January 19, 2017

Abortion

Tips for Discussing Abortion Online by Tim Barnett

Abortions Have Dropped 43% Since 1990, 673,800 Fewer Babies Die From Abortion Now by Dave Andrusko

Reflections on the Guttmacher Report, One Day Later by Dave Andrusko

Audio: Free To Be Faithful – History and Preview of the March for Life – with host Kip Allen

Do Abortion Restrictions Force Women to Become Parents? by Amy K. Hall

Video: Sermon: Exposing and Ending Abortion by Apologia Studios 

Does the Bible Condone Abortion? – Clearing Up Misconceptions by Tim Chaffey

Bioethics

Scientists: New fertility technique “raises spectre of embryo farming on unimaginable scale”

The Micro-Premie Dilemma by Courtney Reissig – “Does NICU technology change our pro-life obligations?”

Family Living

Video: A Little Boy Sitting Alone In A Diner Changed This Empty Nester’s Life Forever

Video: Man Up: Who is the Perfect Man?

Video: Cashier Makes The Day Of A Boy With Cerebral Palsy In The Most Adorable Way

Godly Friendships by Abbot Tryphon – Some good thoughts on friendship from an Orthodox priest.

Movies – Television – Video

Not So Golden Globes by Cal Thomas

Patricia Heaton: My Career Floundered, Then Flourished Because of Faith by Rebecca Cusey – “Q+A: The star of ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ and ‘The Middle’ reveals the prayer that changed her life.”

Patricia Heaton Responds in an Amazing Way to an Abortion Activist Trashing Pro-Lifers by Micaiah Bilger

Political

The Idiocy of How We Buy Healthcare by David Thornton

Worldview and Culture

Audio: From Drama to Doctrine – Hosted by Justin Holcomb, Kim Riddlebarger, Michael Horton, Rod Rosenbladt

The World’s Most Outstanding Medical Missionary by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra – “Burundi surgeon wins $500,000 prize for service in 2016’s hungriest country.”

Breaking the Materialist Spell – We’re More than a Bag of Chemicals by Eric Metaxas – “You can learn a lot from fairy tales. But first you have to know whether you’re living in one.”

A Guide to Basic Differences between Left and Right by Dennis Prager

Audio: Confessional Lutheranism in the Former Soviet Union – An Issues, Etc. interview with Bishop Vsevolod Lytkin

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The Principle of Change by R. J. Rushdoony

“The need therefore is for faithful men, regenerate men who move in the fear of God rather than the fear of men. It takes good men to make a good society, not another election.”

An old French saying declares, “The more things change, the more they are the same.” This observation reflects the disillusionment of the people with their politics. No matter who is elected and what their promises are, their actions are the same basically as those of the men voted out of office. All the hard work of people to elect new officials in the hopes of a new order end in the same old political corruption, higher taxes, and more problems. As things go from bad to worse, yesterday’s rascals sometimes look better than today’s reformers, but on reflection it becomes obvious that nothing has changed really, it is the old corruption still. Thus, the more things change, the more they are the same.

Many Americans express their growing sense of hopelessness with the state of things. Again and again, the bright hopes of a pre-election promise become the bitter disappointment of a long term of office.

Why so, and need it be so? To cite an old American saying, “You can’t make a good omelet with rotten eggs.” You can spend a lot of time trying to do so, but the results are always predictably bad. But isn’t this exactly what we so often try to do, to take people without faith and character and somehow add them up to a good society?

Solomon said, “Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint” (Prov. 25:19). A man with a foot out of joint will not travel far, nor will a country progress who places confidence in unfaithful men.

The need therefore is for faithful men, regenerate men who move in the fear of God rather than the fear of men. It takes good men to make a good society, not another election. This, of course, has been a part of the church’s work, to bring men into conformity to God and His Word, to bring forth by God’s grace a generation of strong, godly men. This most churches have ceased to do: instead of seeing Christ’s mission in terms of changed men, they too often see it as a calling to change society, to generate social revolution. They are giving us bad eggs and bad omelets. Is it any wonder that, the more things change, the more they are the same?

God declares, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). The world’s destiny is not sameness, not continual corruption, but the regeneration of all things by Jesus Christ. But that regeneration cannot take place apart from Him.