Liberty Fellowship Weekly 6/27/23

Joel Walbert

Jun 28, 2023

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Source: Chuck Baldwin Live

Catholic Cardinal Urges Americans To Give Up Their Right To Keep And Bear Arms

Published: Thursday, June 22, 2023

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A powerful and influential American Catholic Cardinal, Joseph W. Tobin, of Newark, New Jersey, has written a letter urging the American people to give up their Second Amendment freedom to keep and bear arms.

Here is the report:

Amid a mounting debate in America over the constitutionality of gun control, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark has entered the fray with a different argument: That people should voluntarily forgo their Second Amendment rights for the betterment of society.
“I honestly believe it is the best thing we can do to change the culture of violence that threatens us today,” Tobin said.
“Let’s voluntarily set aside our rights in order to witness the truth that only peace and never violence, is the way to build a free society that is lived concretely in our homes, our neighborhoods, our communities, our nation and our world,” he said.
Tobin made the plea in a recent letter, “Pray for an end to all instances of violence,” where he calls on community leaders and Catholic bishops, himself included, to call for a “synodal effort” to actively resist gun violence. He proposed a threefold process that includes prayer and work, advocacy, and voluntary self-restraint from the Second Amendment.

Many Catholic insiders speculate that Cardinal Tobin could one day become the first American Pontiff.

I suggest that readers watch this short video response to Tobin’s stupid suggestion.

The Vatican is often said to possess the largest private army in the world. The Pope and other high-ranking Catholic clerics are provided a massive amount of private security—that means there are a lot of heavily armed military and police personnel with the most sophisticated self-defense weapons in the world protecting these men.

Have you noticed that the people who are the most vocal in calling for average people to surrender their firearms are the ones who are rich enough or occupy a position high enough that they have their own personal armed security for protection?

As with every radical would-be gun grabber, the Cardinal seems oblivious to the fact that, at a very minimum, the private possession of a firearm saves the life (or lives) of an American citizen 1.6 million times every year.

Guns save lives in America far more often than they take lives.

The Cardinal also seems oblivious to the fact that the most gun-controlled Democrat cities in America (such as Tobin’s hometown of Newark, New Jersey) have the highest incidents of gun violence. Obviously, gun control hasn’t helped cities such as Chicago.

And speaking of Chicago, this past Memorial Day weekend, there were over 50 people shot and 11 people killed in that one three-day period alone. The victims ranged in age from 2 to 77. And these kinds of statistics are common for almost any weekend—especially a three-day weekend—in Chicago. I wonder why the mainstream news media didn’t tell the American people about those mass shootings?

Of course, you know the answer. (Again, I urge you to watch this short video with the honest and straightforward rejoinder.)

But Catholic clerics are not the only ones who harbor anti-Second Amendment sentiments. There are a plethora of Protestant and Evangelical pastors who are innately anti-freedom as well. Most of them, however, are not quite as open about it as the Catholic Cardinal above. But in their hearts, they feel exactly the same.

Remember the Southern Baptist leader in Tennessee that is publicly calling for communist pre-crime Red Flag gun confiscation laws in that State? He is another example of an anti-freedom statist positioned within the highest levels of influence in many religious organizations.

There is a quick way to determine the inner convictions of your pastor regarding the freedom issue. In previous columns, I have told readers how to find out exactly where their pastor stands on the subject of constitutionally protected freedom in general and the right to keep and bear arms in particular.

Here’s how to do it:

At your earliest opportunity, ask your pastor this one simple question: “Do you believe that America’s Founding Fathers were Biblically justified when they fought our War for Independence?”

That’s it! Ask him that one simple and direct question. And if he tries to talk around the question or hesitates or sidesteps the question or glibly says, “Well, our founders weren’t perfect,” you know this man harbors deep anti-freedom and anti-Second Amendment convictions, which means he is no friend of freedom and is, in his heart, a statist, who will do nothing to help preserve Liberty for you and your family.

This is why your pastor avoids discussing the subject from the pulpit. By what your pastor is NOT saying, he is revealing himself to be a traitor to freedom and constitutional government.

By the way, I have a DVD containing three messages entitled Questions For Pastors When Searching For A Church. One of the questions included in this message series is the question above. I suggest you watch it. I think it will be extremely helpful and enlightening.

And I cannot leave this discussion without pointing out to you another reason your pastor has removed himself from the freedom fight. He is preaching and teaching, not from a Bible version, but from a Bible perversion.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about: Let’s take the verse statist preachers love to quote, Romans 13:1.

Your pastor is probably preaching from English translations of the corrupt Alexandrian texts such as the NIV, the ESV, the NASB or the NLT. How do these versions translate Romans 13:1?

NIV: Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.
ESV: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
NASB: Every person is to be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.
NLT: Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.

But here is how God’s Holy Word, accurately translated from the Textus Receptus, the Authorized King James Version Bible, translates Romans 13:1:

KJV: Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

The words higher powers are worlds apart from the words governing authorities.

The Bible perversions translated from the corrupt Alexandrian texts completely bastardize the truth that the Biblical teaching of God-ordained jurisdictional authority applies to ALL human authority—be it familial, vocational, spiritual or civil—and is under God’s supreme authority: the Highest power (Psalms 18:13; Luke 1:32, 35, 76; 6:35), and that ALL human authority (including civil authority) has lesser power according to its jurisdictional parameters as described in Romans 13:3 - 5 (along with the entirety of Holy Writ).

For example, the same Christian statists who use St. Peter’s words in I Peter 2:13 - 15 to “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man . . .” conveniently ignore St. Peter's actions when he willfully refused to submit to the “governing authorities” who had overstepped their jurisdictional authority by attempting to usurp God’s authority (the Highest power) in Peter's life, as seen in Acts 4:18 - 20 and Acts 5:27, 28.

Albert Barnes (1798 - 1870) puts Romans 13:1 in proper first century Judean context:

It “could not be” and “never was” a question, whether they should obey a magistrate when he commanded a thing that was plainly contrary to the Law of God. [Obviously, they should NOT.] But the question was, whether they should obey a pagan magistrate at “all.”

There it is!

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St. Paul affirms through Holy Spirit inspiration that all human authority, which is limited and jurisdictional in scope, is ordained of God and should be submitted to, providing it operates within the divine will of the Highest power. When the “higher power” usurps the will of the “Highest power,” it loses its authority, upon which obedience to the “lesser power” becomes an act of idolatry.

In addition, pastors who follow the corrupt Alexandrian translations completely miss the fact that in the United States, We the People, not the government, are the higher powers. America is not a monarchy; it is a constitutional republic led by the collective will of We the People via our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Therefore, America’s governing authorities are duty-bound to submit to the will of The People via our Constitution and Bill of Rights (the higher powers), not lord over a servant class as kings and monarchs.

But as you can see by reading the corrupt translations above, these textual perversions place civil government at the pinnacle of authority to which all men must submit. That is called statism. Another word for it is serfdom.

That is why your pastor refuses to deal with Liberty issues, and specifically the right to keep and bear arms, which is the primary protector of Liberty. His heart and mind have been corrupted by the erroneous Bible perversions that have saturated his soul.

My constitutional attorney son and I wrote a book on how to properly understand Romans 13 and the rest of Holy Scripture regarding Biblical submission. The book is called Romans 13: The True Meaning Of Submission. Find it here.

I also have a DVD containing four messages on the subject of Romans 13 entitled The True Meaning Of Romans 13. Find the DVD here.

In addition, my son and I wrote a book that is very germane to this subject entitled To Keep Or Not To Keep: Why Christians Should Not Give Up Their Guns. Find the book here.

In this book, we examine not only Romans 13 but the vast majority of passages from both the Old and New Testaments that deal with the subject of Biblical self-defense, aka self-preservation.

Furthermore, just a few weeks ago, I delivered a very important message on this subject entitled The Lack Of Fighting Parsons Is Destroying America. Find the message DVD here.

And more recently, I delivered a very neglected but much needed and extremely relevant message entitled America’s Pulpits: Living Under The Stain Of Shame For Relinquishing Their Natural Free-Born Citizenship. Find this message DVD here.

When confronted with our nation's problems, most pastors will smugly say, "All we need to do is preach the Gospel”—even though the vast majority of evangelical pastors are woefully ignorant of Christ’s New Covenant Gospel, and are, in reality, not truly preaching the New Covenant Gospel themselves.

Regardless, one-third of America's adults claim to be born-again Christians. There are more Christians, more pastors, more churches, more missionaries, more Christian radio and television programs and more Christian literature in the U.S. than anywhere in the world—at any time in the world.

So, why then is America collapsing morally, socially, culturally and spiritually?

It's because America no longer has Patriot Pulpits to preach and teach God's Natural Laws of Liberty to the nation. Instead of John Witherspoon, James Caldwell and Jonas Clark, America has Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland and Jesse Duplantis.

The only reason pastors in America today are free to preach and promote the Gospel is because of the sacrifice and bloodshed of our brave patriot forebears. Pastors today were simply born into a free nation that gave them the opportunity to freely minister.

But the vast majority of today's pastors have so little regard for the principles of Liberty and so little desire to apply God's Natural Laws to the maintenance of freedom that they are doing NOTHING to preserve Liberty for their posterity.

For the most part, we are getting absolutely NO help from America’s pastors in the fight to preserve Liberty in this country—regardless of denomination: from Catholic leaders in New Jersey to Southern Baptist leaders in Tennessee.

For the life of me, I will never understand why professing freedom-loving Christians continue to attend and support churches with such irresponsible ministers who are so carelessly contributing to the enslavement of our children and grandchildren by their total disregard to preach and teach the primacy of God’s Natural Laws of Liberty.

I will never understand it.