Recently, I have been in great need of repeating Gospel promises to myself, almost continually, otherwise my heart has seemed to slip very quickly into bitterness, misery, spiritual depression, anger, and the like. I’m not sure why, but it has been so. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Not me. Knowing Romans 8 to be chock full of promises from God, fulfilled in Christ, I read it and came across this one headline truth that I need pounded into my head and my heart. Romans 8:33 above.

This one statement sums up what the Gospel is about, namely it is God who justifies. The whole Bible itself can be summed up in that one central truth. I don’t justify my existence, or my works, or my interactions with others; God does, more precisely Christ does, and even more precisely in the cross and resurrection. Of course the Bible goes much further than just this simple statement that it is God who justifies. But if you could sum it up, I don’t know how much better you can get. This is what distinguishes the Gospel from all other truth claims of various religions, for each one is all about justifying yourself through what you do. And it is the one central truth I need headlined in my heart when the weight of sin and my own unbelief clouds my vision.

My ways are impure, tainted, and when I become discouraged by my sin, I have lost sight of this one central truth: I don’t justify myself, God does. At that moment, I’m believing the lie that I must justify myself, and because I can’t I despair and don’t turn to Christ. I have nothing to offer for a reason or explanation or defense as to why my life should be accounted for anything in the light of the white hot fire of God’s perfect judgment. Even my “good deeds” are stained with sin from my evil intentions and the self-seeking motivations that rest in my heart.

And so when my heart sinks under the weight of what I know I am apart from Christ, forgetting His work, that is precisely when I must set my mind upon this and other central truths. My life is accounted righteous only in relation to Christ and His work. Apart from Him, I am nothing and can do nothing of any spiritual value that matters to God. He is what gives my life Life, value, significance, only because He gave Himself up that I may have His worth and value and reward. He has given me all things of eternal value by His work on my behalf. He has removed my punishment by taking it in Himself, He has canceled the debt by paying it in full, absorbed the guilt of my sin, granted that I may know Him, the best part of heaven, the single greatest reward.What could possibly be better than this? This is what we must meditate upon in the Gospel. What kind of people would we be if this ruled our hearts before all other things?

When your heart sinks under the weight of your sin and your heart is blackened by the poison of unrighteousness that exists in the core of your being, as has been the case with me lately, look to Him and see that it is not you but God who justifies, in His Son. There is nothing else that truly matters but this one thing. I pray that truth too would work itself into my heart, that I would not doubt in unbelief but believe deeper and deeper that Christ has set me free my His blood shed on the cross for my sin. Remember, it is God who justifies, no one else, not even yourself. You are helpless apart from the mercy of Christ. And He offers it freely, at no cost, to even the greatest of sinners, including myself.

What has occurred though to a great degree is that the idea of piety itself, properly defined, in Biblical terms has been left by the way side, in the wake of moving from one extreme to the other. Personal holiness is something that is lightly if ever talked about. We talk about our mistakes or external sins here and there, for sure, but how often are we admonished to pursue virtuous piety, in the terms the Bible describes? It is a shame personal holiness is not advocated the way the Scripture advocate it. The problem is that you risk offending people, which is exactly what Scripture does to sinners (like myself) who are in violation of God’s law. It brings rebuke and correction, something our “enlightened” American society has a hard time with.

A champion of the Biblical concept of piety from historic evangelicalism is John Calvin. Calvin wrote extensively about holiness and personal piety in light of the work of Christ, particularly in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. This is something teachers and preachers need to recover. Watch below as Ligon Duncan discusses John Calvin’s life and his emphasis on personal piety in the life of the Christian and why it was so important to him.

“John Calvin is sometimes perceived as a dry and dusty academic whose writings deal only with abstract theological topics. To read Calvin, however, is to read one who was devoted to seeing God’s Word impact the lives of Christian people everywhere. In this message, Ligon Duncan explores some of Calvin’s most practical wisdom for those who seek to follow Christ.” – Calvin and the Christian Life, Ligon Duncan

Released in 1973, the movie portrays a time in the future, specifically the year 2022, when the population of New York City (one slice of the world’s total population at the time) has exploded to a massive 40,000,000 people. Resources are scarce (especially food), poverty is rampant, streets are crowded, and all power has been consolidated into the hands of the government to control the masses of people who are out of control. Because of the lack of food, a company used by the government, Soylent Corporation, produces high-energy ration wafers that the people can consume for nutrition. There is Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow and a new product, Soylent Green. Long story short (here’s a spoiler), Soylent Green turns out to be processed dead people. It’s a sort of secret, government-sponsored recycling program. Yeah gross.

But the larger point of the story, over-population, is what is in view here, because clearly the point of the movie is that if we don’t do something about our exploding populations, this may very well be our future (the whole scaremongering thing, or politics of fear). During the time the movie was made, overpopulation was at the forefront of many intellectual minds, in academia and government. Henry Kissinger, who penned the now infamous National Security Memorandum 200, a formerly classified document detailing America’s approach to third-world nations, described in detail how America might work to reduce the size of those populations (who presented some form of a threat in his mind) through non-violent means (minus abortion of course).

In addition to this, scientists like our current science czar John Holdren, who in 1977 co-authored the science textbook Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, called for “forced abortions, ‘compulsory sterilization,’ and the creation of a ‘Planetary Regime’ that would oversee human population levels and control all natural resources as a means of protecting the planet.” I’m not kidding. Read about it here. He has not to my knowledge recanted this point of view either … and he’s our science czar. I digress.

Other movies have been used in the past to shape agendas and change the opinions of the masses over the past century. Take the movie The Day After, a made-for-TV movie in 1983 in which a nuclear holocaust occurs the likes of which the world has never seen. Having been made at the height of the Cold War, the big fear this movie stirred up was that the “evil” USSR would obliterate our nation. And the implication as well as the effect of the movie was that we need to take the necessary steps to make sure this never happens. Propaganda? I believe you could safely call it that. Neil Postman describes the philosophy behind this movie in the book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Good read.

So this brings me to the movie Soylent Green. I’m not saying it was propaganda. But what is the best way, in our society, to change social ideas on a mass scale? Make a movie and market it. Think about how much culture has been influenced by the ideas of movies and TV. At the very least it is a reflection of what was being talked about at the time: exploding populations. But by whom, average Americans? Surely not. At the most, it was the actions of intellectuals attempting to shape what they viewed as important.

Also, one of these days I’ll start blogging again. Had a long run of difficulties and well, laziness to some degree, spiritual and otherwise. So, I’ll be returning soon.

Here are pictures! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=144151&id=502472774&l=6a0f5cc720

I honestly haven’t been impacted by a sermon like this in a while. Justin Taylor has already blogged about this, but I think it’s worth repeating. God’s Outrageous Love is a sermon R.W. Glenn gave at John Piper’s church, Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN a couple of weeks ago. It’s a message on Jonah 4 and how outrageous it is that God loves any of us. Here is a quote: “Until you’re outraged by God’s love, you’ll never think it’s outrageous; until you’re offended by God’s love, you’ll never be overwhelmed by it.” This was really convicting and yet at the same time pointing to the greatness of the mercy of Christ. Highly recommended!

Just what is a false flag attack? Here is an explanation on Wikipedia: “covert operations which are designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own.”

Here are just a few examples, including a couple involving the US. Many historians have even come to the conclusion that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a false flag attack orchestrated by the US, using old, empty destroyers as the targets, as a justification for the war in Vietnam. To my knowledge, this conclusion is unconfirmed, but being that the intelligence itself was skewed with documented proof of this fact, it seems at least possible these accusations could prove to be true.

The most interesting and quite startling false flag attack plan by the US that was thankfully never implemented was Operation Northwoods. When you read the information from that plan (PDF), you won’t believe your eyes.

In the 1931 Mukden incident, Japanese officers fabricated a pretext for annexing Manchuria by blowing up a section of railway. Six years later they falsely claimed the kidnapping of one of their soldiers in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident as an excuse to invade China proper.

In the Gleiwitz incident in August 1939, Reinhard Heydrich made use of fabricated evidence of a Polish attack against Germany to mobilize German public opinion and to fabricate a false justification for a war with Poland. This, along with other false flag operations in Operation Himmler, would be used to mobilize support from the German population for the start of World War II in Europe.

On November 26, 1939 the Soviet Union shelled the Russian village of Mainila near the Finnish border. The Soviet Union attacked Finland four days after the Shelling of Mainila. Russia has agreed that the attack was initiated by the Soviets.^[4] Also, the nearest Finnish artillery pieces were well out of range of Mainila.^[5]

In 1953, the U.S. and British-orchestrated Operation Ajax used “false-flag” and propaganda operations against the formerly democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq. Information regarding the CIA-sponsored coup d’etat has been largely declassified and is available in the CIA archives.^[6]

In 1954, Israel sponsored bombings against US and UK interests in Cairo aiming to cause trouble between Egypt and the West.^[7] This operation, later dubbed the Lavon Affair, cost Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon his job. The state of Israel (where it is known as “The Unfortunate Affair”) finally admitted responsibility in 2005.^[8]

The planned, but never executed, 1962 Operation Northwoods plot by the U.S. Department of Defense for a war with Cuba involved scenarios such as hijacking a passenger plane, sinking a U.S. ship, burning crops and blaming such actions on Cuba. It was authored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nixed by John F. Kennedy, came to light through the Freedom of Information Act and was publicized by James Bamford.

Former GRU officer Aleksey Galkin,^[9] former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko^[10] and other whistleblowers from the Russian government and security services have asserted that the 1999 Russian apartment bombings that precipitated the Second Chechen War were false flag operations perpetrated by the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB. Galkin has since recanted his accusations, which were made while he was a prisoner of Chechen rebels. However, there are other theories that the FSB engineered this incident.

Not pretty scenarios. Government spending has thrown free market mechanism’s into distortion and disarray. So it should shape up to be an interesting year.

There are various takes on how everything will pan out. The MSM (main-stream media) paints everything as a rosy picture: we’re coming out of the recession and things will only get better, we hear.

However, all of the realistic economists, the one’s who rightly predicted crashes in recent years, are predicting some hard events that will take place this year forward.

On a macro level, for the most part, they all see the same scenario emerging. Mish says it’s the year for the beginning of the Second Great Depression. In addition, he believes it’s likely we’ll hit a Y-shaped economy, that is, a W-shaped trend where we dip into recession a second time and re-test previous lows and then some.

Trends researcher Gerald Celente (not in this audio) is predicting the Greatest Depression in the next few years. Peter Schiff is predicting similar scenarios. By the way, these guys have been right for years on predicting future trends, not just months but years in advance many times. Economist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is saying the next shoe to drop around the world is sovereign debt, that is, debtor nations such as Greece, Spain, and the US, will pop or default. Here is Jim Rogers take:

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. – Luke 2:1-20

(And Jesus, God Himself, come in flesh, came to save us from the eternal punishment of our sins against God, by taking that punishment in Himself on the cross, confirming it by rising again from death. And this salvation is made effective for us through our belief and trust in Christ alone for that very salvation, trust that He bore our sins, and lived a perfect life in our place because it is impossible for us to do so):

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

BUT NOW (!) the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. – Romans 3:10-26

Come and fall on your knees before Christ and ask Him that, by His grace, you would see that He is the Author and Creator of all things and the Author and fulfiller of our salvation, having suffered, died and resurrected on behalf of any of you who would believe.