October 31, 2017, is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany. This reformer was born in 1483 to a wealthy German mining family. He attended a Latin school run by a medieval lay group dedicated to the study of the Bible and graduated from the University ofErfurt, where he reportedly studied the Biblical commentaries of Nicholas de Lyra, a Christian scholar who heavily borrowed from Rashi, the famed Jewish scholar of the eleventh century. His father wanted him to become a lawyer and he was disappointed that he entered an Augustinian monastery.
The Sell of “Indulgences”
In 1506 the Church of Rome undertook one of the grandest and most expensive projects to date: the building of a new St. Peter’s Basilicaas the centerpiece of the Vatican. The church was to be so lavish and huge that, when completed 150 years later, it was the largest church ever built and remained so until 1989. This project was too expensive to fund by normal giving, so as a source of fundraising, the Church turned to the sale of indulgences.
This practice of granting indulgences, which was the remission of the punishment for sins through the intercession of the Church, already had a long history. Early on indulgences were granted when a sinner performed some hazardous duties for the Church.
For example, going on a crusade to the Holy Land got an individual forgiveness for all sins ever committed. Later it became possible to buy indulgences on one’s deathbed, which meant a person would enter heaven immediately, bypassing purgatory. Pope Sixtus IV’s fundraising campaign touted indulgences that would free your deceased loved one’s suffering from purgatory as well.
Engaging in emotional extortion, Church envoys resorted to imitating the anguished wailing of parents who, in the throes of holy purification fires, pleaded with their children to buy an indulgence and ease their torment. Auctioning of indulgences to the highest bidder—on the basis of “buy now, pay nothing later”—was another favorite tactic.
The state of the affairs was so shocking that in 1512 Johann Geiler, the famed preacher from Strasbourg, predicted that God Himself would see to the much-needed house cleaning: “Since neither pope, nor emperor, kings nor bishops will reform our life, God will send a man for the purpose. I hope to see the day…but I am too old. Many of you will see it: think, then I pray you of these words.”
The reformer whose coming Geiler foretold was none other than Martin Luther. The Holy Spirit moved upon the heart of this man, opening him to the truth that no one can earn salvation by his or her own personal works or merit as Rome had taught.
As an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther involved himself in a movement to revive stricter discipline in the church. He traveled to Rome in 1510 and once there he was shocked to discover the self indulgencies and worldliness of the Vatican clergy. Unfortunately, his appeal to holiness was uncalled for. He returned and later he wrote:
I did not love, indeed I hated this just God, if not with open blasphemy, at least with a huge murmuring, for I was indignant against Him, saying, “as if it were really not enough for God that miserable sinners should be eternally lost through original sin, and oppressed with all kinds of calamities through the laws of the Ten Commandments. Thus I raged with a fierce and most agitated conscience.
In his days as a monk, he sought to save himself by following what he understood to be appropriate practices. He prayed to three saints every day and flogged himself until he fell unconscious on the cell floor. He went on a pilgrimage and climbed the holy steps in Rome on his knees. But he found no peace.
His father superior asked him, “If you take away relics and pilgrimages and prayers to saints and all the devotional practices, what will you put in their place?” Martin Luther replied, “Christ, man only needs Jesus Christ.” This is how the Protestant Reformation began.
The Lord’s plan was that people could be eternally saved from the guilt of sin by simply trusting in what the Lord Jesus Christ had done on the cross to atone for their sins. The scales fell off the eyes of Martin Luther and he realized he was now truly born again, which revolutionized his spiritual experience.
He believed that humans could not reach salvation by their own acts, but that only God could bestow salvation by his divine grace. In earlier times the Catholic Church taught that salvation was possible through “good works,” or works of righteousness, that pleased God.
Luther came to share Augustine’s two central beliefs, which is the just man lives by the gift of grace that is by faith. That salvation could be reached through faith and by divine grace only. This would later form the basis of Protestantism.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church’s practice of granting indulgences to provide absolution to sinners had reached a fever pitch. Indulgence-selling had been banned in Germany, but the practice continued unabated. This difference of viewpoint was what caused him to break with the Roman Catholic Church.
Acting on this belief, he wrote the “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” the now famous 95 Theses,” a list of questions and propositions for debate and posted his protest on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.
The consequence for this was that his protest reached Rome, and he was asked in no uncertain terms to recant. He refused, proclaiming his famous defense, “Here I stand, and I cannot do otherwise.” He was excommunicated four years later from the Church of Rome.
Frederick III Elector of Saxony
Frederick III Elector of Saxony (1463-1525) alias Frederick the Wise played an important role in the Protestant Reformation by using his political power to protect Martin Luther and other German Reformers from being executed by the Papacy.
Luther’s conduct and writings were reprehensible to the Roman Catholic Church, and normally he would have been put on trial as a heretic and burned alive. But Frederick III, decided to give protection to Luther.
Frederick also just happened to command the largest army in Europe and his military might played a big role to the Reformation’s success. In 1502 he founded the University of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther taught. During Luther’s lifetime Wittenberg was the home and intellectual centre of the Reformation movement of which the Emperor was a reliable protector, although only active in the background.
He protected Martin Luther from the Pope’s enforcement of the edict, by taking him into custody at Wartburg Castle following the Diet of Worms (1521), which put Luther under the imperial ban. He saw him as unjustly persecuted because Luther could not be found guilty of any crime. Frederick, however, remained a Catholic, although he gradually inclined toward the doctrines of the Reformation.
Frederick never married but will be remembered as the man who saved Martin Luther from the fury of the Catholic Church. The final outcome of this was that the land of Saxony removed Roman Catholicism as its official state religion and Luther was given free rein to establish a whole new state religion from ground up.
New Printing Press
His Ninety-Five Theses which were an indictment of the Roman Catholic Church was now printed and widely distributed with the help of the new printing press which was first used in Germany between 1450 and 1456.
This amazing printing machine was applied to Luther’s protest and thereafter Luther went on to translate the Old Testament from the original Hebrew into German vernacular and the New Testament from the original Greek, also in common German.
It was around this time that he emphasized the primacy of the Bible rather than Church officials as the ultimate religious authority. This growth in production of Gutenberg’s presses provided the world with the knowledge of knowing the Bible for themselves and this knowledge would be used to reduce the corruption that existed in the Church.
Changing the Ecclesiastical Structure
Luther had before him a nation filled with empty, ex-Roman Catholic Church buildings. Earlier, many Catholic priests had read Luther’s writings and had left the Catholic ministry. Most got married, and many came to Luther’s home seeking teaching and direction. He performed no small number of marriages between ex-priests and ex-nuns, and ordained a host of “Lutheran” ministers. Luther himself had no problem marrying Katharinavon Bora, a former nun in 1525.
During these incredible times, Luther produced an entire ecclesiastical structure out of bare bones, created a flood of Lutheran literature and got it distributed. He single-handedly created a Protestant catechism for children, a Protestant hymn book, and a Protestant Bible, which he translated, published and distributed.
Luther was also the first modern writer to urge public compulsory education and proposed that the state should pass legislation and enforce it. His idea of compulsory education spread to the Prussians, and, as a result, all of Europe developed theories of mandatory public education.
While doing all this, he taught and trained ex-priests to become Lutheran ministers and Bible expositors. Wherever possible he was sending these men to serve as Protestant ministers too those empty church buildings all over Saxony.
Those Lutheran ministers were looked upon as a Protestant version of a priest. Up until that time the pastoral role of the Protestant world, did not exist. The modern day pastoral concept began in Wittenberg, Germany. So did a lot of our other “New Testament practices.”
Luther Quit Too Soon
Notable writers like Gene Edwards and James Rutz contend that Luther quit too soon, of which this is an extract from their book, The Open Church:
People got saved and lives were changed. But the love of the brethren was not the keynote because the protestant Reformation was primarily a doctrinal, intellectual, and ecclesiastical event. It set the foundation for the great evangelical and charismatic movements of the 200 years, and yet it was lacking in many practical aspects.
For one example, the Catholics were sending out far more missionaries than the early Lutherans ever thought about. So when Catholicism lost half of Europe during the Reformation, it still grew in size because of its missionaries going out all over the world.
Luther often declared that those Catholic feelers or mystics would never gain a toehold in his Lutheran world. Consequently, the Reformation, according to some analysts was primarily a theological and intellectual movement. It was woefully lacking as a revolution of spiritual maturity and lacked in giving people a practical grasp on a deeper and intimate walk with the Lord. Since that time, Europe has fought hundreds of wars over doctrinal disputes. This bloodshed came from intellectual, rational, logical, and doctrinal differences of the thinkers. Today we have 23,000 denominations, each with its own pet doctrines, the logical offspring of the Reformation.
From all Europe, men who had read Luther’s writing were moving to Wittenberg to sit at his feet. Luther, in turn was training, speaking and writing volumes, and working to fill those empty church buildings with Protestant ministers as fast as he could. Those converted ex-priests from Wittenberg who followed Luther’s teachings, took off their priestly robes and got married to ex-nuns. They set up pulpits were the Eucharist was once located, and preached the Word every Sunday morning at 11:A.M. Why 11 A.M?
Luther had preached every Sunday at dawn. The hour was the same that the Catholic mass had been scheduled for centuries. However, Luther did not enjoy getting up early, so before long, he moved the Protestant worship service to 9.00 A.M., then to 10 A.M—to the tune of more complaints. Finally, he found even 10 A.M. to be uncomfortably early and last possible hour he could set for the service and call it morning worship was 11 A.M.!
Until that time, communities were accustomed to having priests in their city who were carrying out seven pastoral duties of a priest. They were used to seeing them:
Marry the young
Bury the dead
Hear confession
Bless community events
Baptize their babies
Visit the sick, and
Care for and collect money for the poor and the church.
Luther instructed these men to continue the pastoral duties of a priest–with only a tiny alteration. He changed one particular Catholic duty, that of “hearing confessions.” This gave way, thankfully, to spiritual counsel and preaching the Bible.
Also, tragically, Luther felt that the laymen around him were so backward, illiterate, and ill-prepared to minister that he was afraid to move ahead to the next logical step of restoring open worship, sharing, and lay ministry. Writing of the sort of laymen he would need, he said, “I cannot find them.”
The modern concept of the pastor grew out of Wittenberg, Germany, and was but an adaptation of the pastoral duties of a priest, which led to dividing up the body of Christ into two parts: overworked leaders and sedentary serfs.
The Just Shall Live By Faith
The emphasis on doctrine and intellectual pursuits, to the exclusion of other spiritual matters stood as a barrier to a restoration of a live encounter with Jesus Christ in church life. Furthermore, the Reformation, though, very important wasn’t really understood. Christians are justified by faith, but they will be judged by works, because works are the fruit of faith.
Nevertheless, this experience of his new birth sparked a movement on the Continent which became known as the Reformation. It spread from Wittenberg to Geneva, began to take root in Scotland, and then came to England. Within a space of ten years it had spread so rapidly that it overran the whole Continent.
The most famous verse from Habakkuk, which has become the ‘Magna Carta’ of Protestantism, is “The just shall live by faith.” This statement of Habakkuk is quoted three times in the New Testament: in Romans 1:17, in Galatians 3:11 and in Hebrews 10:38. It would be difficult to think of any sentence as short and simple as this which has produced as great an impact upon the history of the human race. The proclamation of this simple message by a tiny, despised minority changed the course of world history.
Within three centuries it brought to his knees the great Caesar himself, the head of the most powerful, the most far reaching and the most enduring empire that the world had ever seen.
About twelve centuries later this same sentence, quickened by the Holy Spirit to the heart and mind of Martin Luther, provided the scriptural lever that dislodged the power of papal Rome and, through the Protestant Reformation, once again changed the course of history first in Europe and then, by its outreach, the world at large.
The man largely responsible for the Reformation, Martin Luther, came to understand the vital importance of justification by faith through this statement. There is no doubt that, still today, this same simple sentence, when once apprehended and applied by faith, contains within it the power to revolutionize the lives of individuals or the course of nations and empires.
Prisoner Number 2491-The Inspiring Story of The First Nazi Martyr
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in London when he heard of Paul Schneider’s death. He gathered his nieces and nephews to tell them.
“Children, you must never forget the name of Paul Schneider. He is our first martyr.”
Schneider, like Martin Niemöller and Bonhoeffer himself, were members of the Confessing Church, pastors who would not bow the knee to Nazism, but confessed allegiance to Christ at any cost.
And Schneider was the first of them to seal his gospel witness with his blood.
To Rebuild a Heartbroken Humanity
At the end of World War I, Paul Schneider returned from the western front to a Germany in ruins. It changed the trajectory of his life. He had entered the army with plans to become a doctor. Now he was confronted with a brokenness that went beyond a doctor’s skill to heal. He recorded,
My discharge to the home front . . . found me determined to devote myself to the study of theology because here alone was power to rebuild a heartbroken nation and a heartbroken humanity.
As he prepared to graduate from divinity school, however, Schneider underwent a spiritual crisis. The demythologized gospel he had embraced did not leave him anything truly comforting to proclaim before a hurting people. He postponed his licensing exam and traveled to Berlin. There, in a city mission, Schneider encountered believers whose ministry was marked by the spiritual reality he desired.
Here there are people who claim that they not only know Jesus and seek to follow his teaching, but possess him as the living power of their lives. . . . Here I must say to myself, “You are not yet such a child of God.”
Through the witness of these evangelical believers, Schneider was confronted with his own need for new life. He pled,
May I step before the congregation tomorrow with the message of advent and the joy of advent? . . . Oh God in heaven, give me the gift of faith. . . . I have to put a question mark behind everything that I do. You, God, can pour out your Spirit of love on me so the question mark would turn into a joyous “Yes and Amen.”
God heard his prayer. His future wife confided in her diary, “Eternal life entered his soul, and he was filled with great joy.” Paul Schneider possessed Jesus Christ as the living power of his life.
Radiant Man of Truth
Enlivened by this experience of redemption, Schneider’s characteristic zeal was conscripted into the service of the full gospel. A friend described him as “a man of radiant warm-heartedness and a man of ultimate-truthfulness.” This vital blend was immediately apparent in his preaching. He no longer gave question marks empty of comfort or conviction; instead his sermons now resounded with calls to confess the biblical Christ and promises to salve suffering hearts. Preaching the glory of Christ in calming the storm, Schneider declared,
But now you are challenged to confess and bear witness dear evangelical church. . . . We are anxious and we are afraid. . . . We do not see how the poor, unprotected little boat of the church can be preserved among the powers and the forces of the world. But then we must remember; in this boat the Lord is with us and . . . soon he will be up!
Comforting Staff, Sweet Burden
Ordained in 1926, Schneider took over his father’s church in Hochelheim. With this income, he could bring home his “Gretel,” Margaret Dietrich. Paul and Margaret became a remarkable support for one another — “both a comforting staff and a sweet burden” — she wrote. In 1935, while he was detained by the Gestapo, she encouraged him,
I am satisfied with the decision you have made. I know well enough how something bothers you when you can’t do it wholeheartedly. You know that on the outside I can hold my own, but there are also tears I have not cried. May God give us both strength to walk in his ways.
Later, in 1937, he exhorted her from the concentration camp at Buchenwald,
I foresee a time when every sincere Christian will be compelled to openly confess and freely declare their faith. It will soon be your turn on account of our [six] children. . . . God will give you strength, my love, to do the right thing.
Witness of Pastor Schneider
The road to Buchenwald wound through several years of intensifying conflict with the Gestapo. They labeled his preaching of biblical truth “psychologically deviant” and recommended, “This man belongs in the concentration camps.” Of his two years in Buchenwald, Prisoner #2491 spent eighteen months in solitary confinement because he continued holding devotions in the barracks.
He confided to a camp orderly, “There is no spot on me that has not been beaten black and blue.” They sicced dogs on him, they beat him with bull whips, they fed him a regular diet of the cardiac depressant strophanthin, which eventually — with a huge dose — killed him. They gave Margarete 24 hours to collect the body, nailing his coffin shut so that she could not see what he had suffered.
Despite heavy observance by Nazi officials, Schneider’s funeral attracted hundreds of Confessing Church pastors and served as a rallying point for their boldness in proclamation. Four pillars of Schneider’s confession can likewise encourage us in our own Christian witness.
Take Strength in the Sovereignty of God
Drawing from Scripture, from Calvin’s theological writings, and from the Heidelberg Catechism, confidence in the sovereignty of God sustained this suffering pastor in the sacrifice of praise. Rather than put his hope in avoiding suffering, Schneider wrote, “Certainly we still live in this world, and with this suffering people, and also share its sufferings.” He continued, “But we have a commission and a calling from another world and our citizenship is there. And we know that in spite of everything, this world will one day be victorious. Therefore, we will be cheerful in tribulation.”
Navigate by the North Star of Scripture
Gretel wrote to Paul in prison to ask, “What do you do all day?” His reply was a window into his endurance in the truth: “I am a pupil in the school of God’s Word.” This prioritization of the biblical text marked his entire ministry. Viewed against the blitzkrieg of social, economic, and political changes contemporary with his pastorate, it is remarkable that every one of Schneider’s existing sermons is an exposition of the biblical text. Helmet Golwitzer calls this commitment to exegesis the “liberating effect of text sermons.”
The biblical text should not merely be a motto placed at the head of the sermon . . . but should be in concrete control of the preacher. The preacher’s subordination to this text frees him from all other authorities; from ecclesiastical authorities — that was the liberating experience of the Reformation, and from political authorities — that was the liberating experience at the time of Hitler’s dictatorship.
Draw Greater Strength from Deeper Joy
The Nazis deployed a program called Strength through Joy. This was an attempt to shear away the “weakness” bred by “fear of death and a bad conscience” inherent within a Judeo-Christian worldview. In its place, Nazism announced “a joyous message that liberated men from those things that burdened their life.”
Schneider reclaimed this idea of strength through joy, arguing that a superior strength was available to Christian believers because they could access a superior joy: “We know a joy that rests on the deepest foundation and has given hundreds of thousands of believing Christians the power to sacrifice their lives. . . . Our faith brings a greater joy and therefore a greater strength.” The Confessing Church was armed to out-rejoice — and therefore to overcome — the very ones who were killing them.
Settle on the Seriousness of Eternity
The conviction that exerted a formative impact on her husband’s ministry, Margarete remembered, was “his recognition that each individual can be lost for eternity.” The light of eternity provided a much-needed perspective before the Nazi demand that all Germans surrender their heavenly citizenship for a place in “the single, eternal life of this world.” Armed with an eternal perspective, Schneider refused to allow godless men, however powerful in his present moment, to define what the real church was, who the real Christ was, or how true love and unity behaved.
This weight of eternal lostness extended to the horror of the concentration camp. It sounded over the parade grounds, morning after morning, from a small window in solitary confinement. It was recorded by an inmate who found Margarete after the war in order to tell her what she needed to know, and would have already known, about her husband:
Every morning Schneider’s voice was heard ringing out loudly and clearly from the solitary confinement building, almost across the whole square, when tens of thousands had lined up for roll call: “Our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to save us from our sins. If we have faith in him, we are put right with God.
We need not fear what man may do to us because we, through Christ, belong to the kingdom of God. . . . Our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, has promised that we, by faith in him, may participate in his resurrection. He said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me shall never die.’ Accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior, and God will receive you as his child.”
A UK court has ruled that a university’s decision to expel a Christian student over his comments on homosexuality is legal.
In 2015, Felix Ngole wrote on his personal Facebook page that “same sex marriage is a sin whether we like it or not. It is God’s words and man’s sentiments would not change His words.”
He went on to add that “the Bible and God identify homosexuality as a sin.”
The 39-year-old student challenged the university’s decision arguing that expelling him was a breach of his human rights.
The university had a different view. While officials from Sheffield University agreed that Ngole “was fully entitled to his religious beliefs, and had acted with honesty and integrity,” it was his decision to make his views public that was in question. They argue he “may have caused offence to some individuals.”
A UK court agreed with the university’s position, claiming Ngole’s public comments on homosexuality “could be accessed and read by people who would perceive them as judgmental, incompatible with service ethos, or suggestive of discriminatory intent.”
“That was a problem in its own right,” the court ruled. “But whatever the actual intention was, it was the perception of the posting that would cause the damage. It was reasonable to be concerned about that perception.”
Ngole disagrees.
“To me it sends a chilling message that if you are a Christian and you hold traditional Christian views you should be careful not to express them because you might end up losing your job,” Ngole saidshortly after the ruling.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, is representing Mr. Ngole. She released the following statement:
The court has ruled that though Mr Ngole is entitled to hold his Biblical views on sexual ethics, he is not entitled to express them. But freedom to believe without freedom of expression is no freedom at all.
Many views are frequently expressed by students on social media and in other contexts. It is the expression of Biblical morality that has been singled out for sanction by the university.
This ruling will have a chilling effect on Christian students up and down the country who will now understand that their personal social media posts may be investigated for political correctness.
Ngole, who is from south Yorkshire, was removed from Sheffield University’s two-year MA program last February following his Facebook comments.
“I am very disappointed by this ruling which supports the university’s decision to bar me from my chosen career because of my Biblical views on sexual ethics,” Ngole said in a statement. “I intend to appeal this decision which clearly intends to restrict me from expressing my Christian faith in public.”
And Williams said, “Rulings like this show that society is becoming increasingly intolerant of Christian moral values. Christians are being told to shut up and keep quiet about their moral views or face a bar from employment.”
“Unless the views you express are politically correct, you may be barred from office. This is very far from how a free and fair society should operate,” Ngole added.
Jesus says that He is going to build His Church that no force of evil will ever prevail against it (see Mathew 16:18). Peter also reminds us that the Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone (see1 Peter 2:4-9).
What is the Church? The church is not a business or a corporation and it is not of this world. The Church is in the world but not of the world, it is not an organisation. The Church is not buildings or programs. The Church is the Body of Christ. The Church is the people. It is made up of many parts.
The Church is gifted with apostles, teachers, pastors, evangelists, encouragers, healers, prophets, and administrators. The Church is a place where two or more are gathered in the name of Jesus. It is a place where the Scriptures are discussed, interpreted and preached.
When the Church meets together, one will bring a hymn, another might bring a teaching, or a special prophetic knowledge. It is a place where everyone can be edified (1 Corinthians 14:26). It is also a place where the sick can ask for the elders to anoint them with oil and pray over them (James 5:14). It is a place where we confess our sins to one another.
In 1 John 1:7 the apostle John states, “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”This means we are to be honest and open with each other.
The Church is where koinonia (fellowship) takes place and God’s children use their gifts to build one another up. The Bible tells us that we are the spiritual temple built out of living stones (1Peter 2:5). Jesus is its sole foundation and cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20; 1 Corinthians 3:11) in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, replenishing and sanctifying the hearts of the faithful.
The Body of Christ is the living temple of God. The Church consists of individual members who walk among people of all races and nationalities. No geographical, political or cultural boundaries identify the extent of the Church because it has no earthly parameters. The Church is admonished not to be part of this world.
Paul warns us not to conform to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we may prove what good, acceptable and perfect will of God (see Romans 12:2). James says that being the world’s friend is being God’s enemy. So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world takes his stand as an enemy of God (see James 4:4; I John 2:15-17).
We are in the world but not of the world. We are citizens from every country on the face of the earth; but we are different. Christians are not promised an inheritance on this earth because we are destined for heaven.
Spiritual Endowment
The final harvest of souls into the Kingdom of God will not take place until we’ve had the full outpouring of the latter rain of the Holy Spirit upon the Church all over the world. Repent (change your views and purpose to accept the will of God in your inner selves instead of rejecting it) and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of and release from your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The gift is for you and your children, says Peter to the Jews whom he was immediately addressing and the generations that would follow them which implied all the coming ages of the church’s history to Gentile as well for Jews: “and for all who are far off- for all whom the Lord will call and bids to come Himself” (see Acts 2:36-39). The baptism with the Holy Spirit is for every child of God in every age of the church’s history.
The Holy Spirit is a Person Who knows the things of God and reveals to us what He himself knows. Now there are distinctive varieties and distributions of endowments (gifts, extraordinary powers distinguishing certain Christians, due to the power of divine grace operating in their souls by the Holy Spirit) and they vary, but the Holy Spirit remains the same (1 Corinthians 12:4 AMP).
In 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, the Holy Spirit is presented as a divine Person Who gets hold of us and uses as according to His will. These diversity of gifts given by the Holy Spirit to individuals are given according to the line of service to which each person is called. Not everyone can be an evangelist or a preacher of the Word. The Holy Spirit according to His wisdom and purposes distributes to every person individually as He wills. He also imparts to each one a special gift for the special service to which he/she is called.
The supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit are not given primarily to the individual believer. Rather they are given through individual believers to the church as a whole. In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul indicates that the spiritual gifts or special endowments of supernatural energy are intended to function within the corporate life of the congregation.
The ability of the members to minister to one another is due to these supernatural spiritual gifts. This ability of believers to minister to each other does not depend on education or natural talent. If at all the church depends on these factors, then the main burden of ministry would fall upon on just a few of the members, while the rest remain largely passive without any real opportunities for spiritual expression.
Today most pastors are overworked and imprisoned in a highly demanding system. When you ask a typical evangelical Christian to stand up in the Sunday service to exercise some ministry function, he will hyperventilate until he faints!
The reason why so many professional ministers in our modern churches suffer mental or nervous breakdown is that, in many cases, one member is struggling to carry a burden of ministry which God never laid upon him. One member is seeking to fulfill a ministry which God intended to be divided up among all the members of the Church.
The only escape from the limitations and frustrations of this situation is through the supernatural ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church dividing spiritual gifts to all the members individually, according to His own will. This delivers believers from their own natural limitations and lifts them into a spiritual realm where they can share together the burden of the total ministry of the church. When all members are thus equipped to function in their individual ministries, the church as a whole can fulfill its corporate role as the body of Christ.
If we are going to have the whole picture or message in these last days, we are going to need the humility to work with others, listen to others, and put our parts together in love and unity shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.This is evidenced by what the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 4 about the five-fold ministry.
And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love (Ephesians 4:11-16 NKJV).
The first ministries mentioned here are the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers and their function is to equip the saints to do their own work. All these gifts and positions are not the same thing.
For instance, the confirmation of Paul’s earlier call to missionary service came during a prayer meeting at Antioch. A prophecy was given by the Holy Spirit which said that the time had come for Paul and Barnabas to be separated from the rest of the church so that they could begin the work to which God had called them. Paul received a call to service from Jesus Christ at his conversion, but that call had to be confirmed by the Holy Spirit through a prophecy in the Church.
Someone may be asking: What if I have a call from the Lord but nobody in the Church confirms it?
We have to realize that deep in the innermost being of every man and woman who loves God, there is an innate and overwhelming desire to do something for Him. The first thing we all do when Jesus has saved us is to seek Him to give us some work to do for Him, as an outlet for our love and gratitude to Him; some self-denying service, no matter what it might be, however trying or trivial; something with which He would be pleased, that we might do for Him who has done so much for us. That desire which cannot be explained in human words has to be encouraged, equipped and released if the church is going to be effective in making authentic disciples in these last days.
Our current Western church system is based on importing a professional to be the head of the church. If care is not taken, this can discourage the average member from ministry—especially leadership….If a person really wants to serve God, he/she is encouraged to go to Bible school. Why? Because the church is not prepared or equipped to raise the believer to maturity so that they, in turn can raise other believers to maturity…
Rather than the church being like a business, it is to be a family. The two, business and family, have different foundations, becoming part of the family usually happens by birth or through a commitment that springs forth from love. Family commitment is for life and cannot be simply put aside. On the other hand, a business relationship is based upon accepting a job.
When Christianity became accepted and popular, local churches began to erect buildings and hire pastors. This set off a chain reaction of tragedies:
Open worship and sharing ceased.
Congregations turned into audiences. Participants became spectators
The true priesthood of the believer was discarded. Ordinary believers became laymen, with no ministry functions allowed in church.
Leadership and authority became centered in the priesthood.
Francis Chan started his California mega church in his living room. He says it was all he knew to do. Until the Holy Spirit convicted him. In the next video he explains why…..
The Bible provides a sufficient model and it is the ultimate standard by which to judge all other ages. In the New Testament, especially in the book of Acts, the leadership was raised up from the local church. So the book of Acts gives us a model of what the early church members did and what they were. The apostles were concerned that people should become disciples; they were not interested in our modern methods of preaching. They realized that disciple making takes time and so Paul would stay in a place for a considerable period of time to make sure that the believers were established.
In Ephesus he taught about the kingdom of God every afternoon from 12 until 4 o’clock for two years in order that young converts might learn and new people would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. In fact those who came to faith were commonly known as disciples or followers of the way. It was perseverance on the journey that mattered, not a one-off decision that has little effect on daily life.
But we have substituted churchianity for Christianity. Churchianity produces church members; Christianity produces disciples. Churchianity demands conformity; Christianity demands commitment. The great majority of professing Christians today are not even aware of their departure from their original pattern and standard of the Gospel.
We’ve simply formed our concept of Christianity from what they see in the contemporary Church. Yet when Jesus sent out those first apostles, His instructions were perfectly clear: “Go… and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28: 19). We should be striving toward this great commission according to a definite strategic plan we each get from the secret place, instead of wasting our efforts in trivial everyday affairs.
Establishing and the discipleship of the converts is the pattern throughout Scripture, it’s the pattern described in 2 Timothy 2:2
And the instructions which you have heard from me along with many witnesses, transmit and entrust as a deposit to reliable and faithful men who will be competent and qualified to teach others also.
Many of us have read the words of the Great commission that we are to make disciples. But few of us understand that verse or more less obey it. The mission of the Church is to preach the Gospel, make disciples of all nations, and declare to all people that the return of the Lord and the Kingdom of God is at Hand.
In a nutshell, the solution again according to James Rutz, is to open the church to full participation by everyone! We do this by…
Reducing apathy, weakness, fear of witnessing, worldliness, and over activity to the minimum.
Transforming laymen from spectators into strong, healthy participants.
Restoring each person’s individual ministry and making him or her unique in the household of God.
Freeing pastors from overwork and enabling them to concentrate on making their parishioners grow spiritually.
Turning laymen into joyous, loving, holy, wise, and powerful servant priests who are capable of fulfilling the Great Commission in our time.
God has designed every believer to carry His anointing and to fulfill a unique purpose. When his life is filled with the Holy Spirit, he/she is empowered to accomplish God’s will for his/her life. If we seek His face, He will not only reveal Himself, but pour out His Spirit to perfect and fully equip His saints that they should do the work of ministering toward building up the church, that it might develop until we all come to the unity of the faith and of the full and accurate knowledge of the Son of God.
If we get to know Him intimately and accurately, and give Him His right place in every part of our lives, Paul says we should no longer be like children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.
Therefore, if we submit to the Holy Spirit, there will be love, truth, and fruitfulness in all things into Him who is the head-Jesus Christ. No one will be able to cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.
For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power (see Colossians 2: 8-9). He is the one who will judge the world righteously (see Acts 17).
Ramifications of Vaccine Injury
When my son David was born in 2001, I was 23 years old and blissfully optimistic about the journey into motherhood. I had read every book about pregnancy and parenting I could find. I researched the safest vehicles and car seats for our precious angel. I bought him stacks of the best books money could buy as I knew instinctively he was to be a genius. I was ready and well prepared for the road ahead.
When David was an infant, I took him to his well-child visits armed with the confidence of the Roman Empire. When asked if I wanted to vaccinate my son, I boldly declared, “Of course I do. It would be irresponsible of me not to. I don’t understand why a parent would subject their child to preventable diseases.”
And just like that, I signed the form releasing the pediatrician from all liability if my son were to be injured or die as the result of an adverse reaction to vaccines. After signing the paper, I felt a deep sense of discord and fear well up inside of me. I paid my instincts no mind and allowed my beautiful son to receive all recommended vaccines. Vaccinating was the right thing to do and I, being of superior intellect, knew that I was doing the right thing, despite having never researched possible side effects.
In infancy, David cried incessantly, sometimes for hours at a time. In an effort to curb the crying and bloated tummy, we tried everything we could think of. We switched formulas several times, gave him Mylicon drops, rocked him, wrapped him up tightly in his blanket and manually bounced his chair (the only thing that soothed him). We did everything we could think of and yet the crying ensued.
My son, who could count to five at thirteen months, was learning the alphabet and said, “ma, da, brover, bye” and “hi,” was, in fact, a genius. The multiple stacks of books I bought him went to good use. Our days were spent looking at numbers, letters, shapes and beautiful pictures of far-away lands. His genius flourished despite his chronic GI issues, which surely caused him incredible discomfort.
At thirteen months, he received multiple vaccines at his well-child exam. Within a few days, his language, eye contact and connection to his family dissipated. He clearly had suffered an adverse reaction to his vaccines, but his pediatrician assured me that he needed to be further vaccinated to protect his health and I agreed.
At his 24 month checkup, he was vaccinated again and it was the beginning of the end of life as we knew it. Within a week or so, David became violent toward me and his dad. He, for the first time, was hitting himself in the head and banging his head on the ground. He slept very little and did not want to be bathed, have his hands washed or his clothes changed.
When I took him into the pediatrician’s office, the (now retired) doctor told me he could not have been injured by vaccines because they had been rigorously tested for safety. He told us to take him home, let him cry and have a beer if we needed to.
Despite this advice, my husband (at the time) and I knew something was very wrong with our son. We could tell he was in pain and was trying to convey this to us by pounding on his head and slamming it into the ground.
After years of specialists’ visits and countless evaluations, I realized my son would soon be too dangerous to keep at home. He was now four and was a threat to himself and others. I knew I would have to find answers myself or my son would need to be placed in a residential facility, which was something I could not live with.
Per the recommendation of a mother who had recovered her son from autism, I tested David for heavy metals commonly found in childhood vaccines. Low and behold, David had heavy metal poisoning, something every pediatric specialist had missed.
Additionally, I put his medical file in order and recognized a pattern: following many of his vaccines, I took David in to be seen for myriad reasons. One visit I reported constant crying, another visit I reported loss of language and a fever and I reported a regression of developmental skills. Putting his medical file in order allowed me to see what doctors didn’t: my son was vaccine-injured.
Here is where it gets sticky. You see, we all sign the little form stating we will not sue the pediatrician if our child is vaccine-injured. Most of us are not told that if our child is injured, the vaccine manufacturer cannot be held liable. But the financial blow is just the tip of the iceberg.
Vaccine injury doesn’t just harm your innocent child; it will make you a social leper. When you prove to your pediatrician he injured your child, he will no longer take your phone calls or see you when you come in. Your loved ones will say things like, “Well, what happened to him is rare and we still need vaccines to keep polio at bay.” (Not knowing polio was eradicated by semantics and redefining polio symptoms). [1]
When your child is vaccine-injured, you are no longer a part of any social group outside of other parents of vaccine-injured children. At church you will say, “If I had known many vaccines contain aborted fetal cells, I would not have vaccinated him.” And they will respond with something like, “Oh, well, we need vaccines to prevent measles.” (Not realizing that the measles is a benign disease that is easily treated in developed nations).
When you discuss your child’s vaccine injury with the other moms at your child’s school, you will be forced to say, “He has autism,” because if you dare say your child suffered encephalopathy causing neurological damage and severe GI distress from vaccines, you will be shunned (even though the DTaP vaccine package insert lists autism as a possible vaccine reaction). [2]
When you finally meet other parents of children with disabilities you connect with, you dare not say your child is vaccine-injured or you will be ostracized and your injured child will be left out of (even more) birthday parties and activities. You see, vaccine injury isn’t just emotionally, physically and financially devastating, it is socially devastating as well. Even other parents of children with disabilities will sometimes turn their backs on you if you have the audacity to speak your truth.
Facebook friends will mysteriously vanish, invitations to events will wane, you will get odd stares at social gatherings because suddenly you are “that crazy lady who says her child is vaccine-injured.” Watching your child suffer immeasurably after a vaccine injury is just the beginning. The road ahead is wrought with the pain of being shunned by the disability community, friends and sometimes even family.
Your child will suffer twice: First, the loss of their health as an adverse reaction and second, the loss of any chance at a social life if you dare speak your truth. You will have to make a choice to either be shamed into silence or be made strong by the brutal treatment you will receive for stating the devastating truth about your child’s failing health.
At 23 years old, I was convinced I had it all figured out. My perceived superior intellect proved to be nothing more than youthful arrogance, which reduced me to a brokenhearted, pleading and isolated woman. The Roman Army confidence I once felt was now piecemealed by the degrading tone of the Medicaid workers I had to beg for services. My once self-assured and possibly self-righteous nature was drowned by the number of people who “forgot” to invite us to an event or refused to speak to me at a social gathering.
When you sign the contract releasing your pediatrician from liability if your child is injured by a vaccine, you are signing a social contract as well. Your social contract will include missed vacations, milestone birthday parties, girl’s nights, disability-related events, weddings and family reunions.
If I could go back and give my 23 year-old, know-it-all self advice, it would be this:
Do your research, as many pediatricians do not read vaccinepackageinsertsand cannot recognize an adverse reaction. Understand synergy and the physiological impacts of combining vaccine ingredients. Trust your God-given motherly instincts and lastly, think critically about the long-term health and social ramifications of vaccine injury.
One of Paul’s prophecies begins in a very unusual way for the Scriptures. “But understand or know this” he says in the last days will come (set in) perilous times of great stress and trouble had to deal with and hard to bear. Know this. Usually the Bible simply says, “This is the way it will be.” Be in no doubt about this.
Here is an absolutely established fact you cannot change by prayer, pleading or any other activity. It is going to happen, so bow before this fact. We are living in fierce times. And they are going to get fiercer as things get worse. Actually, it will not be so much “things” getting worse as people. People are going to get worse as they give in to pressure to turn from following God.
Here is the initial description that Paul gives, following his injunction to “understand this”
But understand this, that in the last days will come (set in) perilous times of great stress and trouble hard to deal with and hard to bear. For people will be lovers of self and utterly self-centered, lovers of money and aroused by an inordinate greedy desire for wealth, proud and arrogant and contemptuous boasters. They will be abusive (blasphemous, scoffing), disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane. They will be without natural human affection (callous and inhuman), relentless (admitting of no truce or appeasement); they will be slanderers (false accusers, troublemakers), intemperate and loose in morals and conduct, uncontrolled and fierce, haters of good.
They will be treacherous betrayers, rash, and inflated with self-conceit. They will be lovers of sensual pleasures and vain amusements more than and rather than lovers of God. For although they hold a form of piety (true religion), they deny and reject and are strangers to the power of it their conduct belies the genuineness of their profession. Avoid all such people turn away from them.
When Paul speaks about fierce times, he begins with the root cause: “For people will be.” Then he lists eighteen moral ethical blemishes. In other words, human character is the root cause of the dark days to come-not a nuclear holocaust. Notice that the list begins and ends with what people love: self, money and pleasure. These three loves are the cause of all the other negative attributes listed here, and they are interrelated.
Why would people have an ordinate desire for wealth? Because they love pleasure. Money can buy pleasure, at least for a little while. But it cannot buy peace or joy. The love of money is also an expression of pride. Riches can also encourage us to be arrogant, to display our wealth and act as if we are better than those who have less. These loves are rooted in love of self. In other words, what you love determines what you will be.
A Form of Godliness
People who are guilty of these moral sins are not people without an outward form of religion. For although they hold a form of godliness or true religion, they deny its power and are strangers to the power that can make them godly. This power is none other than the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Many don’t leave any room for His presence; they don’t have any kind of sensitivity to spiritual things and, worse still, there is no conviction of sin, righteousness, and judgment.
Just listen to people of the world talking together in any public place-a gym, train or a restaurant. What is the most common topic of conversation? Without a doubt, it is money and wealth. After money there comes a variety of other topics, all connected with our physical and material wellbeing, pleasures, comforts, luxuries, cars, family affairs, clothing, and household equipment. These are things which normally occupy the thoughts and speech of the people this world.
Yet the act of being or acting religiously is not missing from our current culture. In other words, Paul is saying that people are professing Christians, but their lives have never been changed. They deny the power of godliness, the power of an encounter with Jesus Christ to change their lives radically and permanently.
Look at the relational, social, ethical and moral character of African leaders many of whom call themselves Christian. For instance, in Uganda certain Pentecostal churches whose pastors are close to the president have gained much in prestige, contributions by their parishioners and occasional moral support or political and legal cover from the state.
The church that was supposed to be a pillar of truth, love, charity, and justice, is now dealing with “useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain” (1 Timothy 6: 5).
These issues are not particular to Africa. The West experiences some of the same problems as the church in Africa. And it is indeed impossible to imagine at the very heart of a society a more astounding fact than this: the law has come to be an instrument of injustice. And if this fact brings terrible consequences to the United States, what about in other parts of Africa and Europe where the perversion of law is a principle or a system?
In the next brief video, Congressman Ken Buck explains to Attkisson exactly how Washington works, and what he reveals is absolutely shocking…
Since I was asked to make a presentation about vaccine exemptions in 1997 at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., I have publicly defended the informed consent principle, which was defined as a human right at the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg in 1947. 1 Informed consent means you have the right to be fully informed about the benefits and risks of a medical intervention and the freedom to make a voluntary decision about whether or not to accept those risks without being coerced or punished for the decision you make. Informed consent applies not just to risks taken by participants in scientific experiments, but also to risks taken by patients under the care of physicians. 2 3 4 5
Informed Consent Principle Applies to All Medical Risk-Taking
Today, when a person publicly advocates for informed consent protections in vaccine laws, an “anti-vaccine” label is usually immediately applied to shut down any further conversation. 6 7 Perhaps because a conversation about ethics opens up a wider conversation about freedom.
The right and responsibility for making a decision about risk taking rightly belongs to the person taking the risk. When you become informed and think rationally about a risk that you or your minor child may take – and then follow your conscience – you own that decision. And when you own it, you can defend it. And once you can defend it, you will be ready to do whatever it takes to fight for your freedom to make it, no matter who tries to prevent you from doing that.
Never Do Anything Against Conscience
Albert Einstein, who risked arrest in Germany in the 1930’s when he spoke out against censorship and persecution of minorities, said, “Never do anything against conscience even if the State demands it.” 8
There is no liberty more fundamentally a natural, inalienable right than the freedom to think independently and follow our conscience when choosing what we are willing to risk our life or our child’s life for.
Because the journey we take on this earth is defined by the choices we make. If we are not free to make choices, the journey is not our own. The choices we make that involve risk of harm to our physical body, which houses our mind and spirit, those are among the most profound choices we make in this life.
Vaccine Risks Not Being Borne Equally By Everyone in Society
So, vaccination must remain a choice because it is a medical intervention performed on the body of a healthy person that carries a risk of injury or death. 9 10 And while we are all born equal, with equal rights under the law, we are not born all the same. Each one of us is born with different genes and a unique microbiome influenced by epigenetics that affects how we respond to the environments we live in. 11 12
We do not all respond the same way to pharmaceutical products like vaccines, so vaccine risks are not being borne equally by everyone in society.
Why should the lives of those vulnerable to vaccine complications be valued any less than those vulnerable to complications of infections? And why should people not be free to choose to stay healthy in ways that pose far fewer risks?
Vaccines Carry Risks and Do Not Guarantee Protection
The act of vaccination involves the deliberate introduction of killed live attenuated or genetically engineered microbes into the body of a healthy person, along with varying amounts of chemicals, metals, human and animal RNA and DNA and other ingredients 13 that atypically manipulate the immune system to mount an inflammatory response that stimulates artificial immunity. 14
But there is no guarantee that vaccination will not compromise biological integrity or cause the death of a healthy or vaccine vulnerable person either immediately or in the future. There is also no guarantee that vaccination will protect a person from getting an infection with or without symptoms and transmitting it to others. 15
Vaccine Science Gaps, Doctors Cannot Predict Who Will React
Reports published by physician committees at the Institute of Medicine confirm that vaccines, like infections, can injure and kill people but that:
very little is known about how vaccines or microbes act at the cellular and molecular level in the human body; 16 17 18 and
the Institute of Medicine confirms that an unknown number of us have certain genetic, biological and environmental susceptibilities that make us more vulnerable to being harmed by vaccines, but doctors cannot accurately predict who we are; 19 20 and
that clinical trials of experimental vaccines are too small to detect serious reactions before they are licensed; 21 22 and
that the U.S. recommended child vaccine schedule through age six has not been adequately studied to rule out an association with allergies, autoimmunity, learning and behavior disorders, seizures, autism and other brain and immune dysfunction. 23
Yet, with these large gaps in scientific knowledge, government health officials direct physicians to vaccinate 99.99 percent of children regardless of known or unknown risks. 2425
Government Licensed Vaccines “Unavoidably Unsafe”
Therefore, vaccination is a medical procedure that can be termed experimental each time it is performed on a person. By extension, “no exceptions” mandatory vaccination laws create a de facto uncontrolled, population based scientific experiment that enrolls every child at birth and never ends, sacrificing an unknown number of vaccine vulnerable children.
Further, the US Congress and Supreme Court have declared federally licensed vaccines to be “unavoidably unsafe,” removing civil liability from doctors who give vaccines and drug companies that sell vaccines in what has become a very lucrative multi-billion dollar business in the U.S. 26 27 At the same time, the federal vaccine injury compensation program created by Congress in 1986 that was supposed to be a no-fault alternative to a lawsuit – not instead of a lawsuit – has been gutted by federal agencies so that, today, almost no child receives compensation when they are hurt by vaccines. 28
Now, a global vaccine injury compensation program is being created to shield multinational corporations from liability for injuries caused by the hundreds of new genetically engineered vaccines governments will mandate in the future. 29 30 31 32 33 34
All this, while medical trade groups affiliated with industry and government join forces to lobby for removal of flexible medical, conscientious and religious belief exemptions from state health laws, 35 as was done in California in 2015, 36 so that those who refuse government endorsed vaccines for themselves or their minor children can be denied an education, employment, health care and other civil rights.
Utilitarianism Should Not Be Foundation of Public Health Law
In 1996, when I was in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. attending a conference on the role of physicians and scientists implementing public health policy during the Third Reich, I looked up and saw an inscription that took my breath away. It said, “the first to perish were the children…from these a new dawn might have risen.”
This commentary, which I originally presented in March 2017 at the inaugural meeting of Physicians for Informed Consent in California, 37 is dedicated to mothers and fathers, whose children died or became brain injured when the risks of vaccination turned out to be 100 percent.
I am arguing that the consequentialist theory of utilitarianism 38 39 40 is a pseudo-ethic that must be rejected as the moral foundation of public health policy and law so it can be replaced with a compassionate ethic grounded in respect for the human right to autonomy and informed consent to medical risk taking, including vaccine risk taking.
Pediatrician Censored for Reporting Infant Deaths After DPT Shots
I remember the day in the spring of 1982, when I was a young mother with a four year-old son struggling with the effects of a serious DPT vaccine reaction. I had just seen the NBC television documentary DPT: Vaccine Roulette 41 and was networking with parents of DPT vaccine injured children in the Washington, D.C. area when I decided to attend a press conference at the American Academy of Neurology to hear a young pediatric neurologist talk about his study in which two thirds of the babies, whose deaths were classified sudden infant death syndrome, had died within three weeks of a DPT shot.
This pediatrician was concerned that DPT vaccine may be a major unrecognized cause of early childhood death, including SIDS, and he suggested that more research be done. As soon as he finished, his physician colleagues launched a vicious attack on his professional expertise and personal integrity that left him physically trembling in a cold sweat. I had never seen anything like it.
During the break, I was approached by a PhD scientist who, at the time, worked for the National Academy of Sciences. This scientist asked me why I was there and I told him I wanted to know more about DPT vaccine because, when I was taking my baby to be vaccinated, I had no idea that vaccines – which were supposed to keep children healthy – could actually kill them.
He got this quizzical look on his face and said something to the effect that it only happens once in a million kids. And instinctively I said, but if a vaccine kills even one, how can all children be legally required to get it? He looked surprised, uncomfortable, and walked away mumbling something about vaccine benefits far outweigh the risks, and sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the greater good.
And I thought to myself, but the benefits didn’t outweigh the risks for my child or for the babies who died after DPT shots in the study that young doctor tried to talk about before he was figuratively lynched for suggesting that DPT vaccine benefits might not outweigh the risks.
And why was my child’s health sacrificed without my knowledge or permission, and what is “the good” that is made greater by child sacrifice, and who defines it as “good”?
Playing DPT Vaccine Roulette with My Son’s Life
When I became a Mom in 1978, my son, Chris, was the light of my life. Happy, healthy and precocious, he was saying words at seven months,
speaking in full sentences by age two and identifying words in the books we read together every day. One doctor told me he was cognitively gifted.
But everything changed in 1980 when, within hours of his fourth DTP shot, I witnessed the eyes of my two and a half year old son roll back in his head and his head fall to his shoulder as if he had fallen asleep sitting up. I carried him, pale and limp, to his bed, where he did not move for hours. I thought to myself, oh, he is tired and just taking a really long nap, or maybe he is coming down with a cold.
And when I finally was able to wake him but he couldn’t sit up or walk or speak coherently, when he had terrible diarrhea and only stayed conscious for a few minutes before falling into 12 more hours of deep sleep, I did not understand that I had witnessed a classic post-DPT vaccine convulsion and “hypotonic/hyporesponsive reaction and brain inflammation. 42 43 44 45 Chris was not just taking a really long nap, he was unconscious in his bed and could have died that day.
Image credit Lea Thompson, WRC-TV, Washington D.C. 1982
I did not know because my pediatrician had told me nothing about how to recognize a vaccine reaction, including symptoms of encephalitis – brain inflammation that has been a well-documented complication of vaccination for two centuries. 46 47 48 49 I did not know that the unusual local reaction after his third DPT shot was a warning sign or that our family history of severe allergies and autoimmune disorders could increase vaccine risks. 50 51 52 53 54 55 56
Even though I came from a family of doctors and nurses, had a college degree and had worked at a teaching hospital – like most parents back then I believed that vaccines were 100 percent safe and effective.
And in the following days and weeks, when Chris could no longer concentrate or do what we could do before, when his personality changed and he was constantly sick with ear and respiratory infections, diarrhea, new food allergies and severe weight loss, my family and I could not understand why Chris had regressed physically, mentally and emotionally and become a totally different child. His doctors told us there was no explanation and said I should take him home and love him.
Eighteen months later, when I, and millions of other parents in America, watched the Emmy award winning “DPT Vaccine Roulette,” 57 I called the TV station and asked if I could have copies of the medical literature used to anchor the documentary.
And it was in my living room as I read case history descriptions of DPT vaccine injury and death in the pages of Pediatrics58 59 60 and the British Medical Journal61 62 63 and New England Journal of Medicine64 that exactly matched the symptoms of brain inflammation I witnessed my son suffer that day, it was then I knew that physicians had been talking in medical journals for more than 50 years about the fact that pertussis vaccine could brain damage children, but no one had informed the mothers dutifully bringing their children for DPT shots legally required to go to school.
As I tried to help my son cope with multiple learning disabilities that included dyslexia, fine and gross motor skill delay, auditory processing and attention deficit, and short term memory delays so severe they confined him to a special ed classroom throughout his public school education, and as I interviewed hundreds of mothers for the book DPT: A Shot in the Dark, I came to know many families whose children had died or were much more severely vaccine injured than my child. 65 66
Chris has worked hard to compensate for his learning disabilities and he is a productive member of society today; but many vaccine injured children, tragically, are not. 67
My son is among the walked wounded in what has become an unprecedented and still unexplained chronic disease and disability epidemic now plaguing millions of children and young adults in America. 68 It is an epidemic of learning disabilities, ADHD, asthma, seizures, autism, diabetes, depression, and other types of brain and immune dysfunction marked by chronic inflammation in the body that has perfectly coincided with the tripling of the numbers of vaccines given to children – from 23 doses of seven vaccines starting at two months through age six in the early 1980s – to the current 69 doses of 16 vaccines starting on the day of birth with 50 doses given before age six. 69 70
In 1982, it was my curiosity about the truth of the matter that pushed me to research the science, policy, law, ethics, history and politics of vaccination and spend two decades participating in public engagement projects at the Institute of Medicine and Department of Health and Human Services, where I served as a consumer member on vaccine advisory committees at the FDA and CDC, 71 a journey that has now spanned half my life.
So, I offer you my perspective from that vantage point.
Philosophy: Love of Wisdom
Here we are in the 21st century, where the electronic communications revolution has created a virtual global public square on the World Wide Web, where more than three billion people are talking to – and sometimes yelling at – each other about ideas, values and beliefs, just like they did in the public squares of ancient Athens and Rome, and in universities, newspapers, and on radio and television since then.
Throughout recorded history, people have disagreed with each other about how to answer big questions, like:
Where do we come from?
Are we only physical matter or do we have an immortal soul, a consciousness that survives physical death?
What is truth and how can we know it?
What is ethical behavior and how can we define it?
Most of the formal debates about these questions have been described in the history of philosophy, 72 which the ancient Greeks defined as “love of wisdom,” that included study of knowledge; reasoning; nature of being or metaphysics; aesthetics; and ethics.
The philosophy of science emerged as a separate discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries after mathematicians and astronomers mounted a successful challenge to the authority of organized religion.
Science Now Dominates, Affect Cultural Values & Laws
Since then, science has invaded and dominated every other branch of philosophy. As we are reminded every day in so many ways, science and math rule, and scientific evidence determines what is true and what is not. In fact, those who practice and submit to the authority of science insist that not only must science be used to define all truth, but leaders in science and medicine are authorities who should define “the good,” that is, define moral behavior and what kind of cultural values we should have, and what kind of beliefs we should be allowed to hold and teach our children, and what kind of laws should be passed in order to limit the ability of individuals to make “unscientific” choices that presumably endanger the public health and welfare. 73
That’s a whole lot of pressure for many physicians, who do not want to be put on a pedestal and required to exercise that kind of authority over the lives of fellow human beings because – first and foremost – it interferes with developing a relationship with patients based on mutual respect, trust and shared decision making.
But, the stark reality is that the scientification of every branch of philosophy has elevated prominent scientists and physicians promoting “consensus science” into positions of authority, whose judgment should never be questioned. Long held cultural values, such as respect for freedom of thought, speech, conscience and religious belief are being called into question, which, in turn, affects court decisions and the making of laws.
No where is this more visible than in public health law using the materialist philosophy of utilitarianism to legally require all Americans to use an increasing number of vaccines without their voluntary informed consent.
So how did we get here? How did science come to dominate how we define what is true and good for the individual and society in the 21st century?
Old Arguments About What Is True and Good
Although conversations about the meaning of life and what is good started before written history and is embedded in tenets of five surviving major religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity – it was the classical Greek philosophers who began recording the debate.
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle believed that we are physical matter animated by a vital spirit, and we can use innate knowledge and reason to perceive what is good.
Epicurus disagreed and said humans are only physical matter and have no spirit or innate knowledge and that seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is the highest good and guide to moral behavior.
For 1500 years following the birth of Christ, the highest good was defined as knowing and loving God in western cultures adopting Judeo-Christian moral values – until the Scientific Revolution when 15th and 16th century scientists Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Francis Bacon developed methods for determining what is true that put the existence of God on trial, along with the definition of what is good.
Although between the 16th and 19th centuries, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel and other philosophers argued that humans are both physical matter and spirit and can use reason to understand scientific truth, as well as to perceive the natural law that serves as a guide to what is good, the materialist philosophers Hobbes, Hume, Bentham, Comte, Marx and Nietzsche argued that science proves there is no God or human spirit because we are only physical matter, and there are no absolute moral values but, rather, science can be used to define what is true and good.
This included the idea that a mathematical equation can be used to judge whether or not an individual action, government policy or law is moral.
The authors of the U.S. Declaration of Independence agreed with the philosophers who argued that humans have a physical body animated by a soul or spirit, and that we can use reason given to us by God to perceive the natural law, which includes natural rights, that belong to all individuals and limit the authority of government.
The Bill of Rights in the US Constitution contains strong language protecting exercise of natural rights. 74 These have been defined internationally as human rights, including freedom of thought, speech, conscience and religious belief. 75 76
Utilitarianism: Mathematics, Vaccination & Public Health Rising
But today, it is not respect for natural rights that guides public health policy in the U.S., it is the philosophy of utilitarianism, created by Jeremy Bentham, a 19th century British attorney and social reformer. 77 78 Bentham mocked the U.S. Constitution for mentioning God and affirming natural rights protected in the First Amendment.
Like Comte, Marx and Nietzsche who followed him, Bentham did not believe that man has a soul or innate intelligence, so he returned to the hedonistic Epicurean philosophy of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain to define what is good.
Bentham’s utilitarianism uses a mathematical equation that judges the rightness or wrongness of an action by its consequences. Bentham said that an action is only moral or ethical if it results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. With its emphasis on numbers of people, Bentham created utilitarianism primarily as a guide to state legislative policy, and vaccine cost-benefit analyses are rooted in utilitarianism.
Bentham was a contemporary of British physician Edward Jenner, who took pus from a cowpox lesion and scratched it onto the arm of a young boy in an effort to prevent smallpox. Jenner’s experiment, repeated over and over again in lots of people, created a live human-cow hybrid virus called vaccinia. 79
The new chemical industry took that vaccinia virus, added some chemicals and bottled it, selling it to doctors and governments. The mass smallpox vaccine campaigns that followed expanded the authority of a new branch of medicine focusing on population-based disease control, called public health. 80
19th century physicians were enlisted by government to give infants and children smallpox vaccine and were persuaded to look the other way when some of them died or were left permanently disabled after developing raging vaccinia virus infections and inflammation of the brain. Fully embracing the utilitarian rationale, public health officials viewed individual smallpox vaccine casualties as necessary losses to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Utilitarianism Codified Into US Law: Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905)
At the turn of the 20th century, utilitarianism was fashionable in intellectual and political circles. It was the philosophical argument used by attorneys in 1905 to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a utilitarian ruling in Jacobson vs. Massachusetts.81
Lutheran Pastor Henning Jacobsen and his son had suffered severe reactions to previous smallpox vaccinations and Jacobsen argued that genetic predisposition placed him at high risk for dying or being injured if he was forced to get revaccinated. The court dismissed Jacobsen’s concern for his own health and life.
In a split decision with one dissenting vote, the Court that included Oliver Wendell Holmes, issued an opinion that would affirm the legal right for U.S. state legislatures to assign police powers to public health officials to restrict or eliminate individual liberty in order to “secure the general comfort, health and prosperity of the state.” 82
The Court maintained that all citizens can be compelled to receive smallpox vaccinations because the happiness and welfare of the majority outweighs the happiness and welfare of a minority. In other words, individual human sacrifice is ethical and legal if it is done for the common good.
Georgetown law professor and mandatory vaccination proponent Lawrence Gusting has described it as the most important Supreme Court opinion in the history of American public health law. 83
Eugenics: Eradicating the “Unfit” in Buck v. Bell (1927)
In 1927, then Chief Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the Jacobson ruling to give the state of Virginia a green light to sterilize Carrie Buck, a 17-year old young single mother who doctors and state social workers had incorrectly judged to be mentally retarded, just like her daughter and mother, they said. 84
Self-identifying as a Darwinian atheist and utilitarian, Chief Justice Holmes’s admiration for exercise of power is reflected in his legal opinions. 85 Holmes did not believe in the concept of natural rights and said, “Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.” 86 He believed scientific knowledge should be used to improve the human race and said, “I can imagine a future in which science shall take control of life, and condemn at once with instant execution what now is left up to nature to destroy.” 87
And, so, when it came to Carrie Buck, Holmes, the eugenicist, coldly proclaimed–
“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.” 88
In this merciless 1927 Supreme Court decision, just as in the 1905 Jacobson v Massachusetts decision, Holmes achieved his goal of stripping cultural values and ethical principles from U.S. law. His logic was that if utilitarianism could be used to ensure the common good and protect society from infections through compulsory vaccination laws, then forced sterilization laws could be used to immunize society against becoming infected with bad genes.
Social Darwinism and Eugenics in America Inspired Hitler
Darwin’s theory of natural selection led to Social Darwinism 89 and eugenics that was viewed as a new science by U.S. intellectuals during the 1920s and 1930s. 90 American biologist Charles Davenport had founded the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island in 1910 91 to improve the human race and soon courses on eugenics were offered at Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Brown and other universities. The National Education Association had a Committee on Racial Well-Being to help teachers integrate eugenics content into public school textbooks. 92
By 1932, California and 28 other states had passed compulsory sterilization laws and the practice of eugenics was endorsed by leading U.S. scientists, medical doctors, lawyers, professors, businessmen, politicians, philanthropists, and social reformers like Margaret Sanger. The next year, in 1933, Hitler adopted eugenics as a central piece of his plan to protect the common good by eliminating individuals he considered to be a threat to the health, security and economic well being of the State. By the time eugenics became politically incorrect in the 1940’s, physicians implementing government health policy had performed more than 60,000 involuntary sterilizations on mentally disabled or chronically ill Americans. 93
Hitler was influenced by Marx and Nietzsche and inspired by U.S. eugenics laws. He blended utilitarianism with social Darwinism and nationalism to create a view of the State as one biological entity or body that must be kept healthy and free from disease and threats from unfit individuals.
Enlisting the assistance of physicians and public health officials, the first minority considered unfit and expendable were severely handicapped children, the chronically sick and mentally ill, the “useless eaters” they were called. And when the reasons for why a person was identified as a threat to the health, economic stability, or security of the State grew longer to include minorities who were too old or too Jewish or too Catholic or too opinionated or simply unwilling to believe what those in control of the State said was true….as the list of those the State branded as persons of interest to be demonized, feared, tracked, isolated and eliminated grew, so did the collective denial of those who had yet to be put on that list.
Doctors’ Crimes Against Humanity: Judgment at Nuremberg
When doctors were charged with crimes against humanity at the Doctor’s Trial at Nuremberg for carrying out horrific scientific experiments on captive children and adults in the concentration camps, including vaccine experiments, they pointed to U.S. eugenics laws and invoked a utilitarian defense, claiming it was moral to sacrifice the health and lives of individuals to advance scientific knowledge that could save the lives of many more. 9495
Out of the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg came the Nuremberg Code, of which Yale law professor and physician Jay Katz said, “if not explicitly then at least implicitly, commanded that the principle of the advancement of science bow to a higher principle: protection of individual inviolability. The rights of individuals to thoroughgoing self-determination and autonomy must come first. “ 96
The First Principle of the Nuremberg Code is, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” 97
The Doctor’s Trial at Nuremberg put a human face on individual victims of immoral government health policies. The Nuremberg Code stands as an uncompromising affirmation of the value of every human life and the natural right to self-determination, a timeless guide to ethical behavior by scientists and physicians.
While post World War II Europe had to process what they had learned from The Doctor’s Trial at Nuremberg and the holocaust, things were very different in America. In our country, prominent members of our society who had promoted and participated in the practice of eugenics were never required to look in the mirror and reflect upon what they had done, or face public disgrace. 98 They just went underground.
Science & Math Rule: History of Philosophy Forgotten
Our perception of what is true and good is very much influenced by the prism through which we are taught to view the world.
In today’s public schools, education is focused on science and math, but the study of philosophy and its’ impact on human history is not valued or taught that often. There is no discussion about the kind of utilitarian thinking that made eugenics acceptable in America.
Few Gen Xers and Millennials, who will steer our nation into the second half of the 21nd century, understand the ramifications of allowing utilitarianism to guide public health policy and law, even as the specter of genetic engineering to change what it means to be human is already underway. 99 100 101 Do they understand the influence of utilitarian philosophers like Dr. Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton, who says it is ethical to euthanize disabled babies in the first 30 days of life, and it is ethical to euthanize elderly and disabled persons who are not aware they serve no useful purpose in society, because, he says, the life of a severely intellectually disabled person has no greater value than that of a dog or pig? 102
Dr. Paul Offit and other contemporary utilitarians who develop vaccines, make vaccine policy and promote “no exceptions” mandatory vaccination laws 103 are forcing us to kneel before them at an altar reminiscent of the one that a 19th century August Comte, built for his Religion of Humanity. We are not allowed to talk about what is true or good in the public square unless we have medical or academic credentials and then – only if we strictly adhere to promoting their consensus science, a code word for censorship that delegitimizes freedom of thought and dissent.
Debate About Forced Vaccination Transcends Vaccination
Today, everybody knows somebody who was healthy, got vaccinated and was never healthy again. But the vaccine science is settled, say the utilitarians refusing to compare the health of vaccinated children to unvaccinated children. Vaccines do not injure and kill, they say, or – if they do – it is so rare, that requiring some children to sacrifice their lives without their parent’s informed consent is ethical in order to enforce mandatory vaccination laws that serve the greater good.
It is for this reason that the debate about vaccination transcends vaccination. It is the tip of the spear in a much larger war that is being waged on cultural values and beliefs in America, which is why I call it The Vaccine Culture War.
Because if the State can tag, track down and force citizens against their will to be injected with biologicals of known and unknown toxicity today, then there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the State can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow.
Today the battlefield of the 200 year war on microbes is littered with human casualties far too numerous to count while, in a natural fight to survive, the microbes have evolved to evade the vaccines. 104 And the scientists and physicians in leadership positions determined to win that war continue to fire away, stepping around the bodies of vaccine-damaged children lying on the ground.
Do I think that public health officials flying the science flag with a utilitarian star on it wake up everyday and say to themselves, I want to hurt a child today? Of course not. Most doctors and scientists want to help, not harm people.
Do I think they have lost their way, blinded by a utilitarian pseudo-ethic that makes it easy to ignore the bodies lying on the ground so they can allow themselves to believe that human sacrifice is ethical when it serves the greater good? Yes, I do. They have forgotten to ask themselves this question:
When one individual is considered expendable for the good of society, how many more can be considered expendable? Is it 500, 5,000, 50 million – or more? How many is too many to sacrifice for the happiness of the rest, and who gets to decide which ones among us are expendable?
Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel said, “When you take an idea or concept and turn it into an abstraction, that opens the way to take human beings and turn them, also, into abstractions. When people are turned into abstractions, what is left?” 105
He is right. Abstractions are much easier to write off as coincidences. Abstractions are easier to add up in a column when there is no name or a face put to them. Abstractions do not live or breathe, bleed or convulse, scream or die. Abstractions can be dismissed and buried in files where nobody ever has to look.
Rejecting Utilitarianism & Embracing An Authentic Ethic
After surviving four concentration camps, physician Viktor Frankl called on mankind to reject the materialist view that a person only has value if he useful to society, which makes him a slave to the State. Frankl said:
“The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment—or, as the Nazis liked to say, of ‘Blood and Soil.’” I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Majdanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.” 106
Transcending the horror of what he had witnessed, Dr. Frankl was able to see that, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.“ ….. “It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
In the 21st century, all of us are called upon to choose whether or not we will embrace what Albert Schweitzer called “a reverence for life.” 107 It requires us to turn away from materialist philosophers like Hobbes, Bentham, Comte, Marx, Nietzsche and Singer, who say that individual life does not matter, that life has no meaning, and that morality can be reduced to a mathematical equation. Enlightened physicians and scientists with compassion and courage are called upon to take back leadership of their professions from those who have lost their way. Even as those, who have been victims of utilitarian health policies, must continue to witness in the public square.
Only then can we reject utilitarianism as a guide to the practice of medicine so consensus science orthodoxy will give way to real science that yields the truth about vaccination and health. Only then can we transcend the horror of what has happened to far too many children in the name of the greater good and adopt an authentic ethic, one that values individual autonomy and freedom of thought, speech and conscience – civil liberties that have been an antidote to tyranny in its many forms throughout human history.
Our mission continues. No forced vaccination. Not in America.
Copyright 2015, Dr Ryan TAnderson at The Australian Christian Lobby’s event The Cost of ‘Equality’ on 20 August 2015-All rights reserved
The Decision to Home School in Africa
One Super Mum’s Tales of Living and Loving
Since I decided not to have a maid, I had to become creative on how I managed life. I am a morning person, eight months ago, I decided to experiment on waking up early. I started with 5a.m. and then later on when I plunged myself into a raw food diet with the mental alertness and energy at large, I pushed it to 3am which gives me more hours in the morning.
I love the feeling of being up at 3am all by myself – I find that the morning time is the best for me. I am fresh, I love the quiet and there is absolutely no interruption – no phones, no children crying. I tend to start my day by doing things that require a lot of activity like mopping the house, preparing meals and then I am ready to stop and have some time for prayer and reading, then go through the plans for my day.
Before I know it, it is already 6a.m, time to wakeup the children, get them breakfast, have them bathe and prepare them for class which usually starts at 8:15a.m.
Home Schooling Programme
Our class structure comprises Skills development, Activity time, Phonics, Numbers, Writing, Language development and Bible (She tells the children to recite about five verses for me and they all take off in unison quoting the book, chapter and verse prior, in crisp clear English).
Midday to 2p.m. is nap time for the children. I keep them together in the sitting room, so that I can keep an eye on who is pinching who as that falls within my job description. It is also my free time and I can choose to nap until I drool or put my gift of talking to good use on the phone. I serve them lunch when they wake up, give them an afternoon bath outdoors which is fun, and then do some review, writing, colouring and play.
5 p.m. is time to eat again and at 7 pm, they are getting ready for bed. After 9p.m. my body gets into shut down mode and if I do not quickly find my bed, I will end up curled up under our car in the garage.
Parenting an Autistic Child
Stephen our first child was born a normal baby in the US. When he was about 18 months we realised that he was not making progress developmentally – the boy who used to talk to us shut down completely and begun acting strange. We were thrown into a dilemma. A year later we got a diagnosis and it was confirmed that he was autistic. The cause of autism is still a subject of debate. We decided to focus on how well we can help him live a life that is as normal as possible through behavioural therapy. This I must confess is not for the faint hearted.
Stephen does not like to find water spilled on the floor and many times cannot use the toilet until he has first flashed it. He does not appreciate sudden changes to his established routine. But because of all the work that we have put into training him, among other things, he is now able to ask for food, pick up after himself and help out with simple chores like taking his plate to the sink after eating.
Our Decision to Adopt
We always wanted to make a contribution to the plight of underprivileged children, and having an autistic child seemed a good reason for us not to take on more children but deep inside there continued to be a yearning to adopt. We made a trip to the babies home, and after a long process, we identified two children who were not doing well health wise, but we were ready for the challenge. Just before the children came home, we found out that I was pregnant. This was the first test of our commitment to adopt. The girl was hospitalised at the time and the doctor kept calling us saying the girl badly needed a home to get better.
Why I don’t have a House Help
There are maids out there who are amazing, but my personal experience stems from childhood. I find satisfaction in doing things myself. I tried at some point to have maids but I found that over time, it was emotionally exhausting. It’s coming to two years now without a maid, and my pulse rate is still normal!
The Decision to Home School
In my understanding, it is my responsibility to train our children as their parents. After a lot of research, home schooling seemed the most suitable for the varied needs of our children. For example the adopted children still needed to bond with us and I just did not feel right sending them out to the world on their own.
Most schools are designed for normal children, so our autistic son would be quite overwhelming for both the teachers and pupils.
From the first comments that visitors to our house made like, “he is so stubborn”, and yet the truth is that “he is autistic”, responding in a different way is what made me take on the decision. We are borrowing the US curriculum and integrating it with the Ugandan curriculum. For example, instead of learning about the US flag, we learn about the Ugandan flag. But the challenge is that it is subject to interruption from guests or illness of the teacher or when the teacher has a bad hair day!
My Role as a Housewife
It is an honour to be one and granted this is also a season in my life. I want to make the most of it by being home when the children need me most – especially during their dependence and formation years. I guess it’s also a reaction from my mother and father separating and the fact that I grew up with no one to share my struggles and joys with, this has been so important to me. But this is so challenging because it’s very isolating and financially hard to sustain. You have to be dependent on one salary or scale down on your expenses to be able to manage.
My Day off
I like to get away on Saturdays, just to do shopping and pamper myself if I can afford to. I hand over the children to my husband and disappear. Even just driving out and putting on loud music relaxes me. My favourite place to visit is Aristoc where I do some reading, and I also like to have random conversations with strangers which my husband finds very disturbing. Going to church for me is like taking a car to a service station. It refreshes my spirit and sets the pace for my week to be a healthy mother, wife and friend.
90% of Television Is Controlled By Just 6 Giant Corporations
How much is your view of the world shaped by what you see on television? On average, Americans spend more than 150 hours watching television every month, and it is called “programming” for a reason.
If you allow anyone to pour ideas and information into your mind for five hours a day, it is going to change how you look at reality. Everyone has an agenda, and every single news program, television show and movie is trying to alter your views.
Sadly, our society has become absolutely addicted to media, and the mainstream media is completely dominated by the elite. In fact, about 90 percent of the programming that comes through your television is controlled by just 6 gigantic media corporations.
Most of us are willingly plugging ourselves into this “propaganda matrix” that is completely dominated by the elite for several hours each day, and that gives them an enormous amount of power over the rest of us.
If you control what people think, then you control a society. And through their vast media empires, the elite are able to shape how we all think to a frightening degree.
Just think about it. What do we talk about with our family, our friends and our co-workers? To a large extent, those conversations are about movies, television shows, something that we just saw on the news or a sporting event that just took place.
The reason why we talk about certain things is because the mainstream media gives those things attention, and other things we ignore because the mainstream media does not make them seem to be important.
The mainstream media literally sets the agenda for our society, and it would be difficult to overstate the power that is in their hands. And as I mentioned above, the mainstream media is almost entirely controlled by just 6 colossal corporations.
The following list of these 6 corporate giants comes from one of my previous articles, and this is just a sampling of the media properties that they each own…
Comcast
NBC
Telemundo
Universal Pictures
Focus Features
USA Network
Bravo
CNBC
The Weather Channel
MSNBC
Syfy
NBCSN
Golf Channel
Esquire Network
E!
Cloo
Chiller
Universal HD
Comcast SportsNet
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Studio Home Video
The Walt Disney Company
ABC Television Network
ESPN
The Disney Channel
A&E
Lifetime
Marvel Entertainment
Lucasfilm
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
Disney Mobile
Disney Consumer Products
Interactive Media
Disney Theme Parks
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures
News Corporation
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox News Channel
Fox Business Network
Fox Sports 1
Fox Sports 2
National Geographic
Nat Geo Wild
FX
FXX
FX Movie Channel
Fox Sports Networks
The Wall Street Journal
The New York Post
Barron’s
SmartMoney
HarperCollins
20th Century Fox
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Blue Sky Studios
Beliefnet
Zondervan
Time Warner
CNN
The CW
HBO
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
HLN
NBA TV
TBS
TNT
TruTV
Turner Classic Movies
Warner Bros.
Castle Rock
DC Comics
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
New Line Cinema
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
People Magazine
Viacom
MTV
Nickelodeon
VH1
BET
Comedy Central
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Country Music Television (CMT)
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
CBS Corporation
CBS Television Network
The CW (along with Time Warner)
CBS Sports Network
Showtime
TVGN
CBS Radio, Inc.
CBS Television Studios
Simon & Schuster
Infinity Broadcasting
Westwood One Radio Network
According to a report put out by Nielsen, Americans are plugging into “the matrix” more than ever before. The following is how our daily use of media breaks down by device…
Live TV: 4 hours, 31 minutes
Time-Shifted TV: 33 minutes
Radio: 1 hour, 52 minutes
DVDs: 8 minutes
Video Game Consoles: 14 minutes
Multimedia Devices (Apple TV, Roku, etc.): 13 minutes
Internet on PC: 58 minutes
Smartphone: 1 hour, 39 minutes
Tablet: 31 minutes
When you total those numbers up, it comes to 10 hours and 39 minutes.
In essence, Americans are spending most of their waking hours plugged in to something.
And if you only add together “live television” and “time-shifted television”, Americans are spending an average of more than five hours each day just watching television.
Of course many of us spend countless hours on the Internet as well. It has been estimated that 54,907 Google searches are conducted, 7,252 tweets are posted, 125,406 YouTube videos are viewed, and 2,501,018 emails are sent out every single second.
You may have guessed this already, but most of the news and information that we consume on the Internet is also controlled by the elite…
Overall, the top 10 publishers — together owning around 60 news sites — account for 47% of total online traffic to news content last year, with the next-biggest 140 publishers accounting for most of the other half, SimilarWeb found.
The biggest online news publisher for the U.S. audience was MSN, owner of MSN.com, with just over 27 billion combined page views across mobile and desktop, followed by Disney Media Networks, owner of ESPN and ABC News, with 25.9 billion.
This is why the “alternative media” is so important. All over America and all over the world, people are waking up and realizing that they aren’t getting the truth from the mainstream media, and they are hungry for truly independent sources of information.
The only way that we are ever going to be able to throw off the insidious system of control that the elite have established is by winning the information war. We are literally in a constant battle for hearts and minds, and the good news is that we have made a lot of progress. Over the past decade we have “red pilled” millions upon millions of people, but we still have a long way to go.
Faith in the corporate media is dwindling, and the elite are deeply concerned about this. The Internet has allowed ordinary people like us to communicate on a mass scale, and this has never been the case before in human history. We have a window of opportunity to fight back against the elite, and we must not let this opportunity pass us by.
October 31, 2017, is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany. This reformer was born in 1483 to a wealthy German mining family. He attended a Latin school run by a medieval lay group dedicated to the study of the Bible and graduated from the University of Erfurt, where he reportedly studied the Biblical commentaries of Nicholas de Lyra, a Christian scholar who heavily borrowed from Rashi, the famed Jewish scholar of the eleventh century. His father wanted him to become a lawyer and he was disappointed that he entered an Augustinian monastery.
A UK court has ruled that a university’s decision to expel a Christian student over his comments on homosexuality is legal.
Jesus says that He is going to build His Church that no force of evil will ever prevail against it (see Mathew 16:18). Peter also reminds us that the Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone (see1 Peter 2:4-9).
When my son David was born in 2001, I was 23 years old and blissfully optimistic about the journey into motherhood. I had read every book about pregnancy and parenting I could find. I researched the safest vehicles and car seats for our precious angel. I bought him stacks of the best books money could buy as I knew instinctively he was to be a genius. I was ready and well prepared for the road ahead.
One of Paul’s prophecies begins in a very unusual way for the Scriptures. “But understand or know this” he says in the last days will come (set in) perilous times of great stress and trouble had to deal with and hard to bear. Know this. Usually the Bible simply says, “This is the way it will be.” Be in no doubt about this.
publicly defended the informed consent principle, which was defined as a human right at the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg in 1947. 1 Informed consent means you have the right to be fully informed about the benefits and risks of a medical intervention and the freedom to make a voluntary decision about whether or not to accept those risks without being coerced or punished for the decision you make. Informed consent applies not just to risks taken by participants in scientific experiments, but also to risks taken by patients under the care of physicians. 2 3 4 5
The other side of the rainbow – Millie Fontanas story
One Super Mum’s Tales of Living and Loving
How much is your view of the world shaped by what you see on television? On average, Americans spend more than 150 hours watching television every month, and it is called “programming” for a reason.