... new piece from pastor Chuck Baldwin.

An Appeal To My Fellow Pastors
By Chuck Baldwin
November 6, 2007

This column is archived at
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2007/cbarchive_20071106.html

Recently, Iowa pastors gathered to hear my presentation in Des Moines
on behalf of Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul. After
listening to me, they then heard ten-term Republican Texas Congressman
Ron Paul himself.

Consider how Congressman Paul's message impacted Pastor Jim Hartman of
the Assembly of God church in Conrad, Iowa. "I've been supporting Mike
Huckabee, but I would say I'm leaning real strong toward Ron Paul."
Hartman supported President Bush four years ago and explained, "Up
until the last six months I had not allowed myself to imagine that
we'd been let down by Bush." As for Iraq, he said, "I don't think we
were prepared to understand that culture and to work with that
culture." He said he now feels "humble and I feel kind of bad that I
haven't done a better job of being faithful to Ron Paul's kind of
integrity." [Source: MSNBC, Oct. 30, 2007]

Integrity: that is the issue drawing millions to Ron Paul, including
young people. The night before I spoke, nearly 700 students gathered
at Iowa State University in Ames to hear Dr. Paul. One of those
students wrote me recently. His name is Nathan Rockman. He wrote, "As
a columnist for the Iowa State Daily here on campus, I have seen first
hand what can be described as Ron Paul fever. Since Dr. Paul visited
this past Friday, his message of freedom and liberty has been
spreading through campus like wildfire . . ."

Ron Paul doesn't recruit artisan spin writers and bloggers to wear
down those who might question his past dealings. He doesn't need to.
There are no missing hard-drives, ethics violations, and taxpayer
funds used for personal use that need to be spun away. He still
refuses to participate in the lucrative Congressional pension fund and
returns a portion of his Congressional office budget back to the U.S.
Treasury each year.

This kind of integrity moved Pastor Hartman, the students at Iowa
State University, and many more like them.

Ron Paul has been fighting for the right to life from the beginning of
his public career. Dr. Paul is rock-solid on pro-life. After all, he
has helped over 4,000 women deliver their babies into the world in his
obstetrics practice in Lake Jackson, Texas. He proposed the "Sanctity
of Life Act of 2005" (and 2007), which would require that "human life
shall be deemed to exist from conception, without regard to race, sex,
age, health, defect, or condition of dependency." Has he recently
discovered these pro-life convictions? Not at all. Congressman Paul
introduced the Human Life Amendment in Congress in his very first term
of Congress, a couple of years after Roe v. Wade was first handed
down.

Is Ron Paul a libertarian, as some use in a throw-away line, often
intended to move the listener to discard him without thought? Yes, on
areas of fiscal, economic and judicial liberty, he is. But, he is also
a social conservative and a Constitutionalist.

Ron Paul's priorities are right with marriage. He and his wife, Carol,
have been married for more than fifty years. He believes marriage
should be between a man and a woman and defends that principle with
his vote, where and when he has the Constitutional authority to do so.
For example, Dr. Paul strongly supports the Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA). Candidly, though, Ron Paul does not believe (and neither do I)
that the U.S. Government needs to be defining that which God has
already defined in His Word.

Where pastors often become confused about Ron Paul is that when he is
resisting the unconstitutional centralization of our federal
government, he is often perceived as being anti-family. Many in these
pro-family movements themselves have been co-opted into believing that
the solutions to our family problems come in the form of more
unconstitutional federal legislation and programs. And when one does
not agree with these unconstitutional remedies, they conclude that he
or she is "anti-family." Such people mean well but are confused.

America would be much better off if we Christian pastors taught the
need for Christ-honoring resistance--at the local level--to
anti-family federal intrusions. We should call on our congregations to
vote out of office any judge who passes rulings designed to pervert
the Biblical family. That doesn't take a Constitutional amendment. It
just takes courageous pastors and people who understand that judges,
too, must respect the Constitution and our Christian heritage.

In fact, adherence to the Constitution protects our freedom of speech
and assembly; our freedom of worship; our right to keep and bear arms;
our right to a trial by jury; the right to be secure in our own homes
against police overreach; our right to witness for Christ in public,
as a Christian; the right to own property; the right to not be
deprived of life or property without due process of law; the right to
face our accusers, and the right to keep government local and limited.

Keeping government local and limited is the cornerstone doctrine of
American government. Ron Paul understands this more than any other
candidate running today.

Most of the problems that we are now dealing with socially,
culturally, financially, etc., stem from America abandoning the basic
founding principle that "the government that governs least governs
best."

Accordingly, America's commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness has been (and is being) systematically stripped from us--not
by State legislatures, but mostly by agencies of the federal
government.

Consider how it has been federal courts that have banned prayer in
school, and legalized abortion and homosexual marriage. Even in the
liberal State of Massachusetts it was the courts (along with a
compliant liberal governor, Mitt Romney), that forced acceptance of
homosexual marriage upon the people.

The solutions to these problems do not reside in more federal
legislation. All that does is strengthen the scope and power of the
federal judiciary.

The only ones who have anything to fear from Ron Paul are those who
believe in Big Government.

You see, Ron Paul is actually calling on us pastors and Christians to
stop seeing the federal government as one "in whom we live and move
and have our being." Jesus Christ is our Savior and Lord, not the
federal government. Have we not, in a material way, set up the federal
government as our functional Lord and Savior? When we look to the
federal government to solve our moral and spiritual problems, that is
exactly what we are doing.

When it comes to the war in Iraq, I firmly believe that Christian
conservatives have been duped by the neocons. Dr. Paul--an Air Force
veteran and proponent of a strong national defense--opposed the
unprovoked and pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, and rightly so. Time has
certainly vindicated Dr. Paul's principled position. There was a much
better way to deal with al-Qaeda.

Soon after 9/11, Congressman Paul introduced H.R. 3076, the September
11 Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001. According to Paul, "A letter of
marque and reprisal is a constitutional tool specifically designed to
give the president the authority to respond with appropriate force to
those non-state actors who wage war against the United States while
limiting his authority to only those responsible for the atrocities of
that day. Such a limited authorization is consistent with the doctrine
of just war and the practical aim of keeping Americans safe while
minimizing the costs in blood and treasure of waging such an
operation."

This is precisely what President Thomas Jefferson did when America's
ships were confronted with Barbary pirates on the high seas.

If the United States government had listened to Ron Paul, we would not
have lost nearly 4,000 American soldiers and Marines, spent over $1
trillion, and gotten bogged down in an endless civil war from which
there is no equitable extraction. Furthermore, had we listened to Dr.
Paul, Osama bin Laden would no doubt be dead, as would most of his
al-Qaeda operatives, and we would be less vulnerable to future
terrorist attacks, instead of being more vulnerable, which is the case
today.

One thing that Pastor Hartman brought up in our meeting in Iowa was
the sentiment of many Christians and pastors to defend Israel. Dr.
Paul stated that he did not believe that we do Israel any favors and
we actually weaken Israel by our constant meddling and intervention. I
agree.

Ron Paul is not Israel's enemy. And neither is he the enemy to
Christian liberty and constitutional government.

Ron Paul's non-interventionist and constitutional foreign policy
approach would help, not hurt, Israel to resolve tensions with their
neighbors. Remember, Israel has more nuclear missiles to defend
themselves than all of the Middle East nations combined. Believe me,
Israel knows how to defend itself. And know this: America's constant
meddling curses Israel more than it blesses.

Also consider this: according to published reports such as this one in
the Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/5223477.html , Ron Paul
is receiving more donations from military personnel than any other
Presidential candidate in either party. Think seriously about this.
Our active duty and retired military personnel clearly endorse with
their own contributions Ron Paul's non-interventionist position above
all others.

In the end, if the candidate is a sincere Christian, he will all the
more readily obey his or her oath to preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States. After all, does not our Lord tell
us that our yea is to be yea and our nay is to be nay? In other words,
genuine believers are to be true to their word. How, then, could a
true Christian make a promise before God and the American people to
preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution and then turn
around and ignore that promise?

Ron Paul lives his Christian faith and takes his oath to the
Constitution seriously. What more could we ask for in a Presidential
candidate?

Every Christian pastor should seriously consider Congressman Ron Paul.
Here is his website: http://ronpaul2008.com

(c) Chuck Baldwin

Please visit Chuck's web site at http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com.

--
"But truthfully, I don't really know. We've had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7."
~~ Dr. Shyam Sunder - Acting Dir. of Buiding and Fire Research Laboratory (NIST)
"We are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse." (NIST)