One picture is worth a thousand words.
America
Way back when I was a boy growing up in rural Iowa a neighbor of ours had the surname Lee. Later I found out that they were relatives of the Southern General Robert Edward Lee and for some reason that impressed me! After I received Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour I learned that Robert E. Lee also professed to be a born again Christian. Some years ago we visited Gettysburg and I purchased the book CHRIST IN THE CAMP by J. William Jones a chaplain in the Confederate Army. Chaplain Jones spoke highly of General Lee’s Christianity.
Today, with these Marxist, Muslim, Loony, Lovies seeking to destroy US history and statues of men like General Lee it just might be a good time to share a little about the man known as General Robert E. Lee.
‘2 Tim. 2:3 – “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”
One writer called General Lee, “The portrait of a soldier.” Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote of Lee: “His noble presence and gentle, kindly manner were sustained by religious faith and an exalted character.” His minister told him, “If you are as good a soldier of the cross as you are of the Army, Christ will have a great worker in His Church.” President Theodore Roosevelt described General Robert E. Lee as: “the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth.”
General Lee was born January 19, 1807 in Stratford, Virginia, and died October 12, 1870 in Lexington. He was a son of Revolutionary War hero Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee. He married the granddaughter of President George Washington. He graduated 2nd in his class at West Point, and has the distinction of being the only student to ever graduate without a demerit. When a Colonel stationed in Washington, DC, he was sent to put down a rebellion led by the radical abolitionist John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).
When Abraham Lincoln was elected President South Carolina seceded and was quickly followed by 6 more deep southern states: Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. At the behest of President Lincoln, Lee’s former commanding officer, General Winfield Scott, asked Colonel Robert E. Lee to take command of the United States Army to put down “the rebellion” in the South. He declined and instead offered his services to the newly formed Confederacy. The primary issue at stake for Lee was States’ Rights, not slavery. (As a matter of fact, Lee freed his slaves during the war, but General U.S. Grant, who fought the war to supposedly free the slaves did not free his until after the war was over: he lived in Maryland, a slave state that was not subject to the “Emancipation Proclamation.” It only applied to Southern states.)
After the war Lee applied to be reinstated as a U.S. citizen, but his paperwork was “lost” by a federal bureaucrat and was not “found” until over one hundred years after his death. His citizenship was finally reinstated by President Gerald Ford in 1974.
General Lee never felt hatred for his enemies, and exhorted the South to forgive and go on. He said: “Abandon your animosities, and make your sons Americans.”
His last words, when he knew his time was short, were: “Strike my tent; call for Hill.” (General A.P. Hill). The hymn sung at his modest funeral was, “How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent Word.”
1. General Lee was a God-fearing Man. 2 Samuel 23:3 says: “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.”
General Lee feared God. He was a man of faith and prayer. One of his numerous General Orders he issued in 1862 read: “Habitually all duties except those of inspection will be suspended during Sunday, to afford the troops rest and to enable them to attend religious services.”
On one occasion when he issued one of these orders an Army chaplain wrote: “The work of grace among the troops widened and deepened and went gloriously on until there had been thousands of professions of faith in Christ as a personal Saviour.”
John Cooke said: “He had lived, as he died, with this supreme trust in an overruling and merciful Providence; and this sentiment, pervading his whole being, was the origin of that august [majestic] calmness with which he greeted the most crushing disasters of his military career. His faith and humble trust sustained him after the war, when the woes of the South well nigh broke his great spirit; and he calmly expired, as a weary child falls, asleep, knowing that its father is near.”
Lee had learned through personal hardship and tragedy to possess an unrelenting faith in the sovereign counsel of God, both in personal and national matters. Upon hearing of the death of his 23-year-old daughter, Annie, and unable to attend her funeral, he insisted that these words be carved on her tombstone: “Perfect and true are all His ways, Whom Heaven adores and earth obeys.”
Like Job of old in the Bible, he trusted in God no matter the situation or heartache. He did not get angry with God, but entrusted his life and circumstances with God.
2. General Lee was a Born Again Man.
The Bible teaches that we must be saved and born again through faith and trust in Christ and His shed blood on the Cross of Calvary. Salvation is by grace, not by works of righteousness which we have done. (Titus 3:5; Eph. 2:8,9; John 3:7)
General Lee was a saved, born-again, Christian man and everyone knew and respected him for it. He wrote to his chaplains who informed him of their prayers for him that he thanked them and needed all of the prayers they could offer in his behalf. And then he said: “I can only say that I am nothing but a poor sinner, trusting in Christ alone for salvation.”
Lee considered himself a sinner who had been saved, not by church attendance or by good works or by any other human endeavor, but solely by the grace of God and the blood of Christ. In his Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Rev. J. William Jones, who was Lee’s chaplain at Washington College, wrote: “If I ever came in contact with a sincere, devout Christian – one who, seeing himself to be a sinner, trusted alone in the merits of Christ, who humbly tried to walk the path of duty, ‘looking unto Jesus’ as the author and finisher of his faith, and whose piety constantly exhibited itself in his daily life – that man was General R. E. Lee.”
3. General Lee was a Bible-believing Man.
The Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 – “ALL scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: THAT the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”
General Lee accepted all of the Bible without claiming to understand all of it.
He once remarked to Chaplain William Jones: “There are things in the Old Book which I may not be able to explain, but I fully accept it as the infallible Word of God, and receive its teachings as inspired by the Holy Spirit.”
He was a constant reader and a diligent student of the Bible.
He obeyed the command of 2 Timothy 2:15 to “Study to shew thyself approved unto God…” He believed what the Bible said in Revelation 1:3, “Blessed is the that readeth the words” of God. He practiced what it spoke of in Psalm 1:2, and he meditated upon the Scriptures.
Those who knew him well said, “Even in the midst of his most active campaigns he made time to read a portion of God’s word every day.”
He was actively engaged in promoting the Word of God (KJV).
The Bible says in Psalm 68:11 – “The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.” General Lee was in that company. He paid for and bought Bibles and was actively engaged in distributing the word of God to the world.
During the War he helped to provide Bibles and prayer-books to the men at his own expense.
After the War, he was offered and accepted the presidency of the Rockbridge Bible Society in Lexington, VA (where he taught at the Washington College and served as its President). The primary objective of the Bible Society under his leadership, according to his own words, was to place a Bible in every home in the South. He admonished folks to “read the Bible, read the Bible.”
4. General Lee was a Lowly-minded Man.
The Bible says in Philippians 2:5-8 – “LET this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: WHO, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: BUT made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: AND being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Jesus was a servant who ministered to others.
General Lee had this mindset. He was a lowly-minded man of humility. He said, “What do you care about rank? I would serve under a corporal if necessary!”
His ambition in life was to the best Christian he could be. Lee said: “My chief concern is to try to be a humble, earnest Christian…”
John Cooke, in his Life of General Robert E. Lee, wrote: “The crowning grace of this man, who was thus not only great but good, was the humility and trust in God, which lay at the foundation of his character.”
The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-30: “COME unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.TAKE my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. FOR my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
General Lee was a meek man who was willing to learn from the Lord through the lessons of life: “We must expect reverses, even defeats. They are sent to teach us wisdom and prudence, to call forth greater energies, and to prevent our falling into greater disasters.”
He believed that “no human power can avail us without the blessing of God.”
For what it is worth, I like this quote from the General: “All I ever wanted was a Virginia farm, no end of cream and fresh butter and fried chicken-not one fried chicken, or two, but unlimited fried chicken.”
5. General Lee was a Church-goimg Man.
General Lee was an Episcopalian by denomination – but a saved, Bible-believing member of that church in the South of his day. (I seriously doubt he would be one today!)
“General Lee was a most active promoter of the interests of his church, and of the cause of Christ in the community; and all of the pastors felt that they had in him a warm friend.”
“He was a most regular attendant upon all the services of his own church.” Gen. Lee took heed to Hebrews 10:25 – “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.”
“His pew was immediately in front of the chancel, his seat in the chapel was the second from the pulpit, and he always seemed to prefer a seat near the preacher’s stand. He always devoutly knelt during prayer, and his attitude during the entire service was that of an interested listener or a reverential participant.” While at Washington College, his seat in the chapel was never empty when services were being held.
His habit was to attend church wherever he was stationed. He would stop along the roadside to join his troops in prayer services. Once he was came upon a group of soldiers kneeling in prayer on the eve of a battle. He rode up, dismounted from his horse, Traveller, uncovered his head, and knelt in reverence to engage in prayer with them and their chaplain.
“He was a most liberal contributor to his church.” Gen. Lee was a giver. Not only did he tithe of his income, but It was not unusual for him to ask how much the balance was for a certain need of the church and then give the amount needed to make up for the lack of funds.
6. General Lee was a Soul-winning Man.
He was concerned for the souls of his soldiers & students. He had the heart of the Apostle Paul for those under his command and care (Rom. 10:1): “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.”
“General Lee always took the deepest interest in the work of his chaplains and the spiritual welfare of his men.” He attended the Chaplains’ meetings and a faithful chaplain always had a friend at HQ’s in General Lee. While General of the Army, Lee supported his chaplains and urged them to preach the Gospel to his soldiers. He encouraged them to distribute Gospel tracts to the men under his command and try to win them to Christ.
After the war, he became President and instructor at Washington College (later renamed Washington & Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. He told one of the local pastors: “I shall be disappointed, sir; I shall fail in the leading object that brought me here, unless these young men become real Christians; and I wish you and others of your sacred profession to do all you can to accomplish this.” He said to another: “I dread the thought of any student going away from the college without becoming a sincere Christian.”
Chaplain William Jones, the “Fighting Parson,” the author ofReligion in Lee’s Army, preached at the college, and afterwards General Lee told him: “I wish, sir, to thank you for your address; it was just what we needed. Our great want is a revival which shall bring these young men to Christ.”
Before he died, he said to one of the professors of the college:“Oh, doctor! If only I could know that all the young men in the college were good Christians, I should have nothing more to desire.”
7. General Lee was a Clean-living Man.
The Bible commands God’s people to be clean-living people. We are told to “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” (2 Cor. 7:1)
General Lee was a man of high moral character. He strove to live an exemplary life. He did his best to live a holy life, one pleasing to God. He lived according to 2 Timothy 2:19 – “Let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”
General Lee did not smoke, drink, curse or indulge in crude humor. Once a soldier asked if there were any ladies present before he started to tell a dirty, off-color joke. Lee said, “There are no ladies present, but one gentleman is.” Needless to say, the joke was never told.
He said, “I think it better to do right, even if we suffer in so doing, than to incur the reproach of our consciences and posterity.” He practiced what Jesus and the Apostles taught, and was willing to suffer for doing right rather than to do wrong and avoid criticism and scorn.
As President and instructor at Washington College, he said:“We have only one rule here – to act like a gentleman at all times.”
When it came to honest dealings he remarked: “The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.” He believed what he Bible said about lying and liars, about honesty and integrity. With him it was a conviction, not a policy or preference. He believed that God judged men for their actions here and in eternity and he lived in view of that truth.
As a lasting tribute to a man of sterling Christian character and Southern patriotism, War-era Georgia Senator Benjamin Harvey Hill gave us these words in his address before the Southern Historical Society on February 18, 1874, just four years after Lee’s death: “When the future historian shall come to survey the character of Lee, he will find it rising like a huge mountain above the undulating plain of humanity, and he must lift his eyes high toward heaven to catch its summit. He was a foe without hate, a friend without treachery, a soldier without cruelty, a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices, a private citizen without wrong, a neighbor without reproach, a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar without his ambition, a Frederick without his tyranny, a Napoleon without his selfishness, and a Washington without his reward. He was obedient to authority as a servant, and loyal in authority as a true king. He was gentle as a woman in life; modest and pure as a virgin in thought; watchful as a Roman vital in duty; submissive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles!”
General Robert E. Lee was a Christian man, and not ashamed of his Savior or the Bible.
What if everybody lived like General Lee?Then everybody would be –God-fearing
Born-again
Bible-believing
Lowly-minded
Church-going
Soul-winning
Clean-living
What if you lived like General Lee?‘ http://www.solidrockbaptist.net/the-christian-character-of-general-robert-e-lee.html
A University education is not always the best education!
HOW JASPER GOT HIS SCHOOLING
THESE chapters disclaim outright any pretension to biography. They deal with a weird, indescribable and mysterious genius, standing out in gloomy grandeur, and not needing the setting forth of ordinary incidents. At the same time, when an extraordinary man comes along and does masterful things, there be some who are ready to ask questions. Was he educated? Well, yes, he was. He had rare educational advantages, not in the schools; but what of that? A genius has no use for a school, except so far as it teaches him the art of thinking. If we run back to the boyhood of Jasper and look him over we find that he had, after all, distinct educational advantages.
It is another case of a good mother. We know that her name was Nina, and that she was the wife of Philip Jasper, and if tradition tells the truth she was the mother of twenty-four children–a premature applicant for the Rooseveltian prize. John was the last, and was not born until two months after his father’s death. Truly grace as well as genius was needed in his case, or he would have struck the wrong road.
That mother was the head of the working women on the Fluvanna farm and learned to govern by reason of the position she held. Her appointment bespoke her character, and her work improved it. Later on, she became in another home the chief of the servant force in a rich family. It was quite a good place. It brought her in contact with cultivated people and the imitative quality in the negro helped her to learn the manners and to imbibe the spirit of the lady. Later on still, she became a nurse to look after the sick at the Negro Quarters. There she had to do with doctors, medicines and counsellors and helpers. Add to all this, she was a sober, thoughtful, godly woman, and you will quite soon reach the conclusion that she was a very excellent teacher for John; and John coming latest in the domestic procession found her rich in experience, matured in motherliness, and enlarged in her outlook of life.
John’s father was a preacher. Harsh things, and some of them needlessly false, are said of the fact that there were no negro preachers in the times of the slaveholding. It is true, that the laws of the country did not allow independent organizations of negroes, and negro preachers were not allowed, except by the consent of their masters, to go abroad preaching the Gospel. They could not accept pastoral charges, and were hampered, as all must admit, by grievous restrictions, but there were negro preachers in that day just the same,–scores of them, and in one way and another they had many privileges and did good and effective service. One thing about the negro preacher of the ante bellum era was his high character. It is true that the owner of slaves was not in all cases adapted to determine the moral character of the slave who wanted to preach, and too often, it may be admitted, his prejudices and self-interest may have ruled out some men who ought to have been allowed to preach. It is a pity if this were true. But this strictness had one advantage. When the master of a negro man allowed him to preach it was an endorsement, acceptable and satisfactory, wherever the man went. If they thought he was all right at home, he could pass muster elsewhere.
Now, concerning John’s father, tradition has proved exceedingly partial. It has glorified Tina the mother with fine extravagance, but it has cut Philip unmercifully. John could get little out of his father, for they were not contemporaries, and as his brothers and sisters seemed to have been born for oblivion, we can trace little of his distinction to the old household in Fluvanna.
But we dare say that Philip, the preacher, remembered chiefly because he was a preacher, had something to do in a subtle way with John’s training. Nor must we fail to remember that Jasper himself grew up in contact with a fine old Virginia family. Fools there be many who love to talk of the shattering of the old aristocracy of Virginia. The First Families of Virginia
have been the sport of the vulgar, and their downfall has been a tragedy which the envious greedily turned into a comedy. But people ought to have some sense. They ought to see things in their proper relation. They ought to know that in the atmosphere of the old Virginia home the negroes, and especially those who served in person the heads of the family, caught the cue of the gentleman and the lady. I can stand on the streets of Richmond to-day and pick out the coloured men and women who grew up in homes of refinement, and who still bear about them the signs of it. Bent by age, and many of them tortured by infirmity, they still bear the marks of their old masters. They constitute a class quite apart from those of later times and are unequalled by them. I rejoice in all the comforts and advantages which have come to the negroes,–most heartily I thank heaven for their freedom and for all that freedom has brought them; but I do not hesitate to say that one of the losses was that contact with courtly, dignified, and royal people which many of them had before the Civil War. And even those on the plantations, while removed farther from the lights of the great castles in which their masters lived, walked not in darkness entirely, but unconsciously felt the transforming power of those times.
John Jasper was himself an aristocrat. His mode of dress, his manner of walking, his lofty dignity, all told the story. He received an aristocratic education, and he never lost it. Besides this, he had a most varied experience as a slave. He grew up on the farm, and knew what it was to be a plantation hand. He learned to work in the tobacco factory. He worked also in the foundries, and also served around the houses of the families with whom he lived; for it must be understood that after the breaking up of the Peachy family he changed owners and lived in different places. These things enlarged his scope, and with that keen desire to know things he learned at every turn of life.
After his conversion he became a passionate student. He acknowledges one who sought to teach him to read, and after he became a preacher he spelled out the Bible for himself. He was eager to hear other men preach and to talk with those who were wiser than he. And so he kept on learning as long as he lived, though of course he missed the help of the schools, and never crossed the threshold of worldly science in his pursuit of knowledge.
It may be well to say here that Jasper never lost his pride in white people. He delighted to be with them. Thousands upon thousands went to hear him, and while there was a strain of curiosity in many of them there was an under-note of respect and kindliness which always thrilled his heart and did him good. Time and again he spoke to me personally of white people, and always with a beautiful appreciation. It is noteworthy that the old man rode his high horse when his house was partly filled with white people, and it would be no exaggeration to say that not since the end of the war has any negro been so much loved or so thoroughly believed in as John Jasper. https://docsouth.unc.edu/church/hatcher/hatcher.html
This is a segment on Sky’s Outsiders. The video is a tweet by President Trump that Twitter removed. Enjoy.
With all the chaos that has been created around the world with the BLM it is good to read about a Black man that was truly a slave to another man but came to be ‘a servant of Jesus Christ’ . This is the story of John Jasper from the book John Jasper, the unmatched Negro philosopher and preacher. The following is just the Introduction to the book that tells of a more contemporary Onesimus in the life of John Jasper. In the days to come more of the book will be given here. To God be the Glory!
'INTRODUCTION READER ; stay a moment. A word with you before you begin to sample this book. We will tell you some things in advance, which may help you to decide whether it is worth while to read any further. These pages deal with a negro, and are not designed either to help or to hurt the negro race. They have only to do with one man. He was one of a class, without pedigree, and really without successors, except that he was so dominant and infectious that numbers of people affected his ways and dreamed that they were one of his sort. As a fact, they were simply of another and of a baser sort. The man in question was a negro, and if you cannot appreciate greatness in a black skin you would do well to turn your thoughts into some other channel. Moreover, he was a negro covered over with ante bellum habits and ways of doing. He lived forty years before the war and for about forty years after it. He grew wonder-fully as a freeman ; but he never grew away from the tastes, dialects, and manners of the bondage times. He was a man left over from the old regime and never got infected with the new order. The air of the educated negro preacher didn't set well upon him. The raw scholarship of the new " ish," as he called it, was sounding brass to him. As a fact, the new generation of negro preachers sent out by the schools drew back from this man. They branded him as an anachronism, and felt that his presence in the pulpit was a shock to religion and an offense to the ministry ; and yet not one of them ever attained the celebrity or achieved the results which came to this unlettered and grievously ungram- matical son of Africa. But do not be afraid that you are to be fooled into the fanatical camp. This story comes from the pen of a Virginian who claims no exemption from Southern prejudices and feels no call to sound the praises of the negro race. Indeed, he never intended to write what is contained within the covers of this book. It grew up spontaneously and most of the contents were written before the book was thought of. It is, perhaps, too much to expect that the meddlers with books will take the ipse dixit of an unaccredited stranger. They ought not to do it : they are not asked to do it. They can go on about their business, if they prefer ; but if they do, they will miss the story of the incomparable negro of the South. This is said with sobriety and after a half century spent in close observa- tion of the negro race. More than that, the writer of this never had any intention of bothering with this man when he first loomed up into notoriety. He got drawn in unexpectedly. He heard that there was a marvel of a man "over in Africa," a not too savoury portion of Richmond, Virginia, and one Sunday afternoon in company with a Scot- Irishman, who was a scholar and a critic, with a strong leaning towards ridicule, he went to hear him preach. Shades of our Anglo-Saxon fathers! Did mortal lips ever gush with such torrents of horrible English ! Hardly a word came out clothed and in its right mind. And gestures ! He circled around the pulpit with his ankle in his hand ; and laughed and sang and shouted and acted about a dozen characters within the space of three minutes. Meanwhile, in spite of these things, he was pouring out a gospel sermon, red hot, full of love, full of invective, full of tenderness, full of bitterness, full of tears, full of every passion that ever flamed in the human breast. He was a theatre within himself, with the stage crowded with actors. He was a battle-field ; himself the general, the staff, the officers, the common soldiery, the thundering artillery and the rattling musketry. He was the preacher ; likewise the church and the choir and the deacons and the congregation. The Scot-Irishman surrendered in fifteen minutes after the affair commenced, but the other man was hard-hearted and stubborn and refused to commit himself. He preferred to wait until he got out of doors and let the wind blow on him and see what was left. He determined to go again ; and he went and kept going, off and on, for twenty years. That was before the negro became a national figure. It was before he startled his race with his philosophy as to the rotation of the sun. It was before he became a lecturer and a sensation, sought after from all parts of the country. Then it was that he captured the Scot-Irish and the other man also. What is written here constitutes the gatherings of nearly a quarter of a century, and, frankly speaking, is a tribute to the brother in black, the one unmatched, unapproachable, and wonderful brother. But possibly the reader is of the practical sort. He would like to get the worldly view of this African genius and to find out of what stuff he was made. Very well ; he will be gratified ! Newspapers are heartlessly practical. They are grudging of editorial commendation, and in Richmond, at the period, they were sparing of references of any kind to negroes. You could hardly expect them to say anything commendatory of a negro, if he was a negro, with odd and impossible notions. Now this man was of that very sort. He got it into his big skull that the earth was flat, and that the sun rotated ; a scientific absurdity ! But you see he proved it by the Bible. He ransacked the whole book and got up ever so many passages. He took them just as he found them. It never occurred to him that the Bible was not dealing with natural science, and that it was written in an age and country when astronomy was unknown and therefore written in the language of the time. Intelligent people understand this very well, but this miracle of his race was behind his era. He took the Bible literally, and, with it in hand, he fought his battles about the sun. Literally, but not scientifically, he proved his position, and he gave some of his devout antagonists a world of botheration by the tenacity with which he held to his views and the power with which he stated his case. Scientifically, he was one of the ancients, but that did not interfere with his piety and did not at all eclipse his views. His perfect honesty was most apparent in all of his contentions ; and, while some laughed at what they called his vagaries, those who knew him best respected him none the less, but rather the more, for his astronomical combat. There was something in his love of the Bible, his faith in every letter of it, and his courage, that drew to him the good will and lofty respect of uncounted thousands and, probably, it might be said, of uncounted millions. Now when this man died it was as the fall of a tower. It was a crash, heard and felt farther than was the collapse of the famous tower at Venice. If the dubious, undecided reader has not broken down on the road but has come this far, he is invited to look at the subjoined editorial from Tke Richmond Dispatch, the leading morning paper of Richmond, Va., which published at the time an article on this lofty figure, now national in its proportions and imperishable in its fame, when it bowed to the solemn edict of death. (From The Richmond Dispatch} " It is a sad coincidence that the destruction of the Jefferson Hotel and the death of the Rev. John Jasper should have fallen upon the same day. John Jasper was a Richmond Institution, as surely so as was Major Ginter's fine hotel. He was a national character, and he and his philosophy were known from one end of the land to the other. Some people have the impression that John Jasper was famous simply because he flew in the face of the scientists and declared that the sun moved. In one sense, that is true, but it is also true that his fame was due, in great measure, to a strong personality, to a deep, earnest conviction, as well as to a devout Christian character. Some preachers might have made this assertion about the sun's motion without having attracted any special attention. The people would have laughed over it, and the incident would have passed by as a summer breeze. But John Jasper made an impression upon his generation, because he was sincerely and deeply in earnest in all that he said. No man could talk with him in private, or listen to him from the pulpit, without being thoroughly convinced of that fact. His implicit trust in the Bible and everything in it, was beautiful and impressive. He had no other lamp by which his feet were guided. He had no other science, no other philosophy. He took the Bible in its literal significance ; he accepted it as the inspired word of God ; he trusted it with all his heart and soul and mind ; he believed nothing that was in conflict with the teachings of the Bible scientists and philosophers and theologians to the contrary notwithstanding. " ' They tried to make it appear,' said he, in the last talk we had with him on the subject, ' that John Jasper was a fool and a liar when he said that the sun moved. I paid no attention to it at first, because I did not believe that the so-called scientists were in earnest. I did not think that there was any man in the world fool enough to believe that the sun did not move, for everybody had seen it move. But when I found that these so-called scientists were in earnest I took down my old Bible and proved that they, and not John Jasper, were the fools and the liars.' And there was no more doubt in his mind on that subject than there was of his existence. John Jasper had the faith that removed mountains. He knew the literal Bible as well as Bible scholars did. He did not understand it from the scientific point of view, but he knew its teachings and understood its spirit, and he believed in it. He accepted it as the true word of God, and he preached it with unction and with power. " John Jasper became famous by accident, but he was a most interesting man apart from his solar theory. He was a man of deep convictions, a man with a purpose in life, a man who earnestly desired to save souls for heaven. He followed his divine calling with faithfulness, with a determination, as far as he could, to make the ways of his God known unto men, His saving health among all nations. And the Lord poured upon His servant, Jasper, ' the continual dew of His blessing.' "'
‘A viral video of a Black Lives Matter protest is exposing the hypocrisy of a movement that claims to fight to protect black Americans.
According to BizPac Review, the video shows a black man confronting medical workers who gathered for a Black Lives Matter protest outside a hospital. Some online commenters identified the hospital as University Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, but LifeNews could not confirm the location.
In the short video, the man asks the medical workers, many in lab coats and scrubs, if “all black lives matter, or just some black lives.”
“All black lives matter,” the protesters respond.
Seconds later, though, when he asks them about abortion, the protesters remain silent and look confused.
“The black babies killed in the abortion clinics matter, right?” he asks.
When no one responds, the man adds, “Thought so.”
Later, he continues: “But the black babies killed in the abortion clinics don’t matter, do they medical people? Do their lives matter? Does the future of our black babies matter?”
A few protesters respond, but their words are indistinguishable.
“It’s okay if we kill them in the womb, right?” he ends. “If we don’t respect the lives of our unborn children enough to save them and fight for them, our lives mean nothing when we are born.”’ https://www.lifenews.com/2020/06/17/black-man-silences-blacklivesmatter-protesters-by-asking-do-aborted-black-babies-matter/
Knowing the Lord Jesus Christ changes the heart and the life.
‘Reverend John Jasper is arguably one of the most famous black ministers of nineteenth-century Richmond, Virginia, who gained popularity for his electrifying preaching style and his ability to spiritually move both black and white Baptists. He began his career in the early 1840s, preaching at funerals of slave and free black parishioners and giving occasional sermons at the First African Baptist Church. His popularity grew quickly and not only among Richmonders; after giving a guest sermon to the Third African Baptist Church in the nearby city of Petersburg, Jasper was invited by that congregation to preach every Sunday. Jasper’s accomplishments are even more remarkable given the fact that he was a slave in the tobacco factories and iron mills of Richmond during the first 25 years of his ministry work during a time when Virginia law expressly prohibited blacks from preaching.
Following the Civil War, Jasper became a full-time pastor and in 1867 organized the Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church in Richmond, ministering to hundreds of local black Baptists, but many whites as well. His sermons continued to attract eager audiences, but none seem to draw more listeners than his famous discourse, “De Sun Do Move” given in 1878. Faithful followers, devoted fans, curious onlookers and even news reporters gathered at the church for a standing-room only lecture on the powers and mysteries of God. Though not all were convinced by Jasper’s geocentrism, his orating skills mesmerized most; as one skeptic wrote “Jasper didn’t convert me to this theory, nor did he convert me to his religion, but he did convert me to himself.”
Jasper’s work extended far beyond preaching to the devoted and attempted to minister to all black Richmonders; the Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church became active in providing community services including aid to the elderly and the destitute. Jasper continued in this capacity until 1901 at the age of 88, after half a century of serving God.’ https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/jasper-john-j-1812-1901/
Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Genesis 9:6 Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
Genesis 18:25 That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
‘Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam wants abortion on demand to be enshrined in the Virginia Constitution.
The Democrat governor has a radical pro-abortion record, from declaring elective abortions “essential” during the coronavirus shutdowns to defending infanticide. He also has been accused of racism after a photo surfaced of him in blackface or a KKK robe.
Now, Northam wants the state General Assembly to approve a constitutional amendment that would guarantee a “right” to abortion, One News Now reports.
Olivia Turner, leader of the Virginia Society for Human Life, warned that the amendment would allow partial-birth abortions again and end a parental consent law that ensures parents are involved before an underage girl aborts her unborn baby.
“The odds are very high that unless there is a huge outcry from the general public, the constitutional amendment to the Virginia Constitution allowing a right to abortion could, in fact, pass,” she told the conservative news outlet. “We don’t have the votes to stop it in the House of Delegates, and it’s questionable whether we’d be able to stop it at the Senate level.”
To be added to the Virginia Constitution, the legislature must approve the amendment in two consecutive sessions and voters must approve it on the ballot.
Though pro-abortion politicians claim the amendment would simply ensure “personal reproductive freedom,” Turner said it really would allow a radical pro-abortion agenda that most Americans oppose.’ https://www.lifenews.com/2020/06/17/governor-ralph-northam-wants-right-to-kill-babies-in-abortions-added-to-the-constitution/
Right now it may look like Northam and the other baby murderers are getting by BUT there is a Day of reckoning when they will stand before the Judge of all the earth!
The West is digging its own grave. ‘In Monday’s ruling inserting “gender identity” into the word “sex” in a 1964 employment law, the U.S. Supreme Court called a man a woman, possibly leading to eventually forcing everyone else to do so also. The ruling will lead to a tsunami of polarizing court cases and further degradation of Americans’ natural rights to free speech, to free association, and to worshipping God as their consciences require. All this in the name of “equality,” a word that has become a totalitarian weapon.
The 6-3 majority included Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, appointed by Republican President Donald Trump. These presidents promised voters their justices would uphold the rule of law and the Constitution, and were elected in significant part based on these now-broken promises.
This decision is a disgrace to these bedrocks of Western civilization, our nation built upon them, the voters who vote for them, and to these men’s honor. President Trump ran promising judges who wouldn’t murder America, and Gorsuch just gave him and everyone who voted for him a giant middle finger. The court’s newfound weakness will also be exploited and explored by leftist legal agitators whose goal is the destruction of the American system.
“There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation,” writes Justice Samuel Alito in a dissent Justice Clarence Thomas joined. “…A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall.”
Open ‘Sex,’ Insert Queer Theory
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. Alito torches this argument in numerous ways. Here’s just one:
At oral argument, the attorney representing the employees, a prominent professor of constitutional law, was asked if there would be discrimination because of sex if an employer with a blanket policy against hiring gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals implemented that policy without knowing the biological sex of any job applicants. Her candid answer was that this would ‘not’ be sex discrimination. And she was right.
“Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result… [But] [w]hen the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest,” Gorsuch asininely claims: You simply rewrite the “express terms of the statute” as a majority of justices please, just as the Supreme Court did in Roe v. Wade, and reason your way backwards into a politically predetermined conclusion no matter the meanings of the words Congress thought they were writing into law. “Sex” therefore transforms into “sexual orientation and gender identity,” concepts unknown when the 1964 law was passed.
“The precedents set here will have major implications… This will mean that legislators actually won’t know what they are voting to pass—because words might change cultural meaning dramatically between the time of passage and some future court case,” writes Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Courts are not supposed to legislate because citizens cannot consent to legislation imposed by courts, and have no direct means for altering Supreme Court decisions like we can alter laws through our elected representatives. When courts legislate, they disenfranchise the people. They invalidate our votes, our God-given natural right to rule ourselves. By adding words to statute that Congress did not put there, and has repeatedly and explicitly refused to add, these judges are destroying our Constitution, our way of life, the people’s sovereignty, and thus our human dignity.
Making War on Real Rights With Fake Ones
This is a salient example of what Christopher Caldwell calls the United States’ second constitution, which is at war with its first: the identity politics laws and regulations passed largely since the 1960s in the name of “antidiscrimination.”
“Just as assuming that two parallel lines can meet overturns the whole of Euclidean geometry, eliminating freedom of association from the U.S. Constitution changed everything,” Caldwell writes in “Age of Entitlement.” At the time, it wasn’t obvious how “extra rights” could destroy natural rights. But it is now.
As Alito notes, the Supreme Court’s addition of “gender identity” to protected employment classes may cause lawsuits claiming “that the failure to use [transgender people’s] preferred pronoun violates one of the federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination. The Court’s decision may also pressure employers to suppress any statements by employees expressing disapproval of same-sex relationships and sex reassignment procedures.”
In other words, “antidiscrimination” and free speech cannot coexist. Neither can legal identity privileges coexist with freedom of association: “if a religious school teaches that sex outside marriage and sex reassignment procedures are immoral, the message may be lost if the school employs a teacher who is in a same-sex relationship or has undergone or is undergoing sex reassignment. Yet today’s decision may lead to Title VII claims by such teachers and applicants for employment,” writes Alito.
Given all that has happened after Obergefell v. Hodges, which we were vociferously told was ridiculous to forecast — transgenderism immediately going mainstream, pushing religion inside the closet LGBT people were vacating, limiting people’s ability to freely express their faith and ideas, forcing education institutions to promote LGBT politics and behavior — it’s naive to think such scenarios will not quickly become reality as a result of this court decision.
Get Ready for Years of Legal Battles
This decision also cements public schools’ status as social enforcers and subsidizers of far-left politics, as they can have no potential legal defense against a teacher switching genders in front of students, putting boys in girls’ locker rooms and sports, or teaching preschoolers that Heather can have two or even three mommies. Queer theory is now reigning U.S. employment law. This means it must also dominate all institutions of higher education that are not explicitly religious, both public and private.
Religious schools and homeschooling now offer the only potential safe haven to parents who don’t want their children indoctrinated to believe it’s awesome to amputate healthy penises and breasts. Even those options are under threat, and it will take oodles of litigation to work out the details.
Rod Dreher has more on this: “John Bursch of Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented one of the losing plaintiffs in one of the SCOTUS cases, …points out that religious liberty is still very much in play, and will be at issue in future cases. But what SCOTUS has done today is to redefine ‘sex’ to include ‘sexual orientation and gender identity.’ Because of that, he said, ‘there is no end in sight to that kind of litigation.’”
This is litigation LGBT activists are very well-prepared, motivated, and well-financed to pursue. Given Republican politicians’ history of cravenly sacrificing Americans’ constitutional rights to gaslighting from identity politics agitators who don’t vote for Republicans, most notably when Vice President Mike Pence was governor of Indiana, we’d all better redirect any donation from Republican campaigns to legal protection like ADF and The Becket Fund.
We Need Lots More than Judges From Republicans
This is a time to redouble pressure on Republicans to stop helping Democrats shred the Constitution and Americans’ natural rights, withdrawing support from them if they do not. This decision makes Congress irrelevant, unless they decide to make themselves relevant again by eliminating the underlying law on which this decision is based.
The last century of abdicating their responsibilities when in power shows Republicans are not keen on defending our rights. They’d prefer to give rousing speeches about our rights at conventions like CPAC while scapegoating our continued loss of these rights on the judges and the bureaucracy they’re supposed to oversee. That needs to end, and for it to end, all constitutional hypocrites need to be made uncomfortable until they do the right thing.
We must learn how to be effective in expressing our ideas. People need to frequently contact their representatives about this issue, and get on the email lists of state and national groups working on this issue — like Mass Resistance, the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition, the Americian Family Association, Family Research Council, 4thWaveNow, and Transgender Trend — to read up on this issue and take action on bills.
All elected officials and candidates need to start being asked in public, on videos immediately posted to social media, why they aren’t doing anything to keep naked men from getting access to naked girls in showers, bathrooms, and locker rooms. Republicans need to be asked how they can tell us to vote for them “because judges” when their Supreme Court nominees just passed an LGBT version of Roe v. Wade that will lead to teaching preschoolers the confusing, anti-science lie that “boys can have girl brains.”
They need to be asked on camera whether they support the Constitution’s unconditional guarantees of freedom of association, freedom of speech, and the freedom to worship, and if not, how they can take an oath of office swearing fealty to that Constitution. They should be asked how they can justify not voting to eliminate Title VII now that the Supreme Court has made it a Trojan horse for forcing lingerie shops to hire men to fit women’s bras and female beauticians to wax a man’s genitals. They should be asked what effective steps they are taking to ensure that taxpayer dollars do not finance genital mutilation, and that medical and therapeutic professionals lose their licenses if they mutilate the healthy bodies of underage boys and girls.
They should also be asked these questions in private from major donors, and primaried out of office when they answer the wrong way. Campaign donors’ businesses should be boycotted if they do not withdraw support for Republicans who can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman.
Fighting this may not work. That two-thirds of our nation’s highest court clearly despise the Constitution and the way of life it protects, and which it is their sole job to defend, may be yet another indication that the United States we know and love is heading into a dark night of oblivion, like all empires before it. If that is the case, however, I’m going down fighting as hard as I can.’ https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/16/scotuss-transgender-ruling-firebombs-the-constitution/
whatyareckon 