|
| | | | |
| Pastor Mathias | | Ms. Brunell - Executive Director | | Mr. Gaffney - Managing Director | | Ms. Helmers - Managing Director | | | |
| Mr. Flynn - Senior Director | | Mr. Bolton - Director | | Ms. Irwin - Director | | Mr. James - Director | | Mr. Levine - Director | | Ms. Radewicz - Director | | Mr. Rodgers - Director | | Mr. Shea - Director | | Mr. Widmyer - Director | | | |
| Ms. Avery | | Ms. Baird | | Ms. Baker | | Ms. Bray | | Ms. Burns | | Ms. Coffey | | Ms. Crane | | Mr. David | | Ms. Drew | | | |
| Mr. Dunlap | | Mr. Ewing | | Mr. Farley | | Ms. Finley | | Mr. Friedman | | Ms. Gay | | Ms. Hahn | | Ms. Hobbs | | Ms. Holder | | | |
| Mr. Horton | | Ms. Lee | | Mr. Maddox | | Ms. Perez | | Ms. Rollins | | Ms. Smith | | Ms. Smith | | Ms. Weslin | | Mr. Wilkerson | | | | | | M.R. Mathias - Ambassador |
|
| |  | | | Randy E. Barnett | Biography | U.S. Constitution | Randy E. Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and is Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States’ Attorney’s Office in Chicago. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies, Professor Barnett has been a visiting professor at Penn, Northwestern and Harvard Law School.
Professor Barnett’s publications includes twelve books, more than one hundred articles and reviews, as well as numerous op-eds. His most recent book is Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People (HarperCollins, 2016). His other books include:
Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (Princeton, 2d ed. 2014)
The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (Oxford, 2d. ed 2014)
A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (co-authored) (Palgrave, 2013)
Contracts: Cases and Doctrine (Wolters Kluwer, 5th ed. 2012)
Constitutional Law: Cases in Context (Wolters Kluwer, 2nd ed. 2013)
The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Contracts (Oxford 2010)
In 2004, he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzalez v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2012, he was one of the lawyers representing the National Federation of Independent Business in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Recently, he appeared on PBS’s Constitution USA with Peter Sagal; and he portrayed a prosecutor in the 2010 science-fiction feature film, InAlienable. [More] | |  |
| |  | | | Our Republican Constitution — Randy E. Barnett | A concise history of the long struggle between two fundamentally opposing constitutional traditions, from one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars—a manifesto for renewing our constitutional republic.
The Constitution of the United States begins with the words: “We the People.” But from the earliest days of the American republic, there have been two competing notions of “the People,” which lead to two very different visions of the Constitution.
Those who view “We the People” collectively think popular sovereignty resides in the people as a group, which leads them to favor a “democratic” constitution that allows the “will of the people” to be expressed by majority rule. In contrast, those who think popular sovereignty resides in the people as individuals contend that a “republican” constitution is needed to secure the pre-existing inalienable rights of “We the People,” each and every one, against abuses by the majority.
In Our Republican Constitution, renowned legal scholar Randy E. Barnett tells the fascinating story of how this debate arose shortly after the Revolution, leading to the adoption of a new and innovative “republican” constitution; and how the struggle over slavery led to its completion by a newly formed Republican Party. Yet soon thereafter, progressive academics and activists urged the courts to remake our Republican Constitution into a democratic one by ignoring key passes of its text. Eventually, the courts complied.
Drawing from his deep knowledge of constitutional law and history, as well as his experience litigating on behalf of medical marijuana and against Obamacare, Barnett explains why “We the People” would greatly benefit from the renewal of our Republican Constitution, and how this can be accomplished in the courts and the political arena. [More] | | |
| |  | | | Video Main Index | Video | ActsAmerica.org | | We are excited that you have found these Video Sermons of anointed preaching and teaching that has come across the pulpit from the heart of God to His people. You will doubtless find in these messages a consistent theme: the dealings of the Lord to bring a people into a surrendered, crucified life in Christ. This is the call from heaven and the message we must proclaim, that Christ in you is the hope of glory and man is not the center as humanism has so forcefully asserted. May the Lord prosper the hearing of the Word in your ears. We pray that you are blessed with the blessedness that Jesus promised to all those who will not stop short at the hearing of the Word of God, but will go on to become faithful doers. [More] | | |
| |  | | | Testimony of Prayer & God's Provision : ActsAmerica.org | | Acts America.org is the online ministry of New Covenant Outreach, Inc. The ministry is located in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Everything on this website is meant to be an extension of what God is doing in and through the ministry in Goldsboro. This website comes from a call of God to raise awareness around this nation that there is a voice of Truth which can still be heard crying out in America. In the midst of the darkness of this nation's moral midnight, you can still find a house where the Word of God and Truth is preached with Clarity and Passion! [More] | | |
| | | | | | Real reasons for the Civil War: | This is well-reasoned document concerning the reasons the Civil War occurred.
Many people think the Civil War of 1860-1865 was fought over one issue alone, slavery. Nothing could actually be further from the truth. The War Between the States began because the South demanded States' rights and were not getting them.
The Congress at that time heavily favored the industrialized northern states to the point of demanding that the South sell is cotton and other raw materials only to the factories in the north, rather than to other countries. The Congress also taxed the finished materials that the northern industries produced heavily, making finished products that the South wanted, unaffordable. The Civil War should not have occurred. If the Northern States and their representatives in Congress had only listened to the problems of the South, and stopped these practices that were almost like the taxation without representation of Great Britain, then the Southern states would not have seceded and the war would not have occurred.
I know for many years, we have been taught that the Civil War was all about the abolition of slavery, but this truly did not become a major issue, with the exception of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, until after the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, when Abraham Lincoln decided to free the slaves in the Confederate States in order to punish those states for continuing the war effort. The war had been in progress for two years by that time.
Most southerners did not even own slaves nor did they own plantations. Most of them were small farmers who worked their farms with their families. They were fighting for their rights. They were fighting to maintain their lifestyle and their independence the way they wanted to without the United States Government dictating to them how they should behave.
Why are we frequently taught then, that the Civil War, War of Northern Aggression, War Between the States, or whatever you want to call it, was solely about slavery? That is because the history books are usually written by the winners of a war and this war was won by the Union. However, after following my family around since I was just a year old to Civil War Living History scenarios in Gettysburg and elsewhere, I have listened to both sides of the story, from those portraying historical figures, both Union and Confederate. Through listening to these people and also reading many different books, including some of the volumes of The Official Records of the Civil War, Death in September, The Insanity of It All, Every Day Life During the Civil War, and many others, I have come to the conclusion that the Civil War was about much more than abolishing the institution of slavery.
It was more about preserving the United States and protecting the rights of the individual, the very tenets upon which this country was founded. I personally think that the people who profess that the Civil War was only fought about slavery have not read their history books. I really am glad that slavery was abolished, but I don't think it should be glorified as being the sole reason the Civil War was fought. There are so many more issues that people were intensely passionate about at the time. Slavery was one of them, but it was not the primary cause of the war. The primary causes of the war were economics and states' rights.
Slavery was a part of those greater issues, but it was not the reason the Southern States seceded from the Union, nor fought the Civil War. It certainly was a Southern institution that was part of the economic system of the plantations, and because of that, it was part and parcel of the economic reasons that the South formed the Confederacy. The economic issue was one of taxation and being able to sell cotton and other raw materials where the producers wanted to, rather than where they were forced to, and at under inflated prices. Funny, it sounds very much like the reason we broke from Great Britain to begin with. The South was within their rights, but there should have been another way to solve the problem. If they had been willing to listen to Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the war could have been avoided. Lincoln had a plan to gradually free the slaves without it further hurting the plantation owners. He also had a plan to allow them to sell their products anywhere they wanted to and at a fair price. They did not choose to listen to the President, however, so they formed the Confederacy and the Civil War began.
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." Sam Adams: terrorist, patriot, and public enemy #1.
OUR GRAVEST threat is the Zionist Occup [More] | | |
| |  | | | On The Eighth Day God Made Texas - Tea Party Tribune - Tea Party Tribune | On the eighth day God made Texas. I found it in the Bible!
And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
Then God began to consider. Looking at all He had made, and the man, and the animals, the rocks, the trees, oceans, and the fish therein, and He saw that something was still missing. For God knew man for what he was, and knew that man would stray like a child in a school yard. There needed to be one place, one people, who while being flawed, and would make mistakes, would still retain God’s original plan, and be willing to act on it, so on the eighth day God made Texas!
As you know, I spent some time in Utah recently. I studied the culture there, enjoyed the mountains, met the people, and found a society that had evolved from a hardy pioneer stock to populate an area that no man in his right mind would even have a second thought about. I returned home, and as luck would have it, I ended up on my porch alone last night, and that’s never good because I begin to think. My night progressed to YouTube and I first researched the Great Salt Lake. Yeah, I’m boring, but I’m old, bear with me. Then I watched a slew of stuff on Joseph Smith, including what looked like the Disney version of his life. Yeah, I watched the whole movie. The night wound up with a presentation by some guy who was a former Satanist, turned Mormon, and then got “born again.” (Wait for it.)
This learned gentleman went through great lengths to slander Smith, and finally produced his “proof” that the Devil had inspired Brigham Young to draw up the Blue Prints for the Salt Lake Temple. Ok, I’m just a Simple Ol’ Boy From Austin, but I did have a twelve pack so I continued. That was. . . special. I notice little things. Real things. And the more beer I drink, the more I notice. Hey, it’s a “Texas” thing. One thing I noticed was this cat did an entire segment lambasting the LDS “Garment.” Now, for the uninformed the “garment” is a form of underwear worn by Mormons for a physical reminder of the adherence to their beliefs. They have these little symbols on them, and there is an entire ritual concerning the wearing of this cloth. Well, first he tore into the symbols, going back to Babylon or someplace, but finally settled on the Masons. (This is my surprised face.) If you ever want to see a religious nut go off, just bring up the Masons. Anyway, he cited Bible verse after Bible verse showing how God hates underwear. I’m listening to this idiot, but still couldn’t help but wonder how Marie Osmond looked in her underwear. I digress.
Then, an angel appeared unto me. I looked upon the angel, and the angel was magnificent. Funny thing about angels is that you can never tell if they are male or female, what with the long blonde hair, the fair features. I suspect this was a California angel. Anyway, I walked up to the angel and I said, “What?” And the angel got holy, and powerful, and resounded-duh. And the angel said, “Look at that fool’s head!” So, I did. On top of his head was this little beany kinda like Spanky used to wear in the Little Rascals. So here’s this hypocrite ranting and raving about someone’s drawers while he’s wearing a religious symbol of his own right on top of his head. Wisdom comes in small doses, folks. He ended his lecture with the conclusion that the Mormons were in a vast conspiracy to take over the world, with the cooperation of the Devil of course, and would move the Oval Office to a Mormon Temple in DC about a block or two from the White House. (You can’t make this stuff up, people.) That, and Joseph Smith set this all up on some hill in New York one hundred and ninety-three years ago. I can get this same kind of nonsense out of Frenchi if I run a few shots of Tequila through her, and I’m quite sure she looks a lot better in her underwear than he looks in his!
I called it a night, but this morning I caught a Charlie Daniels video Pale Horse, and that scared the pee out of me all good and proper. Ok, let’s cut to the core. Let me do a refresher for you from Wilbur 101. There is a God Hole in everyone’s head. People try to explain their situation by filling that hole. Now, there is a creative force in the universe, and if you don’t believe that just try to make a leaf. Left on its own, this pretensity will lead to millions of conclusions, all different, all filling the hole with whatever. Religious thought is organic. When the dots don’t connect, just make more dots. Let’s look at some facts, shall we?
Fact: The man in the lecture never changed. He just tra [More] | | |
| | | | | | Christ for all Nations - Bouake, Ivory Coast | | No description would be adequate to convey the extent of what just happened a few minutes ago. First of all, the field was packed tonight with more than 210,000 people! That’s a third of the population of the whole city. When I asked how many were attending for the first time, it was the majority of the crowd. That means that literally most of the city heard the Gospel this week (with combined attendance)! Pastors told us that their churches were packed to overflowing this morning – so much so, they thought they would have to turn people away. [More] | | |
| |  | | | The First One Hundred Years of Christianity in Jerusalem | Essene GATE | Essene gate in Jerusalem was unearthed by Bargil Pixner and Doren Chen in 1977. They established that the wall and gate date to the first century, and the gate fit exactly that mentioned by Josephus as the "gate of the Essenes." Much scholarly research in the years since has focused on the Essene gate. It is the closest entry in the city that leads to the area of the Cenacle (the upper room) believed to be the place of the first Christian community in Jerusalem. Scholars now agree that Essenes occupied this site during the first century of the common era. It is believed that the guest house adjoining the Essene quarter was used by Jesus and his apostles to celebrate the last supper.
Immediately after the death of Jesus, his followers returned to the upper room. It was here that Jesus appeared to them on Easter Sunday, and it was here that the Pentecost event took place. It was here that the first Christian community established itself under the leadership of the family of Jesus. This was the beginning of the Jewish Christianity in Jerusalem.
Many scholars see strong evidence of a connection between the Essenes and this community. Pharisees and Sadducees are frequently referred to in the Gospels, but the Essenes are not so easily recognized. One has to look closely to see that they are referred to as "devout men" and appear several times. The aged Simeon in the temple is called a devout man. Acts 2:5 mentions that "there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven." Acts 8:2 tells that "Some devout men buried Stephen, and made loud lamentation." It was an assembly of "devout" men who recognized the fact that Peter had a message of the Lord. "But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city" (Acts.13.50). Ananias in Antioch was a devout man (Acts 22:12).
Essenes are the "devout men." These "devout men" had been supporters of the Maccabees who had ousted the Greeks from Israel in about 180 B.C.E.and who had taken over the kingship of Israel under the name of the Hasmoneans. The devout group had been great supporters of the Hasmoneans but in 152 when Jonathan Hasmoneaon took over the high priesthood in Jerusalem, their support ended. This was their domain. Essene priests claimed to be the sons of Zadok (the chief priest of David’s son, Solomon) and as such were the legitimate heirs to the High Priesthood of the temple. Simon, who was the current high priest, (referred to as the Teacher of Righteousness in the scrolls), declared the sacrificial offering in the temple to be illegitimate. He and his followers went off to the desert (a place of purification) to prepare a way for the coming of the Messiah. They regarded themselves as the sons of light fighting against the sons of darkness (evil) to establish the rule (kingdom) of God.
The Essenes prepared for the coming of the Messiah by practicing severe aestheticism and by being strict observers of the law. They no longer had access to the temple and its sacrifice. They substituted baptism for sacrifice by immersing themselves several times a day in the mikveh. By doing this, they were reforming their lives and moving from sacrifice of goats and sheep to leading moral lives.
Since the discovery of their diary in 1947 and the archaeological digs done at Qumran and the Essene quarter of Jerusalem, we now know a great deal about them. They lived in celibate communities at Batanea, Qumran, and Jerusalem. They had community rules and a hierarchy of twelve men of holiness to govern them. Their overseer, Magabakeer, was elected by lot unlike other groups. They prayed three times a day, at sunrise, noon, and sunset (mainline Jews prayed in the Temple only once a day). They celebrated a communal meal presided over by a priest. They shared everything in common.
Josephus and Philo of Alexandria suggest that there were about 4000 Essenes. There could not have been more than 200 of them at Qumran. Many now regard Qumran as a type of Essene university where their main occupation was the study of Scripture (they were particularly fond of Isaiah and Amos).
They also lived in groups of ten in villages all over Palestine, earned their living as best they could (possibly as day laborers), and pooled their resources. They catered to the needs of the marginalized and established houses for the poor who took in destitute young girls, widows, and young boys who were then trained for a career. There were Essene villages dotted around the country. Yigal Yadin says that Bethany where Martha and Mary and Lazarus lived was an Essene village. We know that Simon the leper lived there. We know from the Damascus Document that some were married.
Essenes were known for healing by the laying on of hands. In Alexandria, they were called Theraputea. The Essene calendar had 364 days. This meant that Passover always fell on a Wednesday; the first day of the month was a Wednesday [More] | | |
|
|
M.R. Mathias 
