Is Man Essentially Good?

Is Man Essentially Good?


Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the Swiss philosopher who strongly promoted the idea that "man is essentially good", "a "noble savage" when in the "state of nature". He taught that good people are made unhappy and corrupted by their environment and their experiences in society. He viewed society as "artificial" and "corrupt" and that the furthering of society results in the continuing unhappiness of man.

Rousseau's impact on our post-modern society is significant. Many modern individuals struggle with the question of whether man is essentially good. The question was posed recently to a number of people, here is a sample of some of their answers:

" I think people are essentially good simply because of the love and joy that each person can bring to another person's life. Even a simple smile can brighten up someone's day."

"Man is good...even Hitler was good. Each person has his own kindness-- his inner kindness...because we are made by the likeness (image) of God"

These beliefs don't match up with scripture. Wesley taught that man's nature is essentially evil and he quoted several scriptures to support his belief. God's word teaches us that we are all "dead in trespasses and sins", we are "without hope, without God in the world." The "wickedness of man was great in the earth" and "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

2 Thes. 2:11 declares that in the end of the age God will send them " a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie". The failure of our culture to embrace the scriptural teaching that men are born in a depraved state is evidence that a lie has taken root. In an attempt to eliminate the 'problem' of sin in a godless society many try to blame evil behavior on the environment, or poverty or perhaps some early abuse during childhood. But the word of God declares that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."

Lyle and Eric Menendez brutally murdered their parents in August of 1989. Americans immediately began to look for reasons for this horrendous crime. The brothers were declared to be anti-social. Lyle and Eric declared they had been abused by their father. He was too hard to please. But, the truth about any horrible murder such as this is that it is a result of sin springing forth from a carnal heart. The social factors may very well have contributed to their negative attitude toward their parents but the root cause of their crime was sin.

God sent the flood to destroy man when the time for grace and mercy had ended and the time for justice had come. God has shown an unimaginable amount of patience in view of how sinful our American culture has become. Surely, at some point in time, the cries of 40 million aborted babies crying for justice will spur God to end the time of mercy and begin a time of judgment on a culture that has turned its back on God.

The great hope we have is that the terrible malady that lies within all men can be cured. Jesus became a man, took on himself the sins of us all and carried them to a cross. He purchased our salvation from this inbred sin by sacrificing his own life. Through his shed blood we can be forgiven our sinful actions and we can conquer the sin nature within.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." - John 3:16

The Price of our Freedom

 Irena Sendler




 There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an 'ulterior motive' ... She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews, (being German.) Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids..) She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.. During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept the m in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize ... She was not selected.

Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

(Someone emailed this to me 10-13-09)

I Thought I Knew You

I Thought I Knew You




There are lyrics to a song called I Thought I Knew You that go like this: “I thought I knew you but I wasn’t even close.” There are millions of people who think they know Jesus but they aren’t even close. Sunday morning between 11:00 and 12:00 is probably the worst hour for idolatry in the United States. Millions across America gather to worship an image of Jesus they have concocted in their minds. He is not the real Jesus, far from it. Mel Gibson’s answer to those who criticized his film “The Passion of the Christ” was, “My Jesus is the real Jesus, not yours.”

The Bible declares that in the latter days there will be many false claims about Jesus. The author of The Da Vinci Code tried to convince millions that Jesus fathered a child to Mary Magdalene. A modern concept of Christ is an ultra feminine Christ. There is a Jesus who abides in the blue states who is a pacifist and recycles all his coke cans. There is a Jesus that lives in the red states who is chomping at the bits to retaliate against the terrorists in an all out war of wars.

In 1998, the president of the Mormon Church, Gordon Hinckley, spoke of a Jesus who “appeared to the boy Joseph smith in the year 1820” near Palmyra, New York.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet has written a book claiming new teachings of Jesus have been found to verify his teaching “on the feminine potential of both man and woman”.

Jesus has become a sort of magical cure-all whose teachings are misconstrued to satisfy any person’s fancy or incredible belief or even absurdity. We become his creator and he becomes a convenient instrument for our use. He is a democrat, a republican, a pro-abortionist, pro-homosexual, liberal, conservative, etc. ad nauseum.

The post-modern Jesus is portrayed as someone who wants to fulfill all of our dreams. His ultimate purpose is to bring satisfaction into our lives, to make us feel comfortable and to improve our self-esteem. He is a Santa Clause figure intent on spoiling us with all sorts of material gifts. He is a friendly uncle who would never share a harsh word with you. He bled and died so that we would experience great individual happiness, live in a large house and drive a BMW.

Phil Driscoll has his ideas about the emergent Jesus, “There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.”

The real Jesus is a divider. He came, not to bring peace, but a sword. He stirred controversy everywhere he went. His entire ministry was dedicated to exposing the lies of Satan and revealing truth. He loved the truth because he loved the sinner. The real Jesus spoke harsh words regarding the cancerous sin in our society. The cancer is terminal and Jesus offered a cure. He was confrontational. He was painfully honest with everyone. He was unaffected by political correctness or unreasonable tolerance.

If I were to visit the doctor tomorrow and the doctor discovered I had a terminal cancer, I wouldn’t want him to fail to inform me of the reality of approaching death. I would want to know the truth so I could prepare myself and my loved ones. A doctor who decides to spare his patient by obscuring the truth is doing him no favor.

Jesus’ message was very unpopular. Christ’s message was painfully honest. Sin is deadly. Sin brings death. There is only one cure, one hope. We do our lost loved ones and lost friends no favor by choosing politeness over honesty.

Let us commit to worshipping the real Jesus. He is not found in the self-help section of Barnes and Noble. He is found in the four gospels.

Mike Rogers talks sense about Obamacare

There is hope after all.  Someone in Congress actually talking sense:

How to do nothing and win the Nobel Peace Prize

How to do nothing and win the Nobel Peace Prize

How ironic, the Nobel Peace prize is named for Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist who invented dynamite! The prize is given in Scandinavia, that part of the European Union that wimped out in the last century, declaring their neutrality when National Socialism was marching through Europe depriving freedom to millions. Both the brave and the cowardly enjoy that freedom today because someone had guts enough to stand up to a ruthless enemy.

Sadly, Socialism still won. What they failed to do through military force was done quietly but surely through ideological persuasion. The iron curtain came down because there was no longer any need for it. Now, these Socialist European nations carry water for the ideologues at the United Nations. Never question the real reason Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. The leftists in Europe want to put a leash on the puppy lest he go astray. They love Obama because he has been properly indoctrinated having sat twenty years under the racist, anti-Semitic teaching of his mentor, Jeremiah Wright. Obama can’t really process what might be wrong with allowing the Iranians to join the nuclear club if their intention is to destroy the “Jewish plague” in the Middle East.

The United Nations has become a freak show of haters. Libya’s Gaddafi, Venezuela’s Chavez and Iran’s Ahmadinejad use the bully pulpit in the U.N. to spew their hatred for the United States and then enjoy cozying up to its president. There is something desperately wrong with this picture. Why does the United States play host to an organization that spreads its hatred for Americans like butter on bread?

President Obama is the most radical pro-abortionist to have ever served as leader of America. I remember his words during his campaign, “I don’t want (my daughters) punished with a baby”. I couldn’t help but remember another Nobel Peace Prize winner’s words, Mother Theresa who strongly opposed abortion: "America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters". Sadly, we now honor and exalt child killers and oppose vehemently those who would try to preserve young life.

The Nobel Peace Prize committee is so corrupted by its own narrow bigotry and biases that one can no longer afford it any legitimacy whatsoever. It is infected with its own political correctness and hatreds. Americans and Jews happen to be high on their list of undesirables. Consider the list of other unworthy notables who have won the prize: Kofi Annan, Yasir Arafat and Rigoberta Menchu. Hustlers and frauds all! Al Gore may not be a criminal but it is surely an oddity that he received the award. Another oddity is the peanut farmer, rabbit killer from Georgia, Jimmy Carter! Now, add Barack Hussein Obama to the list of odd winners. He is presented the Nobel Peace Prize while sending troops to Afghanistan to conduct war!!

I know the real reasons Obama won the prize: he hates the unborn, he hates America and in the words of his mentor Jeremiah Wright and his advisor, Louis Farrakhan, he hates “them Jews”. Fits in perfectly with the ideology of the United Nations and its lapdog, Scandanavia.

An Infection Worse Than Swine Flu

An Infection Worse Than Swine Flu

Paul wrote to the Ephesians saying we “are all by nature children of wrath.” This could only mean that we are born into sin and are sinners by our very nature. God did not create man to be sinful but man fell into sin as a result of a poor decision made possible by his free moral agency. The same passage of Scripture (Eph. 2) declares we are all “children of disobedience.” The Psalmist declares in Psalm 51:5 “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.”

Humanity was infected with sin after the fall. Sin became an actual property of being human. Therefore, all who are human are also sinful. To be human is to be sinful. All people, until and unless they repent of their sins will remain sinful forever. Rom 3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

This basic teaching of the scriptures is clearly contrary to modern day teachings regarding the nature of man. In the mid 1700’s, Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared that “man is essentially good”, a “noble savage" when in the "state of nature" (the state of all the other animals, and the condition man was in before the creation of civilization and society), and that “good people are made unhappy and corrupted by their experiences in society.” Rousseau taught that an “artificial and corrupt” society ruined the natural goodness of man.

Certainly Satan’s greatest tool of deception in dealing with man is to convince him that he (Satan) does not exist. Would it not also be beneficial to the Evil One to successfully convince man that sin also does not exist? The next logical step is to conclude that if Satan does not exist, and sin does not exist, there is certainly no need for a Savior, therefore, God does not exist.

Though most of the modern world would embrace Rousseau’s premise with gusto, they would cringe at hearing that Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Charles Manson were all essentially good. If something in their environment caused them to do evil, why is it that others who grew up having been effected by the same culture, turned out to be very good, even preachers of the gospel of Christ?

I have a four year old son. From infancy he has at times shown a very uncooperative spirit. No one taught him to kick his feet on the floor when he got angry. His mother asked him to read up his room the other day. He came out saying the deed was done. She checked on his work and discovered that he had been deceptive. “Who taught him to lie?” she asked. I gave her the simple, scriptural answer, “He was born a liar as we all are.” Some sin is learned, but there is a basic, original sinful nature that we don’t have to learn, we are born with it.

My son asked me in early one morning, “what happened to the stars, where are they.” Later that night I took him outside and he saw silhouetted against a black sky all the magnificent diamonds of God. The black background makes the stars visible to him.

Why does God allow us the disadvantage of being born in sin? He allows it because we chose it. Also, the black, dark image of sin makes the holiness of God visible to us. And most of all he wants us to see his holiness.

Danger of Interfaithism

Danger of Interfaithism

The religion sweeping through the world today is not Christianity, nor is it Islam or Buddhism or New Age. The prominent religion invading every corner of the earth is the religion of tolerance. Tolerance has been chosen as the tool to replace the grace of God in our attempts to find peace in the world. Rodney King’s voice is still echoing in our minds, “Can’t we all just get along”?

The call for tolerance can be a deceptive attempt to convince people to embrace that which is contrary to the will of God or that which is totally evil. The most divisive figure in all of World History was Jesus Christ himself. His mission was not so much to minister to the saved as it was to convert the sinner. Mat 10:34 “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” A sword cuts asunder, it divides. Christ’s purpose was to bring ideological division and separate lies from truth. He came to call sinners to repentance.

But in this age we are attempting to marry lies to truth. The Satanic strategy is to utterly destroy truth but if it cannot be destroyed then it can certainly be diluted by falsehoods so as to make it weak and non-effective.

Several years ago the Pope went into a Muslim country and declared his great respect for ‘true’ Muslims. He warned Catholics living in that country not to proselytize out of respect for the Islamic faith! Can you imagine Christ telling his disciples to have great respect for religions that oppose the truth of Christianity and whatever you do, don’t try to convert them. This is an affront to the Great Commission.

The great confusion that the religion of tolerance is reaping can be seen in Ann Holmes Redding of Seattle She is an Episcopal Priest. In 2007 she made an announcement to her church, “I am both Muslim and Christian.” She prays in both religions “to the same person”. She does not believe that Jesus is divine. She does not believe in the trinity.

Ms. Redding believes that Allah and God are one and the same. If this were true, why has there been thousands of years of conflict between Christians and Muslims? Why don’t we all become both Christians and Muslims, worship the same God, and live happily ever after? Artifacts dug up from pre-Islamic times reveal Allah was a moon god, he was married to a sun goddess and the stars were his children. A far cry from the God I worship. The Bible calls Satan the great deceiver. A skilled deceiver he is, to convince millions that the pagan god they worship is one and the same with Jehovah God!

Some measure of tolerance is necessary if we are to live in peace. It is one thing to be tolerant of those who believe differently,. But it’s quite another thing to promote a falsehood by allowing our tolerance to be interpreted as a validation. Christ didn’t do it, nor should we.