COUP: Obama Officials Knew Steele Dossier Was Russian Disinformation Targeting Trump

This report from Sara Carter is damning, a smoking gun or at least close to it:

Newly declassified footnotes from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December FBI report reveals that senior Obama officials, including members of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team knew the dossier compiled by a former British spy during the 2016 election was Russian disinformation to target President Donald Trump.

Further, the partially declassified footnotes reveal that those senior intelligence officials were aware of the disinformation when they included the dossier in the Obama administration’s Intelligence Communities Assessment (ICA).

Worse, as many of you remember, the Steele Dossier was used by Obama officials to get FISA warrants to spy on Donald Trump and his campaign. 

If people do not go to prison for this, it will be a grave injustice.

Sara Carter has much more on this.

The Presiding Minister of CREC Gets It on Restoring Freedoms

This morning, I was about to post on Christian leaders who are exploiting COVID-19 for ungodly causes such as letting border crashers right on in.  But I came across an open letter from the Presiding Minister of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), and I find it a much more pleasant subject.  He gets it on the need to bring the shutdowns to an end and to restore our freedoms.

Further, he nicely lets it be known that the time CREC will comply with restrictions on churches will soon come to an end:

The citizens of the United States and our congregants are already beginning to strongly feel the need to get back to regular living. While we do not currently have a date after which we will no longer comply with the extreme restrictions, we believe the time is now at hand for our leaders to stand down from the extreme isolation efforts, and the date after which we will no longer comply, is soon approaching, in days or weeks, not months.

His overall thinking on the current COVID-19 situation and on reopening the economy and society is so much in line with mine that I will post his full letter without further comment:

Dear Mr. President, Congressmen, Senators, Mayor, and Civic Leaders in the USA and Abroad, 

I am writing to you as the Presiding Minister of Council of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), an International Denomination. 

We have been praying for you and continue to do so. May the Lord grant you His wisdom as you make decisions in this time of trial. 

First of all, thank you for the care and concern you have shown for the citizens who elected you, and for your attempt to do what you believed to be best for the public good in light of the available information at the time.  

It is now apparent that our initial information was incomplete. The pandemic is not what we all thought it was going to be. This is understandable. It was new. We all thought it was a dire threat and we all responded to protect the lives of our citizens, and our congregants, as we should have. It is now clear that the stated rationale for these temporary, emergency actions, “to flatten the curve”, has been achieved, and that these temporary measures are no longer necessary. If we continue on the current course of action of extreme mitigation, things may get much worse, as we fear they most certainly will.  

President Trump was right to say that the cure cannot be worse than the disease. In fact, it is. The pandemic did not justify putting millions of people out of work and locking down businesses and churches for the indefinite future. It is now time to open up for business, return to work and return to the worship of the Triune God.  

While Covid-19 is among us and members of our churches have been harmed by the disease, the much larger damage to our members has been done by cutting off the means of supporting the lives of their families. In our churches, we have few Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations or deaths. However, we have many people whose ability to support the lives of their families has been greatly damaged through the loss of wages and damage to their businesses. For us, the cure has been far worse than the disease. 

We encourage you to consider the immense damage that will be caused by continuing down this current path of a closed economy. The lost livelihoods, closed businesses, and the isolation of our congregants, is a tremendous loss to the health and well-being of our society. This damage will only worsen the longer we stay on the present course of sheltering in place and keeping the economy and houses of worship closed. Dangerous social unrest is the likely result of staying on this course. 

We have a great concern for the lives and health of our members as well as those in our communities. Many in our churches are elderly or are in a high-risk category for Covid-19. Those individuals and their families, pastors, leaders and physicians, are the ones to make the best decisions about how they should live during the spread of this disease. If this were a great plague, a direct threat to the health and lives of all of our congregants, as many of us initially thought it was, we would be glad to continue to comply with reasonable measures to mitigate the spread. However, it is now clear that it is not the plague and we are not prepared to continue to comply with extreme mitigation efforts.

Our desire is to be obedient to the civil magistrate. However, we must also do what we believe God expects of us, what is best for our people and our communities, and what our consciences dictate. For our American members, The U.S. Constitution rightly affords us these rights of speech and assembly because they extend to us from God, Himself.

  The citizens of the United States and our congregants are already beginning to strongly feel the need to get back to regular living. While we do not currently have a date after which we will no longer comply with the extreme restrictions, we believe the time is now at hand for our leaders to stand down from the extreme isolation efforts, and the date after which we will no longer comply, is soon approaching, in days or weeks, not months.

  Our response in the churches has been to humble ourselves, confess our sins, the sins of the church and the sins of our citizens and governments. Please join us in humbling yourselves before the Lord Jesus.  

We call upon the grace and mercy of God to give us relief. Death is an enemy, the last enemy that will be destroyed by the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We acknowledge this. While we despise death, we do not fear death, because for us, to live is Christ and to die is gain. May God grant us repentance, and as we confess and repent of our many sins, we trust that He will be gracious to us and heal our land. 

In the service of King Jesus, 

Virgil Hurt 

Presiding Minister of Council Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC)

Democrat Governor of Kentucky Vows to Quarantine Easter Churchgoers

One nice thing about COVID-19 is that it is revealing who the totalitarians are, both among busybody neighbors and tyrannical politicians.

Take Democrat Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, please.  Go to church services in Kentucky tomorrow Easter Sunday, and he will try to slap a 14-day quarantine on you.

“We’re having to take a new action, and I hoped that we wouldn’t, and it’s that any individual that’s going to participate in a mass gathering of any type that we know about this weekend we’re going to record license plates and provide it to local health departments.

“Local health departments are going to come to your door with an order for you to be quarantined for 14 days,” Beshear said.

This has a bright side as well.  Beshear may have just guaranteed he will be a one-term governor.

But if we real Americans do not fight back against the tyranny that is using the coronavirus as its latest pretence, our freedoms may be short lived as well.

The “Bishop” of London Crucifies Again the Body of Christ

On Good Friday, almost 2000 years ago, both religious and secular authorities attempted to silence Jesus of Nazareth and to do so permanently.

They failed.

Yet through the centuries, they keep trying.  Various authorities, both secular and religious, have time and again sought to silence Holy Church, the Body of Christ.

They have failed again and again and again.  Jesus lives and reigns, and His Holy Church lives and reigns with him even though it may not seem so at times.

There is little question that those of a totalitarian mindset are trying to use the COVID-19 pandemic to silence the church and drive it out of the public square.  The Democrat Mayor of New York even threatened churches that do not comply with his edicts with permanent closure.

Yet in some ways the church is flourishing as it struggles in the midst of this pandemic both to do its part to guard public health and to do its duty for spiritual health.  Livestreams of excellent worship abound.  The glories of traditional Anglicanism especially are getting new and more widespread audiences.

But the petty totalitarians do not want to abide even that.  People, though a very few, are STILL going to churches and even livestreaming their worship?  How dare they!

Never mind that multitudes go to grocery stores and liquor stores and use mass transit where there is far greater risk of getting the coronavirus. The use of church buildings for worship is non-essential, don’t you know.

In London, one very small loophole was allowed.  If a priest lived on the premises of a church with internal access to the sanctuary, he could use the church building and livestream from it:

Because there are a very few churches in London Diocese where the church is accessible by an internal door from the clergy home, or can be accessed from the clergy home without leaving the curtilage of the church, we will encourage those – and only those – clergy to pray in their churches privately and to consider whether they could live stream their services from within the church building.

Peter Anthony of St. Benet’s Kentish Town was among those utilizing this loophole in a most winsome manner.  Fortunately, he recorded the Good Friday liturgy in his church when he still could.

For now he cannot without disobeying authority.  After the bleatings of the petty totalitarians, even that loophole has been taken away by the London College of “Bishops,” and that during Holy Week of all times:

…we are asking the limited numbers of you to whom the above applied, to stop all live streaming from your church buildings for the time being.

It feels extremely hard to ask this of you, this week of all weeks.  But you will know that some people believe that being in our churches to stream, even if it is accessed by a door in your home, is encouraging others to want to travel to their church, and for others to ask for churches to be open to the public. [GOD FORBID that people would ask for their churches to be open!! – ed.] We would not want to be seen to encourage any laxity in the requirement to stay indoors except for designated reasons, because this will save lives, and protect the NHS.

Thus, with the flimsiest of excuses, the “Bishop” of London seeks all the more to muzzle the church.  As if solitary priests livestreaming from their churches endangers lives and the NHS.

Well, apostate religious authorities attempted to use their authority and secular authority to silence Jesus, and that too on dubious pretences.  We should not be surprised when apostate “bishops” attempt to silence Holy Church and its faithful priests. 

We shall not be silenced.  We must not be silenced.  For, yes, lives are at stake.

For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the samesufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. (2 Cor. 1: 5,6)

Southern Baptist Coup?

Imagine, if you will, the uproar and outrage if President Trump used the coronvirus as a pretence to delay the November elections a full year and to stay in full power as President of the United State for that year.

It seems Southern Baptist Convention President J. D. Greear has pulled pretty much the same sort of coup.

It is certainly understandable, even advisable, for the Southern Baptists not to have their convention this year.  What is not understandable is for him to remain President of the SBC for the additional year until the next convention with the full exercise of the powers of that office.  The appointment powers of the SBC President are particularly important.  Will Greear use those to stack further the leadership of the SBC?

Could the Southern Baptists not had an online vote to elect a new President?  Or could not Mr. Greear had vowed not to use most or all of the powers of the office during this additional year?

Now perhaps he may come around to seeing that putting aside those powers is the right thing to do. But I’ve seen no indication that he has or will.  And I have looked around and asked around including asking Greear himself.

Will you refrain from using some of the powers of a #SBC president such as appointment powers? What will you do to alleviate the concerns of those who see this as a power grab?

— WannabeAnglican (@WannabeAnglican) March 30, 2020

I will keep my ears open and will post again if Greear does the right thing.  But there is no indication of that so far.  Instead, he gave a long tedious speech about “putting the Gospel above all.”  I did not hear a word about him putting the Gospel above his own power.

But is there any outrage from among Baptists?  Not much that I’ve noticed.  Some are even cheerleading it, including Dwight McKissic.

Watching the convention debate resolution 9 & the unprecedented abhorrent act against Pastor David Uth & the dear sister scheduled to do the poetic speech would have been observing the SBC return to their original sins. God spared the SBC & America of this pending atrocity. https://t.co/ebGnXAjmif

— Dwight McKissic (@pastordmack) March 25, 2020

You know he would not be cheerleading an unelected free year for Trump.  Heck, he will probably rant if Trump gets reelected fair and square.  But an unelected free year for his side in the SBC?  He has the gall to thank God for that.

I will leave aside, at least for now, what I would do if I were a Southern Baptist.  But I will remind my Baptist brethren that a big reason the mainline Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches went liberal and apostate is because most of the people in the pews were spineless wimps who did nothing when church leadership engaged in the outrageous.

Go and do not likewise.

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NOTE:  No, I do not think Trump would ever use a pandemic to stay in power an additional year.  And I would oppose any President pulling a stunt like that . . . although I admit I love it when Trump trolls the paranoid Left that he will be in power for decades and decades. 

I am much more worried about Democrats using the coronavirus to steal the election as they have already attempted.

Cardinal Pell Acquitted on Appeal (UPDATED)

I am very glad to see that the conviction of Cardinal Pell has been overturned by the High Court of Australia.  More than that, the Court has acquitted him.

I’ve long thought his conviction did not pass the smell test.

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More on the overturn of the unjust Pell conviction.

Esau McCaulley Promotes Black ACNA Zoom Meeting

Esau McCaulley is promoting a Black ACNA clergy and laity Zoom meeting to be held on Good Friday. This from the ACNA Facebook page:

Just flip the color to white, and you will see one reason this is problematic.  The date chosen has me scratching my head as well. 

And how calling an intentionally monochrome meeting promotes “a more diverse Anglicanism” is beyond me.  No, I am not woke.