"Honest Self-Assessment" Assessment

On Thursday April 25, 2013, a blogpost was posted on the III Percent Patriots blog bearing the title I've copied above. 

The entire post can be read here: http://iiipercent.blogspot.com/2013/04/honest-self-assessment.html

The gist of it is to provoke one to examine one's own position with regard to the seemingly inevitable confrontation coming between those who would have our Constitution restored and those who would destroy any remaining vestages of the same.  It's time for each American to choose.(If you're an illegal, you have no standing in this matter whatsoever under any circumstances so sit down and stfu. Better yet - leave now while you can.)  With that choosing will come the inextricable conditions and requirements imposed by either side of this now "Great Divide".  Let me be clear: if you be for the Restoration of our Founding Documents, there can be no room for compromise or, as the pathetic sing-songing goes, "going along to get along".  That bus stops here and now.  It is and has been that compromising of basic, fundamental truths that has us where we are today.  It must end.  The Rule of Law must be re-established, enforced and, above all, respected by EVERY INDIVIDUAL and at each and every level of every form of governance in this nation.  Anything less is unacceptable.

Bur again, I digress as this post is about my assessment of me and just what will I do.  This question has been eating away at my little gray cells for longer than the mentioned blogpost put it in so many words.  Wrestling with the quandry reached a fever pitch during and due to the III Congress meet last week.  My "profession" or(to those who truly understand) my calling places me in a somewhat different category than most.  You see, most view those "in the Ministry" as either extreme pacifists or at the least anti-gun and anti-violence.  I am none of the above.  I am, however, a believer in providing for my own - including self-protection when and as necessary and I am squarely against anyone infringing on my God-Given rights to pursue my life as my God and conscience guide. And, while we're visiting this, I further believe that it is not our form of governance which "allows" me the right to do but rather it is MY voice in allowing or DISALLOWING that governing body to do or NOT DO what I decide.  It is for these ideals, these principles every American or legal hopeful must decide. 

But..... what will I do "if/when....."?  Suffer me to quote from a record written over one hundred fifty years ago:  "The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States" by Benjamin F. Morris, pgs 424, 425.

The Person: The Reverend James Caldwell, circa 1775, Pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Elizbethtown, N.J. 

His position:  "His name and fame are interwoven with the history of his country, and are as dear to the State as to the Church. He became early and deeply interested in the conflict, and devoted all of his powers no less to the freedom of his country than to the service of his God.  Such was his influence over his people that, with few exceptions, they became one with him in sentiment, and feeling; and thenceforward he and they were branded as the rebel parson and parish.  To the enemies of his country he was the object of the deepest hatred; and such was their known thirst for life, that, while preaching the Gospel, he was compelled to lay his loaded pistols by his side in the pulpit."

His Participation:  He was, at one point, elected Chaplain of a brigade provided to colonial army by N.J.  He had earned a price on his head, offered by the torries and British troops, for his unrelenting efforts in spurring others to rally and fight for Freedom's cause. Neither did he stand soley behind his pulpit but he also took up arms and engaged the oppressors in battle beside his countrymen.  "In one of the engagements near Sprinfield, N.J., (he) was in the hottest of the fight, and, seeing the fire of one of the company's slaken for want of wadding, he galloped to the Presbyterian meeting-house nearby, and, rushing in, ran from pew to pew, filling his arms with hymnbooks.  Hastening back with these into battle, he scattered them about in every direction, saying, as he pitched one here and another there, 'Now boys, put Watts into them.'"
(Watts being a hymnwriter of an earlier time whose writings were considered by the Presbyterians nearly as scared as the Scriptures themselves.)

Such is my decision. I will use my pulpit not only to spread the Gospel of God's Love and Redemption through His Son, Christ Jesus but also as a cannon(if I may say) to assault the enemies of our hard won freedoms and to turn as many as will listen to that same fight we're again facing today.  Supply and quarter will be offered to those who prove themselves Patriots and, as I my God will enable, to go shoulder to shoulder with the same should the need arise. 

If God would grant me the wisdom and courage to be half the Christian man this Pastor was, I could go into Eternity with at least the knowledge my life was more meaningful than had I shrunk back into the calm, shadowy darkness of complacency.

This Patriot, this "man of the cloth" and his family were eventually murdered by the British in 1780.