Jim Baxter on the value of The Individual

Internet friend Jim Baxter responds to an email excerpt, linked below, mailed out by Dave Hunt and The Berean Call. Like much of Jim's work, it was a insightful and invaluable commentary addressing the very foundation of American uniqueness and liberty; the value of the individual, and too important to simply be relegated to the in-boxes of Jim's email list recipients. The culture wars in American society; Socialist/Marxism and Islamism opposed to Christian liberty; rage around the very principals Jim articulates here.

Likewise, it exposes the false premise of America's current bid to bring "democracy" to the Middle East, that is, a bid to "reform" Islam. As Tom Pardue Sr. stated in the interview I did with him way back after 9/11, "...With the rise of the influence of the United Nations after WWII foreign interventionism has become normative. At some point when the false gospel of the UN became dominant, the mitigating influence of what remained of the influence of Evangelical Christianity vanished. The Social Gospel with a genesis in the Second Great Awakening was co-opted by humanists. Thus, the UN gospel now has completely supplanted any other influence. Now, men completely ignorant of the fact that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, seek to export liberty to other countries. They are hostile to the fact that liberty developed in this country only because the Gospel of Jesus Christ was brought to this country by the Puritans. They think erroneously that freedom and liberty have been created by men alone and not the fruit of the Gospel."

From: James Baxter

To: The Berean Call Daily Email

Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 6:59 AM

Subject: Re: TBC Today - Israel and Islam

> Sex Slavery Under the Islamic Republic of Iran [Excerpts]
>
> Islamists have added another way to dehumanize women and girls: buying
> and selling them for prostitution. Exact numbers of victims are
> impossible to obtain, but according to an official source in Tehran,
> there has been a 635 percent increase in the number of teen-age girls in
> prostitution. The magnitude of this statistic conveys how rapidly this
> form of abuse has grown. In Tehran, there are an estimated 84,000 women
> and girls in prostitution, many of them are on the streets, others are
> in the 250 brothels that reportedly operate in the city. The trade is
> also international: Thousands of Iranian women and girls have been sold
> into sexual slavery abroad.
>
> (International Media Intelligence Analysis News Alert, 04/23/07,
> Réalité-EU)

The Old World method of measuring human value was, and still is, by the group. Whether tribe, clan, city-state, color, ethnic, or gender, the Old World, ancient and modern, measures by the plural unit. Individuals had and have no value of themselves but only as they were and are part of a collective.

When Y'shua Jesus died on the cross, the veil of the Temple at the Holy of Holies parted from the top down. The individual believer in the congregation had, for the first time, a face-to-face, one-on-one relation with his Creator. The Creator, Himself, had validated each individual for the first time.Thus, the Individual became the corner-stone for later human value measuring systems: socio-political, philosophical, religious, educational, economic, etc., henceforth and forever. Western Civilization, America, English Law, civil Rights, the 'democratic' process, etc., all sprang from that single event. (Greco-Roman 'democracies' were 95% slave throughout their entire histories. Biblical principles are still today the foundation under Western Civilization and the American way of life.

Many social systems attempt to borrow ideas of "democracy" without the basic premise in The Individual. Such a system is only superficially and temporarily 'democratic.' The cornerstone of the democratic process is The Individual and the cornerstone of the value of The Individual is Y'shua Jesus! It is not possible to have one without the other. There is only One Source - there is no other.

It is additionally interesting to note that all value measuring systems are based on the single definitive unit of the system. Ex: Number, Time, Distance, Weight, Heat, Money, Angle, Volume, etc.

Only humanism makes the abusive error of measuring human value by the plural unit and attempts to build social structures, relations, and institutions thereon. Such man-made systems can only be abusive and oppressive because in reality there are only individual persons. Groups or collectives are merely convenient plural verbalizations about individuals. They are not reality.

I have yet to see a 'group.' All I have ever seen are individuals.Have you ever seen a group - or is it a verbal convenience? Reality is only in the individual person. And, such a validation never derived from a human source without the initiative of the Creator. (The French Rationalists of the 18th Century favored the fruit - but rejected the branch, tree, and root.)

We thank the Lord God for revealing His validation of each individual person. We thank Him for creating each person uniquely, in His image, and calling each one to a courageous ascension by Y'shua Jesus, who said, "I AM the Way..."