OCPAC Weekly Insights
4/1/19
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1. At OCPAC: Andrew Speno
For more than a decade, Andrew was the main news anchor for the Fox News affiliate in Oklahoma City. He has garnered more than 25 awards from the Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists, and the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters.
He was named one of the most influential "people under 40".
He is currently working on criminal justice reform in Oklahoma and has graciously agreed to speak this coming Wednesday on the many issues involved.
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Join us from NOON to 1 PM at Olivet Baptist Church
Lunch Available: See Below!
$2 donation to church if not eating
NW 10th and Western, OKC
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2. Christ and Crime by Bob Linn
3. Lunch provided
4. Last week: Steve Kern covered the constitution
5. Last week: CHARLIE'S RANT
6. Pastor Paul Blair honors Oklahoma's own Anita Bryant!
7. Dr. Everett Piper: Not A Daycare available here .
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2. Christ and Crime by Bob Linn
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There are many references to prisons in the Word of God. Yet, nowhere in Biblical Law are prisons either described or proscribed. God’s Law allows for only temporary “custody” while awaiting trial. Biblical Law prescribed either capital punishment or restitution. If the offender was unable to make restitution, he worked on behalf of the victim until restitution was complete. As with all the Law of God, Israel eventually succumbed to the humanistic influences of the nations around them. Hence, we do find prisons mentioned in the later Biblical histories of our Hebrew forefathers.
Western civilization represents an unhappy compromise between the Biblical standard of restitution and a Greco-Roman and pagan criminology. This system had some elements of restitution while leaning heavily toward punishment.
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Noted theologian, Rousas Rushdoony, said of the American prison system, “The prison thus had a place in Christendom, as an ugly, bastard compromise. It was not only a place of custody, but also a place for torture and punishment, a place to hold men for ransom or for elimination from a threatening position to the state." (Rousas John Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law , P515)
Rushdoony's Institutes are a classic and I highly recommend them for the serious Bible student and for anyone considering entering the political arena. As of my writing this, there were three left on Amazon .
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Arthur Griffiths was a British military officer, prison administrator and prolific writer. He penned more than 60 books in his lifetime. He wrote regarding the senseless elements of prison life, “…by far the most numerous class were the impecunious and the unfortunate, whom a mistaken system locked up and deprived of all means of paying their liabilities.” ( Prison Discipline , Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, The R.S. Beale Reprint 1892 XIX P747)
Also questioning the foundations of prisons systems was James Van Benschoten Bennett. Mr Bennett was a leading American penal reformer and prison administrator who served as director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons from 1937 to 1964. He was Assistant Director of the Bureau to Sanford Bates prior to this from 1930-1937.
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James Bennett wrote of the originalpurpose of American criminal law. “ … the purpose of the criminal law, to exact from the criminal a retributive suffering proportionate to the heinousness of the offense, [ has given way to ] the effort to combine deterrence and public protection with restoration of the offender to a more self-sustaining role in the community.” (James V. Bennett, The Sentence and Treatment of Offenders, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol 339 January 1962, P 142 Crime and the American Penal System )
Law based on anything other that the Law of Christ is doomed for failure. The puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony designed a society where every man was expected to know the word of God. The jury system was developed in America on the premise of a Biblical law order in which every citizen knows the law. The requirement that jury members be believers was not a church requirement but a state requirement; the law order required men knowledgeable in Biblical law.
In a Christian law order, ignorance of the law is no excuse. The law book is open to all. In humanistic law, ignorance of the law is unavoidable. There are thousands of statutes. Statutes with no basis in ultimate moral law. They are passed on a regular basis.
Without God’s moral absolutes, man is eventually unable to cope with evil. Rather than fight it, they compromise with it. Dr. Donald Cressey made these compromises clear.
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Dr. Donald R. Cressey was a professor at UC Santa Barbara. He suggested that the idea of some form of negotiation with America’s criminal element might lessen the danger that organized criminals will achieve a monopoly on democratic processes in the United States. Writing specifically regarding "Organized Crime", he said, “A little cold-blooded appeasement is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when our side is loosing.” ( News from the Academy , The Recorder, Kingsburg, California, Thursday, December 18, 1969, Page 8.)
By the way, Dr Cressey received his PhD from Indiana University which is both my alma mater and the place my dad did his own PhD work. Dad studied in the same department as Cressey!
So much for the unholy marriage between Biblical law and pagan law. Come hear Andrew Speno, a consummate communicator, express the details of Oklahoma's needs for criminal justice reform reform!
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COME HEAR
CHARLIE'S RANT!
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Political Insights You'll Hear Nowhere Else!
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Join us at OCPAC. If not eating our $7 lunch, we ask for a $2 donation to Olivet Baptist Church to pay for utilities. THANKS!
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I'd like to invite you to bring your children and grandchildren to the weekly OCPAC meetings. Build a foundation for the role of Biblical thought in their political views. Only as we train our future leaders will we be able to anticipate the maturing of the Kingdom of God expressed both through the church and through the State.
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HELP RIGHT THE SHIP IN OKLAHOMA!
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
NOON to 1 PM
OLIVET BAPTIST CHURCH
1201 NW 10th St, OKC, OK 73106
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We have a $7 lunch solution through EAGLE ONE PIZZA.
It is one of Oklahoma's highest rated pizza kitchens and they make it all fresh from scratch. Rated A+.
"Authentic pizza made from the finest ingredients: fresh basil, olive oil, vine-ripened fresh tomatoes & fresh mozzarella."
The $7 includes the $2 meeting room fee.
Tea and water is provided.
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Last week, Steve Kern addressed key elements of the history of the U. S. Constitution
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Pastor Steve Kern did an excellent job of presenting the Christian foundations of the U.S. Constitution.
It is a document under attack from both the "left" and the "right" who are both asking for either a convention to improve it or a complete re-write.
While it is not inspired in the way the Word of God is, its inspiration certainly surpasses anything our Marxist Democrats or our establishment and statist Republicans could possibly muster. Oklahoma needs to rescind its call for the Article V convention! At least until we recover our culture.
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Pastor Paul Blair spoke at some length at the morning Service of Fairview Baptist Church a week ago. Even while under going cancer treatment, he orchestrated the presentation of a plaque from Governor Stitt honoring Monday, March 25, as Anita Bryant Day. (March 25 is her birthday!)
As you know, she sacrificed everything to speak out for Christ in the midst of the early days of the Homosexual revolution. Like Moses who turned his back on the riches of Egypt in order to obtain the riches of Christ, Anita sacrificed her national contracts with Coca Cola, the Florida Orange Juice Growers, and her personal safety as the hatred and venom of the homosexual community came united against her.
It was a touching service and Stephen Black, Director of First Stone Ministries participated by telling her the personal impact she had in his own life.
Anita was a national figure, speaking for national corporations, singing with Bob Hope on his tours to American servicemen around the world, and singing with Billy Graham. She was voted the most admired woman in America for many years running. See much morehere at the Oklahoma Historical Society.
More than that ...she was born in Oklahoma and was crowned "MISS OKLAHOMA" in 1958. (And, she was second runner-up for the MISS AMERICA crown.) She and her husband are living here today!
Thank you, Anita! And it is wonderful to have you back in Oklahoma!
And, thank you Paul Blair! We are grateful for your rapid recovery!
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The mission of OCPAC is to promote and support public servants who oppose expansive government while promoting liberty, free markets, and Judeo-Christian standards.
This consumer archive includes the more recent weekly and special newsletters from the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee.
