One day you will all stand before God

Published On: May 2, 2016|Categories: MRFF's Inbox|7 Comments|

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One day you will all stand before God and give an account of your acts.   He will cast you into the lake of fire for eternity.

(name withheld)


 

Good Day, (name withheld) –

I’d like to respond to your curious message to our organization. Who am I? In addition to being a staunch supporter of the MRFF, I’m a lifelong, committed, and active Christian and a USAF veteran.
I call your message ‘curious’ because you claim to know something that you can’t possibly know… that someone else is destined to be cast “into the lake of fire for eternity”. Surely, you are not claiming to know the mind of God, are you? Or perhaps you are… yet as fellow Christian, I trust you know that only God decides our fate, and I’m quite confident in asserting that David Whiting is not God.
Let me take a stab at what you seem to be clumsily trying to assert yourself —
You have recently read something about the Constitutional advocacy of the MRFF. Perhaps it had to do with the inappropriate inclusion of a sectarian religious book on the POW/MIA tables in VA facilities. Might have been similar inappropriate activities at Tobyhanna Army Depot. Maybe it was the inappropriate manner in which a National Day of Prayer event was communicated at Marine Corps University. It could have been the inappropriate sectarian religious message at the heart of a recent SHARP training event at Redstone Arsenal.
Of course, the ‘news source’ where you read about the situation didn’t frame it as a Constitutional issue, nor did it describe the MRFF as a diverse group of patriots, both believers and non-believers, Christians and non-Christians, who are dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom to which they and all Americans are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Instead, we were untruthfully portrayed as anti-Christians, or angry atheists, or overly sensitive complainers, or all of these things. As a result, you have wrongly concluded that the MRFF is threatening your own religious rights. You are mistaken.
Here is the real deal, Mr. Whiting. The MRFF is not anti-religion… we are pro-Constitution.  As a result, we challenge any inappropriate conduct within our military that violates the Establishment Clause. If the error is made by Christians, we object. If the error is made by atheists, we object. If the error is made by Muslims, or Jews, or Druids, or Zoroastrians, or Buddhists, or any other conceivable category of believers or non-believers, we object.
And just look at how many legitimate Constitutional issues I was able to rattle off at the top of this email, all of which have occurred very recently. It’s proof positive that the vital work of the MRFF must continue unabated because there really are people who want to advance a sectarian religious agenda within our military organizations… at the expense of one of the dearest principles upon which our nation was founded, religious neutrality on the part of our government.
So if it somehow makes you feel better to cast judgment on others whom you don’t even know, I’ll leave you to that. But your time might be better spent pondering the important responsibility that you and I have as members of the majority religious group in America — to ensure that we don’t allow the tyranny of the majority to jeopardize the Constitutional rights of those Americans who don’t share our beliefs. This is especially important in the ranks of our military, where every member is entitled to live and work in an environment that respects everyone’s beliefs (including non-belief) equally. Has to be that way, Mr. Whiting, or the promise of American liberty is a lie.
Peace,
Mike Challman
Christian, USAF veteran, MRFF supporter

It is the word of God.  Written plainly in the same Bible you are trying to throw out from where you think it doesn’t belong.  Plainly enough for your even your simple mind to understand.  Well, probably not.
The Nazis burned books and also got rid of written text they didn’t agree with.  Sounds a lot like what your misguided group is doing.
(name withheld)

I’ll ignore the insult and ask a simple question,(name withheld) , which should help to frame your views on freedom of religion in America.

If the book in question were the Koran, or the Book of Mormon, would you still object to its removal?

Peace, Mike

And when that day comes you, (name withheld), will be called upon to rate our dive into that lake of fire (on the Olympic standard of 1-10, naturally) from your vantage point below, as you will surely have beaten us there for your sins of judgement and hypocrisy. Blah blah blah pompous nonsense and such ad infinitum….
Blake Page

 Dear (name withheld),

One day you will stand before God for assuming what Jesus will do and speaking for Him.

 

“But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” Matthew 12:36-37

 

Eighty-eight percent of those involved with MRFF are Christians and 96% of our soldier clients are Christians.

 

You – without knowing all of the facts – have judged us to be worthy of eternal hellfire and will be held accountable for your judgmental attitude. Let’s see how that works out for you at the Judgment Seat of Christ.

 

Here are the facts that have been deliberately omitted to anger people such as you:

 

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said in the SCOTUS case McCreary v. ACLU on the Ten Commandments “It is true that many Americans find the Commandments in accord with their personal beliefs. But we do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.”

 

In other words, the majority doesn’t rule over the minority where First Amendment rights are concerned.

 

She also said “The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person’s standing in the political community. Government can run afoul of that prohibition in two principal ways. One is excessive entanglement with religious institutions, which may interfere with the independence of the institutions, give the institutions access to government or governmental powers not fully shared by nonadherents of the religion, and foster the creation of political constituencies defined along religious lines. The second and more direct infringement is government endorsement or disapproval of religion. Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community. Disapproval sends the opposite message.”

 

Her statement is based on past SCOTUS Establishment Clause rulings regarding entanglement of any government entity with religion:

 

Jefferson’s concept of “separation of church and state” first became a part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Reynolds v. U.S.,98 U.S. 145 (1878). In that case, the court examined the history of religious liberty in the US, determining that while the constitution guarantees religious freedom, “The word ‘religion’ is not defined in the Constitution. We must go elsewhere, therefore, to ascertain its meaning and nowhere more appropriately, we think, than to the history of the times in the midst of which the provision was adopted.” The court found that the leaders in advocating and formulating the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Quoting the “separation” paragraph from Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, the court concluded that, “coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured.

 

In 1878 “separation of church and state” became part of the Establishment Clause by law.

 

The Supreme Court heard the Lemon v. Kurtzmacase in 1971 and ruled in favor of the Establishment ClauseSubsequent to this decision, the Supreme Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether government action comports with the Establishment Clause, known as the Lemon Test:

 

Government action violates the Establishment Clause unless it:
1. has a significant secular (i.e., non-religious) purpose,
2. does not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion
3. does not foster excessive entanglement between government and religion

 

Parker v. Levy:

“This Court has long recognized that the military is, by necessity, a specialized society separate from civilian society… While the members of the military are not excluded from the protection granted by the First Amendment, the different character of the military community and of the military mission requires a different application of those protections. … The fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for imposition of discipline, may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside it… Speech [in any form] that is protected in the civil population may nonetheless undermine the effectiveness of response to command.  If it does, it is constitutionally unprotected.” (Emphasis added) Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733, 1974

 

One of the reasons that were taken into consideration was that the bible was never included in the original POW/MIA table.

http://www.nationalalliance.org/alliance_files/cermony.htm

Col. John M. Devillier is the installation commander and his spokesman paraphrased AFI (Air Force Instruction) 1-1, Sections 2.11.and 2.12:

“Our leaders and personnel are encouraged to accommodate the free exercise of religion and other personal beliefs, including freedom of expression unless it has an adverse impact on mission accomplishment,” he wrote. “Air Force leaders must carefully balance constitutional protections of individuals’ free exercise of religion or other personal beliefs with the constitutional separation of church and state. They must ensure their actions cannot reasonably be construed to officially endorse, disapprove of, or extend preferential treatment to any faith or absence of faith.”

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/local-military/turner-objects-to-removal-of-bible-from-wright-pat/nq47X/

 

The bible on the table violates AFI 1-1, sections 2.11 and 2.12, the Constitution, Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878), Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Lemon Test and Parker v. Levy.

 

Plus, the Christian bible on the table does not represent all of the POW/MIA’s.

 

According to Thomas Jefferson our laws protect the freedom of all religions and those of no religion in America:

“Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

 

“Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and & Gov’t in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.”

James Madison Detached Memoranda, circa 1820

 

We ONLY step in when a soldier or soldiers complain to us of the trampling of the Constitution, Supreme Court rulings and military laws, when their chain of command ignores them.

 

Pastor Joan

MRFF Advisory Board Member


 

Anti-Christian zealots at the absurdly named “Military Religious Freedom Foundation” – which calls the Bible “religious oppression” – are at it again.
They’ve attacked soldiers’ crosses and tried to get war heroes court martialed for constitutionally protected speech.Now they have forced three Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals and a military base to ban the Bible from “Missing Man” displays.
“Missing Man” displays honor our MIA and POW soldiers with a special table containing symbolic items, including a Bible – which represents “faith” and our “country, founded as one nation under God.
You will never extinguish the word of God.   Do you have teams that go through hotel rooms removing the Gideon Bible??  What’s next?    Are you working on shutting down the Internet?
(name withheld)

Dear (name withheld),

The caricature you’re trying to paint of us is a bit of a Picasso.

We didn’t ban anything. We asked if the United States government would be willing to provide equal representation of all its brave men and women who have been POWs and gone MIA. As you well know, there is no ban on non Christians serving in our armed forces, and countless many non Christians have fought valiantly for your freedom.  When given the option of paying homage to other’s beliefs, or of forgoing the divisive inclusion of religion in those displays our government decided to take the latter path.

Our country was not founded as one nation under any god.  It was founded E Pluribus Unum.  In fact, my father was born the same year that our national motto was changed and the myth of a Christian United States government began to take hold.

We have no interest in going into hotel rooms to remove Gideon bibles, unless of course those hotel rooms are government owned facilities which decline to represent the diverse people who serve it, pay for it, and have died so it can be.  And we would never advocate shutting down the internet. It has so little to do with our mission you may as well have asked us our opinion on whether Skoal or Copenhagen should be your next purchase.

Cheers,

Blake A. Page
Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Special Assistant to the President
Director of US Army Affairs

 

 

 

 

 

 

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7 Comments

  1. Rev Bob May 2, 2016 at 11:57 am

    He could not say it any plainer than that. However, that judgment could be nullified if they would accept Christ as their Lord and Savior and commit their lives to Him.

  2. Connie May 2, 2016 at 4:50 pm

    Rev Bob believes he
    is God by passing judgement
    On us ‘lessor’ humans

    I thought God was in
    Charge of judgement, not humans.
    What would Jesus do?

    Rev Bob needs to read
    His holy book again to
    Get lessons he missed

  3. Rev Bob May 2, 2016 at 8:59 pm

    Connie, sometimes I wonder how much formal education you received. I am just repeating what the scriptures say.

  4. G May 3, 2016 at 5:20 pm

    Rev Bob, I am always amaze about your lack of an education despite the fact that you have received a comprehensive formal education.

    “I am just repeating what the scriptures.”

    Yeah, and the last time you repeat what was stated in the scripture, you manipulated and twisted the scriptures until Connie gave the whole scripture and nothing but the whole scripture and destroy your credibility with regards to your knowledge of the Bible.

  5. Mark Sebree May 3, 2016 at 6:38 pm

    G,

    Let’s be fair. Rev Bob’s credibility was shot long before Connie gave him that complete scripture in context.

  6. G May 3, 2016 at 8:24 pm

    Mark, I agreed that Rev Bob’s credibility was no good at all; however, Connie’s handling of Rev Bob’s knowledge of scripture was icing on the cake.

  7. Connie May 4, 2016 at 6:26 pm

    G and Mark,

    You make me blush. Thank you.

    Rev Bob – this one is for you:

    Rev Bob insults my
    Smarts because I reply in
    Haiku. Game. Set. Match.

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