We’ve long held that reliance on government is a religion. This piece with video explains it well.

Since the birth of totalitarianism in the 20th century much has been written about this form of rule and millions have read George Orwell’s depiction of it in the classic novel 1984. But what is often overlooked is that totalitarianism is more than just a political system, it is a fanatical religion, and this religion is spreading across the globe with a ferocity not seen since the mid-20th century. In this video we are going to investigate the religious nature of totalitarianism in the recognition that we must know our enemy if we are to defeat it. Shortly after fleeing Nazi Germany, the political scientist Waldemar Gurian wrote the following:

“The totalitarian movements that have arisen after the First World War are basically religious movements. Their aim is not only to change political and social institutions, but also to remodel the nature of man and society.”

Waldemar Gurian, The Totalitarian State

Note: The linked site has videos about religion. This post does not constitute agreement with their theology.

Many thousands in America profess baptism as the evidence of salvation and even the means of salvation. It breaks the heart. This problem exists across the former Bible Belt and elsewhere. When asking the reason for men’s hope of eternity, we run across those professing baptism as their knowledge of salvation. In response, we can ask, why did you decide to get baptized?

We’ll look at three sections of Scripture often misapplied to salvation by baptism.

Acts 2:14-40 is a sermon preached by Peter at Pentecost. We’ll start in verse 36.

“36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. 37 Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? 38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

– Acts 2:36-38

Starting in verse 14, Peter has preached the Gospel under the power of the Holy Spirit. This sermon was among Jews who had taken the curse upon themselves and their children for the blood of Jesus Christ (Matthew 27:25).

Jesus gave himself to be a ransom for all. On the cross, Jesus gave up the Ghost having commended His spirit back to the Father. The Holy Spirit of God makes the lost sinner aware of their sin and the cross.

Arriving at verse 37 of Acts 2, it says they were “pricked in their heart.” They were convicted of their sin and came to believe that Jesus was the resurrected Christ of God. What does the Holy Spirit by Peter tell them to do? Repent. Surely they couldn’t go back and un-crucify our Lord. And anyway, He is alive! He was resurrected! Repentance is a change of mind by a change of heart upon conviction. What’s to repent about? Being convicted (pricked) in their heart by the Holy Spirit, they have to change their mind about who and what Jesus is. They were to repent of the greatest sin of all, rejecting Jesus Christ after having heard the Gospel.

Next, Mark 16:16: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”

Please read it carefully. Belief is the first thing. If you believe in Jesus, you are commanded to get baptized. If you have been baptized (or any other ceremony, rite, or ritual) without belief, you are damned because of your unbelief. “…he that believeth not shall be damned.” The function of the ceremony doesn’t damn you, nor does it save, a man is damned by unbelief, condemned already (John 3:18), and nothing can save their soul but faith in Christ (John 6:47). If you believe in Jesus, you should be baptized as soon as is practicable.

In First Peter chapter 3, start reading in verse 12. Context is king. We’ll take a look at a few things beginning from verse 16.

“16 Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. 17 For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing. 18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: 19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; 20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. 21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: 22 Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.” – 1 Peter 3:16-22

In 1 Peter, there is bad news and good news. The bad news is, for those thinking a tub of water can save their soul, 1 Peter 3 is written to believers about first-century persecution of the church. And some may not like this, but 1 Peter is probably written to Jews (1 Peter 1:18), although we can and should make application from this section of Scripture where appropriate.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is woven into this book of Scripture by the Holy Spirit at the hand of Peter. In Chapter 1, verses 18-19, we learn that the audience of this letter is redeemed, believers.

In our text, we learn they have a “good conscience” (1 Peter 3:16); although they are spoken of as evil by persecutors, they are spreading the “good conversation” (the Gospel and manner of living) in Christ. They’re sharing the good conversation, proclaiming Christ in word and deed by the Holy Spirit, while being falsely accused of some evil thing. Americans are so far from this, but your day is arriving. If you haven’t already, you’ll soon face the choice: go underground or take the abuse. We pray you to do the latter keeping a good conversation in Christ.

As many sections of Scripture do, Peter looks back at the flood because it is constructive for teaching.

“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” – Genesis 6:8. Two chapters before the flood Noah got saved the exact same way all men get saved, by the grace of Almighty God.

Although we believe the flood happened, the typology and symbolism of Noah and the flood are just that; not a mode of salvation but instruction in righteousness, lessons in His grace, and forgiveness toward those that love Him and keep His commandments. And well understood is the judgment against every living thing for all the world had turned to sin and violence (Genesis 6:11-13) rejecting Holy God. Noah, having been saved by the grace of God (Genesis 6:8), being a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5), the world was overflown by the flood as the judgment of God against the wicked. Those at the flood had told God to depart and that He couldn’t do anything for them; they had made themselves a god, condemning themselves to darkness and eternal death.

Here is 1 Peter 3:20-21 (no markings): “Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ” – 1 Peter 3:20-21

Even if you say, wrongly, that Noah is the like figure and not the overflowing of water, Noah had already been saved by the grace of God before the flood. They were saved as a practical matter, not spiritual salvation, by having a boat. The flood buried the sins of that whole world, so too, the sins of the believer are symbolically (a like figure) buried with Christ in baptism (Colossians 2:12). Having been forgiven of our sin and saved by Jesus Christ, baptism is (the answer of a good conscience toward God); baptism is a figure of our salvation representing the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the believer.

You are in trouble if you’re relying on a tub of water to get you into the final resurrected estate. We beg of you not to rely on water baptism for salvation. Rely upon the earnest of the promise of the resurrection, which is the Holy Spirit in the heart and soul of the believer. Baptism is in response to a “good conscience toward God.” We’re sure the lost sinner is condemned for eternity (Romans 8:1), as in the days before the flood; what conscience does a lost man have toward God?

“Not the putting away of the filth of the flesh”!!! Salvation is not by quitting sin. You are a sinner; you can’t stop your own corruption, although the saved believer should try to live upright before God, seeking forgiveness all the day long, praying to holy God to deliver us from our desire to sin! Salvation is of the soul; the resurrection by the Spirit now is also a type of the resurrection of a new glorified (sinless) body.

“Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like [the believers baptism is a figure, type, or symbol] as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” – Romans 6:4

“that like” as Christ was buried into death and raised from the dead, baptism is a ceremony representing our burial (the old sinful dead man) with Christ and resurrection into a new spiritual life as His disciple. Baptism is a serious thing and a great celebration. It’s a first work of obedience toward Christ that God will honor and use to grow the newly converted.

This post is about the doctrine of salvation by grace, the hope being that it will help you who are assuming baptism is sufficient for salvation. Call upon the Holy One and be saved. And it may help you, who, as a witness for Jesus Christ, must account for the need of grace through faith to those souls putting their eternal hope in a ritual or rite with water. As the Lord’s Table does not save, neither does baptism; these are ordinances of observance for believers in the New Covenant.

BREAKING: SCOTUS overturns mag bans, assault weapons ban, and carry ban," Go back and redo in light of what we said in Bruen." This means: The 9th Circuit now has to apply text, history, and tradition to those anti-gun laws. pic.twitter.com/LazvjbePQH

— National Association for Gun Rights (@NatlGunRights) June 30, 2022

Via WoG, Bloomberg.

Several challenges to state gun laws were sent back to lower courts in light of the US Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment ruling limiting restrictions on firearm possession outside the home.

Known as a “GVR”—for grant, vacate, and remand—the justices often allow lower courts another shot at cases after a high court decision that could potentially change the analysis or outcome of a case.

The cases sent back Thursday include challenges to bans in New Jersey and California on high-capacity magazines that hold ten rounds or more, Maryland’s assault weapons ban, and Hawaii’s restrictions on open-carry.

In each case, the lower courts had upheld the restrictions.

The justices didn’t explain why they sent the cases back, but presumably it was to apply the new test laid out by Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion in New York State & Pistol Association v. Bruen. The ruling was the Supreme Court’s first major Second Amendment case in over a decade and limited the restrictions that states can place on where gun owners can take their firearms.

Courts should look only to the constitutional text and that nation’s history of gun restrictions in determining whether a state has run afoul of the Second Amendment, Thomas wrote, adding that they should not defer to legislative determinations about whether gun restrictions are necessary for public health and safety.

“While that judicial deference to legislative interest balancing is understandable—and, elsewhere, appropriate—it is not deference that the Constitution demands here,” Thomas said.

I talked with Dave Hardy a day or two ago and asked about the status of Young v. Hawaii.  He thought it would be vacated and remanded to be consistent with the findings in Bruen.

These are all the right decisions, and everybody knows it.

I hope Young is handled soon and Hawaii has to begin the process of issuing permits.  Actually, I wish they would legalize open carry, consistent with the what the founders did and how they lived their lives.

But leave it to the controllers in Hawaii.  They apparently want to require that permit holders go through the same qualification that LEOs do.

The upshot is that most LEOs aren’t as good with their weapons as most permit holders I know (including me).

News of Chinese influence.

In 2021, China’s policy banks ⁠— the China Development Bank (CDB) and Export-Import Bank (Exim) ⁠— made no loans to Latin America for the second consecutive year. Beijing is now essentially focused on financing Chinese companies to operate in the region.

This shift in strategy and the resulting proliferation of Chinese companies in Latin America will increase the circulation of people and money that are no longer under the direct control of local governments. Based on current trends, Chinese criminal organizations will likely thrive in this new economic environment. Extortion, money laundering through front firms, and smuggling are already increasing, posing a severe threat to the population’s safety in the region.

Drug production is one of China’s fastest-growing businesses in Latin America. After China’s booming export of fentanyl or its precursors to Mexican cartels, a new market has emerged for non-fentanyl synthetic opioids such as nitazenes, also known as benzimidazole opioids such as the synthetic opioid derivative ISO, which are 20 times more potent than fentanyl.

US authorities believe that these drugs are being manufactured in China and shipped to Mexico where they are then smuggled into the US. In March, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody issued a warning against ISO, as law enforcement agencies advised that the drug might be responsible for the recent rise in overdose fatalities. “Isotonitazene is so strong that it can kill just by coming in contact with someone’s skin or being accidentally inhaled,” stated Moody.

Concerns are growing that ISO may be manufactured directly in Mexico or other countries in the region, where Chinese criminal groups have already established production facilities for “creepy,” the name given to a potent cannabis strain popular amongst criminal grow operations, particularly in South America.

Mexico is a failed state, just as are most or all of Central and South American countries (Brazil may be an exception).  Michael Yon has documented the flood of immigrants that will soon overwhelm the Southern border, and are already doing so.  They will crash the American medical system demanding free medical care, and the food and logistics situation won’t fare much better.

Meanwhile, here is the focus of the U.S. Marine Corps: The South Pacific.

Here is the focus of the U.S. Army: Europe.

The Navy is have trouble meeting recruitment and retention goals, as is all of the military.

The U.S. Border Patrol, perhaps the only real police force left in America, isn’t allowed to do their jobs.

If Congress was comprised of anything other than gargoyles, demons and pit vipers, they would hold a vote tomorrow and unanimously declare the Southern border to be a war zone, America to have been invaded, and the military deployed under arming orders to shoot trespassers.

But that won’t be done.  Per a Michael Yon dispatch, this was seen.

Costly food and energy are fostering global unrest https://t.co/HNubS6vrWv

"The Economist has built a statistical model to assess the relationship between food- and fuel-price inflation and unrest." pic.twitter.com/AGpAtyQUJu

— wonkmonk (@wonkmonk_) June 28, 2022

The authorities want chaos and unrest.  They thrive in it.  They need it.  It helps to maintain their authority.  It makes the know-nothings beg for more government intervention and control.  It’s all by design.

Never forget that.  This is all by design.

I love that Dan Wesson Pistol Pack.  As best as I can tell, they don’t manufacture this any more, or at least, I can’t find it.  If readers know better, weigh in with comments. CZ currently owns Dan Wesson.

This is another great presentation by Paul.

Never forget.  You have a new push for red flag laws courtesy of the NRA.

Pick one…

annnnd then, complain in the comments about not having it‍♀️

PC: @HKshooting pic.twitter.com/8rbs0tUre9

— Heckler & Koch (@HecklerAndKoch) June 27, 2022

H&K can go pound sand.  I don’t want any of their products.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Apparently, that means pornography everywhere, Islam co-equal with Christ, sodomites dominating public policy, and communistic fascism as the form of government and society.

Christiandom is so overrun with easternism that Christ’s people have lost knowledge of what Christianity is. In easternism, yin and yang exist, and the living soul ostensibly interacts in every aspect of life, aware they should choose the good thing in what they are doing.

Christians in the west are living the same way. They move within work, home, entertainment, government, business, culture, and other spheres of life, accepting the evil, thankful for Christ perhaps but not enough to know that all aspects of creation are His. Christians have authority in these realms but have, in an eastern way, decided to accept being with the evil, never trying to change those environments by their works for Christ.

Communists fully expect their converts to change everything about themselves and take over every aspect of life on earth. So too, the Musselman is expected to radically transform and conquer everything in their path. Even “atheists” demanding separation of church and state get it; they are set for the conquest of the government sector and, through its law, imposing their religion on the whole country.

Only modern Christianity expects nothing of its “adherents” but an occasional visit to a corporate location for a pop phycology pep talk and leave a check – thanks for coming. Not even easternism is this dilapidatedly lame and willfully ineffectual. Christians are the only ones who deny the notion of operating and dominating all domains of life and society, and they are wrong; that’s not what the Bible teaches or what Christ said.

Communism, Islam, and atheism are frauds of Christ’s kingdom power on earth. The church has completely lost the mandate given to the disciples and retaken by the reformation. Christ expects you to be fully converted to the way, everything about you changing from the heart outward. And under His commission, we are to teach all people of every nation to obey Him. The scriptures are about theological penetration into the whole of society that you might not sin against God, to further that it may go well with you in the land.

Christians shouldn’t care what the Supreme Court says. They are part of the communist regime that claims false rule over Christ’s domain. Christ’s people shouldn’t care what the left thinks about the separation of church and state. Those words are not in the Scriptures.

Only Christians with an actual mandate from the creator Himself, written instruction on how to carry it out, and the indwelling Holy Spirit to lend weight and power to the mission have authority to take every domain on earth for their King. Christians are supposed to be priests and kings. The kings of this world are supposed to be Christ’s men doing His good pleasure. The church is supposed to take over the state, and since Christ’s men aren’t doing it, the devil’s minions will.

There is no such thing as separation of church and state. (Here, we use the word religion broadly, meaning belief system.) There can’t be. Whatever the prevailing religion a majority of society holds, even entertainmentism as Americans today have, will permeate everything in that society. Society is made up of the people; what lives in their heart of hearts is that society’s religion and every aspect of that society begins to reflect the belief system. The government is people (insert Soylent Green joke); they have the prevailing faith system whether anybody likes it or not. That religion is supposed to be Christian, according to God Almighty.

The title of the idiotic video at CNN is “Supreme Court further erodes the separation between church and state.”

The legacy media, and as for that matter, the cast majority of Americans, really lack any historical understanding of the nation or how and why it was founded.  Quoting R. J. Rushdoony:

“The establishments and settlements in the constituent states were definitely and specifically Christian.  In most states, single or plural establishments prevailed.  Where no church was established, Christianity as such was nonetheless firmly established.  There were religious requirements for citizenship and suffrage, religious oaths, laws prohibiting blasphemy, laws requiring a trinitarian faith, or a firm belief in the infallibility of Scripture, and laws barring unbelievers as witnesses in court.  Court decisions sometimes cited biblical law where civil law did not entirely fit the case.  In many areas, laws against unbelief were on the statute books.  A man could be imprisoned for atheism.”  Rushdoony, “The Nature of the American System.”

It’s absurd to claim that the constitution prohibits a prayer during a public event.  The very ones who signed the constitution were the ones who grew up in, and were part and parcel of, the political system Rushdoony just described.

But then, Americans don’t study history any more.  I made it through American History 101 at Clemson University without learning a single thing about American history.