The True Basis and Meaning of “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain” in Mark 11.

Mark’s Gospel is replete with theological gems worthy of the time to mine them. None is more important to the times we live in today than the entire vignette of Jesus and the disciples leaving the temple complex, Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree, and His admonition concerning “this mountain.”

The first item I would like for you to consider is that the expectation of the Messiah was also, of course, the expectation of His Kingdom’s arrival. The disciples were not wrong in thinking that way. The church age was a mystery to them.

That’s the primary reason the Jews wanted Messiah to arrive – to overthrow Rome. Then there’s the question of the Abrahamic Covenant fulfillment, especially the land aspect of that covenant.

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The Epidemic of a Seared Conscience – Dr. Mike Spaulding

Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn’t exist in any declaration I have ever read.[1]

Many Americans have been propagandized to the extent that they now form an entire subclass – the perpetually offended. What are the signs? One of the most glaring signs of this new genre of the walking infantile is the belief, often expressed by aggressive and even violent behavior, that anyone or thing that offends them ought not to be allowed to exist.

People that think this way apparently believe that the universe operates according to their ideology. They have no real justification for believing this way. They can’t point to any standard of moral reasoning, logical analysis, or time-tested system of thought that supports their viewpoint. They further demonstrate their ignorance by believing everyone would be better off believing like they do. Remarkable, they think they are the modern equivalent of the knights of old, riding in to rescue the damsels in distress, in this case culture, civility, and the American way. The truth that these individuals cannot grasp is something much different.

Here is a case in point: Two University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students were recently arrested and charged with assault. What led to their arrests? They were arrested after they physically and violently attacked a pro-life activist who was on the campus with Created Equal, a group that uses dialogue to attempt to persuade people that abortion is the murder of unborn human beings. One of the strategies that Created Equal uses is the prominent display of actual pictures of the dismembered bodies of babies, the result of “choice” as abortion is euphemistically called by those attempting to disguise the barbaric truth of what abortion is and does to the preborn human.

Pictures of babies who have suffered the cruelest fate imaginable are a powerful reminder of the truth of what abortion really is. Pictures leave no room for debate about abortion being “women’s reproductive healthcare” as the brainwashed like to call it. Abortion ends the life of the baby and therefore trying to obfuscate this truth by calling it “reproductive healthcare” is idiocy.

The university students mentioned above were shocked when law enforcement officers arrested them. They could not believe that their noble cause of violently opposing and assaulting pro-life individuals resulted in arrest. One of the students said, “I cannot believe this is happening,” referring to her arrest.

Another example of the same mindset demonstrated by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill child murder supporters is the now infamous behavior of Pennsylvania State Representative Brian Sims. Sims, the self-proclaimed champion of a woman’s right to murder her unborn child, thought he was valiant and courageous for demeaning, belittling, and verbally intimidating an elderly woman outside a baby murder facility.

What was the crime that set Sims over the edge? This grandmother was walking in front of the murder mill while praying silently. For this gross offense Sims took it upon himself to video the woman, demanding her name and address, offering a money reward to anyone who would identify her and where she lived so that he and others that think like he does could go harass her at her home.

In the least Sims demonstrated that he has no business making decisions that affect citizens of the state of Pennsylvania in his capacity as a State Representative. More troubling than that however, is the fact that Sims thought it perfectly normal to call for a mass turnout of like-minded baby murderers to intimidate an individual for having the temerity to be at a place where women murder their children and pray that they would change their minds.

Then there is the recent case of the morally bankrupt young women celebrating the act of murdering babies by dancing through a graveyard of crosses representing aborted babies. This publicity stunt was noteworthy for the callousness with which these young women were exulting child murder. Here is one report of this incident:

Planned Parenthood supporters at the University of Texas at San Antonio protested at a Students for Life symbolic cemetery for the unborn.

The incident occurred on April 9 as Students for Life commemorated aborted babies through a cemetery display, the pro-life nonprofit group revealed in a press release Wednesday. Students for Life set up pink crosses and talked to students about pro-life options as part of a spring Planned Parenthood Truth Tour throughout college campuses.

Young women from the university’s Students United for Planned Parenthood group interrupted the memorial activity. The protesters strode through the assembled crosses, shouted and waved signs, according to video footage.

“Look, there’s mine right there,” one Planned Parenthood supporter shouted in the video, pointing at a cross and pretending an aborted baby lay beneath it. A student shouted across the cemetery that she loves having sex and aborting babies. “My number one kink,” she can be heard saying in the video, as noted by Students For Life.

“I love advocating for abortion! My uterus loves advocating for abortion,” another girl shouted, waving her sign. “When I say Planned, you say Parenthood. When I say aborted, you say fetuses!”

“It’s a fetus graveyard!” another protester said.[2]

What has happened to a great number of men and women in America is that their conscience has become seared. Their mind is in a state of depreciating ability to grasp morality personally and interpersonally. They have become incapable of moral reasoning and logical analysis that lead to guilt or shame related to their thinking and behavior. They are being turned over to the darkness they crave and prostitute themselves to and on behalf of.

Depending on the severity of the behavior, psychologists call this psychopathic or sociopathic behavior. The difference between the two is that a psychopath has no conscience remaining. The psychopath’s conscience is completely seared and devoid of any emotion of shame or guilt associated with their behavior. Ironically, Hollywood glamorizes this behavior, giving tacit approval to the violent and murderous results of psychopathic people.

The sociopath has a small amount of conscience remaining. This person might still feel a twinge of guilt but not enough to stop their evil behavior. Both the psychopath and sociopath are dangerous to others with which they interact and especially those with whom they disagree.  Courtrooms across this nation are filled with cases involving the egregious behavior of people with little to no functioning conscience.

All of the examples above demonstrate varying states of the inability to reason morally. America is well down the path of being wrested from its moral foundations by psychopaths and sociopaths whose faculties have been impaired by evil. What can be done to correct this development? We must first understand what we are dealing with.

J.I. Packer* said concerning conscience that:

An educated, sensitive conscience is God’s monitor.  It alerts us to the moral quality of what we do or plan to do, forbids lawlessness and irresponsibility, and makes us feel guilt, shame, and fear of the future retribution that it tells us we deserve, when we have allowed ourselves to deny its restraints…Satan’s strategy is to corrupt, desensitize, and if possible kill our consciences.  The relativism, materialism, narcissism, secularism, and hedonism of today’s Western world help him mightily toward his goal.  His task is made yet simpler by the way in which the world’s moral weaknesses have been taken into the contemporary church.[3]

Packer identified the real crux of the issue. Conscience is a God-given warning system that has been deliberately turned off today in a large number of Americans. An alarm cannot warn of danger if it is not connected to a power source.

Slowly and over time the innate ability of Americans to determine right from wrong has been strategically and with malice corrupted. The constant drive to remove and even erase Christianity from the public mind and memory has borne the rottenest of fruit culturally speaking.

How can a culture sustain moral uprightness from generation to generation when even the Church, that instrument of God meant to inform and when necessary, correct culture, begins to emulate the culture? When a society becomes seared in conscience, when a critical mass of people begin to think and advocate for evil under the guise of good, and exchange light for darkness, their minds become seared as with a branding iron and the resultant scar tissue renders them incapable of returning to correct thinking and behavior absent a radical surgery.

The Church is meant to be God’s scalpel, guided by His hand to make perfect incisions to remove the cancer of evil, the scar tissue of a seared conscience, and in so doing, restore right thinking and behavior to all individuals. When the Church refuses to do that mass deception is allowed to congeal and that environment creates hostility toward the truth of man’s precarious condition and toward the only solution to his dilemma.

The answer to this predicament is not for the Church to go with the flow, to seek the path of least resistance, to affirm inclusiveness as that term is meant today and throw open the doors to culture. The only answer that will turn America around is a full-on biblical revival that must start in the pulpits of America and sweep through the local bodies of Christ spread out over this nation. That kind of revival cannot be contained and it will spill over into local school boards, city councils, college campuses, businesses, state representatives, and finally our national leadership. When God’s people once again bow their knee to Him alone, then revival will come, minds will be freed from the bondage of the demonic slavery imposed upon them from God-hating miscreants who have secretly snuck into our churches, communities, and governments at every level.

True biblical revival will transform hearts, heal minds, and lead to tangible action by those delivered from their bondage. True biblical revival will come on the heels of true repentance, a faith that demonstrates a changed heart, mind, and life trajectory.

The Scriptures[4] tell us that: There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. John 1:9

This means that only through faith in Christ will people become free from a seared conscience and the inevitable consequence of that state. Christian, rise up and take your place in the army of God, and march forward in victory, for our God has given us this land. Occupy until He returns!


[1] Quote attributed to author Salman Rushdie found here – https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/offense

[2] See https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/02/planned-parenthood-texas-unborn-cemetery/

[3] J.I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness.

[4] All Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, The Lockman Foundation, 1995.

*My original post listed Mr. Packer as “The late.” Mr. Packer is very much alive. My apologies to him and readers.

The Pulpit: America’s Tinderbox for Revival – Dr. John Diamond

The beginning of true liberty is Jesus Christ. And therefore, the first and last target of all subversion is biblical faith. Hence it is that the Church has been the first target of infiltration and subversion; and is the most subverted institution in the United States today.”

— Dr. R. J. Rushdoony

The United States of America is on the verge of political, social and moral collapse. While many Christian leaders are diligently praying for America’s Third Great Awakening, wickedness and immorality seems to continue to spread unabated across America with no apparent end in sight. How did this happen and who is ultimately responsible for preventing its demise?

The reversal of everything that our Founding Fathers stood for politically, socially and culturally began in earnest in the mid 1900’s, when America was invaded and infiltrated by a civilian army whose allegiance and loyalty were elsewhere. Their goal was to destroy the Judeo-Christian Constitutional Republic that our Founding Fathers created and replace it with a socialist/humanistic state to be ruled by a handful of judges. Therefore, if we are to defeat this enemy, we must understand their strategy in order for it to be countered.

Joseph Stalin shows us the tactic that they would use in order to undermine our nation: “America is like a healthy body and its resistance is three-fold. Its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.” The first attack occurred on our “spiritual life” when the Supreme Court invented the fictitious legal doctrine of “separation of church and state” which removed the LORD from His place as the highest authority in our nation. (See Romans 13). The second wave began when the Left unconstitutionally began to use the federal courts to attack our morality. After God’s law was removed as the foundation for American moral law, the sex / drug revolution immediately followed. America then began cascading into moral free fall. Abortion, legalized sodomy and gay marriage were all forced upon the nation by the Supreme Court.

The last wave was (and is) an attack upon our patriotism. This is the strategy behind the Colin Kaepernick protests. I fear if this last thread of resistance is severed, America will fall on the ash heap of history. Herbert Aptheker, Editor Communist Magazine Political Affairs, identified whose neglect was allowing this to happen: “Neglect of parents [and pastors] to teach our youth Christianity and Americanism has made the communist talk of deceiving American youth much easier.” Therefore, the course objective of Americanism: A Course in Citizenship and Ethics is to restore America’s 3-fold cords of patriotism, morality, and the spiritual life that has historically made America strong and great, thus restoring our American Republic.

If we are to pull America back from the brink of judgment and destruction, this movement must begin and be led by the churches and pulpits of America. – Charles Finney, The Father of Modern Revivalism had the following to say in his article The Decay of Conscience (1873)

 “Brethren, our preaching will bear its legitimate fruits. If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree. If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discrimination, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it. Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation.”

I have interviewed hundreds of pastors over the last 25 years in an attempt to get them to engage the culture and the society outside the four walls of theirs church. My efforts were met with nothing but frustration, as many seemed more interested in building their own little kingdoms rather than advancing the Kingdom of God upon the Earth. I asked the LORD “What would you have me do? The LORD responded: “Write down the 12 lies that you have heard come from the mouth of a Christian leader and then refute that lying spirit.” [See 2 Chronicles 18:21 & 1 Kings 22:22]. From this conversation, the curriculum: Americanism: A Course in Citizenship and Ethics – The Social, Moral, Religious and Political Duty of the Church was born. For the next 12 weeks, join us as we address that 12 Lies that the Christian church has embraced as truth.

Dr. John Diamond

Dr. John Diamond is a nationally recognized teacher, motivational and inspirational speaker, author, theologian, and Christian apologist. He is the Founder and Director of Peacemakers Outreach, a non-profit, faith-based organization that is dedicated to pursuing reconciliation through video, social media, and biblical education. He is passionate, high energy and dynamic speaker whose subjects makes him relatable to both young and old, from the new believer to the most seasoned pastor. His teaching style makes him able to communicate the most complex issues in a way that is accessible to even laymen in the faith.  John’s sermons, teachings, and speeches have made him known as an articulate defender of truth and biblical morality.

He is a seasoned author who has written several books including An Appeal to Heaven: A Cry for Divine Justice and the 3-part discipleship series titled Unifying the Body of Christ. He is now being recognized as one of the nation’s experts in the areas of Christian Unity, Discipleship, Outreach, and Biblical Citizenship. This has made him an increasingly sought-out church and conference speaker as well as radio show guest. He travels widely across the nation working with a variety of evangelical churches and Christian organizations. His newly created educational materials and curriculum include several small group DVD studies such as Faith Training and The Mystery of Christ that educate, emphasize and expand upon the four-basic doctrine of the CM&A doctrines of Jesus Christ as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and our Coming King.

His 14-part DVD series titled Americanism: A Course in Biblical Citizenship and Ethics has made him known as one of the leading experts in the relationship between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of men. His book An Appeal to Heaven is being widely recognized as the only biblical solution for the restoration of legitimate biblical government by emphasizing the 3-fold role of Christ as King, Lawmaker and Judge. (Isaiah 33:22).

Dr. Diamond is presently the Executive Director of Peacemakers Outreach. He holds a Masters in Theology and a Doctorate in Christian Education. In January 2013, he created the first American Citizenship School which led to the forming of the American Christian Leadership Alliance (ACLA). He has served as the Director of Discipleship at Bible Community Church in Columbus, Ohio. He is a veteran of the United States Air Force.  

Peacemakers Outreach website here.

SER 168 – Dr. Mike and Olivier Melnick – End Times Anti-Semitism: A New Chapter in the Longest Hatred

Olivier Melnick and his new book End-Times Antisemitism.

Olivier Melnick is an internationally known speaker on the world-wide growth of anti-Semitism. Born in Paris, France, to Holocaust survivors, he has equipped thousands to recognize and defeat anti-Semitism with his research, writing, speaking, and teaching. Olivier is a graduate of the Moody Bible Institute. He serves as the Northwest Director of Chosen People Ministries, and has served in Messianic Jewish ministry for over 25 years,

He is the author of “They Have Conspired Against You:Responding to the New Anti-Semitism,” and his latest book, which is the subject of our conversation today, “End-Times Anti-Semitism: A New Chapter in the Longest Hatred.”

Olivier’s website here.

Fight the New Anti-Semitism.

Go Therefore 2018 – Calvary Chapel of Lima – June 8-10, 2018

MAKE YOUR PLANS NOW TO JOIN US IN LIMA, OHIO, JUNE 8-10 FOR THE “GO THEREFORE 2018” CONFERENCE.

This year’s speakers are Dr. Mike Lake, Russ Dizdar, and Preston and Kelly Condra as well as Pastor Mike Spaulding. Our theme this year is “Equipping the Saints for Ministry.” We will cover such topics as:

  • What does it mean to walk in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit?
  • What does it mean to have the mind of Christ?
  • Why is it important that believers hold tightly together as the body and learn together how to stand firm now and in the near future?

There is no cost for this conference. You may register for the conference or ask any questions through the contact form below. An offering will be received in support of the speakers and their ministries.

Go Therefore 2018 Conference Schedule

I hope to see you at this year’s “Go Therefore” conference at Calvary Chapel in Lima, Ohio.

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