United States – Andy Wrasman

Contradict #14 – God Bless All Nations and Postmodernism

This is the first Contradict – They Can’t All Be True video that does not present the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For that, I apologize. Watch the other videos to hear the Gospel message.

Before the Modern world, we blindly trusted in authority. For God, that meant we just trusted the Bible as the Word of God and believed whatever the Church taught us.

In the Modern world, we trusted in logic, reason, and science. These were helpful tools in helping us interpret the Bible.

In the Postmodern world, an emerging worldview that hasn’t yet fully replaced Modernism, we are confronted with many opposing beliefs, religions, morals, and customs and many of us can’t apply our logic and reason to justify why one belief system is true and another false, especially since we can see elements of truth in all of them. This has led to relativism. We now trust in experience and intuition to guide our beliefs concerning God.

I found a God Bless All Nations bumper sticker. This is a good depiction of postmodernism. Words and symbols can be deconstructed to mean anything an individual wants. In relativism, everything goes. What’s true for you is true for you.

Overtime this can leave us in a state of being dazed and confused, and when it’s been so long, we can’t tell what’s true anymore. God Bless All Nations! If God is blessing nations why don’t we see flags representing countries? Are religions now nations? Or it is trying to say that religions are now so spread out over the world that these religions can be found in many nations, and since God blesses all nations, then he must therefore be blessing all religions too? Of is it trying to say that God can be found in all of these religions and that that God blesses all nations? Or is it saying that America isn’t a Christian nation? Or is it saying that Americans shouldn’t say “God Bless America,” they should say “God Bless all Nations?” In postmodernism, it can mean anything I want it to mean, and you can’t tell me I’m wrong, except I think words do have meaning, and so do symbols… these meanings can change overtime, but we still have to be able to recognize the different definitions, but in postmodernism changes can happen overnight based on some video or image going “viral,” and we don’t have to recognize the contradictions anymore, since everything is now true! So I am left in complete frustration. Come Lord Jesus, Come!

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March 8, 2013

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One Nation Under God #3

The three local libraries that I frequent, all have a bookstore of used books. These books usually cost 50 cents to $2. Sometimes you can find some really great resource books for yourself or copies of the Bible or other books you already own that you think would be great to keep on hand for giving to others. One such book I found recently is In God We Still Trust by Dr. Richard G. Lee. It’s mostly just compilations of quotes from America’s founding fathers, presidents, and key reformers and ground breakers demonstrating that the God we trust in is not some generic, withdrawn, unknown deity, as many liberals want us all to believe now. These quotes also show that when America used to be called a Christian nation, we actually were. Does that mean we don’t have massive sins and flaws in our history, such as the Trail of Tears that starts in my home-state, TN? No, it just shows that we as all people and nations are sinners and led by sinners, but at least, for a time, our nation was largely Christian, trusting in God alone for our salvation and provision.

Here’s a quote from Daniel Webster from a speech he gave before the HIstorical Society of New York, Februrary, 23, 1852:

If we and our prosperity shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect His commandments, if we and they shall maintain just moral sentiments and such conscientious convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country; and if we maintain those institutions of government and that political union, exceeding all praise as much as it exceeds all former examples of political associations, we may be sure of one thing, that while our country furnishes material for a thousands masters of the historic art, it will afford no topic for a Gibon. It will have no decline and fall. It will go on prospering and to prosper.

But if we and our prosperity reject religious institutions and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

February 23, 2013

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One Nation Under God #2 – Abraham Lincoln Quote

Taken from the book, In God We Trust, by Dr. Richard G. Lee:

Abraham Lincoln, anguished by the ravages of civil war, declared a “Proclamation of a National Fast Day” on March 30, 1863:

Whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history that nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

… We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

When I was in high school, probably about 14-15 years ago, I read Jeremiah 18:1-12 and I instantly thought of America, although Jeremiah was talking about Israel. It seemed to me that America’s history was that of Israel, that God still works with nations as he did in the Old Testament era, that he works and deals with people collectively, as well as individually, that in this temperol age, the actions of one affect the whole, just as Adam’s rebellion brought sin and death to all men, and the second Adam’s act of righteousness brought salvation to all men.

In high school, I saw the signs that we were moving away from being a nation under God, even though my public high school had public prayer led by students blasted over the football speakers, and that we could hear the prayer from outside our locker room as we waited to enter the grid-iron, and before we left our huddle to go the field, right after checking Special Teams’ Rosters, we’d hold hands and say the Lord’s Prayer; even then I saw that we were moving away. It didn’t seem to be the America that my Grandparents cherished from their youth… reading Abraham Lincoln’s words make me feel even further removed. In high school, what stood out to me was our acceptance of abortions.

Now it’s the acceptance of all religions as being equally valid and true; such pluralism is what hurt King Solomon’s reign and Israel’s protection in the Old Testament. I think we always need to accept that there will be religions that stand against the Lord of the Bible that Abraham Lincoln spoke about in his this speech I quoted. The fight to kill the unborn is as strong as ever. Now homosexuality is the new fighting ground, and if a person speaks out against the perils of homosexuality, there will be persecution, though that person will be made out to be the persecutor. Recent mass-shootings indicate the level of godlessness that has swept over our nation.

We reap what we sow, and I agree with Lincoln… I wish we as a nation could turn back to the Lord. Christians, we must pray for our leaders, all of them! This is commanded in Scripture – Look it up; it’s 1 Timothy 2:1-7.

Christians we must stand in the gap right now, stand like Ezekiel did. (Ezekiel 22:30) Everyone, we must repent. To echo Lincoln’s words by quoting Scripture, from 1 John 1:9-1:

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”

The invitation is there… God is drawing you to himself through the work of Jesus Christ. Repent, believe, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, if you haven’t already received Him.

February 21, 2013

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One Nation Under God #1

One nation under God. Which God? I’ve heard a lot of people make the argument that a majority of the founding fathers were deists and not Christians. I however was taught that America was founded as a Christian nation. Here are some quotes from some very influential founding fathers:

From John Hancock – Signer of the Declaration of Independence:

Principally and first of all, I give and recommend my soul into the hands of God that gave it; and my body I recommend to the earth… nothing doubting but at the general resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mercy and power of God.

The doctrine of a general resurrection would have come from a Biblical, Christian worldview for Mr. Hancock.

Patrick Henry – Governor of Virgina:

It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Wow! Partrick Henry claims that America was founded on the gospel of Jesus Christ! That isn’t generic deism by any stretch of the imagination. If Patrick Henry was wrong in this statement, other early prominent American leaders would have corrected him. Do we have any such corrections?

Benjamin Rush – Signer of the Declaration of Independence:

My only hope of salvation is the infinite, transcendent love of God manifested to the world by death of His Son upon the cross. Nothing but His blood will wash away my sins. I rely exclusively upon it. Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly!

Benjamin Rush, Painting (Photo credit: Marion Doss)

Benjamin Rush definitely wasn’t Jewish or Islamic, or simply believing that there was some unknown Creator directing the course of history from afar without any direct revelation of himself to mankind.

John Adams – Second President:

The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.

John Hancock and John Adams:

We recognize no sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!

All quotes were pulled from In God We Still Trust by Dr. Richard G. Lee.

February 4, 2013July 5, 2019

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What is Wicca?

A blog called CA Psychics wrote about Wicca. The opening line of their blog says, “In 1990, the American Religious Survey found 8,000 people who identified themselves as Wiccans. In 2001, that number was 134,000, an incredible growth!” http://blog.californiapsychics.com/blog/2011/01/the-growth-of-wicca.html/

I first met a Wiccan when I was in high school. I forget how it came about, but I met him sitting around a campfire. I knew nothing of the religion, besides what was mentioned about Wicca in the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The guy referred to himself as a warlock and said that he did practice magic. He also was a palm-reader. He explained to me that he believed everything in the world was connected through a divine energy, and that it was the harnessing and directing of this energy that was the practice of magic. I asked him if it was like the Force in Star Wars. He said that was a good description. So I asked him if I and the fire were connected if I could magically extinguish it, or if I wanted another drink, I could just open the cooler and have one float to me like Luke Skywalker. He laughed and told me no.

At the Christian university I went to, I met two Wiccans living on campus. I had some very interesting conversations with them. Maybe they knew more about Wicca than the guy I spoke with in high school, or maybe I just knew more because I had studied it a little bit and knew better questions to ask. The one shared that she did practice magic, and that the black magic comes back on you three-fold, so she doesn’t practice that anymore. She only does white magic, and she claims it works.

Basically, Wicca seems to be a lot like Hinduism. They believe in reincarnation. There is a divine essence in all things. They believe in a moral law of cause and effect that is similar to Karma. Rituals can be practiced as the individual practitioner desires and sees most beneficial.

And I do believe there are connections with the growth of Wicca, the New Age Movement, and the many Psychic shops I see popping up around America. It’s disheartening!

Here’s a video that shares a lot more of the Wicca religion that some students of mine created:

January 21, 2013

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