Saved Through Water

 “(I)n which a few - that is, eight souls - were saved through water: this same baptism, thus pictured before, now saves you as well - not as a removal of dirt from your flesh, but as the appeal of a good conscience unto God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. 1 Peter 3

1 Peter 3:8-4:6 has to be taken together as a single thought. Here Peter is making a legal and covenantal argument. The Christian is to live in obedience to God so that when accusations are brought against him by others God the Righteous Judge will be able to declare on the man’s behalf in His court and come to his defense, acting sometimes both as judge and executioner. This presupposes a number of things. Maybe the most prominent and often neglected is the fact of God’s actively being involved in history as a regular and constant reality. Not only does He do this in keeping the planets in orbit, or in making food grow up from the ground, or any other aspect of nature, but He is also actively, constantly, judging and responding in the affairs of men. He raises up some rulers and puts others down. And he acts on behalf of His children when they cry out to Him to do so - and even occasionally when they don’t. He acts for His own glory but also as He is bound in covenant with those He has set apart for Himself. Sometimes He acts by delivering His children immediately when they are suffering unjustly. But as Peter talks about, sometimes He allows the persecution to persist for a long time. Just as Jesus suffered unjustly in His sojourn here, so must we, as we walk the path of salvation He has laid out for us. Either way, the time will come when eventually we will be delivered, either in our death or when Christ returns to rid the world of evil for good and to make all things new.

The point of Peter’s thought with regard to Noah is that justice had to be carried out because the world had grown wicked enough for God to do so. It was through water that God saved Noah’s family. And God also saves us through the water of Baptism. There is no hint here that this water is somehow not water, that this is merely symbolic language for an action carried out by the Holy Spirit apart from real physical water. Just as the Spirit used real water in saving Noah, so He uses real water in saving us. It’s worth saying as well that in neither case is the word “saving” meant in some metaphorical way, in Noah’s or our case either one. Deliverance from the persecution of evil people during our earthly sojourn is not merely symbolic of God’s salvation of our souls when we die. It is the manifestation in this present life of the salvation procured by Jesus’s death and resurrection. God rescued Noah from a wicked world when He brought him through and destroyed evil mankind by the flood. And the point of the passage here is that God will do that for all His children when they look to Him to make a righteous judgment on their behalf. God’s heavenly court is always in session.

This is why I have rendered the phrase “the appeal of a good conscience toward God” the way I have. Some major translations, like the ESV, seem not only not to know how to handle the Greek phrase all by itself, but also don’t understand the larger context in which the verse sits. Peter is echoing an earlier statement from vs. 16, a part of the same flow of thought. The ESV also flubs the translation of the word “sarx”. Somehow they chose to translate the same word as “flesh” in vs. 18 while translating it as “body” here. But that obscures Peter’s deliberate parallel. The idea of Jesus “being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” is meant to parallel “not as a removal of dirt from your flesh, but as the appeal of a good conscience unto God”. Baptism is the application of Christ’s resurrection to the believer, thus resulting in a good conscience. This is why Peter quickly follows the latter phrase with “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. The importance of baptism isn’t that it washes physical dirt off of a person - it isn’t that kind of bath. Rather, it is a legal, covenantally binding ceremony between God and that individual. The person who has been baptized can then go into God’s law court at any time and say to Him, “I am your covenant child. We are legally bound to each other. Please act in space and time on my behalf.” The person who has been baptized has partaken of the work of Christ, and therefore has been, and will be, saved - that is, delivered not only from his own sin, but from the sins of those around him. Peter ends vs. 22 the way He does for that reason. None of the forces of the spiritual realm are above His control. He has authority over all. And when His children call on Him, He acts (Ps. 18).

“My Truth”

 There is no such thing as “your truth” or “my truth”. There is only THE truth. This language of “my truth” is a cutesy way of attempting an end run around absolute reality, making truth a sentimentalistic, individualistic thing. It is the idolatry of one’s self. It tries to reject God as the one who defines truth, instead putting one’s self in the place of God and creating its own reality. This way the person can reject the absolute moral standards that exist outside of him and which are binding upon him. But then the person with this approach invariably turns back to other people and hypocritically tries to bind them to his own self-invented moral standards, as if they aren’t allowed to do what that person just did by creating their own reality.

Individualism is death. No man can take the place of the Creator and Sustainer of all things.

No Doctrine At Odds With Another

 No one doctrine of Scripture is separate from any other doctrine of Scripture, any more than one attribute of God is disconnected from another. As God is unified, so are His works in the created order. And so if we find ourselves holding to an eschatology that is at odds with our soteriology, then the disconnection comes from a fault in our understanding of one or both. Eschatology is the working out of God’s soteriology in the cosmos, no more and no less.

The Real “Parenthesis”

 Dispensationalism has always taught that the Church is a “parenthesis“ in God’s plan. But Romans and Galatians make it clear that if anything can be regarded as a parenthesis, it’s OT Israel. The Law, as in Israel’s Law, and the nation of Israel, were a temporary arrangement designed to prepare the way for Jesus. This is evident in Paul going back before Israel to Abraham to illustrate justification by faith (Rom. 4). The Law was a guardian to keep mankind until the work of Christ was accomplished and justification by faith was brought to bear upon Jew and Gentile alike (Gal. 3:23-29). God does not have, and has never had, two parallel systems working, but rather one overarching plan. Israel was always meant to be temporary, while the salvation of all mankind apart from Israel was God’s end goal. Dispensationalism somehow manages to get Scripture exactly backwards in this.

Curious Angels

 “It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look” (1 Peter 1:12). The last line, “things into which angels long to look”, isn’t a mysterious aside by Peter. He’s making an allusion to the work of angels as “ministers of salvation” in the Old Covenant (Heb. 1-2). He repeats variations on the word “angel” three times in this verse, something which doesn’t carry over into English. And like with other major doctrines in this chapter, he makes use of these words at one point here and then revisits them later in the chapter (vs. 25, “εὐαγγελισθὲν”). So there is some word play going on in his mentioning of angels. But it isn’t just word play. The whole point is that God gave revelation of the work of Christ yet to come in the Old Testament, but gave no clarity on who this savior would be or when he would arrive. These revelations of the salvation yet to come were themselves acts of salvation by God, as He worked out His redemption of the world. And so this chapter is filled with words of knowing, searching, inquiring, seeking, and looking. Those things that were hidden, which men and angels longed and do long to see, were revealed beginning in the first century and have continued to be revealed in the New Covenant up to this day, with the pulling back of the veil (apokalupsis, apocalypse) so that men and angels might gaze into the Most Holy Place upon the glory of Christ in His person and work. What was once hard to see is now set up before all men to behold, in the proclamation of the Gospel and the good works of believing men. And this is why here and throughout the book Peter exhorts them to lives of holiness, that the fullness of Christ’s work might take hold in their lives, and that others may be saved. Rather than the end of vs. 12 being a confusing aside, or vs. 10-12 as it might seem at first blush, this section is at the core of Peter’s exhortation to them, as its teaching is throughout the New Testament in its message - though it seems to be something we have often failed to make clear in the Church.

More on WandaVision

 I think ”Westview” and “Eastview” are references to The Wizard of Oz, as well as The Witches of Eastwick. That’s one Easter egg I haven’t heard anybody pick up on. I believe that we’ll find that Wanda went to Westview, where Agatha Harkness lives, to receive training on how to harness her powers. And things got out of control, in such a way that involved Wanda cutting a deal with Mephisto. I believe Pietro is actually Mephisto. I also think there were intentional allusions to some nineties movies in the last episode, namely Twister, The Sixth Sense, Godzilla, and Hocus Pocus. 

There’s a narrowness in this show, a narcissism, of the sort you get from artists - tv shows about making a tv show, poems about poetry, music videos and songs about life on the road. The hardest thing for some artists, it seems, is to make art about real life. Tom King, who wrote the ”Vision” comic series on which this show is partially based, once said that the suburbs were to him what Hell looks like. And there’s something of that in this show. Disdain for one’s subject matter cannot accurately reflect that subject. All art has to be born out of love, or it will end up being a misrepresentation of its subject. But narcissism is the breeding ground for hate, after all, and hate always deforms both the artist and his subject in its presentation. The makers of this show love TV. But not so much suburbanites in their everyday lives. That is clinging to the myths of yesteryear, a time that deserves to be dead and gone.

Prayer

 Visits to my blog have been up over the past few months, something for which I am grateful. I hope it means I have been posting things that are true, and helpful, and that bring glory to God.

I have been going through a rough patch for awhile now though, and would appreciate any prayer any of you might give. I won’t go into details right now, but simply ask for prayer. 

Irresistibly Drawn

 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44). Raise who up? The one who is drawn. The “drawing” of the Father invariably leads to resurrection. In other words, those who are drawn do not and can not resist. All those who are drawn are saved. When God wants to save a man, no one can stop Him, not even the man himself.

Complete Repentance

 “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Is Peter here saying that God wants every last person saved? To try to make the verse say that is to ignore its context in the rest of the letter. Peter is talking to believers, not unbelievers, and is wanting them to come to a change of mind, “metanoia”. This is a continuation of what he says in 1:5, and the rest of the book flowing after it. In short, Peter doesn’t mean here initial repentance, as we mean in our systematic theologies, but rather the complete renovation of mind that occurs over the course of a person’s life and only ends when his life is over. And he is saying God desires this for those already on the path of salvation, that is, Christians.

The Plague

 I had the chance to speak with an ICU doctor the other day about the virus, in a non-medical setting. In the midst of the rest of the conversation, here’s what he said.

Everybody he’s dealing with is a COVID patient. If you’re either elderly, or wait too late to get checked out rather than going in when you first get it, you’re done. Everybody else can get over it. 

Masks, in his opinion, do no good. You walk around at all times with a cloud of moisture around your head. All the mask does is slow it down as it leaves your mouth. It’s still there.

It’s an inflammatory disease. They’re using Remdesivir, but what is really working is steroids. Once the inflammation destroys enough lung tissue and scars it up to where you can’t breathe anymore, it’s too late. The steroids knock down the inflammation. 

From me - Americans on the whole eat a terrible, inflammation-causing diet. The preventative, then, is to eat an anti-inflammatory diet. Knock off the Little Debbies and eat some greens, if you want to live.

The Last Days

 I have believed in the past that a Preterist interpretation of “last days” language in the New Testament was the most reasonable understanding of it, holding that the “last days” were the end of the Old Covenant. But it was something I had never given the time it deserved, and I don’t think my broader understanding of Scripture was sufficient to come to a conclusion on the matter. I’ve spent some time looking at 1 Peter recently, examining the Greek, comparing it with other passages that speak of “the end”, and taking in passages that speak of the bodily resurrection (1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4). And I don’t believe the Preterist reading of that language is full enough to cover everything the New Testament means by it. It seems to me now that a more Biblically accurate reading to be made of this is to see the “last days” as referring to the final period of God’s eternal plan of salvation - that is, the whole scope of history stretching from the incarnation of Christ on into eternity. This includes the overlapping of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant that occurred in the the first century, but does not refer simply to the end of the Old Covenant. This still leaves place for a Partial Preterist understanding of the fulfillment of prophecy, including the Book of Revelation. A part of Christ’s work was that of bringing the Jewish system to an end, in fulfilling it by doing what it could not do and by bringing in the Gentiles so that, with Jewish believers, all the nations of the earth might worship Him as His Church. This also includes a positive, Postmillennial view of history - Jesus is victorious, and will continue to be so, through His Church, until all people bow to Him. Peter’s letters are filled with this positivity, emphasizing it as a reality to be seen even in the midst of suffering. 

A full consideration of this would take more than I’ll attempt right now. After all, pages upon pages have been written about it throughout history. Whether I will try to cover some of my reasoning in the future only time will tell.

But, I will note, the Lord tells us that “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” ( Rom. 16:20), and “soon” is according to God’s perfect judgment, not our own limited view. “Jesus Christ...has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him” (1 Peter 3:21-22). He is “seated...in heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named“ (Eph. 1:20-21). And He is currently “destroying every rule and every authority and power” (1 Cor. 15:24), even through us, as we “tear down strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4) by the example of our lives and as we “make a defense to anyone who asks (us) for a reason for the hope that is in” us (1 Peter 3:15).

“To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 4:11). Jesus is King, and He reigns now over all things from His throne in Heaven. And He will do so until “the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet”(1 Cor. 15:24-25), when finally God will “be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).

WandaVision - Hate Makes No Art

If only WandaVision had gone for a more heavy-handed Cultural Marxist allegory.

Here’s what I don’t understand about the WandaVision show. So far the show has been predictable and, to me, boring. It has been a recap of classic sitcoms for the most part, too familiar and overplayed to be entertaining. But even this newest episode was derivative to the point of boredom. The acting was bad, and the dialogue was uninteresting. The characters were predictable and stuck in classic tropes. It followed the pattern of classic adventure TV shows in a staid way. One might even suggest it came off as a mockery of similar shows, even of Agents of Shield. Is the mind-warping aspect of the show intended to take on a breaking the fourth wall aspect, extending beyond the borders of Wanda’s artificially created reality into your own livingroom? Are they trying to be that creative? Or is the show just really bad? Given that young Cultural Marxists are notorious for making this sort of bad art as a regular practice, I suspect the latter. Marxism always makes terrible art, because it begins with a denial of the created order and, hating that order and the God of Creation and Providence behind it, they seek to destroy it.

At what point do cynicism and nihilism ruin the artistic endeavor, pursuing creativity in self-contradiction as they trudge on in despair?

Art can only be made as it is born out of love. Anything else descends the direction of anti-art, that is, of death.

At the Critical Moment

1 Peter 1

Vs. 5 - “ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ” - “in the last time”, “in the last critical moment”

Vs. 11 - “εἰς τίνα ἢ ποῖον καιρὸν” - “into who (what) or what manner of time”, “unto who or what kind of critical moment”

Vs. 20 - “ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτου τῶν χρόνων” - “in (on, upon) the last times”, “in the furthest of times”, “in the very last of times”

In 1 Peter 1, Peter has a certain number of thoughts that he repeats throughout the chapter. And it is clear that whatever he meant by these three phrases, he intended them to parallel each other - they all refer to the same thing. What they refer to can be determined by looking more at the chapter.

In vs. 20 he is bracketing time at its extreme points, the beginning and the ending of history: “προεγνωσμένου μὲν πρὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου, φανερωθέντος δὲ ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτου τῶν χρόνων δι᾽ ὑμᾶς”. Christ was foreknown before the very beginning of time, and was made manifest (or made to shine forth) at the very end of time. And for Peter, that very end at least included the first century, the time in which he wrote.

Prayer For The Pretender

“Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” - Ps. 109:8

Or, as a friend said, “I see some Christian friends exhorting us to pray for our new President. I agree, and I recommend praying Psalms 5, 35, 83, and 94.”

**************

“Because the [Roman] people were virtuous they were magnanimous. Because they were free, they scorned power. 

But when they had lost their principles, the more power they had, the less carefully they managed it, until finally, having become their own tyrant and their own slave, they lost the strength of liberty and fell into the weakness of license.”

Montesquieu, “The Spirit of the Laws” (1748)

Let’s Impeach (Twist) Again

 It’s like the Catholic Church digging up the bones of dead “heretics” after they’re long gone and burning them, just to show them. Whenever he finally kicks the bucket they’d better bury his body in an unknown place, or some loony enraged Leftist will try to do that to him too. Or maybe some “Republican”, given the Rinos out there.

Maybe they should work in a third impeachment, you know, just to complete the trilogy.

*************

Based on Fascistbook’s ads I’m getting, they think a war is coming and I’m going to partake. They also think I have a smoking problem and my nonexistent dog needs high-quality vegan bacon treats.

They are quite happy to benefit financially off of the social unrest. But there are no branches of the Federal Reserve in Hell, shocking though that may be.

**************

“And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.“

Poor, naive deplorables that they were.

How incredibly familiar. I wonder how many “shepherds”, particularly among the NeverTrumper scholars, looking snobbishly down their bespectacled noses at the rubes supporting Trump, still have their jobs, their houses, their health insurance? 

But he is so distasteful. So unsophisticated. He eats MacDonalds and says not nice things.

At what point do we enter the territory of “tithing mint and cumin”? I dare say with some we’re awfully close.

I can’t help but keep thinking of The Name of the Rose. As the people suffered in squalor and ignorance outside the monastery walls, inside the scholars debated the penultimate theological question of whether or not Jesus owned the robe He wore.

The whole thing is nauseating.

This sort of cluelessness from the scholars is why the average Christian will listen to the subpar or even heretical theology of some guy wearing a ball cap and pontificating in a video behind the wheel of his truck about things he barely understands, rather than listening to the better theology of the scholars.

He bears their flesh. And the scholars don’t.

One Plan, Not Two

 The key idea of Dispensationalism is that God still has two plans in play, one for Israel and one for the Church. What makes this so odd is that the New Testament not only goes to great lengths to say the exact opposite, but that the exact opposite, that Jew and Gentile are united in the Church and there is only one plan in play now, is the central message of the New Testament.

*****************

Romans 1:17 - “ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν”. I understand the difficulties of translation, but I don’t understand why there would be an impulse to translate this any other way than “out of faith and into faith”. Contextually it clearly seems to be a reference to motion from the Jewish era into the era of the Church, from Old Covenant into New Covenant. The just in the predominantly Jewish past lived by faith, as with Abraham, and the just in the New Covenant, whether Jew or Gentile, equally lives by faith. As such the phrase parallels “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” in the previous verse.

This then has to be seen as leading to Romans 9-11.

Desecrating Our Sacred Halls

What really profaned the Temple in Israel? Was it the physical breaching of its walls? No. God allowed its walls to be breached because Israel through her sin had destroyed the sanctity of her worship and service of God over and over again. She had violated her covenant with God repeatedly, angering and grieving God until finally He gave her over to what she wanted- to abandon Him and worship idols like the nations. What happened at the Capitol building, as in Israel, was merely the physical manifestation of what spiritually has already happened - the death of a people, a nation, a civilization - the giving over by God of a people to their desired judgment and destruction. We, as a people and with our representatives, have destroyed ourselves. We have desecrated ourselves.

As Filthy Rags?

 “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:6). It’s an oft quoted verse, or at least partially quoted. But it’s clearly speaking of Israel as having been unfaithful in her covenant with Yahweh, and that before the coming of Christ. It is referring to a particular matter in history, not a condition of all saved people throughout their lives and throughout history.

When you then turn to Romans 3, which is a parallel to it, you see the same thing. Paul is speaking of a condition of all peoples before the work of Christ has had bearing upon their lives, even moreso, before the work of Christ was accomplished. Paul even seems, in chs. 2 and 3, to be taking Isaiah 64 and applying it not only to Israel but to all people. All people, whether they had the Law or not, were subject to the penalties that come in violating it. And so the passage has to be read redemptive-historically, or maybe better, covenantal-historically. It’s a misappropriation to jump in and pull out this notion of works as filthy rags and apply it to all the works of all Christians, ignoring the context. Beyond this, such an application would have to ignore Romans 6-8, in which Paul makes it clear that living in sin is not the normal state of a redeemed man. A Christian’s works are not all as filthy rags before God, but rather are generally pleasing and acceptable to God. To suggest this is not true would be to cast doubt upon the work of God in salvation. The general direction of all Christians is to walk in holiness and obedience to God’s Law, with sin being an exception in ones life. If that exception ever seems to become the rule, it’s at that point that his salvation comes into doubt. 

John 6 and Israel’s Covenant History

 John 6:25-40 - And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You come here?”

Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”

Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”

Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”

Therefore they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”

And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

*************

This conversation in John 6 occurred right after Jesus had miraculously fed the people with bread and fish. And this makes it even more confounding. At least one lesson to be had here is that unbelief and sin make a person undiscerning. The people who had just seen Jesus miraculously feeding them then asked for a miraculous sign, as if one had not just occurred before their eyes. They even went so far as to make the connection between God feeding Israel with Manna in the wilderness and Jesus feeding them with bread and fish. And they did this without Jesus leading them to it. Yet in spite of all this, they still could not perceive that He was God, or that He was the Savior of the world. Just as God had sought to lead Israel out of her bondage in Egypt, so Jesus had come to lead Israel out of her bondage to sin and the world.

But that generation of Israel in the Exodus not only prolonged their time in the wilderness, but in fact died there, not having reached the promised land. And the reason for this was twofold. First, she fell in her sin because the people did not exercise faith in God; they did not believe; they did not trust God. Just as faith in God and godly works are always found together, unbelief and sin always exist together; where one is, you always have the other. A person always acts in accordance with what he believes.

But beyond this, Scripture tells us that Israel failed because her role was a temporary one, intended to prepare the way for Jesus to come into the world. And until He came, the work of salvation had not yet been accomplished, and faith would not be possible. Israel’s laws, her lineage, her priesthood, her land - they were intended by God to illustrate salvation and its need, things which she could never provide.

This leads us back to John 6, in which we see Israel simply repeating the same unbelief that she had always had. She may have physically no longer been in Egypt, but spiritually she had never left. Jesus in giving them bread was merely repeating the pattern with her that she had been through with Yahweh over and over again throughout her history, always without her exercising faith. The point of this passage and of Jesus’ miracle was not merely symbolic. It was to establish a historical fact - Israel had been unfaithful in her covenant with God, and could not be saved apart from Christ and without the Gentiles. Jesus was again giving her a chance to repent and believe, but she would not. She would do to Jesus what she had always wanted to do to God, in giving Him over to the Gentiles to be crucified.

The Church of God, the New Israel, would soon after be established, with many of Israel as her foundation. As the Gentiles would begin to join with them, Old Israel, Israel according to the flesh, would continue in the unbelief she had always known. And yet God continues bringing the salvation that His Son accomplished through His Church today, a Church of Jews and Gentiles, even as He feeds us with bread and wine.

There Is No Transcending Culture

 You can have good culture or bad culture, Christian culture or anti-Christian culture. But you can never have non-culture, whether in the worship and ministry of the church, or anywhere else. Culture exists everywhere, and the worship and ministry of the church are always enculturated in practice. To exist in Creation always involves enculturation.

A Congress of Thieves and Liars

 Republicans in Congress are normally quite happy to blow billions of dollars on foreign “aid” and the corporations that fund their lifestyles. I find it hard to believe that their opposition to Trump’s recommendation of $2000 checks is over the effects on the economy.

The Illusion of American Capitalism

 Opening the economy back up won’t be enough to fix the current problems. What we’re dealing with isn’t simply the result of the shutdown, but rather years of actions by governing officials determined by back room deals with corporations who then funneled money back to the governing officials for favoring them over small businesses and the majority of American citizens. We don’t have capitalism or a free market, but rather Leftist globalist corporatism. The shutdown merely accelerated the already existing trend toward oblivion. And that‘s without even bringing up China, a whole other part of it.

Hebrews, Pt. 1

Once you have a complete understanding of what the Book of Hebrews is saying, Dispensationalism falls apart like the house of cards it is.

******************

The Book of Hebrews tells us that all of history after the Fall in Genesis 3 is divided up into two parts - 1. the Old Covenant, and 2. the New and Better Covenant. The writer begins with this distinction from the very first verse: 

“God, (1.) who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

(2.) Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds...”.

“Time past” was the Old Covenant, and “these last days” are the New. We see these two periods throughout the book. But we’re told that this is no mere distinction of periods of history. Rather they are stages in which God accomplished the salvation of man and the world.

This Evil Stimulus Package

Congressman Ted Budd, on Facebook, said the following a few hours ago:

“I wish I could have voted for a targeted COVID relief bill several months ago. We need to end economic lockdowns and support small businesses and their workers. But this package is a classic Washington shakedown game, and I’m not playing it.

Instead of going through the normal legislative process to pass a targeted COVID relief package, a handful of Congressional leaders emerged from their backroom with a trillion-dollar package that had to be attached to another multi-trillion-dollar spending bill in order to pass. There was no real debate, no amendments, and no time to comprehend a 5,593-page spending package that represents one of the largest spending bills in U.S. history. That’s no way to run our government.”

But even this, as true as it is, is way understated, given the suffering Americans are going through, and the wickedness of this package. Which goes back to why Trump was elected, with all his brashness. People are tired of wimpy talk and hollow procedure that do nothing. Instead we get this package that does more for the rest of the world than it does for the Americans who are starving and sinking further into debt. And, it is our children who are paying for it. As somebody has already said somewhere, our leaders hate us. It is impossible to measure their arrogance and spite towards us. If you haven’t been praying imprecatory Psalms against them and begging for God to deliver us from them, you should be.

Merry Christmas, Obama

 Ten years ago on social media, it was all about flash mobs surprising people with musical performances. Today it’s just mobs, destroying everything in Western culture they can. The Leftists, and especially Obama, really accomplished what they were aiming for.

On Christian Nationalism

 I’m not a nationalist in the strict sense of the term. It seems to me that nationalism has had a centralizing effect that has been detrimental to this country ever since the Constitution, one that takes away the rights and responsibilities that belong solely to individuals, families, and other bodies. In fact, that nationalism is very much to blame for many of the problems we suffer today. But Scripture makes it clear that every nation, country, city, county, state, and any other grouping of territory or people, owes its allegiance to Jesus the King alone. And it is the duty of every such body to declare its allegiance to King Jesus, along with the Father and the Spirit, the Holy Trinity, and no other “god”, with no lack of clarity on the matter. All things in Heaven and on Earth have been given to the Son by the Father in His ascension, and to refuse to bow and serve Him is idolatry and rebellion against Him, the one true Ruler of all things. Insofar as any body refuses to worship and serve Him, its judgment by God is just, deserved, and inevitable.

Yes, She Knew

 Nothing witnesses to the Church’s cultural irrelevancy like the fact that we think critiques of the twenty-four year old song “Mary Did You Know?” are daring and new.

The Supreme Farce and the NeverTrumper’s Guilty Conscience

 What we’ll be seeing now are posts, articles, etc. on how the Supreme Court made the right decision, from people who have hated, complained about, been envious of, and been found guilty by the speech of, President Trump for five years - people who in any other case would have been talking about how this election was rigged, had it been somebody they didn’t have a personal, emotional problem with. You can just write off anything they have to say about what has happened.

Those Frog People Eggs

 I think there’s a solid defense to be made, from a Christian perspective, as to why the storywriters’ having Baby Yoda eat those eggs in the Mandalorian was a bad thing. And it aligns from one angle with a criticism from outside the narrative of the Stormtroopers’ treatment of Baby Yoda in the last episode of season one - that is, it’s a criticism of the script writers, not of the Stormtroopers. I don’t plan on writing that criticism anytime soon myself. But take into consideration C.S. Lewis’ treatment of animals that have taken on human characteristics in his writings. And then reflect on the reality of pagan cynicism in modern art, and I think you’ve arrived at the truth of the matter.

The Great Globalist Enslavement

 The Great Reset is just a newer, more aggressive version of the same globalism we’ve been having forced on us for a long time now. The destruction of local and folk culture, traditions, history, and the finding of identity in familial connections (through aggressive forced immigration) has been a part of the same end goal. And that end goal is the replacing of these things with globalist corporatist interests, for the reducing of power and money into the hands of a select limited ultra-wealthy few. They want to kill your identity and everything valuable to you that keeps you from being malleable and a moneymaking tool for them. As a recent media release by the World Economic Forum stated, “you’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.”

Our Statist Moment in History

 Another trip to the grocery store, and another experience of people staring quixotically at me, as I was the only one not wearing a mask. I don’t care in the least. But I realized in a fresh way with a science-fiction dystopian narrative we’re in. It’s absolutely bizarre. Nobody can see anybody else’s face. But it’s as if it doesn’t phase anyone. There’s no reflection, no sense of how wrong the whole thing is, no sense of how controlled they are. How many billions of dollars have been spent on science fiction movies, books , TV shows? It’s as if people haven’t been paying any attention at all.

*************************

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -- C. S. Lewis

***************************

If you aren’t already, you should begin praying imprecatory Psalms against not only our wicked politicians, but also against all those who would take away your freedom - corporations, especially the tech companies, and the relevant international organizations. Ask for God to tear down those wicked people and replace them instead with godly people, who would walk in fear of and obedience to Him.

*****************************

Without the fear of God, men do not even observe justice and charity among themselves. -- John Calvin

******************************

Friendship is a fifth column against the State. The State doesn’t even want you to have friends. -- Rod Rosenbladt

******************************

When the police knock down your door on Thanksgiving Day because you have too many people in your house, just tell them you have Anne Frank and her family hiding in a closet in your bedroom. You know, just to keep things interesting.

Collective Narcissistic Abuse

 The narrative du jour that Leftists are repeating on social media is apparently that Trump supporters owe them an apology for all the emotional trauma that those Trump supporters have allegedly caused them over the past four years. Now we can all say that we aren’t apologizing for something we didn’t do, that their own ignorance and foolishness caused their trauma, and so on. But note that if you were in a relationship with someone who was pulling this on you, it would be “I’m in a relationship with a psychopath/narcissistic abuser and I’m out of here” level stuff. Now consider that this thinking is widespread throughout the country, by people who have been carrying out their revenge for months. They have been abusers, and that for a long time. Now tell me: how can anybody believe we have a country left? What possible hope for unity remains? And then consider that even much of the Right supports things that God abhors, most notably sodomy and the murder of unborn children. God can do anything He wants, and we should pray for national repentance. But barring the mighty intervention of the Spirit of God, there is no chance of survival. This country will soon be no more. And as we continue to speed toward our demise, if they are able, the Left will crush you. And just like in the abusive relationship, they will make it as personal as possible.

Pessimillennialism and the Success of the Gospel

Pessimillennialism gets exactly what expects, in its unbelief. If you expect the Spirit of God working through the Gospel to accomplish little, it will affect your sharing of the Gospel, your prayer, and all your conduct in every aspect of your life. “And He did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.” But if the Spirit of God has the power to change individuals, He has the power to change countries, cultures, and the world. No individual Christian achieves perfect sanctification in this life. But the direction of his life is one way, the path of holiness that leads to perfection. And he is mostly characterized by his obedience to the commandments of God (Romans 8:1-17). This exactly what we should expect the Gospel to achieve for the whole world. Jesus tells us to pray “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, as if we should expect that prayer to be answered. This side of the return of Christ, the world will not be sinless, as the people that make it up will not be sinless. But no reading of the Gospel as Scripture presents it can possibly see it as weak or unsuccessful. When all is said and done, the whole cosmos will be saved.

One point to be seen in all of this is that there is no divide between soteriology and eschatology. To believe that there is is to have an incomplete understanding of both. Eschatology is the working out of, and the complete success of, the Gospel in Creation and in history.

So what did Jesus mean when He said “My kingdom is not of this world”(Jn. 18:36)? He meant the world as it existed before His death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, the world under the Old Covenant. That He was referring to that world only is evident by His statement “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews.” The statement was time specific, referring to that moment. Christ’s death and resurrection were necessary and the point of His incarnation. The Old Covenant world, the one where Israel alone were God’s people, apart from the Gentiles, was temporary and to be done away with in Christ’s work. The fact that His reign as King began after His resurrection, bringing in a new world, is clear from His words in Matthew 28:18, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

Atomism, Politics, and Salvation In Time

 It’s only political idolatry when Conservatives do it, apparently. Or, actually, the Left pretends to not be acting politically while being political. Or, even better, let’s stop pretending that morality and ethics - rather, righteousness and the Law of God - can be detached in one sphere of life from how it exists in any other sphere of life/reality. This attempt at Atomism is a denial of the unity of the created order under the One Who created it.

*************************

I have been thinking to myself, “well, if Biden wins, I suppose a lot of us will have to learn from our foolishness the hard way, again.” But that’s exactly the problem - we keep not learning, not gaining wisdom or discernment. We keep suffering the greatest judgment, that of being given over to our foolishness. This is Biblically the act of God forsaking a people, leaving them to sink deeper and deeper, to a place with no hope of salvation, a place where He will no longer save them. And to think that this is somehow a misapplication of Scripture as it relates to politics, or a confusing of politics and soteriology, reveals a failure to understand what salvation really is.

The Racist Affordable Care Act

 The Affordable Care Act was a large wealth transfer from the “haves” to the “have nots”. It was racist in nature by design, intended to disenfranchise the majority, being white Americans. And when coupled with unrestricted immigration, the plan was to replace them with non-white peoples as the majority in power. It was simply Cultural Marxism at work. And the same ideology continues. It’s the exact same thing as has been done in South Africa in recent years, as white individuals and families find themselves in poverty due to “affirmative action”. The turn to violence has occurred as white farmers have been murdered alongside of their wives and children on land their ancestors purchased legally. And now in the U.S. we’ve seen innocent store owners beaten in the streets by BLM and Antifa as they try to defend their businesses. It’s the same ideology and the same anti-white racism.

What No One Else Will Say

 Look, if we ever do elect a woman president, can it at least be a Southern woman with a nice lilting voice we can tolerate for four years, instead of one of these Yankee women with their nasally tone that sounds like a cat crying as it’s being dangled over a full bath tub?

The Inevitable Trump

Luxury makes men idiots. Case in point: the past four years of GOP who are scholars or who otherwise live comfortable lives who have groused endlessly about Trump’s character flaws.

Is President Trump the strong populist traditionalist leader who shows up late in a republic as it’s about to meet its demise? Of course he is. But I consider that as inevitable as the rising and the setting of the sun everyday. And to start fretting about the possibility of centralization and totalitarianism at this point is like waiting until the last lap of the race to complain about the fumes from the cars.

It’s 2020, and President Trump is the late 20th century man. In times of vast rapid change men will always seek out the safety, stability, and familiarity of the recent past. If it wasn’t going to be Trump, it would have been somebody else very much the same.

Fear As God’s Judgment

This sort of fear that controls people today, especially on the Left, is just bizarre to me. What are people doing, or not doing, that has led so many to such a place? Fear over the virus, fear over Trump. And how can people so misread the president over the past four years as to think he’s some kind of tyrant and white supremacist? This isn’t just about him, either. This is about a basic ability or inability to read people. No doubt sin and unbelief, a lack of knowing, trusting, and obeying God, lies at the heart of it. But if that’s the case, then that renders judgment on a lot of reputable men. And that is a frightening thing.

The President’s “Lack of Dignity”

The same people who have been critical of Trump’s “lack of dignity” over the past four years still think that’s the major problem today. And they’re still clueless as to where we are as a country, and what our real needs are. The dignity we’ve had for a long time has been that of whitewashed tombs housing dead men’s bones, among which are the bodies of millions of unborn babies. Our dignity has been a sham, a facade, behind which we’ve tried to hide our sin and shame. What we’re seeing now is merely the tearing down the facade to show who we really are. Don’t blame Trump. Any lack of decorum comes from our failures.

ACB

 I’ll believe ACB’s ascension to the Supreme Court will make a difference when I see it. Throw a case dealing with abortion or gender issues up there and let’s see what she does. For now I’m skeptical. Meanwhile the real need is to somehow eliminate the court’s power to legislate, and move power away from DC and back to the states. The sort of celebration we’ve seen the past couple of days on the Republican side seems to me to reveal what short memories we have, and how little we understand the matters surrounding this. Plus she still praised RBG, a fact that can’t be ignored.

In the Pantheon of the Gods

The late Justice Ginsburg’s body is lying in state in the Capitol building, beneath the dome and the painting of the Apotheosis of Washington, that is, of Washington ascending to the pantheon of gods, and becoming a god himself. Which is more blasphemous, and more a mark of an America in defiance of the one true God? Is it the painting? Or is it Ginsburg’s body, being worshiped as if she were a deity or a savior? Or is it the building itself, or the rest of DC’s high holy temples to men long dead, designed after the patterns of Greek and Roman temples? It’s hard to say. But the past few months Yahweh has sent His plagues and hordes of barbarians to awaken His people from their slumbers, with little more than a sleepy stirring. And the temples of the idols still stand, on every high hill and under every green tree.

9/11 Was the Just Judgment of God

Just like with the chaos this year, 9/11 was God’s judgment on a wicked nation guilty of, among other things, the daily ritual slaughter of the unborn. We didn’t learn then, and so far we don’t seem to be learning now. As long as mass repentance does not arise in this country, we will continue down the path toward complete dissolution.

A Third World Revolution

https://americanmind.org/essays/the-coming-coup/

An important and concerning article. Imagine Trump winning in November, but the ruling elite along with the military forcing Trump to leave the White House. It sounds like that may be what we should expect.

Assorted Fascistbook Thoughts

You know, given the past few months, the Obamas’ move out to safe Martha’s Vineyard was rather interesting. I’m sure it was just a coincidence.

*******************

“America will never become a socialist country,” the president said. Not only have the Left pushed us into socialism, they’ve managed to make the president an active party in it.

********************

You know how that hair salon lured Pelosi into their trap? With wine and ice cream. True story.

********************

At what point is a government negligent to the point of illegitimacy? At what point have they ceased fulfilling their part of the contract such that the contract is no longer valid?

*********************

As the k*y*l*e situation is proving once again, there is no difference between Fascistbook and the National Socialists when it comes to the communication of inconvenient truths.

*********************

“Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips“ - Proverbs 27:2. Let the memers of their own tweets understand.

**********************

Has President Trump had a mini stroke or transischemic attack somewhere along in his life? It’s possible. I think there are many, more than we would expect, that occur in people and are never detected, especially as we get older, and in times of high amounts of stress. Stress itself is a bigger contributor to aging, sickness, and death than it’s given credit for.

The Business of America is Idolatry

I’m currently listening to the president’s RNC address. He has accomplished alot, far more than most presidents. But this claim of ”saving American jobs” is, at least in part, disingenuous. When you are regularly bringing in new “Americans” to please corporations, who are forcing already existing American employees to train their more cheaply paid replacements before they find themselves unemployed, then you aren’t saving American jobs. You‘re simply creating more unemployed Americans and shifting more money back into billionaires’ pockets. You’re just bringing in the foreigners to do the job here rather than overseas. You are moreso increasing the American welfare system and destroying American lives.

The shallow response at this point is that this is “racist”. But in a country this mixed, that accusation of racism doesn’t fly anymore. Your black or Asian neighbor is as likely to lose his job to a foreign replacement as your white neighbor is.

The one thing Republicans can’t understand is that money and business alone make no country great, least of all America. Scripture makes it clear that business apart from obeying the commands of God is death. The requirement to love the people near you, your neighbors in the truest sense, is chief among those commands, with regard to our duties to each other. And what corporations that replace their workers with cheap labor are doing isn’t love. The Epistle of James echoes loudly here. It is the “interests” of big business who have been looting and burning cities the past few months, those trained by the education system ordered by global corporate entities. Big business has supported and encouraged the rioters in their destruction. And in the end the wealthy will weather this and continue to prosper, while the common man is the one who will suffer. They care nothing for your wellbeing, your local businesses, your heritage, or your culture. If anything, those get in their way. Their goal is to bring in cheap labor and appease investors, while throwing in some absurd Leftist ideologically-shaped regulations while they’re at it, the kind that kill off small businesses. What they want are slaves; in fact, they want a slave class, entirely subservient to them.

Without a godliness that does not bow to whatever big business demands, any words about our worshipping Almighty God alone are dishonest and a violation of the first two commandments. Taking this into account, along with the big business that abortion is, it’s impossible to say God’s wrath toward America is undeserved.

Saving Authority

Those who hold positions of power and authority are in the place of bestowing and restoring dignity and honor, particularly to those who have found themselves to have become undignified and dishonored. They can equally take them away or refuse to bestow them, these things that a person naturally longs for, and crush the needy soul in the process. This is true first of all of fathers, and follows out to all those who “father” society. Woe to those fathers who fail to appreciate the power to kill or make alive that they hold, or even worse, those who abuse that power. They condemn men to Hell, whether they know it or not.

Postmillennial Judgments

I’m a postmillennialist. And I believe fully in the sovereignty of God, the complete triumph of the work of Christ, and the victory of His kingdom over all. But any application of postmillennialism that tries to treat tragedies as if they aren’t tragic isn’t Biblical or Christian. Jesus really wept over Jerusalem, and He wasn’t faking His sorrow.

The Bible talks about real loss, and things that in themselves are irrecoverable. Otherwise the warnings of Scripture are sapped of any meaning.

Conservative Statism

Governor Cooper wants to keep government schools closed for now or at reduced capacity. Some conservatives are arguing that we should be opening them, because single parent families need them to babysit their kids. The quote from Dabney about American conservatism that I posted this morning screams out here. Why are Christians arguing for more Statism, and for more opportunities for reprobates to catechize their children? Do we need more occasion for unbelievers to draw them into immorality and godlessness? Haven’t they already led enough into Hell as it is? Are we so clueless about what brought about the chaos of the past two months? This is why the Church is so impotent in America today. We fail in knowing Scripture, and we fail in applying Scripture. Government schools exist to turn your children into worshippers of the idol of the State, and to raise up mindless workers for the corporations who pay off the politicians we so obediently vote into office. Do you want to raise men and women who are free in Christ? Do not turn them over to the State to be “educated”.

R.L. Dabney on American Conservatism

This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious, for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always—when about to enter a protest—very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent rôle of resistance. The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.

Eternally the Other

No person is ever able to fully enter into the experience of another person, and you never fully know what’s going on in the life of someone else, even the people you’re closest to. The most seemingly banal person online, or even in person, is far more rich and interesting than we tend to give them credit for. And there’s always going to be suffering they experience that you know nothing about. It’s always worth remembering in our tendency to reduce people down to something less than what they are.

Conscious Distancing

When I hear the term “social distancing” I’m reminded of Gwyneth Paltrow’s “conscious uncoupling”, in her divorce from Chris Martin a few years back. We all mocked it then, but we seemingly have fallen for the bait this time. Both are equally examples of Orwellian Doublespeak, which governments (or individuals) use to maintain control. The terms intentionally speak in contradictory ways - socializing can’t be at a distance, for instance. They are simply propagandistic rhetoric, meant to obfuscate, and to confuse and manipulate a foolish or naive people. They are not about truth, but power, not about love, but enmity. They are an attempt at taking the personal realities of life and portraying them as impersonal. They are a hallmark of Modernism in its goal of absolute objectivism. They are Duchamp’s Nude Descending A Staircase. 

I can’t think of a much greater indicator of the worthlessness of government schools than the fact that we were all forced to read Orwell and yet somehow didn’t learn a thing from him, other than how to create the world he was warning against.