duty as citizens to speak up (thankful for alternative media!).  Benjamin Franklin looked at it as fundamental to freedom. “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”  Remember, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent” (Thomas Jefferson).