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By Carl Shank March 22, 2025
"Only the facts. Ma'am!" I recall that phrase said over and over again on TV as a kid watching the old TV series, "Dragnet." Dragnet was an American crime drama television series starring Jack Webb and Harry Morgan which ran for four seasons, from January 12, 1967, to April 16, 1970. This very famous and dour saying was Jack Webb's cryptic remark to interviewed witnesses of a crime. He did not want superfluous or extraneous or personal opinions to cloud the real "facts" of the crime or situation at hand. A current public radio program claims that they are following "only the facts," that they report only factual events as they really took place. They claim to be free of bias and not "progressively oriented" in their reporting. Consequently, a recent show on abortion offered the scientific "fact" of an unborn baby, or fetus, achieving "life status" at so many weeks of gestation. This was said in response to a conservative caller who phoned in citing other "evidence," including the Bible's take on conception, as the beginning of life. The public radio station claimed that the caller was wrong and cited "scientific facts" about the "real" beginning of life. This is an instance and example of what modern society, especially anti-Christian society, considers as "factual" and therefore worth reporting and worth our time. There are actually three problems with what are called "facts" today even when claiming to be fair and unbiased. The definition of what is "factual" has shifted, first of all, over time and history. Hillsdale College publishes speeches in a format called "Imprimis" ( https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/ ) This very conservative institution offers excellent and gifted speakers who go against the tide of "progressivism" in the country. While they and their invited speakers are often dismissed and ignored by most public and social media today, they offer another look at American culture that is Constitutionally based. One of those speakers noted that in the court system today, progressive constitutional thinking has replaced and overtaken original constitutional mandates. This can actually be traced in the history of the court system. "Facts" seen as such years ago are now replaced by "real" facts, modern facts, today's facts. This is part of the problem of a public radio station purporting to only report the "facts" of a situation today. In the second place, reporters and journalists today have been schooled and educated by liberal elite to discard "old" ways of thinking, especially conservatively based thinking, and report things as they "see" them. And this is the problem. How we process what we see is often, whether consciously or unconsciously, biased in favor of a liberal, anti-Christian way of thinking and seeing. Rather than admit such presuppositional flavoring to "factual" reporting, the modern way is seen as the "only" way to see and process everything. Scientific reasoning, crafted by liberal theologians and philosophers of the Enlightenment, has replaced and driven out any hint of truthful reporting that takes into account biblical truth. And, of course, "religious" truth has been replaced by "scientific" truth, as if humanity's way of reasoning trumps God's revelation. Third, American individualism, copying the French Revolution, has defined American "freedom" today. This requires some explanation. Os Guinness in his Last Call for Liberty: How America's Genius for Freedom has Become Its Greatest Threat (InterVarsity Press, 2018), has carefully cited historical "facts" that link the 1789 French Revolution and the American Left — "The former struggled for "liberté" and "egalité" the latter for "liberation" and "social justice." The former won through violent revolution, whereas the latter seeks to win through a cultural revolution, after which the elite imposes its will through administrative and bureaucratic procedures (regulative bodies and the law courts). And both are characterized by their reliance on the state, their open hostility toward religion, their radical separation of religion and public life, their attempt to control language in order to control reality (French and Soviet "Newspeak," "doublespeak," and American "political correctness"), their unashamed espousal of power, their egalitarian appeal to envy rather than liberty, and their naive utopianism that the removal of repression will mean fulfillment of freedom." (51) He says that American has rejected its covenantal/constitutional heritage of freedom as a republic surrendering to those supoposedly "democratic" forces that redefine our "facts" and our heritage. "Only the facts, Ma'am!" has taken on a new meaning, a new way of thinking and processing, and an anti-Christian, anti-biblical, anti-religious cast that we cannot even see or take into account in our reporting of the "facts."
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July 25, 2025

Week #29 — Day 6

The Blessing of the Sabbath Day


Q. 60. How is the Sabbath to be sanctified?

A. The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.

Ex. 20:8, 10; Ex. 16:25-28; Neh. 13:15-19, 21-22; Luke 4:16; Acts 20:7; Ps. 92title; Isa. 66:23; Matt. 12:1-13


Q. 61. What is forbidden in the fourth commandment?

A. The fourth commandment forbiddeth the omission, or careless performance, of the duties required, and the profaning the day by idleness, or doing that which is in itself sinful, or by unnecessary thoughts, words, or works, about our worldly employments or recreations.

Ezek. 22:26; Amos 8:5; Mal. 1:13; Acts 20:7, 9; Ezek. 23:38; Jer. 17:24-26; Isa. 58:13.


“When we make the Lord’s Day like every other day, we undermine God’s pledge to one day give us rest from all our toil (Ex. 31:13; Heb. 4:4–⁠5, 9–⁠11). By setting apart the Lord’s Day, we confess that we cannot work our way into His favor. Christ alone has satisfied all the requirements of the law for us. Through Christ’s righteousness, received by faith alone, God promises to give us eternal rest. And we can begin that rest right now. No one can make you honor God’s day. But when He warms your heart by His grace, no one will need to.”


Excerpt From Glorifying and Enjoying God: 52 Devotions through the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Boekestein & Cruse & Miller)


The blessing of the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath. We are to cease, to rest from, our normal routines on a one–in–seven basis because our time is God’s time, and we are but

stewards of the time he has given to us in this life. Consequently, Ephesians 5:15 and Colossians 4:5 tell us to “make the most of every opportunity” — to buy up the time God has given us and use it wisely for his honor and his glory and his purposes. 


How do we do that? J. I. Packer suggests “by an ordered lifestyle set within the rhythm of toil–and–rest, of work–and–worship, so that we master time instead of

being mastered by it.” Early in the twentieth century, Richard Cabot offered a formula for living that honored this cycle — “To be whole people, we must build four

elements into each day: work, play, love and worship.” “Balance” is the key, and the God who created us and knows us intimately and thoroughly says we must have this cycle of work–and–rest in order to live full, healthy, God-honoring and productive lives.


A Puritan Prayer —

“GIVER OF ALL GOOD,

Streams upon streams of love overflow my path.

Thou hast made me out of nothing,

hast recalled me from a far country,

hast translated me from ignorance to knowledge,

from darkness to light,

from death to life,

from misery to peace,

from folly to wisdom,

from error to truth,

from sin to victory.

Thanks be to thee for my high and holy calling.

I bless thee for ministering angels,

for the comfort of thy Word,

for the ordinances of thy church,

for the teaching of thy Spirit,

for thy holy sacraments,

for the communion of saints,

for Christian fellowship,

for the recorded annals of holy lives,

for examples sweet to allure,

for beacons sad to deter.

Thy will is in all thy provisions

to enable me to grow in grace,

and to be meet for thy eternal presence.

My heaven-born faith gives promise of eternal sight,

my new birth a pledge of never-ending life.

I draw near to thee, knowing thou wilt draw near to me.

I ask of thee, believing thou hast already given.

I entrust myself to thee, for thou hast redeemed me.

I bless and adore thee, the eternal God”


Excerpt From

The Valley of Vision

Edited by Arthur Bennett



"We must unquestionably receive its [the Bible's] statements of fact,  bow before its enunciation of duty, tremble before its threatenings, 
and rest upon its promises." – B.B. Warfield


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