Click HERE to see Part 3 of “The Chapel Door is Open”.
Click HERE to see Part 2 of “The Chapel Door is Open”.
Click HERE to see Part 1 of “The Chapel Door is Open”.

One of the things we’ve talked about on the open threads is provided for in the Chapel in the Woods which Sundance has constructed at the lower right.

Comments and conversations about what the Bible has to say about world events have always been welcome here in the woods, and the Chapel is where we can extend those conversations.  It will be open 24/7, just like the Prayer Request thread, functioning as a “perpetual open thread.”

The Chapel is the place to drop in when we notice that our questions or statements, reasonings or fears are best expressed with a Judeo-Christian historical and spiritual context. Anyone who doesn’t care to talk about or pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is  just as welcome in the Chapel as they are in the Treehouse.

The tone and content of Chapel conversations is expected to be the same as elsewhere in the Treehouse: honest and thoughtful.  The Chapel has been built to provide a place for folks to discuss what the Bible says about any number of things~~past, present or future.

Argumentiveness and unkindness will be quickly deleted.  Anyone who comes through the Chapel door to argue against the Bible as our primary source of information about God and what He thinks about things will be ushered out by the ushers.  Anyone who comes to the Chapel for the purpose of Christian-bashing will be thrown out on their ear.

This nation has been a gift of God for well over 200 years, displaying among the nations what a fine thing it is when people are allowed to enjoy those things given by their Creator; among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The United States of America is our nation-house, and there are people trying to burn it down.

This nation is a blessing given to all of us, and there is no supposed “spiritual reason” for people who believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to sit back and fold their hands and somehow assume that it would be wrong for them to stand up and fight.  We will fight and we will stand~~and we consider ourselves free to talk about, refer to, think about and pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob while we do it.

So come on in.  The Chapel’s open.
Our thread was getting pretty slow to load, so this should get us back up to speed!

Cetera is an avid reader and friend of the Tree House, and an occasional commenter.  He currently resides in Wyoming, having given up on Colorado after 10 years and deciding to move his family to a more politically friendly state.  What follows is his effort at communicating Truths inspired by his Christian faith and the Spirit. 

The End?

All of these things will become clear to each of us in time, if they are not already.  Combine what we know with recent events throughout our country and the world, and you see a set of circumstances that may cause you to be fearful.  From the pro-abortion demonstrators chanting “Hail Satan!” in opposition to the pro-life demonstrators singing “Amazing Grace” to the lack of accountability and lawlessness in our own government and chaos throughout the world, things sure seem dark.  (more…)

Leftism’s Disorder is Satan’s Plan

Cetera is an avid reader and friend of the Tree House, and an occasional commenter.  He currently resides in Wyoming, having given up on Colorado after 10 years and deciding to move his family to a more politically friendly state.  What follows is his effort at communicating Truths inspired by his Christian faith and the Spirit. Wolverines, listen up.

We are all here to support each other, to keep a watchful eye on each other and our Republic, and to fight the good fight when and where it is needed.  Each of us shoulders responsibility we assign only to ourselves, that we pick up voluntarily, and in each of our own ways we promote Truth and Justice.

In short, we are here to keep the faith, because at some level each of us feels that faith under assault or under siege. For a great many of us, we may never have put into words or closely examined the fundamental principles and truths that we feel inside of us, and what they mean.  I would like to have a discussion on these First Principles over this and several future posts.

 Satan’s Plan, and why Leftism is always disordered

I’ve talked a little before of Satan’s plan and how it is opposed to God’s plan of free will and love.  Satan’s plan was to force everyone to “love” God without choice, without free will, and without an act of the will. There is a parable of The Grand Inquisitor in the book “The Brothers Karamozov” written in the late 19^th century (more…)

Cetera is an avid reader and friend of the Tree House, and an occasional commenter.  He currently resides in Wyoming, having given up on Colorado after 10 years and deciding to move his family to a more politically friendly state.  What follows is his effort at communicating Truths inspired by his Christian faith and the Spirit. The first two posts are linked at the bottom, this being the third in a series of five.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are all here to support each other, to keep a watchful eye on each other and our Republic, and to fight the good fight when and where it is needed.  Each of us shoulders responsibility we assign only to ourselves, that we pick up voluntarily, and in each of our own ways we promote Truth and Justice.  In short, we are here to keep the faith, because at some level each of us feels that faith under assault or under siege.

For a great many of us, we may never have put into words or closely examined the fundamental principles and truths that we feel inside of us, and what they mean.  I would like to have a discussion on these First Principles over this and several future posts.

Charity touches on a great many pieces of ourselves that we are striving to perfect.  Firstly, charity is an act or action.  We have to choose it and physically carry it out, making it at the very least an act of will. (more…)

Cetera is an avid reader and friend of the Tree House, and an occasional commenter.  He currently resides in Wyoming, having given up on Colorado after ten years and deciding to move his family to a more politically friendly state.  He has been thinking through some basic principles inspired by his Christian faith and the Spirit, and has prepared a series of posts for our encouragement – timeless Truths worth thinking and talking about. This is the second in a series of five posts. Previous posts are linked at the bottom of the page.

What is Love?

If we proceed from an initial conclusion that we are to love both God and each other, how do we do so?  What is love?  First Corinthians tells us love is the greatest thing there is.  That is all fine and dandy, but what is this thing called Love that we are called to be, to espouse, and to do?

Again, the quotes I selected previously (John 3:16, John 15:13, Mark 12:30-31) suggest the answer.  Love is not an emotion or a feeling.  Love is not something passive.  Each passage involves action.

Spend some time with young children, and you will come to appreciate their points of view and marvel at the occasionally phenomenal and intuitive insights they have on life.  They cannot explain love, and they cannot describe it, but they can tell what is and is not love, and they can certainly name examples of love in their lives.  If you ask, they will tell you that they love their parents, or that their parents love them. (more…)

Our friend, Cetera, left this comment in a thread about a year ago and it served well as an introduction to his concern that we find ways to stand fast and encourage one another:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

We’re 3-0, now, in Murietta, at Bundy’s, and against the National Park/Memorial barricades. All were won merely by showing up, refusing to go away, and when threatened with violence, calling their bluff.Twice now, the Obama regime has brought in actual troops prepared to use lethal force against civilians, and were absolutely and thoroughly rebuffed without a shot fired. The third time, they never even deployed the troops.

Wolverines, we ARE WINNING! We’re on the march!. Each time we succeed, we make success more and more likely, and make it more and more difficult for the lawless, illegal Feds to exert force upon us. We are illustrating the Emperor has no clothes.

It is going to be a long, long march home. I’m here to tell you, we’re well on our way, and we are going to get there. We hold the moral high ground, and we must not ever cede it. This is not going to be an easy march. There’s going to be some fightin’, and there’s going to be pain and hardships all around. All the fury of all the storms the evil ones can muster will squall and break upon us. No matter.

Drummer, beat, and piper, blow. We’re marching home, together.

(more…)

Friday evening I took my Stars and Stripes in from the front porch as I do every night, but everything felt different and each movement was conscious as I realized I might not put it out again.

Yesterday morning I came to some sad clarity as I thought through the Pledge of Allegiance:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, 

…and to the Republic for which it stands:

unfortunately,  the Republic for which it stands is in tatters – separation of powers only an ideal; representative government a Potemkin facade; We, the People…just a memory

…one nation:

hardly, having been thoroughly Balkanized by the ruling class whose goal is buttressed by minimal and selective enforcement of immigration laws

...under God:

Not.

By the way, it was In 1954, in response to the Communist threat of the times, (that) President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words “under God,” creating the 31-word pledge we say today. (I don’t remember the White House being lit up with crosses the following day)

 ...indivisible:

that which was thus described no longer exists as such. Its Constitution is no longer a practical reference. Its history is being dismantled. Its foundations are untended – and that doesn’t matter as much as we might think since there is little left for them to support

…with liberty and justice for all:

except for non-minorities, the Baltimore Six,  officers who are drummed out of the military because they serve faithfully according to their oaths, American employees made to train their foreign replacements, anyone targeted by the IRS, etc.  (more…)

If you are sending us an email, please consider and observe the following guidelines:

• Please identify yourself by your Treehouse user name in the subject line so we don’t have to guess regarding the origin of the information.

• If you are sending a link please include a paragraph that explains why the link is being sent. It is not possible for us to click through dozens of links every day and then try to decipher why this particular one was forwarded, whether it connects to one of ten to twenty daily posts made, and how it might be useful.

• If you believe the contents of your email are of general interest to Treehouse readers, consider posting the information on the open thread or related posts where it will be available to our readers immediately.

We appreciate the clarity of some emails – certainly not every email received is lacking in context. Unfortunately, the majority are, which makes it far less likely that the contents will be seriously reviewed or  seen as helpful. (more…)

“I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.”

That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the devil of hell.

You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a mad man or something worse.

You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

–C. S. Lewis

The content of Hillsdale’s Imprimus is always solid and to-the-point. The opening segment of the February 2015 issue is reprinted below, concluding with:

the…cry of so many conservatives that we must “secure the borders” is a naive and meaningless delusion

* * *

by Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute – Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College

The lesson from the last 20 years of immigration policy is that lawlessness breeds more lawlessness. Once a people or a government decides to normalize one form of lawbreaking, other forms of lawlessness will follow until finally the rule of law itself is in profound jeopardy. Today, we have a constitutional crisis on our hands. President Obama has decided that because Congress has not granted amnesty to millions of illegal aliens living in the U.S., he will do so himself. Let us ponder for a moment how shameless this assertion of power is. (more…)