Scott Lively Ministries

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but it’s not the intention that condemns you, it’s thinking you can produce any good by turning away from God and toward Hell in the pursuit of your goal. The poster boy for that truism is Karl Marx.

His good intention was to help the poor by getting the super-rich to share their wealth. The impulse was as noble as the excesses of the European monarchies were obscene, and the plight of the poor was heartbreaking.

His fatal error was rejecting the effectual guidance of the Bible in favor of his own godless system of state confiscation and forced redistribution of private property. That hell-bound ideology has produced more death and misery than any other human invention.

But does Marxism’s evil negate Marx’s original good intention or justify the defense of the super-rich who greedily hoard their vast wealth for themselves?

Remember, there are more than two choices, here. We can reject the false choice of capitalism vs socialism and follow the Biblical model instead, where good intentions are always fulfilled by following Jesus Christ. He set the example of charity and laid out clear ethical guidelines for shaping our actions and character to be more like Him.

Yesterday, a man characterized my approval of Marx’s good intention as “Communism,” making the common mistake of equating criticism of selfish hoarding with rejection of private property rights. The Marxists equate those ideas to recruit Socialist foot-soldiers. The predatory corporatists and greedy super-rich equate those ideas to recruit unthinking serfs to defend their castles.

But Biblically “woke” Christians recognize that God gives us both private property rights AND the ethical duty to voluntarily bless others with what we have.

The more we blindly polarize as Socialists vs Capitalists, aligning with either the armies of “social justice” zealots or the oligarchy of the super-rich, the faster they drive our constitutional republic down the road to hell.

Motivated by the Biblical worldview, America’s Founders envisioned a nation that furthered the advance of “civilization” by pursuing God’s goodness in public policy. They set our path toward that Shining City on a Hill. If we break free from the enfeebling Marxist nomenclature of “capitalists” and “conservatives” and start thinking and acting like Constitutionalists, we can take back the steering wheel, pull a U-turn, and get back to pursuing the Founders’ inspiring vision.

This essay builds upon my recent WND column which addressed the false choice of “progressive” vs “conservative” political affiliation, and exposed it as a tactic of psychological-manipulation-through-rhetoric by the Marxists, designed to trap the people of God into a “tide of history” mind-set, in order to neutralize our resistance to their campaign to replace Judeo-Christian civilization with a “Socialist Utopia.”

The best way to break free from a trap is to know how it was constructed, so today’s column delves deeper into political history.

The origins of left/right progressive/conservative polarization come from France during its revolutionary period that started in the 1790s. The French Revolution, like the American Revolution, was ultimately a war by the “lower classes” against the top-down rulership of European monarchies.

Crying “No King but Jesus,” the children of the First Great Awakening (1740s) in America (many of them Christian clergy of the “Black Robed Regiment” https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24635 ) won that war in 1776, creating the world’s first, best and longest lasting constitutional republic: a non-sectarian Bible-based model embraced by theists and deists alike that ended both rule by Monarchy and formal class distinctions.

The French, however, associated Christianity with the corrupt Roman Catholic system then undergirding the French monarchy and thus rejected the Judeo-Christian framework of the American model. Instead, they invented a new humanistic state religion that blended paganism and occultism with deism, allowing them to justify a demonic orgy of mass murder of aristocrats, clergymen, and others, called the Reign of Terror.

The French Republic which emerged from the revolution was forced back under Catholicism by Napoleon and pursued a pre-Marxist proto-socialist agenda (which Pope Francis would probably have loved). That ended with the “June Insurrection” of 1848 in which ten thousand unemployed workers were slaughtered by the government for protesting a subsistence-level “welfare” program.

Two facts from that period are critical:

First, the Communist Manifesto (1848) by Karl Marx and Frederick Engles was translated to French and published in Paris a few weeks before the June Insurrection.

Second, the French parliament in 1848 was a political battlefield pitting the “Party of Movement” (progenitors of the progressives) against the “Party of Order” (the pro-Royalist “conservatives”). The Party of Movement sat on the left and the Party of Order sat on the right in their assembly hall.

So the framework for the Marxist “tide of history” narrative in which they play the “progressive” heroes fighting for freedom and liberty for the oppressed, and we’re the “conservatives” defending the status quo of privilege for the rich and powerful, embodies the spirit and perspective of the French Revolution, not the American Revolution.

What is the primary difference between the two revolutions that produced such stunningly different results? Allegiance to the God of the Bible!

Americans overwhelmingly prospered by aligning ourselves to God in our constitution and culture until 1947 when our Supreme Court replaced the Bible with Secular Humanism (the religion of Marxism) as our religious foundation. Since then our freedoms and culture have been smothered by ever creeping (sometimes leaping) Socialism.
Now, just as identifying as “conservatives” ensnares us in the Marxist trap of being “foot-dragging defenders of the status quo” instead of proactive visionaries of a God-honoring “Shining City on a Hill,” so does our blind and unqualified defense of “capitalism” (as the term is used today) ensnare us in the role of shielding the globalist super-rich from scrutiny and accountability.

Socialism vs Capitalism is a self-defeating false choice for “conservatives” because it frames the public policy debate in Humanist terms. Both Socialism and Capitalism reflect Darwinist premises: Socialism emphasizes human-driven evolution toward utopian perfection (measured by the advance of egalitarianism), while pure Capitalism emphasizes hands-off economic “survival of the fittest” as the alternate path toward the same goal (measured by technological advancement). Both reject the notion of God’s active guidance of humanity in favor of the Humanist doctrine of human-self-perfectibility.

Both Socialism and Capitalism contain enough elements of the Biblical worldview to lure well-intentioned members of the religious left and religious right into fighting about their respective merits and shortcomings. Thus, once again the Humanist elites use the tactic of polarization to divide and conquer the masses by getting us to believe that predatory corporatism and governmental socialism are our only choices: always keeping public policy debate focused on the fight between the two camps (both of which they control at the top level). It’s just another version of the Dem Blue Team vs GOP Red Team tactic of the Purple Uniparty that we fall for every election cycle.

In contrast, the Biblical model of economics assumes all wealth is God’s and the duty of every human being is ethical stewardship of whatever portion He puts in our hands, to maximize the blessing for all. And the Biblical legal principles for preventing multi-generational hoarding by self-serving family dynasties are limitations on usury and the cyclical Jubilee system of debt-liberation.

Shamefully, we modern Christians are so Biblically illiterate that most of us can’t even grasp how Biblical economics works, let alone articulate its fundamentals as an alternative to the Socialist/Capitalist paradigm. Indeed, we are so heavily steeped in the Marxists’ corrupt logic that even we Christians will fall immediately into squabbling about “forced redistribution of wealth through taxation” vs “the duty of society to care for the poor and needy” as if those are the only options.

We would never have been engulfed in this swamp of false choices had we not first surrendered the culture to “secularism,” which is just the religion of Humanism by another name. To reclaim America we must stop letting the Humanists define reality for us by submitting to their false logical presuppositions, and instead openly and unapologetically champion Biblical wisdom as the solution to social and fiscal problems. Truth will prevail only if those who know the truth resume our duty to defend and teach it.

As a cultural tradition Christmas is a great holiday, but as a representation of Christianity to the world it teaches more mythology than it does Bible truth and I’m not just talking about Santa Claus.

I don’t want to “spoil Christmas” for the believers who love the Christmas mythology we’ve grown up with, but let me remind everyone that God’s reality is ALWAYS far more satisfying, edifying and “magical” than any human-created alternatives. And the parts of a story that misrepresent facts cannot be from God, because “it is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18).

Let’s start with unpacking the word “magical” by talking about the “Magi from the East.” In the cartoonish version we’ve grown used to, the Magi are like Disney’s fairy godmother, popping in with a few gifts for the newborn Jesus to highlight his royalty, then disappearing. Their actual identity and significance is glossed over, despite tantalizing clues from Bible history that highlight a mystery far more captivating than Hollywood could invent. The scriptural facts even explain why Mickey Mouse’s peaked hat in The Sorcerers Apprentice is adorned with stars and planets.

Then there’s the false depiction of Jesus as a newborn when the Magi arrived, when the Bible clearly reports that he was a toddler. Consider the fascinating implications of the actual communication possible between a two-year old Jesus and those who came to honor and adore Him. Every parent and grandparent knows how very different it is to spend time with a toddler than with a newborn. Think how different Christmas would be if we talked about Jesus as a real boy and not a baby doll.

OK, so maybe conflating events in Nativity Scenes can be excused as artistic license, but not unless our telling of the fuller Christmas story corrects the error, which it usually doesn’t.

Then there’s December 25th. Was Jesus actually born then, and if not, when, and why pretend?

There are more questions to be asked but my point is that people with a true Biblical worldview don’t settle for faith-weakening mythology because the true facts of the Bible are far more interesting – and faith building!

And it’s our willingness to accept and perpetuate mythology over Bible truth that has ridiculously morphed into the Santa Clause narrative we’re now stuck defending as symbolic of our faith.

While Americans were sleeping (literally), Thursday night’s unfolding UK election results brought a massive victory for Boris Johnson’s pro-Brexit conservatives and the worst loss for the anti-Brexit progressives since 1935! Dr. Lively woke early to do an interview with a British TV network based in Spain on those results as they were finalized (below). He then filmed the above video to explain the enormous geopolitical implications of that vote, and its likely effect on the 2020 US elections.

Dr. and Mrs. Lively conducted a personal world tour through 27 countries in 2015 and 2016 to assess and assist the populist/conservative movement and went to London for the express purpose of being in country for the original game-changing Brexit vote. They returned from Europe that November to vote for the even more significant election of Donald Trump. Dr. Lively asserts based on his personal research that the fates of Brexit, Trump and Netanyahu in Israel are intimately interrelated.

Search “Brexit” on this blog for numerous Brexit-related articles.

We’ve Been Duped Into An Unwinnable Debate On Terms Our Opponents Control

Ever stop to consider the implications of calling ourselves “conservative” and our opponents “progressive?” Or why our national conversation assumes that the so-called “tide of history” is an actual phenomenon (that always seems to move leftward)? Or why our typical arguments for opposing leftist policies include the admission “Society is not ready for that yet?”

Why don’t “conservatives” project and pursue our own vision for the future in which our value system is fully implemented? Can we even picture such a future society clearly in our minds, or is that space filled only with nostalgia for the past?

On the political front, why isn’t every leftist policy proposal countered by one pushing to the right, but instead merely resisted by our side – even though we all know politicians operate in the realm of compromise between what is and what’s demanded, and thus actual policy changes almost always ratchet leftward?

In a society dominated by a trillion-dollar industry of year-round competitive sports, how can the conservative movement fail to teach its people that a team with no offense can never actually win a series, but at best only delay the other side from winning?

Why is it that we routinely call liberals “leftist” but hesitate to call our own positions “rightist,” implicitly bolstering the left’s false narrative that “right-wing” equals white supremacy and fascism? (Especially galling since both these ideologies are actually leftist!)

Could the answer to all these questions be simply that we’ve been duped by the progressives into playing a game of their invention we are absolutely guaranteed to lose?

That’s a very humbling notion, to say the least. But if its true, and we’re too proud to admit it, we’ll remain hopelessly ensnared in their trap. As the Scripture warns in Luke 16:8 “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.” If we could accept that reminder, and trust the Holy Spirit to guide our future actions in the political/cultural realm, we could slip the progressives’ noose and hang them like Haman on their own gallows (figuratively speaking).

That’s a big IF, however, because it means restoring the politically-incorrect Biblical worldview that Americans held from the Pilgrims’ first landing through the Eisenhower administration, and relentless leftist bullying has made us afraid to do that.

But if we fail to recognize that the key to their success has been convincing we “conservatives” to let them drive the Biblical worldview from the public realm with minimal resistance from us, we can never turn the tide.

The leftist rule-book for the real-life Game of Thrones we’ve been playing was specifically designed to de-throne the God of Creation and en-throne themselves – the gods of Human Self-Perfectibility. That is the agenda of Marxism, growing in the manure of Darwinian Evolutionism and achieving world-conquering religious expression in Secular Humanism.

Some will grumble “Why can’t you just keep it ‘secular,’ Lively?!” But that attitude proves my case. The notion that “secularism” is neutral ground for liberals and conservatives is a false Marxist premise! It was that very lie which made us acquiesce to humanism as the new national consensus in the 20th Century.

To America’s Founders, “secular” meant non-sectarian consensus on broad Biblical presuppositions, epitomized in the Declaration of Independence’s acknowledgment of “self-evident” truths in and from “Nature and Nature’s God.” But in the Humanist version taught to America’s schoolchildren for generations, “secular” means non-religious: a Trojan Horse false concept that hides their religion within itself.

Theories of origin are unavoidably religious and there are ultimately just two of them in the western world, theism and atheism: either this universe was created by God with plan and purpose as the Bible claims, or it’s all an accident of random chance that somehow vests human beings with opportunity and power to make our own rules as Humanism claims. “Secularism” — even the supposedly conservative form — clearly reflects Humanism in premise and practice.

The “Tide of History” is a phrase that flows from Marxism’s Darwinist premise that human society naturally and inexorably evolves toward socialist utopia. Marxist visionaries established the “progressive” movement as a vehicle to conquer and retask key systems and institutions of human society to speed “progress” toward their vision. As each new target is infiltrated, assimilated, and repurposed to serve their ends, the collective grows more powerful and the unconquered remainder of society grows weaker.

It is logically impossible to win a debate when you adopt the other side’s presuppositions, because premises dictate conclusions with mathematical certainty. When we unwittingly self-identify as “conservatives” and grant that our opponents are “progressives” we literally ensure their progress toward their goal by limiting our influence to the speed at which their “progress” occurs.

Worse, if to avoid bullying and prove we’re not “haters” we shrink from defending unpopular Bible truths we dramatically speed the process of our conquest by undermining our own spiritual and intellectual foundations.

I would love to offer you a label to claim as an alternative to “conservative” but I don’t have one yet. The fact that the today’s English language doesn’t even have a one-word label for a person with a pro-active vision and agenda for an advanced nonsectarian Bible-based society shows just how completely we’ve all been ensnared in the Marxist web for a very long time.

I invite you to join with me in a revolution to overthrow our Humanist masters by starting a movement-wide discussion on rebranding ourselves as conquerors instead of “conservatives.”

UPDATE: The term we have adopted is “constitutionalist.”

EXPANDING OUR REACH

December 3, 2019. Yesterday I began the process of learning how to produce my own videos and plan to start publishing a series of documented commentaries:
essentially my articles in video form augmented by photos and graphics. Once I
have mastered video editing skills I will publish my books in serial form using the same techniques.

December 5 Posted our 4th Video. I like this raw, unedited format and will
continue producing this type in addition to producing more polished ones once I have mastered the editing program.

I am working diligently to advance our shared values and always working to improve my skill-set and expand the effectiveness of this ministry. I respectfully ask that you include us in your year-end giving so this work may grow in reach and impact. And please remember that donations by postal mail are best because we don’t have to pay a fee to receive them. Scott Lively Ministries, PO Box 2373, Springfield, MA 01101. However, online donations are always welcome if you prefer the convenience. Of course, all donations are tax deductible.

In 2009 I wrote and published this textbook on pro-family advocacy, which I adapted from the thesis I wrote for my Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) degree in 2007. Importantly, the information contained in Redeeming the Rainbow is not simply the regurgitation of others’ work or the theories of a sequestered academic: it is the fruit of my own missionary efforts as a front-lines culture warrior around the world and its insights and conclusions are hard-earned and forged in the fire of persecution.

Indeed, my first use of this textbook in a classroom setting (of teachers and civil servants) was in early 2009 in Kampala, Uganda during the final pre-publication stage of its development. My truthful and carefully-reasoned teachings were so threatening to the LGBT movement they triggered immediate international outrage by the global LGBT movement, which went nuclear after Uganda falsely blamed my teachings as the impetus for an overly harsh anti-homosexuality law that came out a week after I left the country.

That in turn led to a 6 1/2 year US federal lawsuit for “Crimes Against Humanity” which was ridiculous-in-premise but nevertheless a deadly-serious effort to destroy me by the most powerful leaders of the US LGBT movement — including a Human Rights Campaign Dossier funded by billionaire “gay”-patron Paul Singer, naming me Public Enemy #1 of the “gay” agenda internationally. That’s how afraid the LGBT movement is of the easily grasped and eminently reasonable teachings in Redeeming the Rainbow.

Though now a decade in print, Redeeming the Rainbow remains timely because most of its arguments are rooted in self-evident truth from a Biblical worldview, and do not change with the ebb and flow of “current events” or the pronouncements of the “soft sciences.”

Nevertheless, the evolving political, legal and cultural contexts of culture war analysis have raised new issues that deserve response, and so I have created a Redeeming the Rainbow page on this blog where I will post materials to augment the published book. Indeed, I have already written numerous relevant articles since 2009 that will be linked on that page, and I will add other materials as my schedule allows.

I urge you to download and distribute Redeeming the Rainbow widely, especially to young people and college students who might never otherwise encounter the full toolbox of arguments, strategies, tactics, and insights it contains.

And please donate to support my work. I offer it freely not because I don’t need the income, but because I believe the information is too important to hide behind a paywall. If you have the ability to donate, please do, because, as an avowed missionary that is by choice my only source of income.

The more we learn the worse it gets.

CFA’s crime isn’t just cowardly capitulation to the LGBT mob like Pilate choosing Barabbas over Christ and then washing their hands of political matters as so many people think, it is intentionally and deviously switching sides in the culture war to fight for the opposition like Benedict Arnold did in the Revolutionary War — while bearing false witness about their own actions in the belief that the Christian public is too stupid to notice, and tricking kind-hearted but gullible leaders like Franklin Graham into doing damage-control for them.

Well-intentioned Christian efforts to petition CFA to correct its course assume the Cathy family just made a mistake out of “weariness with well doing” and a little encouragement can stiffen their spine. That’s a false assumption! During the same period they have been raking in massive profits from the misplaced gratitude of Christian patrons, they have carefully and systematically plotted this betrayal. Don’t be deceived by an ingenuous reference to “Christian values” ,”For by their fruits you shall know them.” Even the reprobate homosexual activist and Democrat presidential candidate, Buttigieg, claims “Christian values!”

It may be possible to convince the Cathy family to switch back, but only if this company they have proven they love more than Bible Truth faces real financial consequences. And that means not just boycotts, but direct action like protests at their restaurants holding signs and distributing fact sheets exposing their duplicity.

IF we don’t take such action, they will used the overflowing bank accounts we blessed them with to weather this storm (I’m certain they have planned for this), and CFA will be quickly and fully assimilated into the great “social justice” army that is relentlessly pounding the foundations of Judeo-Christian civilization into rubble while we watch and wring our hands.

If you share this view, please donate now. I would like to organize a direct action campaign but will only do so if people show their support by donating to fund it.

Regular Readers of My Blog Were NOT Taken by Surprise by CFA’s Betrayal Because I Warned It Was Coming! When I learned in early 2014 that during the initial fallout for his pro-marriage remarks in 2013, Dan Cathy took the LGBT bait to prove himself “Not a Hater” by befriending an open and unrepentant homosexual activist, I wrote the following article, titled “Dan Cathy Takes the Mark of the Beast.” I urge you to read it with the current events in mind.

For additional information send inquiry by email to scottlivelyministries@gmail.com

I am very pleased to announce that on November 5th, 2019, at its headquarters in Bishkek, Krygyzstan, Central Asia, the Governing Council of the WORLD LEAGUE OF CITIZENS AND CIVIC ASSOCIATIONS (WLCCA) met in special session to approve my proposal (as a founding partner) to award the President of the United States, Mr. Donald Trump the medal “ҮЙ БҮЛ / Family.”

The “ҮЙ БҮЛ /Family” medal was established in 2017 to recognize individuals with global influence for “self-sacrificing, noble activities and personal contributions in preservation, development and protection of the social relationships based on permanent, imperishable, panhuman, recognized, universal, natural and traditional family values.”

It was unanimously agreed that President Trump’s efforts to end the killing of unborn babies and international sex-trafficking, and to affirm the natural two-parent heterosexual family (by incrementally rolling back Obama-era LGBT extremism), overwhelmingly warrants acknowledgment by the issuing of the “ҮЙ БҮЛ /Family” award. I was authorized to present the medal to President Trump, and to specifically thank him for his most recent White House policy proposal to restore the right of faith-based adoption agencies to refuse adoption to homosexuals.

The WLCCA, chaired by Kyrgyz Civil Leader Bolotbek Batilov, was inspired by a 2016 pro-family conference in the capital city of Bishkek which he organized in furtherance of a referendum to protect authentic one man-one woman marriage in the national constitution (which was passed on November 11, 2016). I had the privilege of being the keynote speaker at that conference in my capacity as a Christian attorney and human rights consultant with credentials from the International Institute of Human Rights (Strasbourg, France).

My message at the conference and subsequent meetings with media and other Kyrgyz leaders emphasized the universality of family values rooted in the natural law, which I then codified in seven essential principles that became the platform for the WLCCA. These principles were concurrently published as “The Bishkek Declaration on the Establishment of a Natural Life Movement in Kyrgyzstan.”

Kyrgyzstan is a majority Muslim nation, a fact which highlights the universality of the Natural Life principles we drafted. It is the purpose of the WLCCA to unify the pro-family majority of the world’s population in the defense of these foundational principles of civilization without regard to racial, cultural, religious or political differences that may otherwise exist.

Our seven principles are as follows:

1. The universal values of all humanity are grounded in the natural order of Creation.
2. The foundation of civilization is the natural family: a man and a woman created to join together as one flesh to bear and raise children together with mutual love and nurturing.
3. The true strength of a healthy nation is a network of natural families organized into natural communities which create stability and economic independence through mutual cooperation.
4. The community which sets the best interest of its children as its highest priority guarantees the highest level of security, prosperity and happiness for everyone.
5. A child’s best interest is to be raised in harmony with the natural world and respect for the God of Creation.
6. The natural-life society allows for beliefs and practices that do not conform to majority views, and practices tolerance for those who respect the mainstream culture but choose to live outside of it. The natural life society also recognizes the value of technology that compliments the natural order without doing harm to it.
7. The natural lifestyle simply prefers the natural to the artificial as a general, flexible principle: Natural foods as contrasted to artificial, genetically modified, or pesticide tainted foods; Natural healing as contrasted with artificial chemicals and processes; Natural persons as contrasted with “legal persons” such as corporations, robots, and “transhumans;” Natural families as contrasted with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or polyamorous groupings; and Natural communities made of independent, self-sufficient families as contrasted with forced urbanization and dependence on government.

Qualification for this award is based solely on actions reflecting the seven universal principles of the WLCCA by individuals with international influence, and is not an endorsement of anyone’s actions or beliefs beyond the scope of these principles.

I anticipate criticism from some quarters that President Trump’s record on pro-family issues is spotty, especially regarding his apparent endorsement of Richard Grenell, the openly activist homosexual US Ambassador to Germany. It is my belief that the President’s hands are tied as to Grenell due to the strong influence of LGBT and other leftist deep state operatives of the Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations who still heavily populate the State Department and Intelligence agencies. Even Evangelical Christian Mike Pompeo, titular head of the State Department, has kow-towed to political-correctness on Grenell.

Significantly, an earlier effort to award the “ҮЙ БҮЛ /Family” medal to President Trump via the US Embassy in Kyrgyzstan was reportedly rebuffed by embassy officials. (My Kyrgyz hosts also informed me that the US Embassy was a driving force pushing “gay” marriage there, triggering the 2016 constitutional referendum).

It must be remembered that in 1995 the reprobate Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12968 which opened the top ranks of our nation’s intelligence agencies to unrepentant homosexuals in defiance of good sense and deep-rooted experience. They have ever since exploited this opportunity as only LGBT ideological fanatics can do. The Family Research Institute had rightly warned in ‘95 that “in all healthy societies, homosexuality is recognized as a pathology with very serious implications for a person’s behavior.” Now almost twenty-five years later that self-evident and truthful statement is considered evidence of “hate and bigotry” in the politically-correct “new-normal” that LGBT overt and deep-state conspirators have forced on our society through their relentless abuse of power.

So, to those who fault President Trump for attempting a public relations balancing act on LGBT issues, while actually rolling back some truly bad LGBT policies, I say let’s give credit where credit is due. Compared to every declared and potential alternative in the race for the 2020 election, Donald Trump is an outstanding champion of pro-family values, and it is my great honor to announce this award.