A New Voice of Freedom

No Respecter of Persons Only absolutes can be truly opposite.  Everything else is subject to manipulation, interpretation, and squirming definitions.  Our liberal leaders assume that if they can legislate morality, they can control the conscience of a nation and thus rule the very details of our lives.   In our modern world we create the gods that reflect our standards and clothe them in the royal...

We are Seven Welcome to another podcast from Poet’s corner. The Romantic Poet, William Wordsworth, captures the simple faith of a child in his moving poem, “We Are Seven.” A little girl of eight is confronted by a cynical adult about the issue of death. The little girl lost her brother and sister.  She visits the cemetery regularly. She, of course, knows they are buried in the church yard but does...

Letters of John to the Seven Churches, Pt VIII: Thyatira  One way to read the Book of Revelation is to treat it as a chiasm. Chiasm is a form of Hebrew poetry in which the end is a repetition of the beginning. In other words, the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation are repeated in the last three or four chapters of the Book of Revelation. It takes the form of ABCCBA. It isn’t an exact r...

The Straight and Narrow Way By sheer coincidence of the English language, there are two straight and narrow ways. The first is spelled S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T the second is spelled S-T-R-A-I-T. S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T suggests an undeviating path: honesty, integrity, fidelity, strict obedience, etc. The Savior said,  cvv“But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: or whatsoever is more than these cometh of...

Take my Yoke upon You and Learn of Me The road to freedom is generally rockier than the road to prison.  It is often the opposite of what we expect.  For example, in an adversarial confrontation we want to attack, to secure the high ground, and to lord it over our enemy.  The Savior seldom tells us what we want to hear.   38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for...

The Law of Liberty If you have been following these podcasts, you know that I have often spoken of the Law of Liberty. The phrase comes from the Book of James in the New Testament: 11 For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged b...

The Ministers Black Veil Welcome to Poet’s Corner. Periodically in the podcasts I like to turn to literature.  Our greatest poets are some of our greatest preachers. I spent my professional career wandering in the wilderness of the world’s greatest literature. But they are not preaching from a pulpit. They can be very subtle. Many of Shakespeare’s most quotable lines come from the black hearts of...

Letters of John to the Seven Churches Pt VII: Introduction  Is there any book in Holy Scriptures more talked about than the Book of Revelation? Is there any book that has more disturbing images than the Book of Revelation? And is there any book more puzzling than the Book of Revelation?  The Book of Revelation is unique in many ways. For one thing, the scope of the book is amazing. It speaks of th...

Manmade Law This is the third and final podcast in the trilogy on law. The first podcast is entitled temporal law. The second podcast is entitled spiritual law. The third and final podcast is entitled manmade law. Let me encourage you to listed to all three. Four of the greatest words in the English language are freewill, freedom, agency, and liberty.  Because they are sometimes used interchangeab...

Spiritual Law In our mortal experience, we must deal with three sets of laws: Temporal Laws, Spiritual Laws, and Manmade laws. Temporal laws govern the mortal or physical body. Spiritual laws govern the spirit or immortal body, and manmade laws govern the body politic.  We must keep them well balanced. In the United States we are incredibly fortunate because we have a Declaration of Independence,...

Temporal Law Temporal laws have neither uncertainty nor surprise. It is only our own ignorance that has uncertainty and surprise. We often learn the effects after the fact. Experience is a very harsh teacher, and temporal laws do not discriminate. Temporal laws do not require faith. They require knowledge. The greater our knowledge of temporal law, the greater our freedom. Temporal laws deal with...

Intelligent Design From a Christian perspective, the ultimate answer will have to be intelligent design.  For intelligent design to exist, there must be an intelligent designer.  The designer must have the following attributes: ·       Omniscience ·       Omnipotence ·       Omnipresence All Christians generally accept intelligent design because fundamental to Christianity is the idea that Jesus C...

Titles of Christ Pt II  As discussed in Podcast 45 Letters of John to the Seven Churches Pt V Titles of Christ Pt I, In the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation Christ is called by at least 35 titles, some strengthened by repetition. The reason is simple. The central figure in the Book of Revelation is Christ.  If you take your eyes off the Savior, you will lose the meaning of the Book. ...

Titles of Christ Pt I As stated in a previous podcast the seven letters to the seven churches hold the key to understanding the Book of Revelation. That is why they are first.    And the first thing all Christians must understand is who Christ is. The Book of Revelation is dedicated to describing Christ and defining his attributes.  Ancient Hebrew Poetry is distinguished by parallelism. The most e...

“What is Idol Worship?” The Children of Israel were not to worship Pharaoh.  They were not to worship Moses or Aaron. And they were not to worship iconic images.  They were to worship an invisible God.  God forbade the Israelites from allowing anything, even religious icons, to come between them and Jehovah, hence the clause, “I am a jealous god.”  Remember the story of the brass serpent Moses hel...

Law of Liberty The purpose of a free government is to allow freewill to be expressed as much as possible and still secure the safety of the citizens.  Though we all must practice good judgment and be held personally accountable for unwise decisions, it is the purpose of government to protect its citizens against fraud, terrorism, intimidation, thieves, murderers, liars, cheats, predators, bullies,...

Paradise Lost Hell’s Gate  A poet, especially a genius such as John Milton, has a gift of language that can make the most abstract concepts concrete through figurative imagery.  In our religious jargon we speak of Satan, of sin, of death, and of hell sometime with very abstract language.  They are a kind of vague abstraction that takes on different meanings under different circumstances. For examp...

Facts vs Truth We confuse information for truth.  Information today, like ash from an exploding volcano, proliferates until it pollutes the air and blocks out the sun, but information is not truth. Information is made of fleeting facts that change with time that may or may not be accurate.   On the one hand, information may lead to knowledge; knowledge and experience may lead to truth; and truth m...

Letter of John to the Seven Churches Pt IV Uses of Parallelism The Book of Revelation is unique above all other scriptures, and if scriptures were evaluated by their impact, I suppose the Book of Revelation would be the apex which is coincidentally positioned as the last book of the Holy Bible. Perhaps that is fitting.  Though perhaps the Book of Revelation was not chronologically the last book wr...

Rewriting the Ten Commandments One example of how Social Democrats are taking away freedom of religion and making government our new God is in the way they are systematically destroying the Bill of Rights.  The left is using fear to try and take away our right to bear arms.  They are using the same tactics to take away our freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  Political correctness, for exam...

Virtue and Freedom If the majority of the people become evil, then liberty will naturally fall and all hopes of equality with it.  Speaking through Isaiah, the Lord said,  “To whom have I put thee away, or to which of my creditors have I sold you?  Yea, to whom have I sold you?  Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.”  (Isaiah 50:1...

Why I believe in Intelligent Design Who can possibly deny the genius of science?  Perhaps no other age has enjoyed the knowledge that we enjoy of the discoveries of science. Science has allowed us to harness the energy of the universe. Science has helped us to understand the forces of nature. Science has invented telescopes that penetrate the fathomless cosmos, revealing its unending patterns. Sci...

The Spirit of Freewill Our mortal physical body houses our immortal spirit.  Our immortal spirit houses our intelligence or our consciousness. Freewill resides in the spirit, not in the physical body. Life is in the spirit, not in the physical body. At death the spirit leaves the body, carrying a memory of all our experiences. At death we leave all things made of clay behind to be dissolved back i...

Hidden Manna Welcome to season three of ‘A New Voice of Freedom.’  The Podcasts are taken from the four volumes ‘In Defense of Christianity’ written by Ronald Keith Messer. Podcast 35 is entitled “Letters of John to the Seven Churches Pt III Pergamos 1 Hidden Manna”  In the Book of Revelation, John writes seven letters to the seven churches: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphi...

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Pts 5, 6 & 7   The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is about sin and redemption and the steps of repentance necessary to receive redemption. In Podcast One of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the mariner leaves the harbor among cheers. However, they travel on strange seas and are lost and the mariner commits a terrible sin. He shoots an innocent albatross which bring...