8/30/15

Pres. Obama Puts Down Mt. McKinley -Raises Denali on Map

President Obama has put to rest the federal government name for the largest hill in North America. The mountain formerly known as McKinley is now named the stalwart name Denali-a name favored by cool insider cognoscenti.


There are at least 27 names for the great hill. I prefer Tenedos because it seems so much like the large island in the Mediterranean that may have travelled across Eurasia and Beringia long ago.

I suppose there may be a pancake restaurant (e.g. Denny's) opening there soon.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-renames-mt-mckinley-denali-ahead-alaska-trip/story?id=33420405

Works vs Grace

 The WCF is not about dispensationalism as people commonly understand dispensationalism today. I believe there is a finite number of covenants God has has made for the benefit of the elect, and all of those serve the greater purpose of God in creating man to start with. Gershner has some good opinions. This is what I wrote about his lecture-it is largely a paraphrase...God is so high above us-so infinitely transcending us, so that we as creatures of the dust could never do anything to merit his attention-so the covenant is regarded as an infinite condescension from God to us mere finite creatures
The first covenant was a covenant of works- made with Adam - if Adam was perfect in obedience he'd be o.k.-That covenant was a condescension too, for how could Adam's obedience merit eternal life? God established the covenant with Adam that if he did such and such...whatever he did would never have merited eternal life though God was gracious to let it be good enough
Man by his fall made the covenant of works impossible, so God made another covenant-that of Jesus Christ-requiring faith in him, that they may be saved. God promised to make all those ordained unto life to have salvation; and to give all the Holy Spirit to make them willing and able to believe.
Adam's human works did not deserve eternal life. Covenant of grace though is pure grace-Adam at least had to do something in the covenant of works. The latter makes one think that he does something that lets him be saved. Covenant of grace alternatively has even faith being supplied with God's grace.
Jesus Christ-the testator-the word testament indicates the kind of agreement. God gave up his own Son for our death, and Jesus Christ agreed to atone for our sins. It was a testament bequethed by the testator.
The Westminster divines were opposed to dispensationalism. The church in the Old Testament was also a covenant of grace- (in a legal dispensation) administered differently though. In the OT the legal dispensation was a difference of mode rather than of essence. That legal dispensation put one in the right way of grace-one wasn't actually saved through works, such that dispensationalists think.
There are not two different covenants of grace-there is just one covenant of grace in the Old and New Testaments. There is just a difference in form.
Christ the mediator-it pleased God in His eternal purpose-to be the mediator between God and man. Two whole perfect, distinct natures-the Godhead and manhood, were joined together in Christ. Sinners does not belong in human nature-it was incurred by the fall. Christ did not take on a nature with sin. He was sanctified and anointed by the Holy Spirit. Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, equal with the Father, yet when he took upon human nature he obeyed God as if he were a man.
Jesus willingly undertook the role of being crucified and died.

Wavefunction Kingdom of God (video)

Immortality of Soul & Eternal Punishment (video)





8/29/15

President Obama's Faulty Iranian Nuke Containment Policy

The President's liberal terms for ending sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iranian assurances that they will delay plutonium or highly enriched uranium production for 10 or 15 years makes me wonder about the logic that suggested that it has any merit to it.

Iran gets billions and billions of dollars of immediate economic relief. Civilian rights are important everywhere and civil prosperity is a large element of civilian rights. So I am sympathetic with that; the people should not pay the penalty for government corruption, malfeasance or insider kickbacks to the rich, yet of course they generally do. The Iranian government with all of the oil money will do what governments everywhere like to do; pend  a lot of military equipment and foreign intrigue-even going so far as to fund terror operation, covert and overt.

Iran probably bought enough nuclear material from Kazakhstan between 1992-2000 to build a few bombs some speculate. There was a lot of dumped, Soviet nuclear materials in Kazakhstan after the cold war. Iranian agents are known to have visited such places when  a few million might buy a few pounds of weapons grade fissile materials. Even if Iran agrees not to make their own highly enriched uranium for several years they can work on perfecting missiles and buying accurate guidance systems. maybe they can employ former Soviet weapons designers to instruct them on the finer points of developing MIRV and MARV systems. Iran isn't likely to use a nuclear weapon on Israel anytime soon anyway knowing that Israelis might vaporize all of their major cities as a courtesy reply. Perhaps President Obama was worried about Iranian nukes for other reasons.

Iran might allow some nuclear weapon to distro out to covert operatives gluing it to a ship hull or hiding it in a drone or plastic swimming fish maybe, if it wanted to nuke D.C. or Boston. If they already have a Soviet surplus nuke in stock the agreement won't affect that. That treaty cannot end the danger of the unknown existing outside the realm of Iranian inspectors who will assure D.C. and the I.A.E.A. they have no contraband material.

Iran will be given safety for a decade for developing missiles and perhaps cruise missile and drones (the C.I.A. delivered one of ours to Tehran) with lots of cash to afford it. Turkey and Iran will attack ISIS in one way or another, yet our Kurdish allies seem threatened by Turkey and Iran neither is especially friendly toward them.. Awash in cash and with substantive dangers from Sunni aggression Iranians that finance terrorism against Israel via Sunni terrorists in the Hamas territories probably look to the agreement as a good thing-something that will allow national security to finance terrorism better to proceed while they lose little or no nuclear development time.. A decade a nothing in politics form some points of view.

If one asks; will U.S. national security be better off a decade from now in regard to a potential Iranian nuclear missile attack. The answer would be no except for any secret anti-missile technology the U.S.A. may manufacture. Iran with a ready-to-wear nuclear missile assortment on which next gen warheads can be fit when the engines of plutonium production finally get rolling with President Barrack Obamas' blessing in a decade or more is the real threat happily accepted by too many in D.C. it seems.


If the Senators that sign off on the treaty are still around in a decade, that would be a surprise.  A next generation of Senators may better discover remedies-including peaceful remedies, to the faulty Obama containment logic. A good ecological economic economy innovated with minimal entropy and exported to benefit all of the people is an alternative approach that isn't used in D.C., and that has no leadership in politics. The same old worst case diplomatic criteria are instead used, and that leads to temporal conflicts and brinksmanship. Some day political and economic wisdom may appear as dual nature attributes that aren't uncommon in politics. Even so the Obama administration's willingness to allow Christians to be purged from the Middle east and endangered in Africa seems like a supporting element to a strategic leftist change to base American foreign and domestic policy on godless atheist principles rather than those of God and the Lord Jesus Christ; plainly that is not good.

8/28/15

A Note on Justification (of free grace)

A note from Gershner's lecture on justification

For justification
-those whom God effectually called he freely justified by counting their sins as paid for Christ's sake alone-Justification by Christ alone...justification by faith alone-not imputing obedience of faith as righteousness, instead it is by imputing the righteousness and sacrifice of Christ to themselves.

Faith-justification-works
not

Faith-works-justification (Rome's error)

It's not a work of faith that saves you, it is through unification through faith with Jesus Christ
not

Faith-justification-minus works (Protestant error)



Neccessary works vs. meritorious works; no works are meritorious

Elect Infants that Die in Infancy are Saved

All elect infants that die in infancy are saved. It also may be that all that die in infancy are of the elect. (paraphrasing Gershner's WCF interp). Maybe that applies to those aborted as well.

Pragmatism , Utilitarianism and Taking a Poisoned Pawn En Passant

  The war in Ukraine, from the Biden-Blinken perspective, is necessary for two or three reasons of a dubious moral character. One is that fu...