"And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations..."
—Matthew 24:14

American churches are arguably spoiled—by their own greed and self-indulgence. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for new buildings and for gymnasiums, when Third world missions plea for assistance and missionaries go unsponsored for lack of support. When the budget is short, then missions are always the first to take the ax. And missions usually get a meager four to six percent of church budgets, if that much. What will God say of such bad stewardship? Will congregations count themselves more blessed eternally as they forsake mission work?

My observation tells me that many pastors and clergy themselves do not appreciate missions and that it is neglected in this age because of deficient church leadership. Some pastors are no less culpable than congregations for their failure to shepherd. They talk aspiring missionaries out of going abroad instead of encouraging them or discipling spiritual gifts. It should be readily apparent that churches that won't adequately financially support missions will not pray for them either.

Though, I recollect hearing a native missionary visit the U.S. to plea for assistance for a church building in the Phillipines a few year ago one night. Granted, the church he spoke at did support missionaries, hence having a missionary speak before the congregation. But the guy didn't get much of a response. It didn't help that few showed up either. Sorta sad considering how much that church specifically invested in its own infrastructure.

I do believe that a young person or young couple should make sacrifices granted, if they are considering a missionary calling then they should pay their own freight costs initially in pursuit of missions. It might mean apprenticing at their own expense with an established missionary for a season, and proving themselves worthy of such a high calling. It entails cultivating and praying for spiritual gifts; and receiving the laying on hands of elders to confirm their missionary calling. It helps though to be involved in fellowship with a congregation of believers that is mission-oriented.

Err, maybe, I should throw aside the grandiose dreams of lawyering—and go with my gut instinct God willing and go for missions. To get my feet wet, I could take up a friend's offer and take an exploratory mission trip down the road. I anticipate mockery, contempt, ridicule from my own family even, cynicism about my qualifications, and the ever famous, "You will get killed."

Arrgghhhh... I'm a Pirate. Well, not really. My dad came up with the bright idea to skip church and to go boating and fishing in Wilmington this Sunday AM. I got to pilot the boat out to sea, and he had to chicken out when the swells in the ocean were too big and there was an ominous storm cloud looming over the horizon, and instead of going trolling he decided to head back and cut the boat off and anchor and bottom-fish. So, surely enough because something can go wrong, it will go wrong. The darn engine wouldn't start up. So, we had to call Sea-Tow. In spite of my tossing out the anchor, the tide was destined to beach the boat, because the anchor was dragging across the ocean bottom. So, we're in Masonboro Inlet, right at the southern tip of Wrightsville Beach on the Pointe with this huge boat. When the boat got closer to shore my dad jumps out and made a semi-productive, but ultimately futile effort to walk her back out to sea past the tidal break line. A U.S. Coast Guard cutter appeared to be responding, but abandoned offering assistance after it established visual sight I guess and determined distress was not perilous. By the time the Sea-Tow guy arrived, we were past the point of no return, and the waves started breaking. Being inside the jetty in Masonboro Inlet lessened the impact of the waves, but the conditions were not pleasant to be in. It was dangerous. I lost my balance several times.

Then, this woman audaciously walks up from the beach passing by and asks us if we know what time it is. "I don't know," was my response. People are so common. Gee—we're quite conspiciously trying to keep the distressed 20' boat from pounding against the shore and hold her out at sea when waves are crashing down, and someone wants to know what time it is.

In spite of my never getting out of the boat, and staying on the radio, I was wet up to my waist and tossed all over the place. Apparently, no matter how big the boat, it will likely take on water when it gets past the tidal break, though it eventually drained out once we started towing it back. My cell phone was soaking wet, and I thought I lost it for a while. So, after we get the boat towed into the marine place, quite naturally it starts back up again. Go figure. Fun! Fun! I'm glad my dad has lots of money to burn on this sorta stuff. I think the marine insurance pays for the tow hopefully. So, the moral of the story is—don't skip church to go out to sea, or God will have fun with you like He did Jonah when he fled to Tarshish.

This wasn't as scary as the time we were in a storm in a 13' Boston Whaler or the time we saw a huge Sand Tiger shark though way out in the ocean.

and this weekend, we watched The Guardian on DVD. How fitting?

If we would . . . rejoice in [Christ] as triumphantly as the first Christians did; we must learn, like them to repose our entire trust in him and to adopt the language of the apostle, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ” [Gal. 6:14], “who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” [1 Cor. 1:30].
—(William Wilberforce quoted), Piper, John, Amazing Grace: In the Life of William Wilberforce, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books), p. 72.

John Piper writes:

From the beginning of his Christian life in 1785 until he died in 1833, Wilberforce lived off the “great doctrines of the gospel,” especially the doctrine of justification by faith alone based on the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. This is where he fed his joy. Because of these truths, “when all around him is dark and stormy, he can lift up an eye to Heaven, radiant with hope and glistening with gratitude.” The joy of the Lord became his strength (Neh. 8:10). And in this strength he pressed on in the cause of abolishing the slave trade until he had the victory.
—Piper, John, Amazing Grace: In the Life of William Wilberforce, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books), pp. 75-76.

We have a nice view of the tidal creek and the intracoastal waterway from this place as well.

We can sit on back balcony to relax, and catch the evening breeze.

Well, I stayed up all night to read the infamous Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution by Kevin Gutzman which just came out this past June 2007. His credentials are impressive. He received his Masters of Public Affairs from the University of Texas, along with a Juris Doctorate from the University of Texas School of Law, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia. A Texas Law professor and conservative, strict constructionist Lino Graglia has endorsed Kevin's book. I have to say I found it worthwhile reading. The author sent me his resume before it went to print. Needless to say, Kevin has quite an extensive knowledge of constitutional history and law, and an expertise on the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. His journal articles are worth researching as well. I learned a few small things, but generally, found it to be a confirmation of my long cherished beliefs about the American founding. This is the latest installment in the popular Politically Incorrect Guide series from my favorite conservative publisher Regnery.

His perspective is very much like mine, and he informed me beforehand, he embraces the sentiments of John Taylor of Caroline, presumably expressed in his 1822 New Views on the Constitution. One thing that Kevin does that is hard-hitting and accurate is stress the importance of utilizing the proceedings of the State Ratifying Conventions to ascertain original intent. The problem I have with modern constitutional historiography is that it does not accurately portray the purpose of the Philadelphia Convention or its power and authority. The ambiguous special pleadings for ratification known as the Federalist Papers while important, are frankly an overvalued window into original intent. Another historian Gottfried Dietze verifies Kevin's assertion on this point:

The split personality of the Federalist can be considered the root of the dualism that became so characteristic of American constitutional development. The disagreement over the nature of the Union may have contributed to nullification and secession or, for that matter, to the fight against these institutions. Likewise, Hamilton’s and Madison’s differing opinions on federalism were used when the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution and largely account for that Court’s oscillation between dual federalism and nationalism. Also, the author’s different conceptions of separation of powers seem to mark the beginning of a struggle between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, evident throughout American history.

The fact that the people of the several states never ratified Hamilton's opinions, and the fact that Hamilton had offered a plan for complete consolidation at Philadelphia only to leave early also discounts the value of his special pleading as the be-all and end-all summation of original intent. In Federalist #40, Madison accurately stated that the Philadelphia Convention had no authority but to draft a Constitution and its powers were "merely advisory and recommendatory." Madison also disclaimed the value of his notes and contended that we should look for original intent not in the deliberations and proceedings of the convention to draft the Constitution, but in the text itself and in the proceedings of the state ratifying conventions. Madison observed, "...the legitimate meaning of the Instrument must be derived from the text itself; or if a key is to be sought elsewhere, it must be not in the opinions or intentions of the Body which planned & proposed the Constitution, but in the sense attached to it by the people in their respective State Conventions where it received all the authority which it possesses." In point of emphasis, "all the authority which it possesses." Gutzman contends in earnest for state sovereignty, and documents that there are "lights towards true construction," of the Constitution as John Taylor has suggested. "Sovereignty is the highest degree of political power," observed Taylor, "and the establishment of a form of government, the highest proof which can be given of its existence. The states could have not reserved any rights by articles of their union, if they had not been sovereign, because they could have no rights, unless they flowed from that source. In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation. But the union possesses no innate sovereignty, like the states; it was not self-constituted; it is conventional, and of course subordinate to the sovereignties by which it was formed."

As Thomas E. Woods, Jr. notes:

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution is not another of the toothless and forgettable laments about the death of the Constitution at the hands of activist judges that we read from time to time from the right-wing pundit class, though of course Gutzman decries both of these things. This is a far more sweeping, much more fundamentally devastating indictment of the Supreme Court, of the "legal training" that raises up ever more people to perpetuate its record of dishonesty and usurpation, and of the American regime at large – which rests on the legal fictions Gutzman shreds in his book.

The official publisher's blurb from Regnery notes that the book:

• explains how the Constitution was understood by the founders who wrote it and the people who ratified it


• follows the Supreme Court as it uses the fig leaf of the Constitution to cover its naked usurpation of the rights and powers the Constitution explicitly reserves to the states and to the people


• shows how we slid from the Constitution’s republican federal government, with its very limited powers, to an unrepublican “judgeocracy” with limitless powers


• reveals how huge swaths of American law and society were remade in the wake of Supreme Court rulings


• reveals how the Fourteenth Amendment has been twisted to use the Bill of Rights as a check on state power instead of on federal power, as originally intended


• exposes the radical inconsistency between “constitutional law” and the rule of law


• contends that the judges who receive the most attention in history books are celebrated for acting against the Constitution rather than for it

Kevin captures another bittersweet reality in American constitutional history. The battle against Big Government, and the battle for constitutionally-limited government has been waged since the formative years of the American Republic. The contests provoked by the Alien and Sedition Acts and the assertion of state protest and interposition in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions manifests that reality. Though, post-Civil War Reconstruction and Comrade Roosevelt's New Deal certainly marked solid gains for the advocates of unfettered national power.

The book is basically a most profound and erudite exposition of U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence since its impetus. In fact, Madison pledged during the ratification debates that the federal government try and simply get along without federal trial courts, allowing decisions to be adjudicated in state courts. The Federal Judiciary Act of 1789 changed that reality, but parts of it were later rescinded shortly thereafter for usurping the jurisdiction of the states. Though, the U.S. Supreme Court actually took initiative to declare portions of the Act unconstitutional. Kevin documents how the framers never intended the federal judiciary to be what it is today. Judicial activism to aggrandize federal power started quite early actually. As an elder Jefferson wrote in 1821, the federal judiciary "...are in the habit of going out of the question before them, to throw an anchor ahead and grapple further hold for future advances of power. They are then in fact the corps of sappers and miners, steadily working to undermine the independent rights of the States and to consolidate all power in the hands of that government in which they have so important a freehold estate." In fact, the federal judicial efforts to usurp constitutional authority from the states was a gradual dialectical process that happened over time. As Thomas Jefferson once lamented, "The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground, and for liberty to yield."

“We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”
—Charles Evan Hughes, 1907, former chief justice

Hughes' quote above captures the arrogance of the imperialists on the federal judiciary, which really came to bloom in the twentieth-century under the auspices of the New Deal Court following FDR's court-stacking scheme coupled with the subsequent retirement of conservative justices. The fifth chapter, "The Imperial Judiciary: It Started with John Marshall," is a particularly interesting look at the work of John Marshall who shaped American constitutional law and made the U.S. Supreme Court a center of power. Marshall was the fourth Chief Justice of the United States, serving from February 4, 1801 until his death in 1835. Marshall invoked judicial review in a power grab in the famous Marbury v. Madison decision, but one could argue that it was implicit in the nature of a federal system granted. The problem was that there was no federal common law, and that federal courts were courts of limited jurisdiction. Under the American federal system, commensurate with original intent, we have two essential court systems: courts of general jurisdiction (e.g. the states) and courts of limited jurisdiction (e.g. federal courts.) In the course of time, however, this would soon changed, not by constitutional right, however, but by federal usurpation of the compact. During the ratification debates at the Virginia Convention of 1788, George Mason presciently claimed that one day the U.S. Supreme Court would swallow up the jurisdiction of the states. Mason was prophetic in that regard. By the twentieth-century, much of what law students and jurists learn in constitutional law classes might as well be called unconstitutional law.

Well, this book was preaching to the choir with me. I was familiar with much of the findings already, but it is reassuring to see others see things the way I do. We are not the crazy and radical ones, as we advocate constitutionally-limited government and restoring the Anglo-American constitutional tradition to its former prominence. Those who stand for Big Government are the radicals, however, well entrenched their political class might be in Washington, D.C. I highly recommend it for students of jurisprudence and American history. It's very straightforward, relatively easy-to-read. Though, it helps to have a little familiarity with our system of government already. Now, I need a shave, a shower and some sleep.

If You're Going Through Hell - Rodney Atkins

Watching You - Rodney Atkins

Swing - Trace Adkins

There's A Girl in Texas - Trace Adkins


Ladies Love Country Boys - Trace Adkins

Higher - Creed

My Own Prison - Creed

Everyday Is A Winding Road - Sheryl Crow

Soak Up the Sun - Sheryl Crow

The Heart of Rock and Roll - Huey Lewis and the News

How's The World Treating You - Allison Krauss and James Taylor

Small Town - John Cougar Mellencamp

Anyway - Martina McBride

Last Dollar - Tim McGraw

I Need You - Tim McGraw

It's the End of the World as We Know It - R.E.M.

Addicted to Love - Robert Palmer

Don't Come Around Here No More - Tom Petty


Teardrops on My Guitar - Taylor Swift

One Wing in the Fire - Trent Tomlinson

Jesus Take the Wheel - Carie Underwood

My friend Josh guarding the Mexican border.

This July 4th week we should give thanks to those who protect our borders—whether the Minutemen, Reservists or the Guard.

Uggh. Today is independence day where we Americans celebrate our country declaring it's independence from a tyrannical regime that taxed us too heavily at 4% only to supplant it with our own self-ruled regime that taxes us Americans at 40% two centuries later. History is full of irony.

I can hear fireworks outside. It's time to run out and play again.

Have you ever seen any of those weirdos at the mall or public places that have everything in the world pierced? Every passing year, our culture in the United States gets weirder and weirder with all of these morons getting things pierced—from their belly-buttons to the bridge of their nose to their freaking eye-brows, and who knows what else? Anyway, one wonders what happens to their children. Well, in case you're still wondering, check this poor fellow out to the right.

One wonders why this infant doesn't have lockjaw from the tetanus he contracted from all the metal in him. There are actually enormous health risks to getting things pierced from blood infections to bacterial contamination. They can affect the whole body in some cases, not just the adjacent areas of the piercings.