Articles by PGF

Isaiah 53

We’ve already explored why you were made in the Image and Likeness of God in three parts;  One,  Two, and Three. Those regard what we suppose our final estate to be. But the question before us now is, what is the image of Christ in men while God has seen fit to leave us here in anticipation of Christ’s return?

“For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” – Isaiah 53:2

I’ve seen many “AI” renderings lately, the makers of which have supposed to be of our Lord Jesus Christ. The definition and use of AI is another topic, but the image of Christ is critical for believers to understand. Seeing these images got us thinking, what is the image of Christ?

There was nothing special about His appearance as a man. He was not particularly attractive or fascinating to gaze upon, and He was not especially stunning in outward physique or face. And He, being a working man, unquestionably wasn’t pretty and effeminate as so many Middle Ages paintings would depict. He looked like an average guy.

Isaiah 53 is the prophecy of the trial and crucifixion of Christ. The degree and intensity of humiliation are vividly displayed, for in being debased, smitten, and stricken of God for our sin, the Father hath highly exalted Him and given him a name which is above every name (Philippians 2:9). Isaiah 53 is the Scripture the Ethiopian Eunuch was reading when the Lord’s messenger of the Gospel, Phillip, showed Him the way of salvation (Acts 8:26-40).

Verse 2 shows us that there would be no outward appearance of His person that indicates He is the Lord. But it’s more than that. Why did God ordain, in His wisdom, that Christ should have no external beauty?

Humans are visual creatures. It’s the most prevalent of our five senses. We have 3d depth perception in one of the broadest color spectrums of any creature on earth. Humans become enamored with beauty for a season. Some men appreciate specific facial structures and adornments given by God, while other men may respect different ones.

We’ve seen folks enamored with the appearance of somebody to the point of refusing to acknowledge that soul’s inward condition and ugliness. And conversely, if Christ had been attractive, could any have heard His great word and the offer of the Kingdom? The Father, through Christ, was and is seeking a people to worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), not in outward impression.

Lovely, however, is the notion that He grew before God as a tender shoot, indeed, born of a virgin, God in a helpless child nurtured into manhood. So too that He grew from dry ground, an infertile hard pack where no life of the Spirit would grow; all Israel hadn’t heard from God in 400 years and was far astray from the Holy Creator of heaven and earth when John Baptist came preaching repentance toward God making way for the Holy One. Jesus arrived right on time, according to the prophet Daniel. But, praise God, not all were in darkness; some waited for the consolation of Israel and the Kingdom of God at His appearing. Simeon in the temple – Luke 2:25 and Joseph of Arimathea, who buried Christ’s body – Mark 15:43, are two examples.

“Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.” – Isaiah 53:10

Isaiah 53 reveals the lost condition of the human soul and God’s desire for reconciliation. Perhaps you’re not so sure about God’s desire. What more excellent an offer than that His own Son should die for you, standing in your stead as payment for your sin? It pleased the Almighty to bruise Christ and put Him to grief, making His soul an offering for sin. On the cross, Jesus Christ saw you, who would be a son of God. Jesus saw all His seed who would receive the new birth by the Spirit of God to be heirs with Christ in the Kingdom of God.

God made Christ’s soul an offering for the torture of hell that your eternal soul was supposed to suffer. Though every sinner deserves hell, God gave His soul to suffer in agony so that your immortal soul, helpless in its sin-stained condition, might see the Glory of God in eternity. Jesus poured out His soul, receiving an inheritance of the eldest Son, firstborn from the dead, resurrected to new life. He defeated hell and set the captives free.

Yes, God wants to reconcile with you so that you might know Him, even be friends with Him in service of His domain; it would please Him. Imagine that; God being well pleased with saving your soul by a simple faith in the power of Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead.

The challenging part for those who are His is to resemble Christ. You, dear Christian brethren, are supposed to look just like Him, who sacrificed everything so that men could be remade and joined again in fellowship and harmony with God almighty.

You were made in God’s image, but the likeness is broken by sin. Even for those born again, sin remains and is a constant battle. However, the resemblance to God has been recreated (a new man), and your mind and heart should be refreshed, having been given the image of God again in the Spirit who created you. “And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” – Colossians 3:10. The new man, having been made a new creation indwelled by the Spirit, should look and act like Christ, God in flesh.

What did Jesus do, teach, and prepare His disciples to do? Those are the specific things the followers of Christ are supposed to do even today, “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” – Romans 8:11.

Don’t limit or reject the quickening of the Spirit, but trust God in all things doing the will of Him that loves you. What does a leader in Christ do? He declares to the believers that we are to emulate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). What is the similitude of Christ if not His people following His commandments because they love Him (John 14:15). The mirror is pointed right back at me, for none are perfect and all fall short. Still, brethren, “…press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:14).

Jesus is the express image of the Father (Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3). A disciple in any endeavor of human activity is supposed to be the likeness of his teacher; so much more the Christian, we are to be the picture of Christ who is the Master of all. But so many Christians today will need to be taught how to serve. John 14:9 is instructive, “Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?”

Has the word of God been so long time with you, yet you haven’t seen Christ and how you are to serve? Reading the Scripture, filled with awe and wonder at Him, what are you going to do about that? Hide it away in a napkin buried in the ground? What are you afraid of (Matthew 25:25). We’re all naked before God, why care what people think of you, serve Christ! “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” – Luke 6:46

There is no outward beauty that we should desire Him. The truths He taught and commanded in the Holy Bible are where the magnificence of Christ resides because in His word is where a man must always find the revealed will of the Father. Do the people you spend time with, do they see Christ? Do they know Him through you?

If you want to understand the relationship between God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit better, always do the will of the Father, for that is as Christ did. It’s one reason why the Father sent the Holy Spirit in Christ’s name; to teach you all things and remind you what Christ has said. Without studying the Scripture, there is nothing about which to remind you! And without doing what the Holy Bible says a disciple of Christ must do: if you read it and don’t do it, it’s not real to you. You remain a theoretical Christian untrained by the Spirit and untested through the fire, having never walked by faith in the service of our Lord to see the blessings of the Dispensation of Grace. You’re missing the Kingdom into which you were reborn and are meant to be an active citizen.

What is an ambassador for King Jesus but one who represents Him in all things and beseeches the lost sinner to be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20). A consumer of Christianity who won’t be a bondservant of Christ in the New Covenant is a wicked and rebellious son.

What is the glory of Christ Jesus; the fullness of grace and truth (John 1:14). Be the fullness of grace and truth to bring glory to God.

“Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” – 2 Corinthians 4:10

Opinion on South Carolina Stand Your Ground, Source:

As a martial artist, I am passionate about the right of people to defend themselves. And in my years of teaching the martial arts, I have had a number of students tell me about how they have had to use force to protect themselves and loved ones from harm. But they always tried to avoid using force, because martial artists know how precious life is — even the life of an aggressor.

Martial artists believe that one should always walk away from conflict, if possible. This is why we only use force reluctantly and only as a last resort.

Also, if force must be used, we know we should use only the amount of force necessary to end the threat and allow us to get to safety.

These principles are dear to me, which is why I oppose stand-your-ground laws.

These laws allow those who use deadly force to be exempt from criminal prosecution, even if they could have easily and safely retreated from what they perceived to be a threat.

Before Florida passed the first stand-your-ground law in 2005, the United States legal tradition already protected the right to self-defense, but only after a person had done all that he or she could to avoid conflict, including backing away from the aggressor and attempting to retreat to safety.

Using deadly force to defend oneself in a public space was only allowed after one first tried to retreat or if retreat was simply not possible.

Stand-your-ground laws differ from what is known as the castle doctrine, which applies to people dealing with an intruder in their home. I do not believe anyone has an obligation to retreat from a home intruder.

The author uses a lot of the word but after claiming to believe in armed self-defense. His argument is, in one way, correct. Avoidance is always the best choice; avoiding crowds is solid advice. But he goes on to wrongly claim a difference between Castle Doctrine and self-defense anywhere. If you have the right to defend yourself in your home, you carry that right anywhere. It’s your right and does not belong to a location. Locations don’t have rights people do. We acknowledge here that the home has a degree of expected sanctuary in the Bible, but men also have to defend their life right anywhere they may be, thus the right.

The object of self-defense is to get the assailant(s) to disengage. If not being where you shouldn’t solves a threat problem, don’t go. If leaving solves that, then leave. Nothing in the Stand Your Ground Doctrine allows the offensive use of weapons or tactics, which is the argument against Stand Your Ground that always shows the ignorance of the man making the case. His opinion, as stated in this piece, is no different.

And he makes the proportional use of force argument. There’s no way to know what would have happened if X or Y, or Z. Proportional use of force is an impossible standard that will get people killed. But the evidence of either murder or self-defense can be determined. Proof is required, not a would have-should have. Arguments against Stand Your Ground also wrongly assume that turning your back is wise. It’s not; never turn your back on a threat.

Again, getting the assailant to disengage is the proper self-defense training standard to teach.

I just found out about these guys last night. The video has only one of them in it. Their humility is encouraging. They have the willingness to admit ignorance and seek necessary knowledge. They don’t have a catalog of videos yet, but they’ve indicated more to come.

A list of gear used in the video is here on the Dirty Civilian page.

https://youtu.be/x0tktnqRS_U

Source:

As a progressive democrat, I generally try to avoid any set of ideas that smacks of conspiracy theory. That caveat being stated, I have followed gun control legislation and its failures, as have many ofus, for some time. Most of us are familiar with the words of the Second Amendment to the Constitution:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The author may be “familiar with the words of the Second Amendment” but not the punctuation; there is but one comma, the second one in the above misquote. Nor can “krypton981” read English well.

It appears to me that the concept of a well regulated Militia would involve not only the government, for the purposes of regulation, but also entities such as the National Guard, rendering those entities entirely sufficient. The Republicans, however, appear to conveniently ignore the first phrase, and devolve interpretation merely to the right of anyone in this country to “bear arms”, (including underage children who may be “given”a gun). The right to bear arms is not, of course, mentioned in the amendment, although that phrase is vociferously used as an argument against gun control or even gun safety.

This should be a fun reminder to gun lovers everywhere. Let’s see:

“A healthy breakfast being necessary to the start of a great day, the right of the people to keep and eat food shall not be infringed.”

Who or what has the right to keep and eat food? The breakfast, the day? Who has the right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment language? The Militia, the State? No, it’s the people. Breakfasts and days don’t eat food, nor do Militias and States have rights.

And it’s no theory; it was a conspiracy to overthrow the crown of England that gave us the Second Amendment codifying God’s immutable right for the people to keep and bear arms.

In response to the headline: perhaps not, but homeschooling sure enough is.

Photo from the article: attributed, artfulblogger/Flickr/cropped/ CC BY 2.0

From the article:

The only thing more predictable than boys being fascinated with weapons is them eventually sketching one in class. But that’s not allowed anymore. What is it that makes a little boy — practically straight out of the womb — take an interest in weapons and emulate gun-toting, swash-buckling heroes? Even doctors aren’t sure. As one pediatrician told me about my then 16-month-old son who turned every stick into a sword, “We don’t know why. They just do it.”

Doctors don’t know why because they are almost exclusively Godless servants of money, turned agents of the State for profit. But “we” do know. In a post here at TCJ, Ignorance, Feigned or Real, we show that inherent sin is provable, both in nature and from Scripture.

Now, weapons are not evil, sinful, or a sign of sin, but necessary for living in a world overtaken by the results of the fall of man into sin. Sin entered into the world through Adam’s disobedience to God, and all men inherited this sinful nature from him (Romans 5:12). Seemingly, the Holy Bible being its own authority and believing what the Bible says about inherent sin upset some lurkers. Oh well. Jesus loves me; this I know because the Bible tells me so. If the Bible is good enough for God, it’s good enough for me. Where were we?

All men are sinners. As one does not have to teach a child to strike another child and steal his toy, so too, the very need for self-defense is evident, even inherited knowledge in an infant. If the child will commit assault and theft quite without any training in the matter, why should he not, evidently in his nature from Adam, recognize the need, yay, the divine right of self-defense to preserve life and immediately, even as an infant, undertake to train himself in this requirement? We see no discontinuity in the idea.

Even a heathen doctor could have told this mother; we do this because we are men, and we must keep you from harm. It is our duty. Seems simple enough even to somebody who’s never read the word of God. Now, as we know, this duty of men comes from God and is evident in nature. Woe to them who makes the State or women rulers of households and keepers of men as chattel.

You can read the rest of the sad tale of child abuse at the hands of government communists indoctrinating children in the ways of sinful effeminacy if you desire. Get your children out of government-run schools!

A leftist finally says the quiet part out loud; a government monopoly on force is their desire.

Article Source

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney (D) addressed the shooting death of Temple University police officer Christopher Fitzgerald and made clear his view that one cannot claim to back the blue if they do not back gun control.

Breitbart News reported that Fitzgerald was shot and killed while investigating a carjacking Saturday night. The alleged cop killer, 18-year-old Miles Pfeffer, was arrested Sunday morning without incident.

The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Kenney reacting to the slaying, saying, “There’s too many [guns] and they’re too easy to get.”

Kenney added, “You can say you back the blue, but if you don’t back gun control and gun availability, you don’t back the blue. We owe it to them to do everything we can to stop this nonsense and stop this tragedy.”

Video H/T @greg_price11

James Wesley Rawles, at Survival Blog:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen decision (issued June 23, 2022) was a pivotal ruling.  Following up on the District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and the McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) decisions, Bruen reaffirmed private gun rights, quite solidly. Up until those three decisions, the Supreme Court had conspicuously ignored taking up any Second Amendment cases, for more than 50 years. But now, the highest court has made it quite clear that the right to keep and bear arms is nigh-on absolute.

I’ve mentioned the Bruen decision before in SurvivalBlog. But today, I’d like like to examine it more closely.

The majority opinion for Bruen was written by one of my heroes, Justice Clarence Thomas. He had previously lamented that the Second Amendment had been treated as “a disfavored right.”  But in the 2022 decision, Justice Thomas set things write. He forthrightly wrote that the only gun regulations that can be deemed constitutional are ones that don’t infringe on conduct that is plainly covered by the text of the Second Amendment and that are “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition.” This part of Bruen means that any gun law enacted at any level must have a demonstrable parallel in regulations that were in place at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights — meaning circa December, 1791. Thus, Bruen sets a very high bar for legislators to hurdle. If lawmakers cannot cite a similar law that existed after the War of Independence but before December, 1791, then any statute pertaining to arms of any description would be unconstitutional!

It’s an interesting rehearsal of some little known history, and with Bruen, history matters. In light of the decision, one has to ask by what authority does the F exist in ATF? Read the rest.

Hint: The solution isn’t politics; it’s you. Source:

There are the solutions we should use, the solutions we could use, and the non-solutions that politicians have used already. Let me bring you up to speed in a hurry.

The bad news is that we built this problem of mass-murder and celebrity-murderers. The good news is that we can fix it. Society changed in significant ways over the last 5 decades. We destroyed families so many young men grew up without fathers. No one taught these young men how to control their strength and their anger. We closed our mental-health facilities and put mentally ill patients out on the street. Recently, we refused to prosecute, convict, and incarcerate violent criminals. Each of those factors certainly contribute to our problem of mass-murder today.

We can disagree about what we meant to do as we changed our public policies but there is no argument about the resulting outcome of increased mass-murder in the last several decades.

Each of those are contributing factors, but they are not the main cause of the increase. We have to address the elephant in the room.

Something else changed in our society. We’ve read the journals and the interviews of mass-murderers and they told us exactly why they kill. They are willing to die so that they can be famous. The biggest problem is the dozens of 24-7 news channels who now give each mass-murderer a 10-million dollar publicity campaign if the murderer kills enough innocent victims. Those are not my words, but theirs. You don’t have to believe me but you should believe them. We created celebrity-murderers, and we should demand that the news media stop turning these mass-murderers into instant celebrities.

The media isn’t the source of the problem. Is there insufficient evidence that “News” is simply government propagandist information of questionable validity and almost zero usefulness? If the government and its media wanted to censor mass shootings and broadcast 24/7 every self-defense firearm use, they could. But that wouldn’t help the long-term plan of keeping people in fear, so they support civilian registration and disarmament.

It isn’t obvious yet, but we are closing the chapter on the brief history of mass-murders in the United States.

We stopped them. Ordinary people like you and I stopped mass-murderers. We learned to attack the murderer if he attacks us in a bar where we are disarmed. We learned to shoot the attacker if we are armed. We found out that shooting back works really well.

Where we are allowed to go armed, ordinary armed civilians stopped attempted mass-murderers over 104 times since 2004. An armed citizen isn’t there at every attempted mass-murder. If he is there, the armed citizen doesn’t choose to intervene every time. In the last few years we were effective at stopping mass-murderers 94-percent of the time when we tried. We stopped more than half of the attempted mass-murders where we were allowed to go armed.

Other than the gradual expansion of carry rights, the people are fighting against mass murder without any establishment support whatsoever. He offers many points, good details, and plenty of data. Read the rest.

Related: Not surprisingly, there is more than one gun news story out today about Chicago residents fighting back against gangs and other criminals with their own firearms. Good for them.

I’ve never shot the M60 though I wanted to the first time I saw one, which was in a Navy unit I briefly served with. The M2 is another story. The readers here probably know some interesting details about the weapon.

Photo found without attribution. Appears to be news stock, Vietnam Era.

Some of the links provided in the story are better than the source of this brief overview.

The M60 is one of the enduring symbols of the American firearms industry. Born out of a fusion of two WWII-era German designs, the original M60 had several engineering flaws that lead to its replacement by the M240. But in 2014, Denmark adopted the M60E6 as the standard light machine gun of its armed forces, and the design continues to be manufactured and sold today. How did the M60 go from its rushed original design to the gun it is today?

The story of the M60 begins right after the end of WWII. During WWII, U.S. soldiers faced down the advanced MG42 machine gun and FG42 automatic rifle. While some may say the MG42’s rate of fire was too high, the weapon was far more suitable for infantry use than the American M1919A6, with superior ergonomics and lower weight. They also faced the FG42, an advanced box-fed automatic rifle that was lighter and more flexible than the American M1918A2 BAR.

Both of these weapons impressed American evaluators, who ordered Saginaw Steering Gear Division of General Motors to produce a version of the MG42 in the American .30-06 caliber. This did not go so well, with many engineering errors such as making the receiver too short. The final gun was highly unreliable, and the project was canned.

The U.S. Ordnance Corps then investigated the possibility of converting the FG42 into a belt-fed machine gun. A variety of prototypes were made. The T44 was a relatively standard FG42 converted to use the MG42’s belt feed, but the basic FG42 barrel proved too light for sustained automatic fire. The T52 came later, incorporating a heavier barrel. Later iterations of the T52 added a quick-change barrel and a new gas system.

The Army also began development of the T161 around this time, which was a variation on the T52 design, but modified for mass production. The T161 and T52 competed with each other throughout 1953 and 1954. In 1954, both guns were adapted for the new 7.62x51mm NATO round and M13 belt link, though they were not called that at the time. The T161 eventually won and went through several iterations before its final field trials as the T161E3 in 1955 and 1956.

The results of the T161E3 trials were impressive. Soldiers preferred the gun over the M1919-series of guns as it was far easier to maneuver, aim, move, and maintain. The gun weighed almost ten pounds less than the M1919A6, tipping the scales at around twenty-three pounds. The T161E3 was adopted as the M60 on 30 January 1957.

The M60 would see its first combat use in the Vietnam War in 1965 with the U.S. Marines. While it served well for many soldiers, providing heavy, accurate firepower, it also revealed many more flaws in the design.

In the door gunner role, M60s could fire upwards of 5000 rounds a day, laying down constant suppressing fire onto landing zones before helicopters came in. This caused the lightweight receivers to stretch and even crack, and gages were issued to armorers to determine when replacement should occur, which usually happened around 100,000 rounds or so. In contrast, the heavier M240 has been known to go for upwards of two million rounds without receiver repair.

More at the source.

Here’s one going for six figures at auction. That price is entirely the NRA’s fault under the NFA; its members covet control of high prices for their automatic rifle investments. The video source is Rock Island Auction, 2023 Gun Prices and Trends, which details many collectibles for this coming year.

Highest ranking troopers of West Virginia State Police implicated in a wide range of unethical and illegal activities. Included are allegations against Internal Affairs. One can only imagine that systemic illegalities and corruption must be everywhere throughout all levels of the department.

Screenshots of a whistle-blower letter are here.

In the past couple of days, WCHS has been reporting about an anonymous whistleblower letter from someone within the West Virginia State Police, revealing numerous specific allegations of misconduct, mostly by senior staff at the agency. I [ The Civil Rights Lawyer ] just obtained a copy of that letter and it’s unbelievable.

Warning! This video, although using proper terminology, mentions explicit sex acts.

There’s no reason to doubt that illegal activities of these types and others are happening in many different police departments across America.

H/T Bill Buppert